Aaugh! A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus
The Director of National Intelligence releases a report, and the press
rushes to kick the football again.
Matt Taibbi
Mar 18
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released a
much-hyped, much-cited new report on "Foreign Threats to the 2020
Elections." The key conclusion:
We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian
government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at
denigrating President Biden's candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting
former President Trump, [and] undermining public confidence in the electoral
process.
The report added Ukrainian legislator Andrey Derkach, described as having
"ties" to "Russia's intelligence services," and Konstantin Kilimnik, a
"Russian influence agent" (whatever that means), used "prominent U.S.
persons" and "media conduits" to "launder their narratives" to American
audiences. The "narratives" included "misleading or unsubstantiated
allegations against President Biden" (note they didn't use the word
"false"). They added a small caveat at the end: "Judgments are not intended
to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact."
As Glenn Greenwald already pointed out, the "launder their narratives"
passage was wolfed down by our intelligence services' own "media conduits"
here at home, and regurgitated as proof that the "Hunter Biden laptop story
came from the Kremlin," even though the report didn't mention the laptop
story at al. Exactly one prominent reporter, Chris Hayes, had the decency to
admit this after advancing the claim initially.
With regard to the broader assessment: how many times are we going to do
this? We've spent the last five years watching as anonymous officials make
major Russia-related claims, only to have those evidence-free claims fizzle.
From the much-ballyhooed "changed RNC platform" story (Robert Mueller found
no evidence the changed Republican platform was "undertaken at the behest of
candidate Trump or Russia"), to the notion that Julian Assange was engaged
in a conspiracy with the Russians (Mueller found no evidence for this
either), to Michael Cohen's alleged secret meetings in Prague with Russian
conspirators ("not true," the FBI flatly concluded) to the story that Trump
directed Cohen to lie to Congress ("not accurate," said Mueller), to wild
stories about Paul Manafort meeting Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, to a
"bombshell" tale about Trump foreknowledge of Wikileaks releases that blew
up in CNN's face in spectacular fashion, reporters for years chased
unsubstantiated claims instead of waiting to see what they were based upon.
The latest report's chief conclusions are assessments about Derkach and
Kilimnik, information that the whole world knew before this report was
released. Hell, even Rudy Giuliani, whose meeting with Derkach is supposedly
the big scandal here, admitted there was a "50/50 chance" the guy was a
Russian spy. Kilimnik meanwhile has now been characterized as having "ties"
to Russian intelligence (Mueller), as a "Russian intelligence officer"
(Senate Intelligence Committee), and is now back to being a mere "influence
agent." If he is Russian intelligence, then John McCain's International
Republican Institute (where Kilimnik worked), as well as embassies in Kiev
and Moscow (where Kilimnik regularly gave information, according to the New
York Times), have a lot of explaining to do.
No matter what, the clear aim of this report is to cast certain stories
about Joe or Hunter Biden as misinformation, when the evidence more likely
shows that material like the Hunter Biden emails is real, just delivered
from a disreputable source. That makes such stories just like, say, the Joe
Biden-Petro Poroshenko tapes, which were also pushed by Derkach and reported
on uncontroversially by major media outlets like the Washington Post, before
it became fashionable to denounce outlets reporting such leaks as Russian
"proxies" and "conduits."
I never thought the Hunter Biden laptop story was anywhere near as big of a
deal as the efforts by platforms like Facebook and Twitter to block access
to it, which seemed a historic and dangerous precedent. This new effort to
cast the reporting of "allegations against President Biden" as participation
in a foreign intelligence campaign is nearly as ominous. Even worse is the
degree to which press figures are devouring the message. Will any bother to
point out the huge quantity of recent official takes on the Russia story
that went pear-shaped? A very, very brief sample:
. All 17 U.S. intelligence agencies backed an assessment that
cyberattacks in 2016 came from the "highest levels of the Kremlin." That was
later corrected in congressional testimony to four (it was actually three):
. The Trump organization was communicating with Russia via a
mysterious server tied to Russia's Alfa Bank. Justice Department Inspector
General Michael Horowitz noted the FBI concluded "by early February 2017
that there were no such links," yet stories pegged to anonymous intel
officials persisted for years after that.
. Russia "hacked a Vermont utility," according to U.S. officials!
Except, the next day:
. Four "current and former American officials," citing a "trove of
information the FBI is sifting through," said the Trump campaign had
"repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials." Months
later:
. A "senior U.S. government official" characterized the ex-spy who
claimed Russia had been cultivating Donald Trump for at least five years,
and could "blackmail him," was "a credible source with a proven record of
providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US
government." But Christopher Steele was subsequently dismissed as an FBI
source for his "completely untrustworthy" decision to talk to the media, and
Horowitz not only discovered that both the FBI and the CIA (who dismissed
his reports as "internet rumor") had many reservations about his
credibility, but that his famed "blackmail" claims about pee and prostitutes
had been made in "jest," over "beers."
. Former Trump adviser Carter Page was a "catalyst" for the FBI
investigation into connections between Donald Trump and Russia, according to
"current and former law enforcement and counterintelligence officials."
Similarly, the New York Times cited court documents in describing George
Papadopoulos: "Trump Campaign Adviser Met With Russian to Discuss 'Dirt' on
Clinton."
But Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe testified that as early as August of
2016, Page became the focus of secret surveillance because Papadopoulos had
been deemed a dead end. This scarcely reported detail only rendered the
entire predicate for the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation absurd:
. Jeff Sessions did not disclose contacts with a Russian ambassador in
a security clearance form, Justice Department sources told multiple outlets,
in what became a major, front-page scandal. Except it came out later he
didn't have to make those disclosures, and as for the contacts themselves?
"Brief, public, and non-substantive," said Robert Mueller.
. "Senior FBI and national intelligence officials" told the White
House and major news outlets that releasing the name of an "informant" in
the Trump-Russia investigation could "risk lives," one of many such stories
(we heard similar warnings before the release of the name of Christopher
Steele, his source Igor Danchenko, the "exfiltrated spy" Oleg Smolenkov, the
"anonymous" New York Times editorialist, the Ukraine "whistleblower," and
others). The "informant" Haspel warned about, Stefan Halper, turned out to
have been a professor outed by name as an intelligence source in the New
York Times all the way back in 1983:
. "Current and former intelligence officers" told the New York Times
that CIA director Gina Haspel showed Donald Trump pictures of British
children sickened, as well as ducks killed, by a Russian assassination in
England using the deadly nerve agent Novichok. It turns out there were no
such sick children or dead ducks, and Haspel didn't show such pictures, an
error the Times chalked up to lack of research time:
. According to "officials briefed on the matter," New York Times
reported, and the Washington Post "confirmed," that "a Russian military spy
unit offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants to attack coalition forces
in Afghanistan." Two months later, an on-the-record military official was
less certain:
One could go on and on with this list, from the bogus claims about Maria
Butina that ended up as Times headlines ("Suspected Secret Agent Used Sex in
Covert Plan"), to overhype of the Cambridge Analytica story (which turned
out to have nothing to do with Brexit), to the bass-ackwards denunciations
of the so-called "Nunes memo" (validated almost entirely by Horowitz), and
on, and on.
Does this mean the Russians don't meddle? Of course not. But we have to
learn to separate real stories about foreign intelligence operations with
posturing used to target domestic actors while suppressing criticism of
domestic politicians. It's only happened about a hundred times in the last
five years - maybe it's time to start asking for proof in these episodes?
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