James DiEugenio

Jeff: If you read Josh Marshall's lengthy analysis of the IG report you will see that something did force Comey's hand. It was the fear that the info would leak out of the NY FBI office which was anti HRC. This is something that he feels was not made the focus of the report. But it should have been. Jeff: I agree that this has become almost McCarthyite by the MSM. The thing is that everything that Mueller had done so far is kind of questionable. On two grounds. First, it does not directly relate to the original charge. I mean operating as a foreign representative without registering is a very common offense. As many in that business have said, it is almost never enforced. Second, the Democratic hack charge has been criticized by some very smart and technically minded people. No less than Bill Binney. Third, where is the evidence of collusion and conspiracy? Nothing that has come out so far comes near to what Bill Clinton did in Russia in 1996. And hardly anyone ever mentions that double standard.

A lurker wanted me to forward this to John: One of the PDF files he shows under the Bloomfield thread is a letter Richard Coit (likely Cote) in C/O: Sir William Stepheson, the British SOE at address 608 Fifth Avenue 20, NY. That address was the Goelet Building and it was adjacent to Rockefeller Center, which according housed the David Sarnoff RCA - NSA appartatus which included Stephenson and Walter Sheridan. Pages 418---pages 487-491 in Dope Inc. Dope Inc PDF file can be accessed and downloaded on line. Interesting history of the building maybe John would like to review. http://s-media.nyc.gov/agencies/lpc/lp/1810.pdf Bloomfield really was a player it seems. He really moved in the upper circles of the power elite.

You know Kirk, if every once in awhile you would get something right about me, I might take you seriously. You don't. Which shows the kind of cheap shot artist you are. I have never voted for a Clinton in my life. Just like I never voted for Obama. California is a safe state. So in the general I vote Green. So i voted for Stein. In the primaries I vote for the best I can find. The last time I voted for Sanders. In 2008 I voted for Edwards. In 1992 I voted for Jerry Brown. Andrew, that whole thing about "racist appeals to the worst instincts", I mean how old are you? You never heard of Nixon's Southern Strategy? The Republicans have been doing this for almost half a century. That is news to you? You are shocked by it? To me its sort of like Claude Rains tongue in cheek line in Casablanca: "Do you mean there is gambling at Rick's? I am shocked, shocked." If the Clinton campaign did not anticipate a method that has been around since the sixties, then they were incompetent. For God's sakes, do you not remember where Reagan made his first post convention speech in 1980? The Neshoba County Fair just seven miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi. Why was that significant? Two reasons. Philadelphia was where the bodies of Cheney, Schwerner and Goodman were found. Reagan's speech was themed around the idea of states' rights. So please, this technique is so old its banal. The real question is why didn't those highly paid advisors and so called strategists find a way to neutralize this, especially in the north? Why did she not spend more time there? Why did she not talk about what she planned on doing for them and take Trump head on? I can suggest one reason: she had little credibility on the issue of globalization since her husband's record hurt her on that issue. Secondly, its hard to say you have the interests of the middle class in mind when you are doing speaking engagements for Goldman Sachs at $260, 000 a pop. Plus, there was the problem with the whole Clinton Foundation pay per play accusation which, incredibly, they never found a way to counter. I have little doubt today that Sanders would have beaten Trump. And its for this reason. He would not have lost the Blue Wall. He really could have convinced those people in Ohio and Pennsylvania that he understood what they were up against and had their best interests at heart. But as we now know, the whole DNC structure and schedule was rigged against him. And then, Obama made sure that Ellison did not take over the DNC and flush it out by getting his Perez flunky to take over, a guy who endorses in Democratic primaries. Another reason HRC lost is that Obama left her little to run on. I mean JFK achieved more in 2 years and ten months, than Obama did in 8 years. Obama had a Golden Opportunity to do some great things with the American economy in 2009. He could have blamed the GOP for causing the blowout and then said we will now rebuild, bypass the failed policies of the past and put the culprits who did this in jail. You know sort of like FDR. And the GOP was really afraid he would do something big which would realign the American political system like the New Deal did. What does he do? He appoints Geithner, the soul mate of Larry Summers, and decides to make the Affordable Care Act his hallmark. Which would be cool if it worked, but it does not work well at all. He then makes HRC his Secretary of State. The Democratic version of Jeanne Kirkpatrick. She is even worse on foreign policy than domestic policy. From 2008-10, Obama had the senate, the House and the White House. It could have been the new Hundred Days. Instead he meets with conservative leaders like Kristol for dinner at the White House. I have a friend from Illinois who once said, "Jim, the key to Obama is all those roll call votes he dodged in the state senate plus the fact he got pummeled by Bobby Rush when he ran for congress." No one took any of that seriously though. But he did bail out with a sixty million book contract. Leaving us with a candidate so flawed she could not even beat a goof like Trump. But what does one expect from Obama, a guy who once introduced Bill Clinton as a great president. Thanks for that going away gift Barack.

OMG, in heaven. All that Cory said was this: Trump ran a very smart campaign and he won the electoral college vote. He kept Clinton out of the south, save Virginia. He then took down parts of the blue wall in the north. He visited those states much more often than HRC did. Michael Moore predicted in advance that this was going to happen. That the people in the north who were hurting were going to tell the Democrats to stuff it: What did Obama do for me? But no one would listen. In addition, only three of the 21 polls got it right. Huffpo said there was a 97 per cent change of Clinton winning. It was a lock. If you watch the election night returns from 2016--and there are many of these reels on You Tube--all the so called pundits were rocked. They were wrong. Clinton had twice as much money as Trump. Let me say that again: Trump was outspent 2 to 1. He did not have nearly as many employees as Clinton. But he ran a smarter campaign. Which the MSM completely missed since they never took him seriously anyway. In my view, Russia Gate is a direct reaction to this shock to the system. Its a way of getting back for an embarrassing flub. There is, of course, a parallel here with the JFK assassination. They missed that one too, and they will abide by no one telling them they were wrong.

So Angleton testified before the Church Committee twice then? Once before the Hart/Schweiker sub committee, then this one looks to be before the Republicans on the full committee. Then, how many times did he testify before the HSCA? I know he did at least once with Surrell Brady. Did he ever testify before the Rockefeller Commission? The thing is, so far no one has focused on what should have been a very important point. Which is: the way Oswald's file was set up when it was first opened and how that limited the routing of his files through the system. Malcolm Blunt has been sending me a lot of documents on this issue. Betsy Wolf--and to a lesser extent Mike Goldsmith--both of the HSCA, spent a lot of time and effort trying to figure this out. Betsy Wolf made reams of pages of notes on this and interviewed several people about it.

I kind of look at Kissinger being the guy who took up where Foster Dulles left off. Kissinger liked and believed in covert action, but he was more the public face of the dirty tricks. And I should also add, Kissinger served under Nixon. Once you listen to their conversations in the White House, you understand why they fought tooth and nail to keep them classified. And why Kissinger is still fighting to keep his personal papers closed. If you ever had two men who created their own reputations and had a coterie of followers that helped in that regard, it was Nixon and Kissinger. Now that much of the material is finally out there, Nixon is exposed and being nothing but a dyed in the wool Cold Warrior who learned at the foot of Ike and Foster Dulles and never adapted himself to a changing world. Kissinger once said to Haldeman that when all Nixon's tapes are declassified, "history will not be kind to us." If anything that was an understatement. And when you compare them to JFK, I mean, forget it.

Like most of his book, Nelson is full of baloney with that LBJ ducking issue. Groden discredited it in his book Absolute Proof. That is interesting Gene, I was not aware of how much RMN and Warren disliked each other. I really like that comment from Warren that his service of the WC was the unhappiest time of his life. I wonder why.

God John, If i hear that phrase conspiracy theorist one more time I think I will puke. This is not about a conspiracy theory, its about the free flow of information. The guy has been dead for over thirty years. If he donated his papers and said they would be open in 2004, what is the legal problem? Why does a third party have to intervene on such a nebulous tenet? Really, its just nutty.

That is an amazing story which does not get the attention it deserves. How could that possibly be a coincidence?

That is a good question. Today, after the influences of the Clintons, I don't think there is. Recall, the Clintons vacationed with Kissinger each Xmas in the Caribbean. Henry is the heavyweight champion of post WW 2 genocides: East Pakistan (Bangladesh), Cambodia, East Timor. Whatever was left of the Kennedy imprint on the Democratic party was pretty much expunged by them.

Steve: That is a great quote. And it really applies to all this. Jeff, that is interesting about Assange's denial. If you read that article I linked to, the powers that be are really after this guy. I mean even to the point of making a negative movie about him, which of course, was produced by Dreamworks.

Geez Kirk, I wonder why Wikileaks wanted to cooperate with Trump? Maybe because HRC once said she would like to "drone Assange"? Some sanity on Wikileaks: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/06/18/a-call-to-bring-julian-assange-home/

Nice one Jeff. And let me add, Putin has made an offer to let Mueller interview his suspects in Russia. Let us see what happens with that. Plus the t-r-o-l-l farm has also requested to see the evidence he has on them. Trump himself asked about the FBI examination of the Democratic server. To my knowledge, there was none done. A private company did it at bequest of the Democrats. This is why many have doubts about where this inquiry is going after well over one year. Again, maybe something will evolve from all this. But right now, I see very little. And when you compare it with what Clinton did with Yeltsin, or Nuland in the Ukraine, its night and day.

Nice one Cory. Here is a link to a good article on this whole issue: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/07/16/us-media-is-losing-its-mind-over-trump-putin-press-conference/ Steve, that is part of what I was trying to say. NATO today has honed in on a mission creep that is so big and divergent from what it was originally designed for that to me, its pretty much unrecognizable.

It was worse than that Mike. He gave him the whole Hussein "mushroom cloud" colloquy, like forty million dead thing. I have always wondered about that myself. Did Johnson really believe that stuff. If he was, then he was being duped by disinfo from the CIA. If he did not buy it then why did he tell Warren that? But I guess we have to rely on the info that Hoover did not figure out that the whole Oswald in MC was a charade until six weeks later. And LBJ was relying on Hoover for his info to a large degree. Belin never brought in these refinements to the argument. Neither did he ever admit that Warren was really a titular chair. What I have called the Troika--Dulles, McCloy and Ford really ran that committee. And Rankin catered to them. Russell, Boggs and Cooper were like extras in a TV movie.

David: What is the data for that angle?

If you look at a map of Europe and NATO, and you include active members of the alliance and those not contributing, or under consideration, it goes pretty much up to the borders of Russia. To me, that is not a defensive alliance. Especially when there is no Warsaw Pact today. And there is no divided Germany. That was the whole reason for NATO: there was an eastern and western Europe. That does not exist today. In fact, NATO has been used of late as an offensive war mechanism. For example, against Serbia and Libya. Can you imagine that, using NATO to attack Africa? When, in fact, Libya posed no threat to Europe. To me, the UN is a much more important international mechanism today than NATO. NATO is a relic from a bygone era. And I really do not understand why we have to foot such a large part of the bill for it in today's world.

Let me add one last point here: i agree with Bannen on the whole firing of Comey issue. It was one of the dumbest things any president has done in recent years. For the simple reason that a special prosecutor has way more power than an FBI inquiry does. I mean can you see the FBI indicting a xxxxx farm in Russia? I can't.

Pat: I disagree with the characterization. If anyone was a murderous thug in bed with a bunch of oligarchs it was Yeltsin. No one can even argue that point. And not only did Clinton back him, Clinton saved him in one of the most obvious American heists of an election in recent history. (Surpassed only by what American did in Ukraine more recently. And we tried to blame that on Putin also.) So my question is, if that is all in the record and there is no real debate about it--and there is not--then why is what Trump doing so bad; when, in fact, the circumstances around those accusations are not proven?

LOL Assuming facts not in evidence.

PS: Trump didn't have to meet with Putin at all. And Meuller did not have to announce those indictments 72 hours before the summit either. If that was not politically motivated, what is? Its the equivalent to announcing the results of the Fisher Panel on the eve of the Shaw trial. Or indicting a xxxxx farm.

BN: How about because until 1945 the Europeans have been slaughtering each other for hundreds of years? Go back through maps of Europe say four or five hundred years . I did not say what you are imputing to me. What I said was, why do we have to foot the bill for it? Look at the ratios. But your other argument is not the reason that it was created. It was not created to stop wars between European nations. It was created to stop a Soviet invasion through the Eastern Bloc. There is no USSR today and there is no Eastern Bloc. Take look at how far NATO extends east today. I think that is ridiculous.

And I don't mind saying that, at least right now. I think its really nutty the way the MSM, parts of the GOP and almost the entire Democratic party is going crazy about this summit and Trump's refusal to denounce Putin. Why should he? Indictments are only accusations. Nothing has been proven about this case, not by a long shot. BTW, I also agree with him on NATO. Why do we need to foot the bill for them if there is no USSR or Eastern Bloc anymore? Does this mean I like Trump? Heck no. He may turn out worse than W, which I did not think was possible. But on these two issues I think he has shown instincts that compare to Kennedy.

Lewis wanted the public to defer to Belin on the JFK case? And this is 1992.

The worst thing Stone ever did is coordinate the Brooks Brothers Riot in Dade County.