Why did NBC hire John Brennan?

By Reginald Johnson

     It was a deeply disappointing decision made by NBC last month to hire former CIA director John Brennan to serve as a national security and intelligence analyst.

  It appears that either NBC overlooked a number of the very controversial and distressing aspects of Brennan’s career, or they just didn’t care.

  In hiring Brennan, NBC is taking on board an individual who has been implicated in what many consider to have been illegal programs carried out by the Bush and Obama administrations in prosecuting the war on terror ---- namely, the use of alleged torture techniques in interrogating terror suspects and the use of drone missiles to carry out “extra-judicial assassinations” of suspected terror leaders around the world.

  Brennan is also someone whose honesty has come into question during investigations by Congress about the counterterror programs and, more recently, about the controversial and much criticized “Russian dossier.”  That document, prepared by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, helped trigger the Special Counsel probe into possible collusion between the presidential election campaign of Donald Trump and the Russian government prior to the 2016 election. The investigation, depending on its findings, could lead to Trump’s impeachment.

    During the administration of George W. Bush, Brennan was a top counterterrorism official and senior official at the CIA.  Critics charge that he endorsed the CIA use of “enhanced terror interrogation” techniques in questioning terrorism suspects --- including  waterboarding and other brutal practices.  Waterboarding is considered torture, which is banned under international law.

 It was also reported that Brennan had many suspects picked up and taken through the “extroardinary rendition” program to “black sites” --- in countries such as Egypt and Syria, where security officials in those countries would carry out torture to extract information for the U.S. 

 Administration legal officials put out memos saying that the interrogation techniques carried out by the CIA fell within the law and denied torture was taking place. For his part, Brennan said that while he was aware of the harsh interrogation tactics, he was not the one who suggested them in the first place and in some cases opposed the practices.

 In 2014 the Senate intelligence committee did a major investigation of Bush-era interrogation methods and produced a scathing 6,000 page report criticizing the CIA’s program.  In the words of the New York Times story on the report,  “the CIA’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed;” that the interrogation program was “mismanaged and not subject to adequate oversight;”  and that the CIA “misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of the brutal interrogation techniques.”

    At the time that the Senate was investigating the CIA for its possible role in torture, Brennan  had risen to director of the agency, following his nomination by Obama and confirmation by Congress.  According to former CIA analyst and writer Ray McGovern, Brennan was furious over the Senate investigation and worked actively to stop the report from being released. At Brennan’s behest, agency personnel  spied on the Senate committee that was doing the investigation and hacked into staff computers to find out what was being found.

   Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, chairwoman of the committee, was so angered by the CIA tactics that she took to the floor of the Senate to blast the agency and its director.

    Although President Obama tried to block release of the report, eventually the report was made public, due to the determined efforts of former Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo.

Former CIA Director John Brennan   (WSJ.com)

   

  As CIA director, Brennan developed the targeted assassination program, in which terror suspects are killed by drone missiles. Brennan worked closely with Obama to draw up kill-lists of people who needed to be taken out.  Thousands of people have been killed in drone strikes, which have hit Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq.

   Brennan maintained that the strikes were causing little or no “collateral damage.”  But that claim was contradicted by human rights observers and a study by the Bureau for Investigative Journalism which found that there was a substantial civilian death toll from the missile attacks.

   Legal observers have also charged that the drone warfare program is illegal when it is carried out in countries where the United States is not at war. That would include Pakistan and Yemen. Critics have also maintained that it is unconstitutional for the drone strikes to be targeting American citizens --- which has taken place on several occasions. The most notable  example of this was the drone killing of Al Qaeda militant Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen in 2011.  He was an American citizen, born in New Mexico. Awlaki’s son, also an American citizen,  was later killed by an errant missile strike, intended for someone else.

    It is illegal under the Constitution to take the life of an American citizen without due process of law. CIA and military officials argued that it would’ve been extremely difficult to capture al-Alwaki and then bring him to the United States for prosecution. That claim has been disputed by opponents of the program however, who said military personnel had the means to capture him.

 Since Trump took office in January of last year, questions have also arisen about whether Brennan has been entirely candid about what he knew about the infamous “Russian dossier” ---- which alleged that there were connections between candidate Donald Trump and Russian officials prior to the 2016 U.S. election and that Russia interfered with the election to benefit Trump.  The dossier was a key part of the information that was submitted by the FBI to the FISA court in 2016 and 2017 to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign team.

  Brennan has maintained in testimony given in May 2017 before the House intelligence committee and in press interviews that he didn’t know that much about the dossier and its contents prior to the election. He told Chuck Todd on Meet the Press early this year that during the fall of 2016 prior to the election he had “heard only snippets” about the contents of the dossier, based on press reports. He said he had never actually read the dossier until late that year.

  But according to a report in Real Clear Investigations by Paul Street on February 11, investigators working with Republicans on the House  Intelligence committee believe that Brennan was well aware of the contents of the dossier and its allegations against Trump prior to the election and that he actively tried to spread the information to members of Congress.

   “John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier,” said an investigator who talked with Street. “He politicized and effectively weaponized what was false intelligence about Trump.”

  Street said that Capitol Hill sources told him that Brennan fed allegations about Trump-Russia contacts directly to the FBI and pressured the Bureau to investigate Trump campaign figures in the summer of 2016.

   The House Intelligence panel, led by the Republican majority voted recently to end their inquiry into whether Trump had colluded with the Russians prior to the election. The committee report stated that they had found no evidence to support the claim of collusion or conspiracy with the Russians. But members of the Democratic minority strongly protested this report and said that there were still legitimate reasons for continuing the probe.

  In signing on with NBC/MSNBC as a contributor,  Brennan becomes the latest representative from the intelligence community and the Pentagon to work at the TV networks as an analyst. Former CIA deputy director Mike Morell is a contributor with CBS and former NSA director James Clapper is a commentator at CNN. Former generals and high military officials are working with the networks as well, weighing in with analysis about a range of topics including the US role in the Middle East, the proper approach to dealing with North Korea and how to deal with Russia.

  The CIA has a long history of making its influence felt with the media.

 Going back to the 1940s and 1950s agency officials sought to cultivate leading figures at US newspapers such as the New York Times. They also sought to have agency people work surreptitiously at the papers or at other media outlets.  In the 1970s, a Senate committee led by then U.S. Sen. Frank Church investigating abuses by the intelligence community following the Nixon-era Watergate scandals determined that there were CIA assets working at 50 media organizations, either as reporters or as employees in other capacities.

  

   

  

Reducing Tensions in Korea

By Reginald Johnson                                     

                                       

   You get the feeling that if left up to the North and South Koreans, there might actually be some progress towards building peace on the Korean Peninsula.

  But whether South Korea’s “Big Brother” --- the United States --- will join in a move towards better relations with North Korea ---- that’s a whole different story.

     In recent months, there’s been several hopeful signs that something positive might be happening between the two Koreas, separated by the 38^th Parallel: diplomatic teams from both North and South Korea met in January to have talks for the first time in two years;  in February, athletes from North Korea came south to participate in the Winter Olympic games in Pyeongchang;  the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un came to the games as well, met with South Korean President Moon Jae and extended an invitation from Kim to come to North Korea.

    South Korean officials also said that North Korea representatives told them at a meeting during the Olympics that their country would be interested in talks with the United States.

   But the U.S. has been sending out mixed messages on whether it wants a better relationship with North Korea.

     Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that meeting with the North Koreans is a possibility.

    “My job as chief diplomat is to ensure that the North Koreans know, we keep our channels open on to listen, “ he told the CBS news show “60 Minutes.”

     But on Feb. 23, President Donald Trump announced a new round of trade sanctions against North Korea.  Administration officials said sanctions are designed to put pressure on North Korea to stop its development of nuclear weapons.

   Trump said he hoped the new sanctions would get North Korea to move to stop nuclear missile testing, which has been taking place on a regular basis in recent months.

    Trump threatened to move to “Phase 2” if the sanctions didn’t work. He didn’t spell out what “Phase 2” meant.

   For much of last year Trump and Kim exchanged insults and threats as North Korea launched a number of missile tests prompting criticism from the American side.

Soldiers loading howitzers into a Black Hawk helicopter at US base Camp Humphreys in South Korea (Wikipedia)

                                              

 Henry Lowendorf, chairman of the Greater New Haven Peace Council and a representative of the U.S. Peace Council said he believes there’s a good chance for a better relationship between the two Koreas.

    “Absolutely. I think there’s a real possibility,” he said. “I think everyone that looked at the Olympics has seen that as an indication of a willingness at least to talk to each other.  Before North Korea offered to create a joint North and South Korean team, the North Koreans refused to talk to the South Koreans.”

   Lowendorf said North Koreans believed for a long time there was no use in talking to South Korea because the U.S. “controls South Korea militarily” and the Americans would make all key decisions on dealing with the North. But North Korea’s approach seems to have changed.

   “ I think it was a real breakthrough ideologically for them to say ‘let’s talk to the South.’  They may have done this for various reasons, but one reason was they weren’t getting any traction with the United States,” he said.

   Lowendorf added the North Koreans may be trying to separate the South Koreans from the U.S.  “I think that’s exactly what they have to do. They have to encourage rationality on the part of the South Koreans, because they’re certainly not  going to find it with the United States.”

    While he saw a plan for a peace agreement possibly being discussed between the North and South, Lowendorf said the U.S. was likely to throw cold water on it.

   “This administration has no priorities, just game playing and how can they threaten and intimidate the other side, whoever the other side is,” he said.

   Lowendorf  said that the United States had previously rejected a proposal offered by the North Koreans,  the Chinese and the Russians that stipulated that in return for the North Koreans pausing their nuclear missile development program,  the U.S., South Korea and Japan would pause their “war on North Korea exercises” that go on frequently. The North Koreans also asked for a peace treaty with the United States in which both sides would agree not to attack each other.
     “What’s wrong with that proposal?” asked Lowendorf. “I can’t understand what’s wrong with that picture if you’re rational and humane.”

The U.S. maintains a large troop presence in South Korea, and a huge network of bases and military installations. America today has 35,000 troops in South Korea and 115 bases, both large and small, according to Prof. David Vine, the author of “Base Nation --- How US military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World.”

     The U.S. has maintained a substantial military footprint in South Korea ever since the end of the Korean War in 1953. That war ended with a cease-fire but not a full peace agreement and both sides have kept their military forces on high alert on the possibility that fighting could break out again anytime.

  The Korean War was devastating for both sides, but particularly for North Korea. South Korea sustained nearly 1 million civilians killed or wounded.  North Korea sustained 1.5 million civilians killed or wounded and saw all of its major cities reduced to rubble by American bombing.

   Some observers believe the North Koreans are building their nuclear program to deter a possible attack by South Korea and the United States. They point to the fact that in recent years, the United States has attacked Iraq and Libya,  leaving both countries devastated. The U.S. is also involved in Syria, with American military personnel aiding insurgent groups trying to topple the government of Bashar al-Assad.

  For years, the U.S. has demanded that North Korea end its development of the nuclear weapons program, saying it poses a huge threat to South Korea, Japan and even the mainland of the United States. American officials, as well as other leaders around the world have also condemned the repressive nature of Kim’s regime, which has been cited by the UN for serious human rights violations.

    

 

  

   

   

   

Russia Collusion or Deep State Coup?

                                       

By Reginald Johnson

    For over a year now, the American public has been bombarded with stories raising questions about whether Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to win the presidential election in 2016 over Hillary Clinton.

  Claims were made first in the fall of 2016 that Russian agents had hacked the emails of the Democratic National Committee and revealed information damaging to the Clinton campaign, allegedly aimed at benefitting Trump. Later, the contents of a salacious “Russian dossier” were leaked to the press, with a former British intelligence agent, using second and third hand sources, alleging that officials of the Trump campaign had close ties to the Kremlin and that the Russians had a compromising videotape of Trump cavorting with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room.

  In the spring, Trump, who has steadfastly denied any collusion with the Russians, fired FBI Director James Comey while his agency was investigating Russia ties. The President said he took the action after the Justice Department recommended the director’s dismissal because Comey had bungled the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server to handle classified information.

   But the Comey firing sparked a furor in Congress and in the media, with Democrats and others claiming obstruction of justice by Trump.  Congress moved to set up a Special Counsel to probe the questions of possible Russia collusion and former FBI Director Robert Mueller was appointed for that job.

  For the last nine months, Mueller’s investigation has been ongoing. Some indictments have been brought against people previously tied to Trump, such as former campaign manager, Paul Manafort.  But none of charges brought so far, including money laundering by Manafort,  relate to the original claim of collusion between Trump and Russia.

   In recent weeks however, evidence has begun to emerge which contradicts the narrative that Russia fixed the election to help Trump.

  In fact, the contents of thousands of cell phone text messages by FBI agents involved in both the Trump investigation and the Clinton email probe ---  released by the Justice Department Inspector General ---  would appear to confirm what some (including this reporter) had suspected last year when the Russia election interference story was first breaking ---- that what had taken place was not a plot by Russia to help Trump win the election, but a plot by U.S. intelligence officials to block Trump from winning the presidency and ensure the election of the more hawkish candidate, Hillary Clinton.

  That scheme turned into a coup attempt after Trump’s surprising victory and the storyline of Russian hacking and a tainted election was gathering steam. First, there was an unsuccessful move to have Electoral College electors switch their votes from Trump and move to install Colin Powell as President. Later, the focus turned to impeachment --- create adverse publicity, with dark talk of collusion with the enemy and even treason, so that Congress would have no choice but to throw Trump out.

 So far, impeachment talk is just that, talk. But should Mueller bring obstruction charges against Trump, impeachment would become a real possibility.. Mueller's team is seeking to interview Trump in the near future.

The White House

  The text messages were between former top FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  The two, who were having an extra-marital affair, exchanged messages over a number of months in 2016 and 2017, at a time when Strzok was first leading the Clinton email investigation ( which concluded with Comey declaring there were insufficient grounds to charge Clinton) and then later serving on Mueller’s special counsel team.

   The two FBI officials show a thorough disdain for Trump, often using profanities to describe him.

   But more pertinently, they make references to what might be an illegal attempt to undermine Trump.

   In one message to Page in August of 2016,  Strzok comments on a meeting which took place in FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s office, during which the election chances of Donald Trump were apparently discussed.

      “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office --- that there’s no way he gets elected --- but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40,”  Strzok wrote.

  What was meant by an ‘insurance policy?’  A campaign of leaks designed to smear Trump by implying he was colluding with the Russians perhaps?

  “We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process.  And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State,” wrote former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in Consortium News on January 11.

  Strzok also led the investigation into the then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a personal email server for classified information.

  In his piece called “The FBI Hand Behind Russia- gate,”  McGovern wrote that Strzok reportedly  “changed the words ‘grossly negligent’ (which could have triggered legal prosecution) to the far less serious ‘extremely careless’ in FBI Director James Comey’s depiction of Clinton’s actions. This semantic shift cleared the way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016 that ‘no reasonable prosecutor’ would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton.

    From May to August of 2017, Strzok was the top FBI official working on Mueller’s investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the inspector general learned of the Strzok-Page text message exchanges and told Mueller.

  Both Strzok and Page have been reassigned to different positions in the FBI.

  Another revealing message between Strzok and Page showed Strzok had some doubts about whether there really was anything to the Russia collusion claims. He told Page in May prior to his joining the Special Counsel team that he had a "gut sense and concern, there's no big 'there' there."

  McGovern and others have raised the possibility recently that some of the claims in the Russian dossier --- and much of that information has been discredited --- was used to obtain a critical FISA court warrant to allow the FBI to spy on members of the Trump team.

  If false information was presented to a FISA court judge to obtain the warrant, then officials engaged in that action could be held criminally liable.

   Currently there is a push on by Republican members of Congress to release a memo compiled by the staff of the House intelligence committee which outlines possible abuses by the FBI, CIA and other government officials of surveillance guidelines and other legal procedures during the Trump investigation. The memo contains classified information, and the Justice Department has asked that the document not be released. But a number of congressmen said they will vote to make it public this week.

    Also thousands more phone text messages are expected to be released involving the communications of the FBI officials.

   

Activists Say: Shut Down US Foreign Bases!

By Reginald Johnson

    Peace activists from around the country will converge on Baltimore, MD this weekend to take part in a conference to discuss the vast array of American military bases around the world and how to shut them down.

    The meeting, entitled “Conference on U.S. Foreign Military Bases” will take place Friday, January 12 until Sunday, January 14 at the University of Baltimore. The event will be live streamed at NoForeignBases.org/live-streaming/

 The conference is being sponsored by a coalition of activists both from the peace movement as well as the environmental and social justice movements who are questioning why the U.S. needs so many bases around the world and are demanding they be dismantled.

   “While we have our differences on other issues, we all agree that US foreign military bases are the principal instruments of imperial global domination and environmental damage through wars of aggression and occupation, and that the closure of US foreign military bases is one of the first necessary steps toward a just peaceful and sustainable world,” reads the unity statement put together by the “Coalition Against US Foreign Military Bases.”

     Probably most Americans have no idea just how many military bases the U.S. maintains.

      People are certainly aware we have bases in the United States itself, that there are some in Europe, some in Japan and Korea, and a few in the Middle East. But that’s about it.

   In reality, the U.S. has a huge network of 1,000 military bases around the world, according to the coalition.  There are U.S. installations in some 80 countries on every continent as well as some bases located on islands in the major oceans.

   In Europe alone, there are hundreds of military installations, with 200 located just in Germany, according to David Vine, professor of anthropology at American University and the author of “Base Nation, How US Military Bases Overseas Harm America and the World.”   Vine said another 100 bases are in Japan and 120 in South Korea.

    The cost of maintaining this far-flung American military empire is huge. By some estimates, the U.S. spends $156 billion a year to fund the bases, where tens of thousands of American troops and other military personnel are stationed.

     In the years following World War II,  during the period of the Korean and Vietnam wars and throughout the Cold War with the Soviet Union, few people, if any, questioned the need for American bases. But times may be changing.

  A growing number of activists and others people are raising their voices against the presence of all the bases, saying that with the Soviet Union gone and the Cold War over, they are no longer justified for national security. They maintain, further, that the spending to keep the bases open (not to mention the rest of the gargantuan US defense budget) represents a huge drain on the federal budget, diverting badly needed financial resources away from funding domestic needs, such as education, housing, health care and infrastructure.

   In the view of many, the bases today simply provide a means for America to exact military and economic control over countries around the globe.

   “These bases are hubs of warmaking, bombing countries like Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen,”  said Henry Lowendorf, Chairman of the Greater New Haven Peace Council and one who’s attending this weekend’s conference.

 Lowendorf added that the bases “send drones to spy and to slaughter. They house regular and special forces whose role is to ensure US corporate domination of the globe. They protect the financial and political interests of the 1%,  not the 99%, in the US or anywhere else.  They prop up unpopular governments.  They threaten the citizens of the country that houses them and its neighbors.  The wars fought from these bases not only kill huge numbers of civilians but generate hatred and fanaticism that lead to reprisals, retaliation and terrorism.”

   For a number of years ---- since the days of broad opposition to the Iraq War --- the peace movement has been divided, with groups taking differing approaches on U.S. involvement in crisis spots like Ukraine, Syria and Libya.

    It’s hoped that the conference on bases may heal some of the divisions.

“We expect that this conference will unify the peace movement to action – educating and mobilizing the public, forcing a discussion that is all but censored in the US about the nature, function and cost – in lives, dollars, assaults on people and the environment, in preventing peace and justice – of the 1000 or more military bases the US maintains on foreign soil,” said Lowendorf.

   Keynote speakers at the conference will be Professor Vine; Ajamu Baraka, 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate and president of the Black Alliance for Peace; and Ann Wright, retired US Army Colonel, former diplomat and leading member of CODE PINK and Veterans for Peace.

   For more information on the conference, go the coalition website at noforeignbases.org

  

Going, Going, Gone

                                      

By Reginald Johnson

  A little bit of the spirit of Bridgeport died yesterday when the Bluefish played their last game here. My wife and I went to a number of games over the years, and whenever we did, we had a great time. We’d see old friends, make new ones, and often see some pretty good baseball. And there was always a happy ambiance --- lots of families with kids in their baseball uniforms cheering wildly for the Bluefish, fans jumping for joy when they caught foul balls, people laughing at the goofy Bluefish mascot or singing along when the loudspeaker would blare Ray Charles’ “Hit the Road Jack!” when an opposing pitcher was driven  from the mound by a Bluefish rally.

   As others have pointed out, the coming of the Bluefish 20 years ago seemed to lift the morale of a city that had been demoralized by years of industrial plants leaving town, a general economic decline and City Hall corruption. The Bluefish were the perfect tonic for the Park City. People thronged to the “Ballpark at Harbor Yard” as Bluefish stadium was known in the early years and the team enjoyed great popularity.

 After a number of years there was a fall-off in attendance and there were reports the team was having financial struggles.  I don’t know all the details of the situation, but city officials were also reportedly concerned about the future financial viability of the team. The Bluefish paid rent to the city for use of the publicly owned stadium.

  Still, the team had a strong and loyal fan base and the team did pretty well over the years getting into the playoffs  a number of times in the Atlantic Coast League and winning a championship. It was a point of pride for Bridgeporters and fans in the area to say ‘we have our own professional baseball team – the Bluefish.’

A Bridgeport Bluefish baseball game in August

   But Mayor Joe Ganim, returning for a second go-round as mayor after serving a term in prison for corruption carried out during his first stint as the city leader in the 1990s,  apparently felt that the Bluefish did not have a great financial future and the city might do better using the stadium site for something else. It all came to a head early this year when the city put out a request for proposals for use of the stadium and indicated that the use could either be baseball or some other entertainment. The Ganim administration eventually accepted a plan from a concert promoter who has proposed a series of concerts at the stadium. The proposal still has to be accepted by the City Council.

   The city may have had legitimate financial concerns about the future viability of the Bluefish staying in Bridgeport, but it is not clear whether the plan for more concerts in the city is really a sound idea, either. For one thing the Webster Bank Arena already hosts concerts and officials there have indicated they may have legal issues with the new plan for concerts at Harbor Yard. Also, it should be noted that the concerts at Seaside Park that went on for a number of years called The Gathering of the Vibes had to be ended a couple years ago because the promoters were way behind in their payments to the city for use of the park.

   I have to admit I am partial to baseball, so the idea of a new concert site in the city in place of baseball just doesn’t grab me.  It seems to me that more could’ve been done to try to save the Bluefish and keep them from leaving Bridgeport. Possibly some creative means could’ve been brought into play such as having the University of Bridgeport take over the use of the stadium and participate in a different payment plan with the Bluefish to the city. The UB baseball team already uses the Bluefish field for its games.

   I didn’t get the impression that Mayor Ganim was at all sentimental about having to part ways with the Bluefish, which is too bad. It’s also ironic since it was Ganim --- in his first go round as mayor who brought the Bluefish to Bridgeport as part of a redevelopment plan for the South End.  While Ganim did a lot wrong in his first tenure as mayor one of the things he did right was bringing in the baseball team and the arena.  Now, sadly, it is Ganim who is letting the Bluefish go. The man who brought in the Bluefish didn’t seem to understand in the end how much the team had come to mean to its fans and the city.

   So the word is the Bluefish may now move on to some city in North Carolina, although the details of a move have not been finalized.

Now I know in a small way how the fans felt in Brooklyn when the Dodgers left town in 1958. It’s a sad day for Bridgeport.