{"id":311178,"date":"2017-06-04T00:54:40","date_gmt":"2017-06-03T23:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-kissinger-backchannel-to-moscow\/"},"modified":"2017-06-04T00:54:40","modified_gmt":"2017-06-03T23:54:40","slug":"the-kissinger-backchannel-to-moscow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-kissinger-backchannel-to-moscow\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kissinger Backchannel to Moscow"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>Exclusive:<\/strong>\u00a0Major U.S. media outlets insinuate that President Trump\u2019s advisers are traitors for secretly talking to Russians, but they ignore the history of Henry Kissinger doing the same thing for Richard Nixon, writes Gareth Porter.<\/p>\n<p>By Gareth Porter<\/p>\n<p>Last week\u2019s\u00a0<u>leak to the Washington Post<\/u>\u00a0of an intelligence report about President Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in early December to discuss a possible back channel to Moscow appears to represents the climax of the campaign of leaks against the Trump team regarding contacts between Trump associates and Russians.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10388\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nixon-kissinger-1972-300x225.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nixon-kissinger-1972-300x225.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10388\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10388\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/nixon-kissinger-1972-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">President Richard Nixon with his then-National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger in 1972.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The leak about Kushner came shortly after another sensational story <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/05\/19\/politics\/michael-flynn-donald-trump-russia-influence\/index.html\">broadcast by CNN<\/a> on May 17 about U.S. intelligence picking up conversations among Russian officials during the presidential campaign in which they bragged about having cultivated a relationship with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and expressed the belief they could use him to influence Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Those two leaks sandwiched extraordinary\u00a0<u>testimony by former CIA Director John Brennan<\/u>\u00a0before the House Intelligence Committee on May 23 in which he said he was concerned about \u201cintelligence\u201d regarding Russian efforts to \u201csuborn\u201d certain Americans \u2013 meaning to induce them to commit unlawful acts. That may have been a reference to the leaked interception of Russians bragging about their relationship with Flynn that had just been reported.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt raised questions in my mind about whether the Russian\u2019s efforts were successful,\u201d Brennan said.<\/p>\n<p>Then, Brennan offered an inflammatory comment reminiscent of McCarthyism. \u201cFrequently people who go along a treasonous path do not know they are on a treasonous path until it is too late,\u201d Brennan said.<\/p>\n<p>Unidentified former Obama national security officials immediately condemned the Kushner proposal to Kislyak for a backchannel \u2013 which occurred after Trump\u2019s election but before his inauguration \u2013 as \u201cnot only highly improper but also possibly even illegal,\u201d as\u00a0<u>Politico reported<\/u>.<\/p>\n<p>In an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/bb\/clapper-jared-kushners-alleged-secret-back-channel-russia-curious-unusual\/\">interview with the PBS NewsHour<\/a>, former Director&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/06\/03\/the-kissinger-backchannel-to-moscow\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Exclusive:\u00a0Major U.S. media outlets insinuate that President Trump\u2019s advisers are traitors for secretly talking to Russians, but they ignore the history of Henry Kissinger doing the same thing for Richard Nixon, writes Gareth Porter. By Gareth Porter Last week\u2019s\u00a0leak to the Washington Post\u00a0of an intelligence report about President Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner meeting with Russian [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-311178","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}