Im-Politic: A Neglected Russia Disinformation Objective?

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2016 election, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, China, CIA, CNN, collusion, cybersecurity, Director of National Intelligence, disinformation, fake news, Im-Politic, intelligence community, James R. Clapper, John O. Brennan, Matthew Rosenberg, MSNBC, NBC, North Korea, Putin, Russia, The New York Times, Trump

Well then. Two passages in a New York Times article from this morning’s print edition were sure conversation-stoppers when it comes to the ongoing uproar about charges that President Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to boost his election odds and ensure soft treatment from his administration. That is, if you read far enough into the long piece to encounter them. In fact, they’re so important that they should have been the main angle – or at the very least, the main theme of front-page stories from now until we ever find out what’s really happened.

The passages (which make the same critical point):

First, according to Times reporter Matthew Rosenberg, by some point last September (at the latest), American intelligence officials were worried that Russia had developed an “operation to create discord inside the American government.”

Second, and more specifically, the intelligence agencies viewed one key part of this operation as feeding information suggesting that Vladimir Putin’s regime could blackmail the President (and/or the candidate) to “United States intelligence agencies and pit them against Mr. Trump.”

And here, in Rosenberg’s words, is the context:

“American intelligence agencies believe that Russia’s spy services see the deep political divisions in the United States as a fresh opportunity to inflame partisan tensions. Russian hackers are targeting American voting databases ahead of the midterm election this year, they said, and using bot armies to promote partisan causes on social media. The Russians are also particularly eager to cast doubt on the federal and congressional investigations into the Russian meddling, American intelligence officials said.

“Part of that effort, the officials said, appears to be trying to spread information that hews closely to unsubstantiated reports about Mr. Trump’s dealings in Russia, including [a] purported video [depicting him in compromising sexual situations], whose existence Mr. Trump has repeatedly dismissed.”

In plainer English, if Rosenberg has it right, the Russians have not only been trying to put Mr. Trump over a barrel and make sure that he defeated his main rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. They have not only been trying to shake Americans’ confidence in their democratic institutions by hacking into them and unleashing a flood of fake news onto its media platforms, social and conventional. They have not only been trying to cover their tracks by using such fake news and other tactics to discredit the Congressional investigations into election meddling and related reported outrages.

They have also – separately – been trying to whip up antagonism between the President and the intelligence community. Achieving this goal of course would both tend to hamper America’s own intelligence operations and broader foreign and national security policies, as well as undermine the nation’s political system and its underlying social and cultural unity. And the tumult engulfing the capital and the nation as a whole suggests that the Russians are succeeding with this disinformation campaign, and that the intelligence agencies are playing their hoped for role.

Not that this possibility lets Mr. Trump and his aides totally, or mainly, or partly off the hook when it comes to their Russia ties either before or after his election.  For this objective could well have been sought on top of an effort to turn Mr. Trump into a Manchurian Candidate and President, not instead of it. But it does raise the question of how many of the allegations have stemmed from simple, and completely fictitious, plants.

Something else noteworthy about this article: If it’s accurate, then the potentially disastrous loss of America’s cyber-weapons to Russia and perhaps other adversaries that keyed Rosenberg’s piece was just the latest disclosed possibly catastrophic intelligence failures that occurred during Barack Obama’s presidency, and on the watches of the former intelligence agency chiefs, like his Director of National Intelligence (the complex’s top job) James R. Clapper, and one of his Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John O. Brennan – both of whom have been particularly sharp Trump critics.

Two others? China’s penetration of the CIA’s operations in the People’s Republic, which reportedly resulted in the assassination or capture of “more than a dozen sources” (according to press accounts, the breach began in 2010, under Brennan’s predecessor, former General David Petraeus) and the failure to anticipate the speed of North Korea’s nuclear weapons development (which can be laid directly at Clapper’s feet, and which Brennan apparently missed as well).

Clapper, incidentally, is now a “national security analyst” for CNN. Brennan has just joined NBC and MSNBC in the same capacity. Good luck to you if you think there’s any chance these networks’ weekend talk shows tomorrow will raise any of this, including the Rosenberg article, with them?

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Im-Politic: The Establishment Media is Becoming a Self-Parody

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2016 election, Alan Greenspan, Amy Cook, Andrea Mitchell, Donald Trump, Establishment Media, Im-Politic, Matt Bai, Meet the Press, NBC

Take it from me – if you want an unvarnished look at how viciously defensive but simultaneously clueless to the point of self-parody America’s bipartisan political establishment has become in this Season of Trump, nothing provides it better than the Sunday morning news talk shows and their panels of media and campaign experts. And no single episode of any of these programs has revealed this toxic combination better than the final 2015 installment of Meet the Press.

The subject of course was Donald Trump’s still-rising support according to all major national polls and his continuing strength in surveys taken in early primary states. Who better to get the conversation in question off on a slanderous note than the substitute host, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell – who in a just world would be identified with an on-screen caption reading something like, “My husband is Alan Greenspan and we still get invited to all the A-list Washington parties even though he nearly destroyed the world economy as Fed chairman.”

Within a few moments, Mitchell channeled this Washington media roundtable segment toward what’s obviously the participants’ prime concern: Trump’s animosity toward journalists. After New York Times Pentagon reporter Helene Cooper upbraided all the candidates for thoughtless foreign policy positions, Mitchell jumped in by cracking, “And of course we are so disliked, we the media, collectively, are so disliked–” The desired effect was achieved – all the panelists chortled.

After playing a clip of journalist-baiting by the Republican front-runner, Mitchell queried the panel, “Have you ever seen Donald Trump and the Drunk Uncle on Saturday Night Live Weekend Update together? That was a pretty good imitation. But Michael Gerson, to the serious point of the level of invective, I haven’t seen this, frankly, since the George Wallace campaign where attacks on the media at rallies really were one of the signature effects.”

Some predictable anti-Trump invective followed from Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush rewarded by the Washington Post with a choice columnist slot – no doubt because that administration had excelled on both foreign and domestic fronts, and because Bush himself gave such memorable orations.

But then Mitchell turned to Yahoo News politics columnist Matt Bai in what initially and astonishingly seemed like a moment of contrition: “But of course it is working and, Matt Bai, you wrote memorably this week why. That we are somewhat to blame. In fact you wrote, ‘It’s clear now that Trump’s enduring popularity is in no small part a reflection of an acid disdain for us. This is a simmering reaction to smugness and shallowness in the media, a parade of glib punditry unmoored to any sense of history or personal experience. It’s about our love of gaffes and scandals, real or imagined, and our rigid enforcement of the politically correct.’ Discuss.”

Yet more chortling followed. Including from Bai himself. Who then returned to Earnest Mode and wound up claiming that the greatest sin committed by his own sophomoric, out-of-touch profession was in fact creating much of the Trump phenomenon itself. As Bai explained (after advertising what an act of political courage he has committed):

“We literally treat our candidates as contestants on a game show to be voted off or vote on. And I think there’s a cost for that and the cost is that you set up a platform where someone like a Donald Trump can come and exploit it very handily, because he is the perfect reality show candidate. And I think at this point there is this symbiosis with the media and Trump. I think at this point he has to be covered to the extent that he is because he is clearly leading, late in the campaign in the polls. But there’s a long period in this campaign where I think we exaggerated his support because it brought ratings and it brought clicks and it was the great shiny story of the campaign.”

Concluded Bai. “And I think we did a great disservice to the country.”

But don’t think that even this penultimate wea culpa produced even a flicker of remorse or even reflection in the studio. The cameras in fact revealingly cut to another panelist, Amy Walter, who edits a prominent (insiders’) political newsletter. And who was of course in full smirk. Whereupon Mitchell, facing a commercial break, announced, “Let’s leave that here for a moment.” And never returned.