Category: Aggregated

In a lengthy piece in the Dec. 16 Consortium News, former British diplomat and intelligence official Alastair Crooke wrote the CIA’s leaked claim of Russia trying to help Donald Trump gain the presidency is aimed at bringing down Vladimir Putin, along with hobbling Trump’s less hawkish foreign policy, even before he gets into office. Crooke entitled his piece “Politicized Intelligence Kneecapping Trump.”

To bolster his argument, Crooke cites former top presidential staffer (1969-74), columnist and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan: “Behind the effort to smear [Secretary of State-designate Rex] Tillerson and delegitimize Trump lies a larger motive. Trump has antagonists in both parties who are alarmed at his triumph, because it imperils the foreign policy agenda that is their raison d’être, their reason ‘for being.’

“These people do not want to lift sanctions on Moscow. They do not want to end the confrontation with Russia. As is seen by their bringing in tiny Montenegro, they want to enlarge NATO to encompass Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova.

“They have in mind the permanent encirclement of Russia… Their goal is to bring down Putin and bring about ‘regime change’ in Moscow.”

Crooke concludes that the war in Syria has had a “hugely corrosive effect on services such as CIA and MI6 … by becoming the echo chamber of claims, however improbable, however false, thrown up by sundry armed movements and their paymasters—with the intent to force the hand of Western military intervention. In short, these services cease to be observers; they become investors. They become lost in a maze of contorted realities, false propaganda, and of acquired hubris. Like Prometheus, they think to secretly steal from Zeus, the god of war: they aspire to dictate war and peace.

“Into this heady world of ‘strategic communication’ warfare, has intruded Mr. Trump, spoiling their Syria gambit—and promising détente with Russia. It must indeed seem intolerable.”