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From Consortium News
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks are the latest progressives to jump on the anti-Trump, pro-Russiagate bandwagon. They have made it crystal clear that, in Mayer's words, they are not going to let Republicans, or anyone else, "take down the whole intelligence community," by God.
Odd? Nothing is too odd when it comes to spinning and dyeing the yarn of Russiagate; especially now that some strands are unraveling from the thin material of the "Steele dossier."
Before the 2016 election, British ex-spy Christopher Steele was contracted (through a couple of cutouts) by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on candidate Donald Trump. They paid him $168,000. They should ask for their money back.
Mayer and Uygur have now joined with other Trump-despisers and new "progressive" fans of the FBI and CIA -- among them Amy Goodman and her go-to, lost-in-the-trees journalist, Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.net. All of them (well, maybe not Cenk) are staying up nights with needle and thread trying to sew a silk purse out of the sow's-ear dossier of Steele allegations and then dye it red for danger.
Monday brought a new low, with a truly extraordinary one-two punch by Mayer and Uygur.
A Damning Picture?
Mayer does her part in a New Yorker article, in which she -- intentionally or not -- cannot seem to see the forest for the trees.
In her article, Mayer explains up front that the Steele dossier "painted a damning picture of collusion between Trump and Russia," and then goes on to portray him as a paragon of virtue with praise that is fulsome, in the full meaning of that word. For example, a friend of Steele told Mayer that regarding Steele, "Fairness, integrity, and truth, for him, trump any ideology."
Now, if one refuses to accept this portrait on faith, then you are what Mayer describes as a "Trump defender." According to Mayer, Trump defenders argue that Steele is "a dishonest Clinton apparatchik who had collaborated with American intelligence and law enforcement officials to fabricate false charges against Trump and his associates, in a dastardly (sic) attempt to nullify the 2016 election. According to this story line, it was not the President who needed to be investigated, but the investigators themselves."
Can you imagine!
I could not help but think that Mayer wrote her piece some months ago and that she and her editors might have missed more recent documentary evidence that gives considerable support to that "dastardly" story line. But seriously, it should be possible to suspect Steele of misfeasance or malfeasance -- or simply telling his contractors what he knows they want to hear -- without being labeled a "Trump supporter." I, for example, am no Trump supporter. I am, however, a former intelligence officer and I have long since concluded that what Steele served up is garbage.
Character References
Mayer reports that Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004, described Steele as "superb." Personally, I would shun any "recommendation" from that charlatan. Are memories so short? Dearlove was the intelligence chief who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002 after a quick trip to Washington. The official minutes of that meeting were leaked to the London Times and published on May 1, 2005.
Dearlove explained to Blair that President George W. Bush had decided to attack Iraq for regime change and that the war was to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Dearlove added matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
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