During the Cold War intelligence analysts would watch the
viewing stand during the annual Soviet Union May Day parade and try to guess
the state of the internal power struggles by who was present or absent, and
where people stood on the stand relative to Stalin. I am reminded of this by
watching the current news leaks and TV appearances by the various FBI, CIA and
DOJ players in the anti-Trump group that seem to suddenly be running for cover
now that their own actions are subject
to investigation. Like the old Soviet Union, it is hard to tell what is
actually happening when everyone is leaking and spinning and trying to “get
ahead of the story” before the really bad news surfaces.
Now that the Muller report is out, without providing
Democrats with the smoking gun they desperately wanted and were so sure they
would get, Trump, via attorney general Barr, is on the offensive against his “deep
state” opponents in the government, and it looks, from the leaks and TV
appearances, like they are running scared and trying desperately to throw each
other under the bus. Ex-FBI Director James Comey and ex-Attorney General
Loretta Lynch are peddling conflicting stories about how the Clinton e-mails
were handled. Ex-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and ex-Director
of the CIA John Brennan have issued repeated statements recently distancing
themselves from the now-discredited Steele dossier, and blaming Comey for pursuing
it. And then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and then-Acting FBI
Director Andrew McCabe offer conflicting stories about whether Rosenstein once
proposed wearing a wire to entrap President Trump.
One of the clues as to who is doing what to whom is the observation
by several analysts that the DOJ tends to leak to the Washington Post, while the FBI favors leaking to the New York Times, so one can deduce some
behavior by where a leak first appears.
And of course the FBI and the CIA hate each other, and the
FBI hates the DOJ and vice versa, as many released emails from people like
ex-FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page demonstrate. So there is clearly some
bitter inter-agency knife fighting going on as well as the attempts by the
principles to distance themselves from what will most likely be embarrassing revelations.
The intelligence community in particular has been stonewalling requests by the Attorney
General and several Senate Committees for documents relating to this case, trusting
that they could use classification to keep their behavior secret. So of course
they are panicked now that Trump has given the Attorney General full access and
the power to declassify anything he thinks ought to be revealed.
And they are probably right to be worried. There are three serious
independent (ie – not partisan, not Senate)
investigations under way at the moment. The Justice Department’s inspector
general, Michael Horowitz, has been examining the FBI’s efforts to surveil a
one-time Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, and that report is expected soon.
In March of 2018 then-Attorney General Jeff sessions appointed John Huber, the
top federal prosecutor for Utah, to investigate the origins of what
eventually became the Mueller investigation, and related FBI surveillance activities. More
recently Attorney General Barr appointed John Durham, a longtime Department of
Justice attorney and currently the chief federal prosecutor for
Connecticut, to investigate roughly the same subject. There has already
been enough material released to suggest that these investigations will find
enough to seriously embarrass some of the principles, if not perhaps even subject
some of them to criminal indictment.
Of course in the end Washington insiders take care of their
own, so no doubt most will escape any serious charges however improper their
behavior, except perhaps for the one or two picked to be scapegoats for the
rest. Accountability has never been Washington’s
strong point.
Posts
