Return of the Deep State

UPDATE: I just saw a tweet from Monday by Julian Assange where he quotes a Monmouth University poll showing that 74% of Americans believe that national policy is directed by a deep state.

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It seems to have been several months since the legacy media has denied the existence of a functioning U.S. deep state. (I am thinking of last year's "What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ That Doesn’t Exist," by Max Fisher, as a prime example.) But it was back on the front page with John Brennan's absurdly sanctimonious weekend "[Y]ou will not destroy America" tweet, amplified in its absurdity by the Samantha Power's double tap "[N]ot a good idea to piss off John Brennan."

And the press harangues Trump for being gauche.

What I wondered upon reading of Brennan's tweeted outrage is whether in the history of the United States any former CIA director had attacked a sitting president in a similar fashion. For instance, did John McCone, Kennedy's Director of Central Intelligence, harangue Nixon during the Watergate constitutional crisis?

 I doubt it.

So the deep state is back, front and center, and Ray McGovern, in his delightful "Former CIA Chief Brennan Running Scared," thinks a resolution to the current constitutional crisis might be right around the bend:

Unmasking: Senior national security officials are permitted to ask the National Security Agency to unmask the names of Americans in intercepted communications for national security reasons — not for domestic political purposes. Congressional committees have questioned why Obama’s UN ambassador Samantha Power (as well as his national security adviser Susan Rice) made so many unmasking requests. Power is reported to have requested the unmasking of more than 260 Americans, most of them in the final days of the administration, including the names of Trump associates.

Deep State Intimidation

Back to John Brennan’s bizarre tweet Saturday telling the President, “You may scapegoat Andy McCabe but you will not destroy America … America will triumph over you.” Unmasking the word “America,” so to speak, one can readily discern the name “Brennan” underneath. Brennan’s words and attitude are a not-so-subtle reminder of the heavy influence and confidence of the deep state, including the media — exercised to a fare-thee-well over the past two years.

Later on Saturday, Samantha Power, with similar equities at stake, put an exclamation point behind what Brennan had tweeted earlier in the day. Power also saw fit to remind Trump where the power lies, so to speak. She warned him publicly that it is “not a good idea to piss off John Brennan.”

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is dutifully playing its part in the deep-state game of intimidation. The following excerpt from Sunday’s lead article conveys the intended message: “Some Trump allies say they worry he is playing with fire by taunting the FBI. ‘This is open, all-out war. And guess what? The FBI’s going to win,’ said one ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid. ‘You can’t fight the FBI. They’re going to torch him.’” [sic]

The Post, incidentally, waited until paragraph 41 of 44 to inform readers that it was the FBI’s own Office of Professional Responsibility and the Inspector General of the Department of Justice that found McCabe guilty, and that the charge was against McCabe, not the FBI. A quite different impression was conveyed by the large headline “Trump escalates attacks on FBI” as well as the first 40 paragraphs of Sunday’s lead article.

Putting Down a Marker

It isn’t as though Donald Trump wasn’t warned, as are all incoming presidents, of the power of the Deep State that he needs to play ball with — or else. Recall that just three days before President-elect Trump was visited by National Intelligence Director James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Michael Rogers, Trump was put on notice by none other than the Minority Leader of the Senate, Chuck Schumer. Schumer has been around and knows the ropes; he is a veteran of 18 years in the House, and is in his 20th year in the Senate. 

On Jan. 3, 2017 Schumer said it all, when he told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, that President-elect Trump is “being really dumb” by taking on the intelligence community and its assessments on Russia’s cyber activities:

“Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.” Did Maddow ask Schumer if he was saying President of the United States should be afraid of the intelligence community? No, she let Schumer’s theorem stand.

With gauntlets now thrown down by both sides, we may not have to wait very long to see if Schumer is correct in his blithe prediction as to how the present constitutional crisis will be resolved.

Davos Man and Fake News

Marcy Wheeler has a good post rebutting DCI John Brennan's denial that the intelligence community was behind the leak of the "dirty dossier" on Trump. Brennan argues that the dossier was bouncing around in the press long before it was published; therefore, you cannot lay it at the IC's doorstep. But Wheeler points out that the dossier that was released included a report that postdates all the versions known to be circulating in the press. The idea that this is a domestic color revolution is the one that makes the most sense.

Wall Street lickspittle Andrew Ross Sorkin, in Davos for the World Economic Forum, has a piece worth reading. In "What to Make of the ‘Davos Class’ in the Trump Era" Sorkin outlines an emerging understanding among the elite that globalization has become very unpopular to the voting public.

Sorkin's story has a hopeful "and this too shall pass" aspect to it. Towards the end he mentions how reviled Davos was during the efflorescence of activism around the millennium:

This is not the first time that the World Economic Forum has come under fire from critics about its globalist, free-trade message. In 2000, a group of more than 1,000 demonstrators carrying signs that said “Against the New World Order” smashed the windows of a McDonald’s franchise here in Davos just down the road from the conference, protesting open trade policies espoused by then-President Bill Clinton, who was speaking at the event.

Marcy Wheeler in another post ties the sudden elite panic over Fake News to the inability to think beyond corporate globalization:

Finally, one reason there is such a panic about “fake news” is because the western ideology of neoliberalism has failed. It has led to increased authoritarianism, decreased qualify of life in developed countries (but not parts of Africa and other developing nations), and it has led to serial destabilizing wars along with the refugee crises that further destabilize Europe. It has failed in the same way that communism failed before it, but the elites backing it haven’t figured this out yet. I’ll write more on this (Ian Welsh has been doing good work here). All details of the media environment aside, this has disrupted the value-laden system in which “truth” exists, creating a great deal of panic and confusion among the elite that expects itself to lead the way out of this morass. Part of what we’re seeing in “fake news” panic stems from that, as well as a continued disinterest in accountability for the underlying policies — the Iraq War and the Wall Street crash and aftermath especially — enabled by failures in our elite media environment. But our media environment is likely to be contested until such time as a viable ideology forms to replace failed neoliberalism. Sadly, that ideology will be Trumpism unless the elite starts making the world a better place for average folks. Instead, the elite is policing discourse-making by claiming other things — the bad true and false narratives it, itself, doesn’t propagate — as illegitimate.

U.S. Position on Syria Becoming Untenable: How Long Can Obama Keep the Spotlight from Shining on Saudi Arabia?

How do you publish a lengthy feature on the growth of ISIS, as the Gray Lady does today with Ian Fisher's "In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of Blame," and barely -- maybe once or twice in passing -- mention Saudi Arabia?

It is ludicrous, but it goes directly to the heart of the U.S. position on the war in Syria. Obama is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. On the one side, he has repeatedly dismissed the seriousness of Islamic State, insisting the caliphate is an epiphenomenon of Assad's brutally; that once Assad is ushered off the stage, then the dove of peace will descend and all will set about to the righteous path. On the other side, Obama has warned of toppling the Syrian government militarily, for chaos a la Libya will reign in the absence of Baathist rule.

So what you have is a policy of slow-motion regime change where the U.S. is facilitating as best it can, according to the wishes of its partners in the GCC, a victory of jihadist forces over the Syrian government, while simultaneously hoping that the situation doesn't get too out of control.

But the situation is clearly out of control and it has been for years. It is only when a European capital city comes under assault that most people in the West suddenly appear to have arisen from slumber and started to demand answers. Of course prior to Paris, there was Beirut, Sharm el Sheikh, Ankara, etc., not to mention the huge influx of refugees to Europe from the greater Middle East.

That's why on Monday Obama was riddled with skeptical questions from reporters at the G20 conference in Turkey. In that appearance before the press (Michael Shear and Peter Baker,
"Obama Says Strategy to Fight ISIS Will Succeed") Obama contradicted his CIA chief John Brennan by saying that the Paris terror attack was not all that sophisticated but more a product of ideology, before reasserting the canard that ISIS flourished in the vacuum created by the war in Syria:

At his news conference here, Mr. Obama sounded weary as he repeatedly rejected criticism of his yearlong strategy. Wrapping up 48 hours of diplomacy in this Turkish resort community on the Mediterranean Sea, the president seemed frustrated by second-guessing and twice chided reporters for asking the same question in slightly different ways. 

He denied underestimating the Islamic State, saying that the group’s attacks have not been particularly sophisticated. “If you have a handful of people who don’t mind dying, they can kill a lot of people,” he said. “That’s one of the challenges of terrorism. It’s not their sophistication or the particular weaponry that they possess. But it is the ideology they carry with them and their willingness to die.” [But whose ideology is it? It is Saudi Wahhabism.]

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In the end, he said, the strategy will choke off the Islamic State’s financing, cut off its supply lines and reinforcements and make it harder to hold territory. Along with a diplomatic solution to the Syrian civil war that provided a vacuum for the Islamic State to fill, “that ultimately is going to be what’s going to make a difference,” Mr. Obama said, adding, “and it’s going to take some time.” 

But who created that vacuum of war? The U.S. and its allies did.

If you want a "man on a galloping horse" perspective on the war in Syria, straight with no bullshit, consult Abel Bari Atwan's interview yesterday on Democracy Now!:

You know, Saudi Arabia is the origin of radicalism, Islamic radicalism, in the Middle East and the whole world and the whole Islamic world. Why? Because al-Qaeda ideology—sorry, Islamic State ideology is the same Wahhabi ideology which adopted by the Saudi kingdom. This is—you know, they go back to the time of Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab in 1704, you know, so they are doing—doing exactly the same. They are doing in Syria and Iraq this brutality, this savagery, the Wahhabism of the Saudi regime in 1705 and ’06, when they actually invaded Karbala and Najaf. They committed the same massacres.

So, Saudi Arabia, actually, now, they are—they are, actually, with Qatar and with Turkey. They have some sort of alliance. And they started the problem in Syria. They poured billions in Syria, hoping to topple the Assad regime for personal revenge, not for political means, not for actually, you know, a strategic move from their side. They just want to take revenge, personal revenge, because Assad insulted them in a way or another, and also because they thought that they can topple him in a few weeks, few months maximum. So they poured billions of weapons. And also, they encouraged a hundred—sorry, tens of thousands of volunteers to go through Turkey to Syria to fight against the Assad regime.

I would add that the Saudis and Turks have strategic objectives. They want to make sure after the deal with the West on its nuclear program that the Iranians do not have stable allies in Iraq and Syria. 

Putschists Announce Another Military Campaign To Retake Eastern Ukraine

Moon of Alabama has a timely, on-the-mark post this morning, "Ukraine: 'Anti-Terrorism' Campaigns Follow Visits From U.S.," where it is noted that, first, following a weekend visit by CIA Director John Brennan and, then, yesterday's cheerleading bagman appearance in Kiev by vice president Joe Biden, the putsch government has launched military assaults against pro-Russian protesters in eastern Ukraine. The first one fell apart last week spectacularly due to a combination of peaceful protest, lack of motivation among the putschist armed forces and a sprinkling of Russian special forces, a.k.a., "green men." What has a changed in a week to make the putschists think that the outcome will be any different is hard to divine. It could be that as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the USG the gang in Kiev is just robotically following orders heedless of the disaster which awaits their completion.

The danger here is that with each military debacle the coherence of the Ukrainian state and the viability of its putschists erode to the point of no return. Then the May 25 presidential elections -- even with U.S. financing and management -- become pointless. This is an outcome the Obama White House wants to avoid at all costs. So it is likely that there will be a new wrinkle in the current putschist "anti-terrorism" campaign. Could it be that a CIA-managed mercenary army of ex-Navy SEALS and ex-Army Rangers will lead the attack? Who knows. Robert Parry over at Consortium News thinks a massacre of eastern Ukrainians is coming. I don't think Russia allows this to happen. I do think there are Russian special forces on the ground in the ten eastern cities under the control of protesters. The question then becomes, How does conflict between special forces, West vs. East, play out? Does it mushroom into a trade war that engulfs Europe?

Ukraine on the Verge of Civil War and Economic Collapse

The news this morning is that the Kiev putschists have finally begun there ballyhooed crackdown on restive eastern Ukraine. Andrew Kramer, reporting from Slovyansk, has the story, "Ukraine Says It Has Begun Military Operation in East":

After days of failing to enforce its own ultimatums, the Ukrainian government on Tuesday began what the president called a military operation to confront pro-Russian militants in the east of the country. 

The first indication that the operation represented more than just words this time was a modest Ukrainian military checkpoint established on a highway north of the town of Slovyansk, which has been controlled by militants since Saturday. 

Witnesses said a dozen armored personnel carriers parked on the highway flew Ukrainian flags about 40 kilometers, or 25 miles, north of the town. There were no credible reports of confrontations with the well-armed and apparently Russian-backed forces in the town. 

“On Tuesday morning, in the north of Donetsk region, an antiterrorist operation began,” the Ukrainian speaker of Parliament and acting president, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, told Parliament in the capital, Kiev. “It will be carried out in stages, and responsibly and in a balanced manner. The goal is the defense of citizens of Ukraine.”

So far this action by the putschists seems largely cosmetic. Slovyansk is completely under the control of pro-Russian protesters. Staying 25 miles outside the city is wise.

The Ukrainian troops were not moving by early afternoon on Tuesday. Ahead of them in Slovyansk, scores of armed men maintained their hold on the police and domestic security service building and the City Hall. They have barricaded the roads and, locals say, placed snipers on roofs.

And yet the town remained crowded with people milling about the streets and standing at protests in front of barricades, illustrating that an overly assertive Ukrainian military response could quickly lead to heavy civilian casualties and play into Moscow’s narrative that Russian-speakers are in need of protection.

The putschists are likely responding to counsel from the gargoyle-like CIA Director John Brennan who was recently weekending in Kiev. The thinking in the West is probably that the putschists have to demonstrate some sort -- any sort -- of ability to establish facts on the ground (even if these facts are merely cosmetic) prior to the scheduled four-party talks in Geneva this Thursday. The U.S. did its part by whispering about more sanctions, also cosmetic, to be applied against Russia. The main one discussed being a travel ban and/or asset freeze of Rosneft president Igor Sechin. Peter Baker Reports in "With Ukraine Tensions Mounting, U.S. Weighs New Sanctions Against Russia" that 

Targeting Mr. Sechin would aim directly at Mr. Putin’s inner circle. Rosneft, Mr. Sechin’s oil company, is deeply involved with Western firms. BP owns nearly 20 percent of the company, and ExxonMobil has multiple projects with Rosneft in Siberia, the Arctic, the Black Sea, Canada, Alaska and Texas. 

Lawyers at ExxonMobil are researching the impact of sanctions against Mr. Sechin. Given that they would apply to Mr. Sechin personally and not his company, some specialists said it might mean little more than a logistical hassle because he could not travel to the United States to meet with his ExxonMobil partners.

Baker's story also illuminates the confusion inside the beltway over Brennan's house call on the putschists:

Mr. Brennan’s decision to travel to Kiev, however, struck many in Washington as baffling. Russian television first reported over the weekend that the C.I.A. director had arrived in Kiev under an assumed name to direct operations there. The White House and the C.I.A. initially refused to comment but on Monday confirmed his trip. Mr. Carney said it was meant simply to foster “mutually beneficial security cooperation,” and he called Russia’s characterization “absurd.”

Some former intelligence officers privately criticized the visit, saying it only bolstered the conspiracies advanced by Russian officials that the C.I.A. was behind the Ukrainian unrest that toppled a pro-Moscow president in favor of a government oriented toward the West. 

But other C.I.A. veterans said there must have been a good reason for him to go because the White House would have known Mr. Brennan would be spotted. “It’s a well-thought-out decision that had to be weighed against playing right into Putin’s message,” said Milton Bearden, chief of the C.I.A.’s Soviet division during the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Should Ukrainian troops decide to attack Slovyansk I am sure that nestled among the soft civilian targets they would find some very efficient and hardened Russian special forces. Appreciation of this is no doubt the reason that two putschist ultimatums have come and gone without any enforcement activity.

Writing yesterday from Horlivka, Andrew Kramer explores the idea that Russian troops walk among the pro-Russian protesters in the Donbass in his "In Ukraine’s East, Russians Are Blending Right In." Based mostly on an online video and one interview with a pro-putsch Ukrainian in Sloyvansk, Kramer concludes that there is a heavy Russian presence to the protests. I'm sure he is right. Russia would be completely negligent if it did not have special forces on the ground milling around acting as an invisible shield to putschist violence. But Kramer's story is important because it validates the essentially popular nature of the uprising in eastern Ukraine:

All the same, an emphasis on a Russian military role discounts the genuine discontent among a portion of the population in eastern Ukraine. And some of the political and business elites of the Donets Basin, an industrial and coal-producing region in the east that is the base of support of the former president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, felt that they had much to lose after he was deposed in February.

The question at this point -- with a bank run on Monday that prompted the central bank to raise interest rates three percent, the hryvnia has lost 35% against the dollar in 2014 -- is will the putschists instigate an all-out civil war to obscure the inevitability of economic collapse?

One thing is crystal clear. The U.S. has created another mess.

What Pearls of Wisdom CIA Chief Brennan Imparted While in Kiev are Hard to Imagine

The pro-Russian uprising in eastern Ukraine appears at this point to be unbowed and gaining traction. This from a solid round-up of the events this past weekend by Andrew Kramer and Andrew Higgins, "No Action Seen From Ukraine as Deadline for Militants Passes":

Through Monday morning, as the sun burned off a dense mist rising from stubbly winter fields in the region, the Ukrainian news media reported no efforts to storm occupied buildings in the eastern part of the country. No police officers or military personnel were gathered outside the regional administration building in Donetsk, which flies a Russian flag as well as the flag of the recently declared but as yet unrecognized People’s Republic of Donetsk. 

In another indication of the scale of the loss of control by the central government, pro-Russian protesters set up a checkpoint on a main highway about 25 miles outside of Donetsk. 

The government’s push on Sunday to reassert its authority in a vital industrial and coal-mining region appeared to have made little headway. Pro-Russian protesters appeared to control not only the police station but also the entire town of Slovyansk, after having set up checkpoints at major streets leading into town.

The protesters blocked a major highway in the east, and Russian and Donetsk flags flew over administrative buildings in several other midsize towns, including Mariupol, where protesters seized a building Sunday.

My sense is that the putschists in Kiev don't have control of the armed forces. Why else throw out ultimatums that can't be met? They might have an "elite" unit or two like Alfa, which may or may not be composed largely of mercenaries, as well as Right Sector hooligans. But apparently these forces are not enough to storm and hold the myriad government buildings under occupation. Also, I would guess that Russia has elite special forces in plainclothes on the ground in these eastern cities. Once the Ukrainian attack begins we can expect that they will play a role.

The fact that CIA chief John Brennan was reported to be in Kiev instructing the putschists over the weekend is proof that things are very shaky for Yats & Co.:

Russian news media reported Sunday that the American C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, had arrived in Kiev on a secret visit to advise Ukrainian officials in charge of domestic security and defense. The American Embassy in the Ukrainian capital declined to comment on the reports.

The problem for the putschists is while these buildings can be stormed and taken by mercenaries, how can they be held? The military and state security apparatus obviously cannot be relied upon; hence, the appearance of Greystone personnel. What pearls of wisdom Brennan had to impart are hard imagine.

Standard Narrative of Obama's Efforts to Aid Rebels

A story appears this morning in the New York Times, "No Quick Impact in U.S. Arms Plan for Syria Rebels," by Mark Mazzetti, Eric Schmitt and Erin Banco, that paints a picture of an Obama administration purposely slow walking its support of the Syrian opposition:

In fact, the officials said, the administration’s plans to use the C.I.A. to covertly train and arm the rebels could take months to have any impact on a chaotic battlefield. Many officials believe the assistance is unlikely to bolster the rebellion enough to push President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to the negotiating table. 

The plans call for the C.I.A. to supply only small arms, and to only a limited segment of the opposition — the actual numbers are unclear. In addition, much of the training, which is to take place over months in Jordan and Turkey, has not yet started, partly because of Congressional objections.

The cautious approach reflects the continued ambivalence and internal divisions of an administration that still has little appetite for intervention in Syria, but has been backed into a corner after American and European spy agencies concluded that Syrian government troops had used chemical weapons against the rebels. Mr. Obama had declared the use of chemical weapons to be a “red line” leading to American action. 

Many in the administration say they are still seeking to satisfy themselves that they have taken all precautions possible to prevent weapons from falling into the hands of Islamic extremists in Syria. To them, the plan carries echoes of previous American efforts to arm rebels in Angola, Nicaragua and elsewhere, many of which backfired. There is also fear at the White House that Mr. Obama will be dragged into another war in the Middle East. 

But others, particularly many in the State Department, argue that the United States must intervene to prevent a further deterioration of security in the region and to stop a humanitarian crisis that is spiraling out of control, officials said.

This is the standard narrative: Obama, cornered because of a foolish statement about chemical weapons use crossing a "red line," agrees to arm, but not with heavy weapons, a Free Syrian Army that is more a creature of the hotel conference room than the battlefield; but actually Obama's decision is mostly show, a public display of appeasing the hawks among the Gulf Arab monarchies and in the State Department.

How much of this standard narrative is true and how much is Obama administration public relations remains to be seen. An argument can be made that as the situation in northern Syria moves closer to an Afghanistan-esque failed state as FSA rebels battle Al Qaeda and with fighters from the Pakistani Taliban arriving to wage jihad against al-Assad, Obama is engaging in damage control. One thing that the Mazzetti et al. story mentions, and that I've seen reported elsewhere recently, is that Congress -- the doves, not the usual hawks -- is beginning to buck. Apparently CIA director John Brennan and VP Joe Biden have been jawboning legislators to get the military aid moving:

The plan — made possible after Mr. Obama signed a secret “finding” that circumvents international laws prohibiting lethal support to groups trying to overthrow a sitting government — continues to face bipartisan skepticism in Congress. 

“It’s not clear to me that the administration has a workable policy,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said last week. 

Senior officials, including Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan, have lobbied lawmakers in closed briefings and personal phone calls since late June. On Sunday, a senior administration official said that the Congressional concerns had been addressed and that “we look forward to pressing forward.” Some senior Congressional officials said Sunday that final details must still be worked out. 

The Congressional impasse has exposed other shortcomings in the administration’s approach, lawmakers and independent Syria specialists said.

The SAA appears to be pressing the attack. Agence France Presse reports government assaults in Idlib province in the north and the Qaboon district of Damascus.