is a former intel­li­gence officer for MI5, the UK Secur­ity Ser­vice, who resigned in the late 1990s to blow the whistle on the spies’ incom­pet­ence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler.

is a former intel­li­gence officer for MI5, the UK Secur­ity Ser­vice, who resigned in the late 1990s to blow the whistle on the spies’ incom­pet­ence and crimes with her ex-partner, David Shayler.

I fear that soon the curtain will finally be brought down on the puppet show that passes for democracy in America, and those who for decades have been pulling the strings will come raging into the light, red in tooth and claw.

The illusion that the people really have a choice of president every four years will be irreparably shattered.

The old British truism that "it does not matter whom you vote for, the government always gets in" can also be applied to the US presidency - usually all candidates are approved and massively funded by the modern incarnation of Eisenhower's infamous "military-industrial complex" and then assiduously supported by cheerleaders in the old corporate media, leaving the electorate with damn little meaningful choice.

This has been true from Reagan to Bush the First, from Clinton the First to Bush the Second and then on to Obama (the First?). It was supposed to have been true in the most recent election, where the elite's choice pointed towards a contest between Bush the Third or Clinton the Second, either one of whom would have worked to the interests of Wall Street and continued the increasingly dangerous, interventionist, and hawkish global US foreign policy.

As a little aside, since when did the USA fall for the concept of inherited political power, a de facto new monarchy? But then an oxymoronic billionaire "man of the people" crow-barred his way into the contest and slashed all the strings of puppetry and privilege. Enter, stage left, the bullish, seemingly bigoted, and bemusingly successful Donald Trump.

As a Brit, currently cut adrift in a pre-Brexit Europe, I hold no brief for the dangers he may or may not pose to the much-vaunted American way of life in the good ol' homeland. However, as I have stated before, with The Donald's apparent determination to follow a strategy of US isolationism, to cut a deal in Syria, and effect a rapprochement with Russia, the wider world may just have dodged a nuclear bullet or at least an era of unending war.

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Plus, the American people appear to have wanted a change, any change, from the hereditary privilege of the Washington elite. That change could well have come from another outsider, Bernie Sanders, if he had been given a fair chance. However, as we know from the leaked Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Podesta emails, the Democratic Party would stop at nothing to ensure the anointing of the chosen one - Clinton the Second.

So why do I think that there may be a coup d'etat looming in America's very near future?

Trump was elected on the promise of "draining the swamp" of the Washington political and corporate elites - this is deeply threatening to the vested interests, not least the CIA, whose daily briefings have been spurned by Trump, thereby rupturing the co-dependent relationship between the president and the politically compromised intelligence agencies that has existed since 9/11 and which has caused so much global harm, starting with the ill-informed and illegal rush to war in Iraq in 2003. I shall return to the CIA later.

The American elite is facing the inauguration of a self-professed outsider who is threatening all their easily-bought privileges, one who seems more interested in cutting deals with countries than bombing them. Nor do they like his nominees to high office, especially that of Rex Tillerson, the current CEO of ExxonMobil, to the post of Secretary of State - after all, he has a track record of cutting deals too and with the Russians no less. Such a person as the top US diplomat might, gasp, help to bring to a close the new not-so-Cold War that is so important to the hawkish warmongers and their masters in the thriving US arms and security industry.

Therefore, once Trump had been declared the official Republican nominee, the establishment push-back was all too predictable. The story of "Russian hacking" was initially trailed merely as media bait to divert the press from the real story - Hillary Clinton's potentially illegal use of a private web server while acting as Secretary of State.

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Then in November WikiLeaks began to release even more damaging emails from the DNC and the Podesta files, which demonstrated quite how the Democrats had stitched up the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. The Democrats immediately cried foul - it must indeed be the Russians hacking their files and handing the information to WikiLeaks (now cast as a 'Russian stooge' - a move extremely useful in America's ongoing attempts to frame the prosecution of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange as "espionage", even though he is an Australian publisher stuck in Europe).

Unusually, Assange went on the record to say the emails Wikileaks published did not come from the Russians: the whistle-blowing site traditionally refuses to discuss its sources.

Then former UK Ambassador and WikiLeaks ally, Craig Murray, went public by saying that, while he was in Washington earlier this year, he was given files that were then published on WikiLeaks. His view is that the information came from a Democrat whistleblower with legal access - it was a leak by an insider, not a hack by an outsider.

Also earlier this week a group of former senior US intelligence officials, including the former Technical Director of the NSA, wrote an open letter to Congress explaining that, if indeed the Russians had hacked the DNC, the NSA would have been able to provide evidence to to prove this. Yet, at such a time of potential constitutional crisis, none has been forthcoming, either directly or via the CIA, even in the face of calls for the usual congressional hearings and special investigations.

So there is apparently no substantive evidence of Russian hacking during the election. However, there does appear to be some evidence around the issue of Clinton's illegal server.

Eleven days before the American election the Director of the FBI, in the wake of the Anthony Weiner sexting case, reopened the investigation into the Clinton server scandal and published the fact, as he said, in the national interest. This caused howls of rage from the Democrats, and again "Russian hacking" was hyped in the media, thereby easily conflating the concept of the illegal server, the alleged hacks, the Russians, into one big lump of geek-speak that most people would not have the will to disentangle. Two days before the election, James Comey backed down, but the hacking seed had germinated.

Now it is coming into bloom - last week the CIA re-entered the fray, with reports about Russian hacking leaked to both the Washington Post and the New York Times. Since then, nameless "intelligence sources" and grandstanding politicians have been falling over themselves to speak to this subject, but it all remains very evidence-lite.

Plus there is apparently by no means a consensus amongst all seventeen of the US intelligence agencies with regards to the CIA's claims. Indeed, until recently the FBI has directly contradicted them, and the FBI is in the business of pulling together evidence to prosecute a case under law.

That, now, is all changing. Only recently it was reported that the FBI is now supporting the CIA's "beliefs". I was puzzled about this volte face until I read this prominent op-ed by Clinton campaign manager, John Podesta, in the Washington Post where, in addition to blaming the Russians for "hacking the election" (note, no longer just the DNC emails and his own), he is attacking the FBI and its head, James Comey, and suggesting that the organisation is broken and "what’s broken in the FBI must be fixed and quickly". Perhaps, for whatever reason, Comey can see the overturning of the election result as a real possibility now and is desperately rowing back.

In parallel, it seems that the CIA is fearful of retaliation if, against all their endeavors, Donald Trump does indeed get sworn in as the 45th president of the USA on 20th January next year. That goes some way to explaining why they are challenging the election result by pushing this line that the Russians "hacked the election", the new headline that has morphed through the global MSM over the last couple of days from belief to established fact, with no evidence produced.

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The CIA claims that Russian "hackers" were delving around in the emails of both the Democratic National Congress as well as the Republican equivalent for months before the November election. And yet only the Democrat emails were, the CIA asserts, passed on to WikiLeaks and thereby published to order to sway the election result. Where is the proof? They have produced no evidence, in the face of of expert testimony from former senior intelligence officers as well as direct assertions from WikiLeaks about the source of the DNC leaks. Indeed, the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, is refusing to brief the Congressional intelligence committees, despite repeated requests from the members.

That has not stopped the global mainstream media from whipping up an imagined new truth: that the Russians "hacked the election". And the media frenzy has grown exponentially over the last few days.

This is why I fear an American coup d'etat, possibly starting as soon as 19th December, the date when the Electoral College meets to ratify the election of Trump. All this Cold-War, anti-Russian hysteria is being used as a stick to beat the Electoral College members into ignoring their duty and vote in the way directed by the majority of the people of their state whom they are pledged to represent. Plus, who knows what juicy carrots may also have been offered?

If enough prove faithless to the electorate, then the election result will be overturned and Clinton the Second could ascend to the American throne. Even if the Electoral College does its sworn duty to the people, I fear that the CIA anti-Trump campaign may now have gathered so much momentum that the establishment may still find a way, any way possible, to stop Trump's inauguration as president - after all we still have five weeks to get through before 20th January.

Trump is a known unknown and retains potential possibilities intriguing to the wider world. However, if the Electoral College starts a coup d'etat on Monday and against all constitutional norms the coronation of Clinton proceeds, we know all too well what lies ahead: war.