2016 Dec 12^th

This morning General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, was interviewed on “Morning Joe.” This is one impressive guy; the only comparison I’ve heard interviewed by them is when they bring on Mika Brzezinski’s father, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. (Mika is vaultingly sincere but she provides an excellent example of intellectual regression to the mean. Of course she has a considerable distance to drop before she gets to average.)

Now, lest we bury the lead, General Hayden clarified the problem in the apparent contradiction between the FBI declaring that there was no evidence that Russian hacking had interfered in our election and the CIA concluding that Russia had done exactly that. The fact that Trump has belittled the CIA’s conclusion is no surprise and has nothing to do with his manufacturing of their past “failure” with the weapons of mass destruction gambit. Actually it is quite the opposite.

 You may recall that Ambassador Joe Wilson was sent on a mission to determine if yellow cake, a barely refined source of Uranium, had been shipped to Iraq from Niger in Africa. Yellow cake could be further refined and used to make nuclear weapons. This mission was financed by the CIA and was with the knowledge of Niger’s ambassador. George Bush had pushed the notion that some aluminum tubes ordered by Iraq were for use in centrifuges so it was important to find Iraq importing yellow cake…only Ambassador Wilson found they were not doing that at all.

This finding infuriated the war party led by Cheney and so in revenge they outed Valerie Plame, Joe Wlson’s wife, who worked as a clandestine CIA operative; the journalist Robert Novak leaked this information, destroying Plame’s career.

The upshot is that evidence of Russian activity in our election gleaned from foreign sources is not available to the FBI whose activities are, by law, only within the borders of this country. When DNC and RNC materials hacked by Russia appear in foreign sourced articles only the CIA will know about it. Instead of bring these agencies closer to cooperating with each other, an outcome surely in the national interest, Trump has further driven a wedge between them and this seems entirely because any hint that Russia might have influenced his win, in his mind, detracts from his importance. As we all know anything detracting from Donald Trump’s importance cannot be tolerated by Donald Trump.

He may also have some problems if he picks Tillerson as his Secretary of State. Two Putin puppets may be more that the Senate can handle. Senator Rubio has expressed doubts and others may come forward as well. Then there is the fact that Tillerson spoke strongly against sanctioning Russia over their invasion of Crimea and Ukraine. The question will arise: “Whose side is he on?”