THIS WEEKS INTELLIGENC HEARING WAS “SHADES OF WATERGATE”

…FBI DIRECTOR, JAMES COMEY

 

Too many “coincidences” to not have some fire, where there was so much smoke.

 

Well, it was an historic day.

 

The Director of the FBI and the Director of the NSA were both able to say that their agencies were conducting investigations into possible coordination between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in a counterintelligence probe that could reach all the way to the White House.  They also admitted that the investigation may last for months,

 

This disclosure came at the beginning of a 5½ -hour public hearing before the House Intelligence Committee in which the FBI Director, James Comey also said there is “no information that supports President Trump’s claims that his predecessor ordered surveillance of Trump Tower during the election campaign”.

 

Even though it was implied multiple times through a number of stated, so called “coincidences”, Director Comey repeatedly refused to answer whether specific individuals close to the president had fallen under suspicion of “criminal wrongdoing, [that is] so we don’t wind up smearing people who may not be charged with a crime”.

 

Comey was being totally proper because the FBI does not disclose the existence of any investigation, “but in unusual circumstances, where it is in the public interest,” Comey said, “it may be appropriate to do so.”

 

Comey had come under serious fire last year when against the department’s strong advice, he notified Congress just 11 days before the November election that the FBI had reopened an examination of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.  That move, Democrats had charged, hurt Clinton as she was heading into the home stretch of her campaign.  

 

But Comey this time at the hearing said he was authorized by the Justice Department to confirm the existence of the wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the electoral process.  The House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Devin Nunes (R-CA) then stated to Director Comey: “You've put 'a big gray cloud' over the Trump administration.”

 

Rep. Devin Nunes then urged Comey to reveal if and when the bureau had information clearing any of its targets, and to do so as quickly as possible.  “There’s a big gray cloud that you’ve now put over people who have very important work to do to lead this country, and so the faster that you can get to the bottom of this, it’s going to be better for all Americans,” Nunes said.

 

Comey said that the investigation had begun late July and for a counterintelligence probe, “that’s a fairly short period of time [for an FBI investigation].”

 

The hearing this day came amid the controversy by Trump’s “Tweets” more than two weeks ago when he tweeted, without providing any evidence, that President Barack Obama had ordered his phones tapped at Trump Tower.  “I have no information that supports those tweets,’’ Comey said. “We have looked carefully inside the FBI, and agents found nothing to support those claims”.

 

He added that the Justice Department had asked him to tell the committee that they also had no such information as well.

Per Director Comey: “No information to support Trump's wiretapping tweets.”

 

Under the appropriate questioning from the top Democrat on the panel, Rep. Adam Schiff (CA), Comey made it very clear that no US president could personally order such surveillance or wire-tapping.

 

But as usual, remarkably, Trump’s presidential Twitter account was burning up the twitter lines as he continued to fire away throughout the widely watched hearing.  Trump live-tweeted comments and assertions that lawmakers then referred to and used them to question Comey and the National Security Agency Director, Michael Rogers.

 

Both Directors predicted that the Russian intelligence agencies would be expected to continue to meddle in US political campaigns because their work in the 2016 presidential race was obviously successful.  “They’ll be back in 2020. They may be back in 2018,” Comey said. “One of the lessons they may draw from this is that they were successful, introducing chaos and discord into the electoral process.”  Rogers agreed: “I fully expect they will maintain this level of activity.” And, he said, “Moscow is conducting a similar active measures campaign in Europe, where France and Germany are holding elections this year.”

 

What was so interesting was when Rep. Schiff focused on possible contacts between Trump associates and Russian officials.  Schiff outlined a series of events that took place last July and August that he said “Appear to be pivotal to the question of whether there was improper contact.”

 

The Democrat then ticked off a list of more than a dozen incidents, including former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page’s trip to Moscow and his alleged meeting with Igor Sechin, a Putin confidant and chief executive of the energy company Rosneft.  Then there was the Trump political adviser Roger Stone’s boasts about his connections to WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange and Stone’s prediction that the emails of Clinton campaign adviser John Podesta would soon be published.  (And just how would Stone know ahead of time that Podesta’s emails would be posted by Wikileaks?)

 

“Is it possible that all of these events and reports are completely unrelated and nothing more than an entirely unhappy coincidence? Yes, it is possible,” Schiff said. “But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated. . . . We simply don’t know, not yet, and we owe it to the country to find out.”

 

Back at the White House, press secretary Sean Spicer stressed that an investigation into possible collusion between Russian officials and Trump associates doesn’t mean that there was any collusion.  “Investigating it and having proof of it are two different things,” Spicer said. “I think it’s fine to look into it, but at the end of the day they’re going to come to the same conclusion that everybody else has had.” Said Spicer: “There’s no evidence of a Trump-Russian collusion.”

But that many coincidence’s…..hmmmmm?

 

One story that apparently had upset the Republicans was of a Feb. 9 piece by The Washington Post reporting that Trump’s then-national security adviser, Michael Flynn, discussed the subject of sanctions with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, in the month before Trump took office. The Post reported that the discussions were observed under routine, court-approved monitoring of Kislyak’s calls.  Flynn, who had denied to Vice President Pence that he had spoken about sanctions, he was then forced to resign.

 

As the hearing was going on, Trump’s presidential Twitter account, in an obvious dig at Comey it carried the suggestion that Obama administration officials were behind the Wikileaks as Trump posted the tweet: “FBI Director Comey refuses to deny he briefed President Obama on calls made by Michael Flynn to Russia.”  At another point, the account tweeted out, “The NSA and FBI tell Congress that Russia did not influence electoral process.” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), noting that the tweet had gone out to 16.1 million Americans, asked Comey, “Is that accurate?”

 

“We’ve offered no opinion . . . on potential impact [of Russia’s hacking] because it’s not something we looked at,” Comey said.

 

Nunes sought an admission from the officials that the security leaks were illegal under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that governs foreign intelligence-gathering on US soil or US persons overseas.

 

“Yes, it is…” Comey answered. “In addition to being a breach of our trust with the FISA court.”

Director Rogers stressed that the identities of US persons picked up through “incidental collection”, in which investigating agents hear the words of people conversing with the targets of a wiretap, these are disclosed only on a “valid, need-to-know” basis, and usually only when there is criminal activity or a potential threat to the United States at play.

 

Comey then confirmed that individuals within the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the Justice Department and others,  including personnel in the White House, in some situations, they could have requested the unmasking of the names of US persons. But he stressed that only "the collecting agency", whether it’s the FBI, the NSA or the CIA, can unmask the identities of any US persons, but not the White House.

 

What came out of the hearing was that there was much smoke that appeared to bring back memories of the beginnings of the Watergate hearings of the 1970’s.  And as it was stated back then to the investigative Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein by their anonymous individual known as “Deep Throat”, he continued to tell them to: “Follow the money”.

 

Looks like that’s the same advise is being given today.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017