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"...I did appreciate that for the press to absorb ... the idea that behind the stage that the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton was too fantastic for people to, um, for the press to process, to absorb... But then we go back to Brooklyn and heard from the -- mostly our sources were other intelligence, with the press who work in the intelligence sphere, and that's where we heard things and that's where we learned about the dossier and the other story lines that were swirling about ... And along the way the administration started confirming various pieces of what they were concerned about what Russia was doing...[emphasis added]
"And we did finally get to the point on October 7, when the administration came out with a very stunning [memorandum]. How stunning it was for both the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security to put out a statement a long statement that said with high confidence that Russia was interfering in the election and they were also directing the timing of the leaks. And it named the institutions WikiLeaks, DC Leaks, and Guccifer as being Russian-led, and how stunning that was to be So I think that the answer for the Democrats now...in both the House and the Senate is to talk about it more and make it more real..."
And so, the Magnificent Diversion worked as intended.
Recognizing Liminal Time
But not all journalists fell for it. Patrick Lawrence (once of The Nation, now of Consortium News) was onto the ruse from the start. He says he had "fire in the belly" on the morning of July 25, 2016, the day the Democratic convention began, and that he dashed off an article "in one long, furious exhale" within 12 hours of when the media started really pushing the "the Russians-did-it" narrative. The title of his article, pointed out to me a few months ago by VIPS member Todd Pierce, was "How the DNC fabricated a Russian hacker conspiracy to deflect blame for its email scandal... disturbing resemblance to Cold War red-baiting."
Lawrence's off-the-cuff ruminations, which Salon published the next day are extraordinarily prescient and worth reading in full. He instinctively recognized the email disclosure-cum-media-obfuscation campaign as a liminal event. Here are some excerpts, reprinted here with Lawrence's permission:
"Now wait a minute, all you upper-case "D" Democrats. A flood light suddenly shines on your party apparatus, revealing its grossly corrupt machinations to fix the primary process and sink the Sanders campaign, and within a day you are on about the evil Russians having hacked into your computers to sabotage our elections.. Is this how lowly you rate the intelligence of American voters? "
The Sanders people have long charged that the DNC has had its fingers on the scale " in favor of Hillary Clinton's nomination. The prints were everywhere " Last Friday WikiLeaks published nearly 20,000 DNC email messages providing abundant proof that Sanders and his staff were right all along. The worst of these, involving senior DNC officers, proposed Nixon-esque smears having to do with everything from ineptitude within the Sanders campaign to Sanders as a Jew in name only and an atheist by conviction. "
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook...appeared on ABC's "This Week" and CNN's "State of the Union" to assert that the D.N.C.'s mail was hacked "by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump." He knows this " because "experts" -- experts will never name have told him so.
"the Clinton campaign now goes for a twofer. Watch as it advances the Russians-did-it thesis on the basis of nothing, then shoots the messenger, then associates Trump with its own mess and, finally, gets to ignore the nature of its transgression (which any paying-attention person must consider grave). Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no "Russian actor" at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise. "[Emphasis added.]
Trump, to make this work, must be blamed for his willingness to negotiate with Moscow. This is now among his sins. Got that? Anyone who says he will talk to the Russians has transgressed the American code. " I am developing nitrogen bends...Which way for a breath of air?"
Sad Sequel
A year later Lawrence was commissioned by The Nation to write an investigative report on the so-called "Russian hack." On August 9, 2017, after he interviewed several Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, among others, The Nation published his findings in an article entitled "A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack." Lawrence wrote, "Former NSA experts, now members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system."
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