THE HACK ATTACK: Pearl Harbor or Watergate? Control the Narrative, or the Truth?

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chair of the German political party Civil Rights Movement Solidarity

Six weeks after President Trump took office, the neoliberal Establishment has still not reconciled itself with the results of the democratic election in the United States. The neoliberal, globalist mainstream media are in a head-over-heels, non-stop campaign, claiming that Russian hacking contributed to the Trump victory.

In reality, something entirely different is going on: First, Trump has promised and is determined to end the British imperial policy of endless war in the Middle East, and instead to put the U.S. relationship with Russia and China on a rational basis. Second, this whole anti-Trump campaign is occurring against a backdrop in which the trans-Atlantic financial system could implode at any minute, and in which Trump, according to his press spokesman Sean Spicer, is sticking to his intention to reinstate the Glass-Steagall system of bank separation, which is a red flag for the City of London and Wall Street.

On a daily basis, the Washington Post and New York Times repeat the “narrative” of the alleged Russia-gate. On Feb 14, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman brought out the big guns and compared the alleged Russian hacking of Democratic Party emails both to Pearl Harbor and to 9/11. He claims, therefore, that Russia has “attacked the core of our democracy.”

But what was the actual content revealed in the first round of Wikileaks’ publication of these emails? They exposed that the Democratic Party leadership had massively manipulated the electoral process in favor of Hillary Clinton and against Bernie Sanders. Second, Wikileaks published the speech Hillary Clinton gave before Wall Street bankers, in which she made it clear that, as President, she would represent Wall Street’s interests. Robert Parry, the investigative journalist who won an unassailable reputation for his exposé of the Iran-Contra scandal, pointed out in a March 4 article “The Politics Behind ‘Russia-Gate’” that it hardly makes sense to call the leaks an attack against “the core of democracy” if they helped the American electorate (as is their right) to be informed of these essential facts about a presidential candidate.

Just as the witch-hunt against Trump and several of his cabinet members and advisers reached a new high point, Wikileaks began to publish a new round of intelligence that surpasses the revelations of Edward Snowden. These revelations concern the total world-wide surveillance which—in addition to the NSA—the CIA and the British intelligence service GCHQ carry out by tapping into smartphones, tablets, computers, smart-TVs, and other electronic devices. This involves an unparalleled breach of the law, which has not yet led to a storm of outrage only because, as the saying goes, the frog is being cooked slowly. (A frog, first placed in cold water, will not notice as the temperature is gradually raised to the boiling point.) The CIA is strictly prohibited from carrying out operations within the United States against Americans.

But the revelation that the CIA has the technical capacity to take control of people’s electronic devices and carry out hacking and other operations under a “false flag,” was also part of the new Wikileaks release. This raises the legitimate question as to whether the alleged Russian hacking attacks—if these were indeed hacks rather than leaks—might have been carried out from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or perhaps from the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt, which has been identified as the secondary base of operations for CIA activities in Europe, China, and the Middle East. The very fact that letters of the Cyrillic alphabet and Russian names appeared in several of the hacking operations raises the question of “false flag” operations, since the most savvy hackers would hardly be so stupid as to leave their calling card.

These latest Wikileaks releases have turned the tide in the United States. The alleged links of the Trump team to Russia are no longer the only focus, but attention is now turned to the question of who is responsible for the illegal passing of information about the conversations of Trump associates with, for example, Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, conversations that occurred in the reasonable pursuit of their functions as senators or members of the transition team. It is illegal to leak such conversations, recorded as part of obtaining communications intelligence of a foreign government. The Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Sen. Charles Grassley, which is probing these questions, is now investigating in two directions—not only the alleged contacts of the Trump team with Russian institutions but, most notably, where the illegal leaks are coming from within the intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, some former members of the intelligence community are speaking up, such as William Binney, one of the developers of the global NSA surveillance system—thus one of the top experts in this area and today a whistleblower like Edward Snowden—who condemn the CIA’s methods as absolutely unconstitutional. They say that these practices involve a total corruption of the legal system, that the United States is already a police state, and dangerously close to being a totalitarian state.

It may transpire that the alleged Russian hacking of the Democratic Party emails to help elect Trump was by no means a “Pearl Harbor” event, but that, on the contrary, Trump’s friend of many years, Roger Stone, is right in his evaluation: Stone, who participated in many Republican election campaigns and administrations after serving as a member of the Nixon Administration, says, as an active witness of the scandals which ended Nixon’s political career, that this current affair far more serious than Watergate. He says it concerns the gravest breach of the law and public morality in the history of the United States.

As for one of the questions that has now become relevant, as to who arranged for a request to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for surveillance of Trump, Stone stressed that it is improbable that it could have happened without Obama’s consent. He pointed to the case of Richard Nixon, who did not know in advance about the break-in at the Watergate Hotel, but had to take responsibility for the crime. Today it is only a question of time as to when Obama, the former Secretary of Defense, and the heads of the CIA and FBI have to testify before a Grand Jury, and the whole issue could potentially become the greatest scandal in American history, Stone said. Very soon, the question will be: What did Obama know, and when did he know it?

U.S., Russia, China Must Cooperate

The neoliberals and neoconservatives on both sides of the Atlantic are acting like children who shut their eyes and think that it makes them invisible. The whole world is talking about the bankruptcy of the working model of this Establishment, which thinks only of its own advantage, at the expense of the general welfare.

Donald Trump—who surely isn’t perfect and must still demonstrate whether the trust placed in him was justified, and in whose administration there lurk all kinds of potential submarines—was elected because a section of the American public that the neoliberal Establishment had written off, had had absolutely enough of endless wars, wars that had cost $6 trillion over 15 years, ruined countless soldiers and their families psychologically, and left them penniless; they had had enough of “rescue packages” for Wall Street, of the drug epidemic, of a no-future life.

The arrogant and pig-headed commentators in Europe should learn from the way that the strategic change is perceived in other parts of the world. On March 7 Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stressed anew that China’s objective is to stabilize the world situation through cooperation among the United States, Russia, and China, and thus promote worldwide economic, technological, and scientific development. The modern infrastructure projects that China has already initiated in 60 nations along the New Silk Road offer a platform for the most brilliant prospects for the whole world, if the most important nations participate. The New Silk Road initiative comes from China, he said, but it belongs to the whole world, and its success would benefit all nations.

It is admittedly difficult for people faced with the totally lock-step mainstream media—with their hysterical anti-Trump campaign, their demonization of Russian President Putin, and the ongoing negative reporting on China—to form a clear picture of what is happening in the world. But one thing should be clear to anyone who thinks it through: The world’s problems can only be solved if the United States, Russia, and China cooperate.

The West has a fantastic opportunity to bring its great cultural and scientific tradition into the shaping of the new paradigm of cooperation among all nations in win-win collaboration in the expansion of the New Silk Road. Don’t let the “narratives” of the mass media block the way.