Ray McGovern reflects on the demise of “Russiagate,” now that two central pieces of the narrative have fallen apart. The first comes from newly-released transcripts of the House Intelligence Committee’s 2017 interview with a senior member of Crowdstrike, the firm that had supposedly provided the evidence that Russian agents were responsible for hacking the DNC’s servers before the 2016 presidential election. These transcripts show the official, Shawn Henry, admitting that his firm had no conclusive evidence that someone from Russia had stolen information from the servers, but that it may have been made to look that way by someone interested in framing a Russian actor. The other piece is the admission by multiple senior government officials that they never saw any clear indication of Russian involvement either, contrary to the impression the public was given by the claim that “17 intelligence agencies” all agreed that there was Russian interference in the election. Scott and McGovern reminds us that even though the narrative seems to finally be falling apart, it has already had the disastrous effect of forcing President Trump into a corner with his Russia policy, including backing out of three nuclear treaties that had helped to unwind the Cold War and deescalate the threat of nuclear war.
Discussed on the show:
“Twin Pillars of Russiagate Crumble” (Consortium News)
“VIPS Memos” (Consortium News)
“1/13/17 William Binney on Russian hacking, NSA spying, and counterproductive means of fighting terrorism” (The Libertarian Institute)
Ray McGovern is the co-creator of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and the former chief of the CIA’s Soviet analysts division. Read all of his work at his website: raymcgovern.com.
This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.
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Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from this website. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. Visit https://scotthorton.org