Stewards of the Visual Exposition
Worse Than Watergate
Publishers note: This post appears here courtesy of our sister site - Jefferson Rising.
The Nunes Memo highlights just how easy it is to spy on an American citizen, and even a candidate for the highest office of the land, when the administration in DC is politicized enough and when it becomes corrupted by political ambition. This should scare everyone.
I. WATERGATE -
Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 in a tight contest with Democratic nominee, Hubert H. Humphrey. During that election, he ran as a moderate candidate, pledging to end the war in Vietnam with honor and to make a clean break from the controversial administration of Lyndon Johnson, his predecessor. By 1972, Nixon remained popular with most Americans and was expected to defeat his opponent, Senator George McGovern.
On June 17, 1972, two police officers responded to a report of a break-in at the Watergate, a hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. where many political professionals lived and worked. That year, it was also the home of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). When the police arrived and entered the fifth-floor offices of the DNC, they surprised five men carrying surveillance devices they were trying to attach to the office phones. One of the men was James McCord, a former employee of the CIA and a Republican Party aide. In the address books of two of the burglars, police found the name H. Howard Hunt, a former CIA employee who, at the time, was associated with the White House. Over time, it became clear that Hunt was part of a group nicknamed the 'Plumbers,' because they stopped political leaks and who'd been conducting a 'dirty tricks' campaign against the Democrats for over a year. Their activities included canceling Democratic rallies, spying on candidates, and stealing confidential files.
In a nutshell, here's what happened in the greatest presidential scandal in U.S. history:
• On June 17, 1972, McCord and four other men working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP - really) broke into the Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate, a hotel-office building in Washington, D.C. They got caught going through files and trying to plant listening devices. Five days later, Nixon denied any knowledge of it or that his administration played any role in it.
• The burglars went to trial in 1973 and either pled guilty or were convicted. Before sentencing, McCord wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica, contending that high Republican and White House officials knew about the break-in and had paid the defendants to keep quiet or lie during the trial
• Investigation of McCord's charges spread to a special Senate committee. John Dean, a White House lawyer, told the committee McCord was telling the truth and that Nixon had known of the effort to cover up White House involvement.
• Eventually, all sorts of damaging stuff began to surface, including evidence that key documents linking Nixon to the cover-up of the break-in had been destroyed, that the Nixon reelection committee had run a "dirty tricks" campaign against the Democrats, and that the administration had illegally wiretapped the phones of "enemies," such as journalists who had been critical of Nixon.
• In March 1974, former Attorney. General John Mitchell and six top Nixon aides were indicted by a federal grand jury for trying to block the investigation. They were eventually convicted.
• While Nixon continued to deny any involvement, it was revealed he routinely made secret tapes of conversations in his office. Nixon refused to turn over the tapes at first, and when he did agree (after firing a special prosecutor he had appointed to look into the mess and seeing his new attorney general resign in protest), it turned out some of them were missing or had been destroyed. (They were also full of profanity, which greatly surprised people who had an entirely different perception of Nixon.)
• In the summer of 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against the president for obstructing justice.
The Watergate scandal hinged on a pivotal question posed by U.S. Senator Howard Baker during a senate hearing: 'What did the President know, and when did he know it? While it has never been proven that Nixon knew about the planning of the break-in or even of the break-in itself when it happened, it was his part in the cover-up that sealed his fate. The tapes clearly showed Nixon had been part of the cover-up. On August 8, 1974, he submitted a one-sentence letter of resignation, and then went on television and said, "I have always tried to do what is best for the nation." He was the first and, so far, only U.S. president to quit the job."
II. THE SURVEILLANCE (FISA) ABUSES UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION -
In a nutshell, the surveillance abuses under the Obama administration can be summed up as follows:
January 2013: At an energy conference in New York, Carter Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, attended an energy conference (in New York), where he meet Victor Pobodnyy, later determined to be a Russian intelligence agent. Page provided documents to Pobodnyy about his energy business, thinking he was a businessman who could help with brokering deals in Russia. This was according to court documents. The two exchange contact information and have several more meetings discussing energy policy.
[A brief history of Carter Page: After growing up in New York and spending a few years in the navy in the late 1990's, Page completed a few graduate degrees in International Relations and in Business. Then for most of the 2000's, he worked at the investment banking firm Merrill Lynch, where he focused on investments related to Russia and Eastern Europe. His work led him to move to Moscow from 2004 - 2007, and it entailed advising Gazprom, the majority Russia state-owned oil firm, on deals. Soon afterwards, he moved back to the US, left Merrill, and went into business for himself, advising investors on Russia-related projects.]
June 2013: Learning about the documents given to Pobodnyy at the conference, the FBI decides to interview Page. But they decide that Page didn't know Pobodnyy was a spy, and so they don't charge him with anything. Page is dismissed as being a person of interest. (So why did the FBI later decide to target him again? There is no good answer for this. Refer to the entry below and the entry of July 2016)
Summer 2014: The FBI begins monitoring Page's communications under a FISA warrant, owing to his 2013 contacts with Pobodnyy.
January 2015: Nunes, a six-term Congressman, becomes chairman of House Intelligence Committee.
January 26, 2015: Pobodnyy and two other Russians are charged with working as agents for Russian intelligence in New York. Court records include a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Pobodnyy talked about trying to recruit someone identified as "Male - 1," which is later revealed to be Page. But Pobodnyy admits "I think he's an idiot" in the transcript. Russian intelligence's interest in Page goes no further.
December 2015: Feeling that the Trump campaign aligns with his ideas on Russia, Page asks Ed Cox, chairman of the NY Republican Party, to recommend him as an adviser. He is brought on right away. "Anyone with a pulse, a resume, and who seemed legit would be welcomed," a campaign official admitted. Put another way, the only reason the Trump team took Page on was because "they were taking anyone with a pulse."
March 21, 2016: Trump meets with the editorial board of the Washington Post. Asked about his foreign policy team, he names, among others, Page and George Papadopoulos.
March 2016: In March of 2016, Papadopoulos communicates with a London professor, Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Russia. Mifsud reportedly tells Papadopoulos that Russia has "dirt" on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and then works with him to try to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. [In October, Papadopoulos will plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his attempts to contact Russian officials].
May 2016: In May of 2016, Papadopoulos converses over drinks at a British pub with a top Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer. He tells Downer that he knows that Russia has "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Two months later, Australia passed this information on to American intelligence officials.
JULY 2016 -
Page joins a group dinner of Trump campaign National Security advisors, including then Senator Jeff Sessions, at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington. He later testifies that he casually told Sessions about an upcoming trip to Russia during dinner. [The trip was tentatively approved by Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowki, on the condition that he NOT act as an official representative of the campaign while in Moscow].
Page spends 2 days (July 6-7) in Moscow, where he gives a talk at the New Economic School that is critical of American policy towards Russia and favorable towards Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Receiving the tip from Australian diplomats that George Papadopoulos had bragged about the fact that he knew Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the FBI initiates an investigation into Trump associates' ties to Russia.
After learning of Page's trip to Moscow, on July 19, 2016, former British intelligence (M-16) agent Christopher Steele files a report for what become known as his "dossier"; it focused on Page's Russia trip. This would be the information he uncovered while doing opposition research on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Citing Russian sources (not corroborated), he includes in his dossier:
• That Page had met with Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the majority Russian government-owned oil company, and discussed lifting US sanctions
• That Page had also met with Igor Diveykin, a Russian intelligence official, and discussed Russian "kompromat" on Clinton (and Trump)
Around this time, Steele, who has admitted being extremely politicized against Donald Trump and would do anything to prevent him from being president, approaches an FBI agent with this information (more correctly, "rumors") that he has "uncovered."
In a later report, dated October 18, 2016, Steele makes an even more astonishing claim: That when Page allegedly met with Sechin, the oil executive had offered Page and Trump's associates "the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return" for lifting sanctions, and that Page "expressed interest" and confirmed that Trump would lift sanctions if he won.
But, note - and this is VERY IMPORTANT -- that in the year and a half since, no one has yet managed to confirm or corroborate any of the claims in Steele's dossier about Page's trip. FURTHERMORE, Page has furiously denied the claims, saying that he's never met either Sechin or Diveykin and disparaging what he calls the "dodgy dossier" both in media appearances and under oath. He continues to deny these claims today.]
*** In fact, Carter Page has filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, demanding to know what information the FBI and Justice Department compiled on him and what information they used to request the FISA warrants in order to surveille him. He has not received anything yet.
Back to the Timeline ---
August 15, 2016: Just one month into the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign regarding ties to Russia, and only two weeks after the FBI had been given a copy of Steele's anti-Trump dossier, one of the FBI's top Russian counter-intelligence experts, Peter Strzok spoke of an "insurance policy" in the event that then-candidate Donald Trump was elected president. Strzok sent a text message to his lover, Lisa Paige, a senior FBI attorney, which read: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office - that there's no way he gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
August 29, 2016: Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid writes a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey calling for an investigation into evidence suggesting that Russia may try to manipulate the results of the 2016 election. In the letter, he cites Page's trip to Moscow and writes that "questions have been raised" about whether Page met with "high-ranking sanctioned individuals" during the trip. Also in the letter, he indirectly refers to Page's speech in Moscow criticizing U.S. sanctions policy toward Russia.
Late Summer 2016: The FBI obtains another secret court order from a FISA Court judge to monitor Page's communications, after convincing the judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FBI waited until the Trump campaign had parted ways with Page to begin surveilling him. [Apparently. the bureau's renewed interest in him in 2016 is sparked by concerns that Russian intelligence may be continuing to target him for possible use as an asset. Note that since 2013, the FBI had found no evidence that Page was actually being recruited, or that any credible attempts to recruit him were made; the fact is that it was clear to the FBI that Page was not even open to such a relationship. But apparently, Page continued to be a target they could continue to spy on, even if it was for the purposes of gaining information on others]
Go Back
The Nunes Memo highlights just how easy it is to spy on an American citizen, and even a candidate for the highest office of the land, when the administration in DC is politicized enough and when it becomes corrupted by political ambition. This should scare everyone.
I. WATERGATE -
Richard Nixon won the presidency in 1968 in a tight contest with Democratic nominee, Hubert H. Humphrey. During that election, he ran as a moderate candidate, pledging to end the war in Vietnam with honor and to make a clean break from the controversial administration of Lyndon Johnson, his predecessor. By 1972, Nixon remained popular with most Americans and was expected to defeat his opponent, Senator George McGovern.
On June 17, 1972, two police officers responded to a report of a break-in at the Watergate, a hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C. where many political professionals lived and worked. That year, it was also the home of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). When the police arrived and entered the fifth-floor offices of the DNC, they surprised five men carrying surveillance devices they were trying to attach to the office phones. One of the men was James McCord, a former employee of the CIA and a Republican Party aide. In the address books of two of the burglars, police found the name H. Howard Hunt, a former CIA employee who, at the time, was associated with the White House. Over time, it became clear that Hunt was part of a group nicknamed the 'Plumbers,' because they stopped political leaks and who'd been conducting a 'dirty tricks' campaign against the Democrats for over a year. Their activities included canceling Democratic rallies, spying on candidates, and stealing confidential files.
In a nutshell, here's what happened in the greatest presidential scandal in U.S. history:
• On June 17, 1972, McCord and four other men working for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (or CREEP - really) broke into the Democratic Party's headquarters in the Watergate, a hotel-office building in Washington, D.C. They got caught going through files and trying to plant listening devices. Five days later, Nixon denied any knowledge of it or that his administration played any role in it.
• The burglars went to trial in 1973 and either pled guilty or were convicted. Before sentencing, McCord wrote a letter to Judge John Sirica, contending that high Republican and White House officials knew about the break-in and had paid the defendants to keep quiet or lie during the trial
• Investigation of McCord's charges spread to a special Senate committee. John Dean, a White House lawyer, told the committee McCord was telling the truth and that Nixon had known of the effort to cover up White House involvement.
• Eventually, all sorts of damaging stuff began to surface, including evidence that key documents linking Nixon to the cover-up of the break-in had been destroyed, that the Nixon reelection committee had run a "dirty tricks" campaign against the Democrats, and that the administration had illegally wiretapped the phones of "enemies," such as journalists who had been critical of Nixon.
• In March 1974, former Attorney. General John Mitchell and six top Nixon aides were indicted by a federal grand jury for trying to block the investigation. They were eventually convicted.
• While Nixon continued to deny any involvement, it was revealed he routinely made secret tapes of conversations in his office. Nixon refused to turn over the tapes at first, and when he did agree (after firing a special prosecutor he had appointed to look into the mess and seeing his new attorney general resign in protest), it turned out some of them were missing or had been destroyed. (They were also full of profanity, which greatly surprised people who had an entirely different perception of Nixon.)
• In the summer of 1974, the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment against the president for obstructing justice.
The Watergate scandal hinged on a pivotal question posed by U.S. Senator Howard Baker during a senate hearing: 'What did the President know, and when did he know it? While it has never been proven that Nixon knew about the planning of the break-in or even of the break-in itself when it happened, it was his part in the cover-up that sealed his fate. The tapes clearly showed Nixon had been part of the cover-up. On August 8, 1974, he submitted a one-sentence letter of resignation, and then went on television and said, "I have always tried to do what is best for the nation." He was the first and, so far, only U.S. president to quit the job."
II. THE SURVEILLANCE (FISA) ABUSES UNDER THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION -
In a nutshell, the surveillance abuses under the Obama administration can be summed up as follows:
January 2013: At an energy conference in New York, Carter Page, who founded an investment company in New York called Global Energy Capital, attended an energy conference (in New York), where he meet Victor Pobodnyy, later determined to be a Russian intelligence agent. Page provided documents to Pobodnyy about his energy business, thinking he was a businessman who could help with brokering deals in Russia. This was according to court documents. The two exchange contact information and have several more meetings discussing energy policy.
[A brief history of Carter Page: After growing up in New York and spending a few years in the navy in the late 1990's, Page completed a few graduate degrees in International Relations and in Business. Then for most of the 2000's, he worked at the investment banking firm Merrill Lynch, where he focused on investments related to Russia and Eastern Europe. His work led him to move to Moscow from 2004 - 2007, and it entailed advising Gazprom, the majority Russia state-owned oil firm, on deals. Soon afterwards, he moved back to the US, left Merrill, and went into business for himself, advising investors on Russia-related projects.]
June 2013: Learning about the documents given to Pobodnyy at the conference, the FBI decides to interview Page. But they decide that Page didn't know Pobodnyy was a spy, and so they don't charge him with anything. Page is dismissed as being a person of interest. (So why did the FBI later decide to target him again? There is no good answer for this. Refer to the entry below and the entry of July 2016)
Summer 2014: The FBI begins monitoring Page's communications under a FISA warrant, owing to his 2013 contacts with Pobodnyy.
January 2015: Nunes, a six-term Congressman, becomes chairman of House Intelligence Committee.
January 26, 2015: Pobodnyy and two other Russians are charged with working as agents for Russian intelligence in New York. Court records include a transcript of a recorded conversation in which Pobodnyy talked about trying to recruit someone identified as "Male - 1," which is later revealed to be Page. But Pobodnyy admits "I think he's an idiot" in the transcript. Russian intelligence's interest in Page goes no further.
December 2015: Feeling that the Trump campaign aligns with his ideas on Russia, Page asks Ed Cox, chairman of the NY Republican Party, to recommend him as an adviser. He is brought on right away. "Anyone with a pulse, a resume, and who seemed legit would be welcomed," a campaign official admitted. Put another way, the only reason the Trump team took Page on was because "they were taking anyone with a pulse."
March 21, 2016: Trump meets with the editorial board of the Washington Post. Asked about his foreign policy team, he names, among others, Page and George Papadopoulos.
March 2016: In March of 2016, Papadopoulos communicates with a London professor, Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Russia. Mifsud reportedly tells Papadopoulos that Russia has "dirt" on Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and then works with him to try to arrange a meeting between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. [In October, Papadopoulos will plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his attempts to contact Russian officials].
May 2016: In May of 2016, Papadopoulos converses over drinks at a British pub with a top Australian diplomat named Alexander Downer. He tells Downer that he knows that Russia has "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. Two months later, Australia passed this information on to American intelligence officials.
JULY 2016 -
Page joins a group dinner of Trump campaign National Security advisors, including then Senator Jeff Sessions, at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington. He later testifies that he casually told Sessions about an upcoming trip to Russia during dinner. [The trip was tentatively approved by Trump campaign manager, Corey Lewandowki, on the condition that he NOT act as an official representative of the campaign while in Moscow].
Page spends 2 days (July 6-7) in Moscow, where he gives a talk at the New Economic School that is critical of American policy towards Russia and favorable towards Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Receiving the tip from Australian diplomats that George Papadopoulos had bragged about the fact that he knew Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton, the FBI initiates an investigation into Trump associates' ties to Russia.
After learning of Page's trip to Moscow, on July 19, 2016, former British intelligence (M-16) agent Christopher Steele files a report for what become known as his "dossier"; it focused on Page's Russia trip. This would be the information he uncovered while doing opposition research on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Citing Russian sources (not corroborated), he includes in his dossier:
• That Page had met with Igor Sechin, the CEO of Rosneft, the majority Russian government-owned oil company, and discussed lifting US sanctions
• That Page had also met with Igor Diveykin, a Russian intelligence official, and discussed Russian "kompromat" on Clinton (and Trump)
Around this time, Steele, who has admitted being extremely politicized against Donald Trump and would do anything to prevent him from being president, approaches an FBI agent with this information (more correctly, "rumors") that he has "uncovered."
In a later report, dated October 18, 2016, Steele makes an even more astonishing claim: That when Page allegedly met with Sechin, the oil executive had offered Page and Trump's associates "the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return" for lifting sanctions, and that Page "expressed interest" and confirmed that Trump would lift sanctions if he won.
But, note - and this is VERY IMPORTANT -- that in the year and a half since, no one has yet managed to confirm or corroborate any of the claims in Steele's dossier about Page's trip. FURTHERMORE, Page has furiously denied the claims, saying that he's never met either Sechin or Diveykin and disparaging what he calls the "dodgy dossier" both in media appearances and under oath. He continues to deny these claims today.]
*** In fact, Carter Page has filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, demanding to know what information the FBI and Justice Department compiled on him and what information they used to request the FISA warrants in order to surveille him. He has not received anything yet.
Back to the Timeline ---
August 15, 2016: Just one month into the FBI's investigation into the Trump campaign regarding ties to Russia, and only two weeks after the FBI had been given a copy of Steele's anti-Trump dossier, one of the FBI's top Russian counter-intelligence experts, Peter Strzok spoke of an "insurance policy" in the event that then-candidate Donald Trump was elected president. Strzok sent a text message to his lover, Lisa Paige, a senior FBI attorney, which read: "I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy's office - that there's no way he gets elected - but I'm afraid we can't take that risk. It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40."
August 29, 2016: Sen. Minority Leader Harry Reid writes a letter to then-FBI Director James Comey calling for an investigation into evidence suggesting that Russia may try to manipulate the results of the 2016 election. In the letter, he cites Page's trip to Moscow and writes that "questions have been raised" about whether Page met with "high-ranking sanctioned individuals" during the trip. Also in the letter, he indirectly refers to Page's speech in Moscow criticizing U.S. sanctions policy toward Russia.
Late Summer 2016: The FBI obtains another secret court order from a FISA Court judge to monitor Page's communications, after convincing the judge that there was probable cause to believe Page was acting as an agent of a foreign power. The FBI waited until the Trump campaign had parted ways with Page to begin surveilling him. [Apparently. the bureau's renewed interest in him in 2016 is sparked by concerns that Russian intelligence may be continuing to target him for possible use as an asset. Note that since 2013, the FBI had found no evidence that Page was actually being recruited, or that any credible attempts to recruit him were made; the fact is that it was clear to the FBI that Page was not even open to such a relationship. But apparently, Page continued to be a target they could continue to spy on, even if it was for the purposes of gaining information on others]
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