A Spy Coup in America?

Reading between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray's comments as suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have been monitoring John Podesta's emails because the Podesta Group, which he founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered "foreign agent" for Saudi Arabia.

"John Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government," Murray noted. "If the American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi government's paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services would not be doing their job. ... His communications are going to be of interest to a great number of other security services as well."

Leak by Americans

Scott Horton then asked, "Is it fair to say that you're saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?"

"I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah," Murray responded. "In both cases they are leaks by Americans."

In reference to the leak of the DNC emails, Murray noted that "Julian Assange took very close interest in the death of Seth Rich, the Democratic staff member" who had worked for the DNC on voter databases and was shot and killed on July 10 near his Washington, D.C., home.

Murray continued, "WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of his killers. So, obviously there are suspicions there about what's happening and things are somewhat murky. I'm not saying -- don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that he was the source of the [DNC] leaks. What I'm saying is that it's probably not an unfair indication to draw that WikiLeaks believes that he may have been killed by someone who thought he was the source of the leaks ... whether correctly or incorrectly."

Though acknowledging that such killings can become grist for conspiracy buffs, Murray added: "But people do die over this sort of stuff. There were billions of dollars -- literally billions of dollars -- behind Hillary Clinton's election campaign and those people have lost their money.

"You have also to remember that there's a big financial interest -- particularly in the armaments industry -- in a bad American relationship with Russia and the worse the relationship with Russia is the larger contracts the armaments industry can expect especially in the most high-tech high-profit side of fighter jets and missiles and that kind of thing.

"And Trump has actually already indicated he's looking to make savings on the defense budget particularly in things like fighter [jet] projects. So, there are people standing to lose billions of dollars and anybody who thinks in that situation bad things don't happen to people is very naive."

An Intelligence Coup?

There's another possibility in play here: that the U.S. intelligence community is felling a number of birds with one stone. If indeed U.S. intelligence bigwigs deemed both Clinton and Trump unfit to serve as President -- albeit for different reasons -- they could have become involved in leaking at least the Podesta emails to weaken Clinton's campaign, setting the candidate up for the more severe blow from FBI Director Comey in the last week of the campaign.

Further, the Russia-bashing that is all the rage in the mainstream U.S. media will surely encourage the Congress to escalate the New Cold War, regardless of Trump's desires, and thus ensure plenty more money for both the intelligence agencies and the military contractors.Then, by blaming the leaks on Russian President Putin, the U.S. intelligence leadership could set the stage for Trump's defeat in the Electoral College, opening the door to the elevation of a more traditional Republican. However, even if that unlikely event -- defeating Trump in the Electoral College -- proves impossible, Trump would at least be weakened as he enters the White House and thus might not be able to move very aggressively toward a de'tente with Russia.

Official Washington's "group think" holding Russia responsible for the Clinton leaks does draw some logical support from the near certainty that Russian intelligence has sought to penetrate information sources around both Clinton and Trump. But the gap between the likely Russian hacking efforts and the question of who gave the email information to WikiLeaks is where mainstream assumptions may fall down.

As ex-Ambassador Murray has said, U.S. intelligence was almost surely keeping tabs on Podesta's communications because of his ties to Saudi Arabia and other foreign governments. So, the U.S. intelligence community represents another suspect in the case of who leaked those emails to WikiLeaks. It would be a smart play, reminiscent of the convoluted spy tales of John LeCarre', if U.S. intelligence officials sought to cover their own tracks by shifting suspicions onto the Russians.

Next Page  1  |  2  |  3  |  4

(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).