Col. Pat Lang — Clapper and Brennan are felons? Probably yes.

Smackdown.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Clapper and Brennan are felons? Probably yes.
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)

At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.

He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. — Wikipedia

John Kiriakou — Brennan and Clapper Should Not Escape Prosecution

Recently declassified documents show that the former CIA director and former director of national intelligence approved illegal spying on Congress and then classified their crime. They need to face punishment, writes John Kiriakou.

Consortium News

Brennan and Clapper Should Not Escape Prosecution

John Kiriakou

Obama to Clapper to Brennan

Is the worm turning?

Zero Hedge
Clapper: Obama Was Behind The Whole Thing

Tyler Durden

Sputnik International

Congress Wants to Grill Ex-CIA Chief Brennan Over Accusing Trump of 'Treason'

Jack Matlock Musings II … The “Intellience Community,” “Russian Interference,” and Due Diligence

Former Ambassador Matlock calls BS.

The report states that it represents the findings of three intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI, and NSA, but even that is misleading in that it implies that there was a consensus of relevant analysts in these three agencies. In fact, the report was prepared by a group of analysts from the three agencies personally selected by James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Clapper told the Senate in testimony May 8, 2017, that it was prepared by “two dozen or so analysts—hand-picked, seasoned experts from each of the contributing agencies.” If you can hand-pick the analysts, you can hand-pick the conclusions. The analysts selected would have understood what Director Clapper wanted since he made no secret of his views. Why would they endanger their careers by not delivering?

What should have struck any congressperson or reporter was that the procedure Clapper followed was the same as that used in 2003 to produce the report falsely claiming that Saddam Hussein had retained stocks of weapons of mass destruction. That should be worrisome enough to inspire questions, but that is not the only anomaly.…

Matlock agrees with other retired intel professionals that this was fixed intelligence and explains why he arrived at this conclusion.

JackMatlock.com
Musings II … The “Intellience Community,” “Russian Interference,” and Due Diligence

Jack Matlock | U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991 and retired career US foreign service officer

See also his previous, which was formerly linked to here at MNE.

MUSINGS … “RUSSIAGATE” HYSTERIA

Zero Hedge — Clapper: The U.S. Meddled In Foreign Elections And Conducted Regime Change In The "Best Interests Of The People"

James Clapper admits the obvious and explains it based on liberal ideology that justifies interventionism counter to international law on "moral" grounds.

This is a recipe for making things up. The institutional rule of law exists to obviate the arbitrary rule of men.

But American exceptionalism puts the US above the law.

Zero Hedge
Clapper: The U.S. Meddled In Foreign Elections And Conducted Regime Change In The "Best Interests Of The People"

See also at ZH

Goldman: If Trump Wants To Win A Trade War, The Market Has To Crash

also

As Good As Gold: Turkey Uses Bullion To Try To Stabilize Its Economy

also

This is quite interesting. Gold buggy but still interesting.

The Quiet Revolution: Gold's Monetary Rehabilitation Is Building

Tyler Durden — Clapper Busted Leaking Dossier Details To CNN's Jake Tapper, Lying To Congress About It

Now both Comey and Clapper caught out for leading classified information of a political nature.

Zero Hedge
Clapper Busted Leaking Dossier Details To CNN's Jake Tapper, Lying To Congress About It

Tyler Durden

Rand Paul — Deep State Exists, Uses Intelligence for Political Purposes

Paul pointed out that he believed Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and others used intelligence collected “without any judicial warrants” for political purposes, in addition to “try to bring Trump down.”...

The AntiMedia
Rand Paul: Deep State Exists, Uses Intelligence for Political Purposes

Truth In Media

Publius Tacitus — Who Is Lying? John Brennan or James Comey?

Publius Tacitus responds to TTG's response (if you are following this debate).

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Who Is Lying? John Brennan or James Comey?

Publius Tacitus

Publius Tacitus — Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place

Most people, including many of you, have the memory of an Alzheimer's patient when it comes to putting events into their proper historical context. So let me help....

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Pieces of the Coup Puzzle Fall Into Place

Publius Tacitus

Soon the investigative crosshairs will settle on Brennan. He’d better have the right answers.

The Unz Review
Is John Brennan the Mastermind Behind Russiagate?

Mike Whitney

Related

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly blocked Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., from briefing President Donald Trump about a meeting he had in London in August with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Rohrabacher told The Intercept.

Rohrabacher claimed Assange had shown him and his traveling companion, Charles Johnson, definitive proof that Russia was not the source of the Democratic Party communications that WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign. Assange was willing to share that information with American officials, Rohrabacher said, but he was never able to present the offer to the president....

The Intercept

Congressman Says He Tried to Brief Trump on WikiLeaks and Russia After Meeting With Julian Assange, But John Kelly Blocked Him

Ryan Grim

Mike Whitney — Brennan and Clapper: Elder Statesmen or Serial Fabricators?

These investigations are taking place because powerful elites want to vilify an emerging geopolitical rival (Russia) and prevent Trump from normalizing relations with Moscow, not because there is any evidence of criminal wrongdoing. As the Intel analysts themselves acknowledge, there is no proof of criminal wrongdoing or any other wrongdoing for that matter. What there is, is a political agenda to discredit Trump and demonize Russia. That’s the fuel that is driving the present campaign.

Russia-gate is not about ‘meddling’, it’s about politics. And Brennan and Clapper are critical players in the current drama....

Still all allegation and no evidence.

As we noted earlier, Brennan and Clapper are central figures in the Russia-gate story, but their records show we can’t trust what they have to say. They are like the eyewitness in a murder trial whose testimony is ‘thrown out’ because he is exposed as a compulsive liar. The same rule applies to Clapper and Brennan, that is, when the main proponents of the Russia hacking story are shown to be untrustworthy, we must discount what they have to say....

Counterpunch
Brennan and Clapper: Elder Statesmen or Serial Fabricators?

Mike Whitney

Ray McGovern — Mocking Trump Doesn’t Prove Russia’s Guilt

Good summary of the witch hunting to date. While he doesn't use the McGovern "soft coup" to characterize what is happening, he implies it. It's really about Trump rather than Russia. The US deep state has always had it in for Russia and won't rest until the US controls it, this is really aimed at neutralizing the president and continuing the effort to remove him from power.

Perhaps you saw "news" reports last week calling William Binney, formerly the NSA's technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis and head of the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center, a "conspiracy theorist" in those words. (Details at The Intercept.) Here is what McGovern says about it.

When news of the Binney-Pompeo meeting broke last week, the U.S. mainstream media again rejected the opportunity to rethink the Russia-did-it groupthink and instead treated Binney as some sort of “conspiracy theorist” with a “disputed” theory, while attacking Pompeo’s willingness to discuss Binney’s findings as “politicizing intelligence.”

To control the narrative there has to be only one side presented as obviously true based on "experts" and all other views characterized false, loony, or even faked. This m.o. is central to propaganda and disinformation.

Consortium News
Mocking Trump Doesn’t Prove Russia’s Guilt
Ray McGovern, CIA intelligence analyst for 27 years and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

See also

Detailed geopolitical and geostrategic analysis based on US military reports. 

While it doesn't address Russiagate and Trumpgate directly, it puts this in light of the US deep states' big picture.

It's about not on the Middle East but also Central Asia in an effort to wrest control of the Eurasian land mass from Russia and China. Recall Zbigniew Brzezinski's The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. The Great Game is still on.

The Syrian War and the Strategic Logic of US Imperialism’s Drive to Dominate the Middle East
Drew Cottle and Paul Antonopoulos
November 2017

Bryan Logan — JAMES CLAPPER: US intelligence assessment of Russia's election interference 'cast doubt on the legitimacy' of Trump's victory

• The former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said an assessment by the US intelligence community on Russia's US election interference "cast doubt" on President Donald Trump's legitimacy.
• Clapper's comments follow an avalanche of recent news about Russia's efforts to sway American voters in 2016.
• The Russia investigation has gained significant momentum in recent weeks, with several current and former Trump insiders under scrutiny for their ties to, and contacts with Russian operatives.

Whoa! US Civil War 2.0?

Looks like the deep state is digging in for a fight to the finish.

HRC piles on.

Business Insider
JAMES CLAPPER: US intelligence assessment of Russia's election interference 'cast doubt on the legitimacy' of Trump's victory

Bryan Logan

Also

Crooks and Liars
Clinton: Americans Should Be 'Terrified' Over Russian Interference
Susie Madrak

David Marks — Clapper’s Unhinged Russia-Bashing

Whatever the ultimate truth about the murky Russia-gate affair, it appears that it is Donald Trump’s willingness to consider friendship and cooperation with the Russians that is driving this emotional debate.

For some of the older U.S. intelligence and military officers, there appears to be a residual distrust and fear of Moscow, a hangover from the Cold War now transferred, perhaps almost subliminally, into the New Cold War and a sense that Russia is America’s eternal enemy.

James Clapper, President Obama’s last Director of National Intelligence, is a fascinating example of how this antagonism toward Russia never seems to change, as he revealed in a June 7 speech to the Australian National Press Club.

“The Russians are not our friends; they, (Putin specifically) are avowedly opposed to our democracy and values, and see us as the cause of all their frustrations,” Clapper declared.
In reaching that harsh judgment, Clapper ignored the U.S. government’s own role in the mounting tensions – expanding NATO to Russia’s borders, renouncing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and locating new missile bases in Eastern Europe. Instead, Clapper blamed the renewed arms race and resulting tensions on the Russians:

“The Russians are embarked on a very aggressive and disturbing program to modernize their strategic forces — notably their submarine and land-based nuclear forces. They have also made big investments in their counter-space capabilities. They do all this — despite their economic challenges — with only one adversary in mind: the United States. And, just for good measure, they are also in active violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty.”

That Clapper would offer such a one-sided account of the reasons behind the worsening antagonisms and the emerging arms race – leaving out the fact that the United States, despite its own budgetary and economic problems, spends about ten times more on its military than Russia does – suggests that he is not an objective witness on anything regarding Russia....

Dangerously delusional.

Consortium News
Clapper’s Unhinged Russia-Bashing

David Marks

Gareth Porter — The Kissinger Backchannel to Moscow

Major U.S. media outlets insinuate that President Trump’s advisers are traitors for secretly talking to Russians, but they ignore the history of Henry Kissinger doing the same thing for Richard Nixon, writes Gareth Porter.

Kissinger is at least an informal Trump adviser, which account in part for Trump's foreign policy realism. I would not be surprised if it was his idea. This report casts a whole new light on the matter if Kissinger was actually involved. He had done it himself when named the prospective national security advisor after Nixon was elected and before he was inaugurated.

But the real issue is this:

But Moss warns that the underlying political crisis in American society is a formidable obstacle to any shift by Trump in relations with Russia. Trump “feels he won the election fairly and that unelected bureaucrats are working against him,” Moss observed, but “The people who suspect possible collusion between the Trump and Russian interference in the election may feel Trump is an illegitimate president.”

Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn are obviously no Kissingers. But the insinuations from Brennan and others that Trump’s advisers may have somehow crossed the line into treason is itself the crossing of a dangerous line into McCarthyism. And the mainstream U.S. news media is participating enthusiastically in the campaign to impugn the loyalty of Trump’s advisers, even though there is still no public evidence to support such suspicions.

This is an extra-constitutional crisis in the works, that has morphed into a soft coup.

Consortium News
The Kissinger Backchannel to Moscow
Gareth Porter, independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism

Pat Lang — Clapper - "No evidence of collusion with Russia"

"No evidence." In other words, innuendo and insinuation based on inference.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Clapper - "No evidence of collusion with Russia"
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Over 70 percent of the Democrats are highly concerned about those alleged contacts, while only 7 percent of the Republicans share their opinion, the poll showed.

According to the survey, 65 percent of the respondents (82 percent of Democrats and 43 percent of Republicans) support the idea of appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the contacts, while 32 percent believe that the Congress is "capable of handling the investigation itself."

A total of 32 percent believe that Russia interfered in the US presidential election, which is 8 percent higher than in January, the poll showed.

Sputnik
Over 35% of US Citizens Worried About Trump Team's Alleged Contacts With Russia

Pat Lang — "Spy chief trashes leaks, assures Trump of loyalty" Politico

I can hear it now. "I told Brennan we should not get involved but he wouldn't listen."

 James Clapper backpedals.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
"Spy chief trashes leaks, assures Trump of loyalty" Politico

Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Mallory Shelbourne — Intel chief: Recent leaks 'corrosive and damaging'

James Clapper says that he doesn't believe that anonymous leaks to the press and the unconfirmed allegations about Russia have compromising information on Trump came from the intelligence community, apparently doesn't know source.

The Hill
Intel chief: Recent leaks 'corrosive and damaging'
Mallory Shelbourne

Larry C. Johnson — Our Intelligence Community is Corrupted

I am referring to Jim Clapper and John Brennan. They are proven liars.…

When you have immoral, corrupt leaders like Clapper and Brennan sitting at the top of the chain of command in the intelligence community, you should not be surprised when the personnel start reflecting those same values. The so-called “revelations” about alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 Presidential election must be taken with a grain of salt. How can you tell the report is not true? It is leaked to NBC and the Washington Post while John Brennan refused to brief the House Intelligence Committee. Got that?….

No Quarter
Our Intelligence Community is Corrupted
Larry C. Johnson | CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm with expertise combating terrorism and investigating money laundering, formerly Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism (1989-1993, and CIA operations (1984-1989)

Jeremy Scahill — James Clapper Has a Classified Blog. It’s Called “Intercept.”

Taking James Clapper to the woodshed over civil liberties.

And yes, no joke. Clapper's classified blog is called "Intercept."

The Intercept
James Clapper Has a Classified Blog. It’s Called “Intercept.”
Jeremy Scahill

Larry Johnson — John Brennan’s Failed Soft Coup?

Damn you John Brennan. You have dishonored the sacrifice of many brave intelligence officers who have given their lives believing they were serving a higher cause.

No Quarter
John Brennan’s Failed Soft Coup?
Larry Johnson, former analyst

The House Intelligence Committee abruptly canceled a briefing set for Thursday on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, after intelligence agencies refused to provide representatives for the session, Fox News is told.

Amid concerns about reports that conflict with details previously provided to the committee, Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had requested a closed, classified briefing Thursday for committee Republican and Democratic members from the FBI, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency.

But Fox News is told the agencies refused to provide briefers, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.

Fox News Politics
Intel panel nixes briefing on alleged Russian interference in US election after resistance

Catherine Herridge, Chief Intelligence correspondent for FOX News Channel