It seems fitting that today is Sept. 11, or in holiday parlance: Patriot’s Day.  When I’d seen that on the calendar a few days ago, I almost threw up.

‘What spooked the spooks? What we still don’t know about Russiagate (by Stephen Cohen)’, 6 Sep, 2019, RT.com

“But the question remains: Why did Western intelligence agencies, prompted, it seems clear, by US ones, seek to undermine Trump’s presidential campaign? A reflexive answer might be because candidate Trump promised to “cooperate with Russia,” to pursue a pro-détente foreign policy, but this was hardly a startling, still less subversive, advocacy by a would-be Republican president. All of the major pro-détente episodes in the 20th century had been initiated by Republican presidents: Eisenhower, Nixon, and Reagan.” [snip]

“So, again, what was it about Trump that so spooked the spooks so far off their rightful reservation and so intrusively into US presidential politics? Investigations being overseen by Attorney General William Barr may provide answers, or not. Barr has already leveled procedural charges against James Comey, head of the FBI under President Obama and briefly under President Trump, but the repeatedly hapless Comey seems incapable of having initiated such an audacious operation against a presidential candidate, still less a president-elect. As I have long suggested, John Brennan and James Clapper, head of the CIA and Office of National Intelligence under Obama respectively, are the more likely culprits.

The FBI is no longer the fearsome organization it once was and thus not hard to investigate, as Barr has already shown. The others, particularly the CIA, are a different matter, and Barr has suggested they are resisting. To investigate them, particularly the CIA, it seems, he has brought in a veteran prosecutor-investigator, John Durham.

Which raises other questions. Are Barr and Durham, whose own careers include associations with US intelligence agencies, determined to uncover the truth about the origins of Russiagate? And can they really do so fully, given the resistance already apparent? Even if so, will Barr make public their findings, however damning of the intelligence agencies they may be, or will he classify them? And if the latter, will President Trump use his authority to declassify the findings as the 2020 presidential election approaches in order to discredit the role of Obama’s presidency and its would-be heirs?

Equally important perhaps, how will mainstream media treat the Barr-Durham investigation and its findings? Having driven the Russiagate narrative for so long and so misleadingly – and with liberals perhaps finding themselves in the incongruous position of defending rogue intelligence agencies – will they credit or seek to discredit the findings?

It is true, of course, that Barr and Durham, as Trump appointees, are not the ideal investigators of intel misdeeds in the Russiagate saga. Much better would be a truly bipartisan, independent investigation based in the Senate, as was the Church Committee of the mid-1970s, which exposed and reformed (it thought at the time) serious abuses by US intelligence agencies. That would require, however, a sizable core of nonpartisan, honorable, and courageous senators of both parties, who thus far seem to be lacking.”

Of course the Dems love the CIA; that agency’s been the McResistance’s bitch!  As does of the New York Times, of course.

‘UPDATED: Barr And Durham Are Focused On The CIA’, June 17 2019, mark mauk, meaninginhistory.blogspot

This is another Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride; you judge: conspiracy theory or a coincidence theory compilations of links, including, but certainly not limited to:

“…the interesting phenomenon of Obama meeting privately with former Italian PM Matteo Renzi in Italy at the same time that Matteo Salvini, Italian Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of the Interior, is in Washington for meetings with the Trump administration. As George Papadopoulos has tweeted, this surely has to do with Italian involvement in the Russia Hoax.”

“Despite the lack of leaks, there can be no doubt that this investigation has begun in earnest and that Brennan and the CIA are feeling the heat. We’re hearing about the Deep State’s increasing anxiety from their usual media outlets, and especially the NYT. I’ve covered some of all this in three posts (beginning with the most recent):

Assessing The Assessment
Brennan’s Task Force–The Heart Of The Russia Hoax
About that IC Assessment: Paul Sperry Has Good News

As further confirmation, I offer some extensive quotes from an article by a certified former Deep Stater, Jed Babbin–The CIA Is Running Scared: Barr’s bloodhounds are sniffing up Langley’s skirts. Babbin is very confident in the direction Barr is taking.
Babbin begins by noting the recent NYT article we discussed, in which “current and former American officials” expressed alarm and dismay that DoJ is seeking to question CIA analysts about their work on the ICA–why, they want to know, should their work be investigated? Well, we all know why. Babbin continues:

… From the Times report, we can easily deduce the fact that those who ran the spy op — including CIA Director Gina Haspel — are running scared from the Durham investigation. 

Start with the sourcing: “current and former American officials.” That includes all of the people who were in the Obama White House, Comey’s FBI, Brennan’s CIA, and everyone else who’s ever held a government job in, for example, the Obama White House.
…
The reason the CIA’s “analytical work” is being subjected to a federal prosecutor’s scrutiny is that there is a lot of evidence of criminal conduct by the CIA and FBI. That’s one of the fundamental differences between the Barr/Durham investigation and the Mueller investigation into the imaginary conspiracy between candidate Trump and his campaign and the Russians.
…
Haspel and her people are going to drag their feet, and probably hide evidence and lie to protect themselves from the investigators. [snip]

UPDATE: George Papadopoulos reminds us why Gina Haspel has every reason in the world to drag her feet rather than cooperate with Barr and Durham:

George Papadopoulos‏@GeorgePapa19

“America: do not forget that that current CIA director, Gina Haspel, was running the CIA desk in London in 2016 while Alexander Downer (Australia) Joseph Mifsud (Italy) Stefan Halper (CIA), Azra Turk (CIA) and the US embassy were spying on me and trying to sabotage Donald Trump.”
1:07 AM – 18 Jun 2019

File under: ya couldn’t even sell this as a ‘spy film treatment’ to a Hollywood producer it’s such a surreal comedy act:

‘New York Times: Main source for anti-Russia campaign may have been a “double agent”’, Andre Damon, 11 September 2019, wsws.org

“In a further exposure of the concocted claims of the New York Times and the Democrats of Russian “subversion” of the US political system, the Times acknowledged Tuesday that the key source used by the intelligence agencies to claim Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement “could be a double agent.”

On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said they were “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions.”

According to this narrative, amplified by the Democratic Party and the New York Times itself, Putin personally intervened to try to get Donald Trump elected by directing the Russian state to steal incriminating emails from the Clinton campaign and release them to WikiLeaks for publication.” [snip]

“Now, the main editorial outlet driving the Democrats’ anti-Russia campaign has admitted that serious concerns were raised within the US intelligence establishment about the primary source behind its hyperventilating denunciations of Russian “meddling.” The Times reported that the source, later identified by the Russian press as Oleg Smolenkov, gained an “influential position that came with access to the highest level of the Kremlin.”

Smolenkov “became one of the CIA’s most important—and highly protected—assets,” according to the Times. CNN reported that he was able to photograph documents on Putin’s desk and send them to Washington.

The Times wrote: “The Moscow informant was instrumental to the CIA’s most explosive conclusion about Russia’s interference campaign: that President Vladimir V. Putin ordered and orchestrated it himself. As the American government’s best insight into the thinking of and orders from Mr. Putin, the source was also key to the CIA’s assessment that he affirmatively favored Donald J. Trump’s election and personally ordered the hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”

There was just one problem. When the United States, concerned that media reports of Russian “meddling” might compromise their asset in the Kremlin, offered to exfiltrate their spy from Russia, where he risked a life sentence or execution if caught, he at first refused, leading to the conclusion that he might be a double agent, feeding false information to the Americans on behalf of elements within the Russian state.” [snip]

“Ultimately, after the Times, the Washington Post and other major media outlets published reports about the unnamed source, the US exfiltrated the spy, who is now living under his real name in Washington.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Smolenkov did work for the Putin government, “but he was never a high-ranking official” and was fired two years ago.

In the name of combating “Russian meddling,” politicians pressured American technology firms to undertake the most onerous program of political censorship in the history of the internet in the US. Accounts with millions of followers were deleted overnight, while Google manipulated search results to bury left-wing viewpoints.

There was a massive effort to poison public opinion against Julian Assange, the courageous publisher and exposer of war crimes. He was slandered by the Democrats and the Times as a Russian agent who colluded with Trump, setting the stage for his imprisonment.

(cross-posted from Café Babylon)