{"id":320958,"date":"2017-08-09T16:20:27","date_gmt":"2017-08-09T15:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=320958"},"modified":"2017-08-09T16:22:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T15:22:26","slug":"u-s-government-press-lie-constantly-total-impunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/u-s-government-press-lie-constantly-total-impunity\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Government and Press Lie Constantly, with Total Impunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The U.S. press don\u2019t report this fact, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not true. The following will document its truth, by recent prominent examples, and will explain how and why this rampant lying by the government and press is done.<\/span><\/p>\n

The lies are usually about the most important policies and actions of the United States government regarding international relations \u2014 foreign policy matters, such as wars, treaties, and economic sanctions. In the past, they were lies about matters such as that North Vietnam had attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, and that Chile\u2019s President Salvador Allende opposed democracy, and that Iraq\u2019s President Saddam Hussein was \u201csix months away from developing a [nuclear] weapon,\u201d<\/span><\/a> and that Russian President Vladimir Putin\u2019s \u201cconquest of land\u201d regarding Crimea<\/span><\/a> had happened and is the basic reason for the economic sanctions the U.S. has placed against Russia. <\/span><\/p>\n

On August 2nd, U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law increased<\/i> sanctions against Russia, which had been passed 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House<\/span><\/a>. This new law stated in Section 211, \u201cCongress makes the following findings\u201d<\/span><\/a> as the basis for greatly hiking the economic sanctions against Russia:<\/span><\/p>\n

(6) On January 6, 2017, an assessment of the United States intelligence community entitled, \u201cAssessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections\u201d stated, \u201cRussian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the United States presidential election.\u201d The assessment warns that \u201cMoscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. Presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes\u201d.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

In other words: because of this alleged hacking of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, the sanctions that were originally (and entirely falsely<\/span><\/a>) based upon \u201cconquest of land\u201d regarding Crimea, are now being greatly increased.<\/span><\/p>\n

The 6 January 2017 document that the 98 Senators and 419 Representatives were relying upon there, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections\u201d<\/span><\/a>, was signed by just one of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies: President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence (James R. Clapper), who served at the pleasure of the then-President (Obama). The portion of it titled \u201cRussia\u2019s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election\u201d was additionally signed by the NSA, FBI and CIA. The entire document was built upon an earlier document, dated 7 October 2016 and issued in anticipation of Hillary Clinton\u2019s becoming the next President; and that earlier document had been signed by two of the 17: the office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the office of the intelligence service for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The public part of this earlier document was titled “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u201d<\/span>.<\/span> It opened:<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

It was signed with the seal of the Department of Homeland Security, and the seal of the Director of National Intelligence \u2014 those two seals or official signatures, being co-equals in authority. They were two of the 17 offices of the U.S. federal government\u2019s Intelligence Community<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Wikipedia\u2019s article \u201cUnited States Intelligence Community\u201d<\/span><\/a>, “The IC [Intelligence Community] is headed by the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), whose statutory leadership is exercised through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).\u201d The 17 members of the IC are shown there in that Wikipedia article, along with the official seal for each one (because a \u201cfinding\u201d is officially \u201csigned\u201d with that seal, not with the person\u2019s signature); and the 17 are: <\/span><\/p>\n

Eight are under the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). These offices are the respective intelligence-offices for: Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and then 3 stand-alone ones that also are under U.S. DOD: National Reconnaissance Office, Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Agency.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two intelligence-offices are at Department of Homeland Security: Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and Coast Guard Intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two are at Department of Justice: Office of National Security Intelligence, and FBI Intelligence Branch.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is at Department of Energy: Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n

One is at Department of State: Bureau of Intelligence and Research. <\/span><\/p>\n

One is at Treasury Department: Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are two entirely independent stand-alone intelligence offices: CIA, and Director of National Intelligence. Each of those two officials reports directly to the U.S. President, not via a Cabinet Department.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s all 17 of them.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is authorized to represent each of the other 16, and not only himself. He is authorized to do that even if some (or all) of the other intelligence offices disagree with him in opinions that he expresses \u2014 if they disagree, they just don\u2019t sign it (their official seal then doesn\u2019t appear on the \u201cfinding\u201d). The DNI may express an opinion that\u2019s contradicted by any or all of the other 16. However, his opinion is not superior to the opinion of any of the other 16 top intelligence officials: he is instead considered to be one among the 17 \u2014 not superior to the other 16 \u2014 but nonetheless to express, in some purely official sense, \u201cthe Intelligence Community.\u201d However, if he expresses an opinion that contradicts the opinion of the sitting President, he may be fired by the President. None of his 16 Intelligence Community colleagues can do that \u2014 officially represent \u201cthe Intelligence Community\u201d regardless of what its other 16 persons might privately support. The basic law that defines the DNI’s authority is Sec. 102. [50 U.S.C. \u00a7 3023]<\/span><\/a><\/span>,<\/span> and states (on page 37) that he is at all times “Subject to the authority, direction, and control<\/span><\/a> of the President.\u201d In other words: When the DNI speaks, the President of the United States is actually being expressed. Whether any other of the 17 top U.S. intelligence officials is also being expressed, is therefore irrelevant. The system was set up this way so that the President would officially have \u201cthe Intelligence Community\u201d supporting whatever publicly endorsed \u201cfacts\u201d or findings the President backs. Any dissenting members of that 17 simply don\u2019t sign, that\u2019s all. The purpose of this arrangement is to keep the findings \u2014 the public<\/i> \u2018facts\u2019 \u2014 in line with the President\u2019s policy on the given matter, no matter what.<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of the 17 top intelligence officials has an official seal of office. No document that lacks the official seal of a particular one of these 17 offices is officially approved by<\/i> that office. The lack of that person\u2019s seal means one of two things: his agency was not consulted on the given matter, or else he had been consulted and declined to sign the given document or \u201cfindings.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Thus: only two of the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies signed the “Joint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security\u201d<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

On 19 October 2016 occurred the last one of the three U.S. Presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump; and Clinton said: \u201cWe have 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military, who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyberattacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin, and they are designed to influence our election.\u201d She was referring to that \u201cJoint Statement from the Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security.\u201d That night, Politifact headlined “Hillary Clinton blames high-up Russians for WikiLeaks releases\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span>, and rated Clinton\u2019s assertion there \u201cTrue\u201d because:<\/span><\/p>\n

The October statement \u2026 said “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident” in its assessment. As we noted in the article, the 17 separate agencies did not independently come to this conclusion, but as the head of the intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence speaks on behalf of the group.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s not really true, but it is officially<\/i> true: if the DNI signs to a \u201cfinding,\u201d then any dissenting member of the 17 must simply keep quiet, say nothing publicly about the matter. To Politifact, the refusal of the other top 15 U.S. intelligence officials to sign the October 7th document meant nothing, and was irrelevant; the only signature that mattered to Politifact was the DNI\u2019s (the signature of the person who, at all times, is, in fact, by law, \u201cSubject to the \u2026 control of the President\u201d \u2014 which then was Obama) \u2014 even the DHS signature (which was on the document) meant nothing to Politi\u2018fact\u2019. Politi\u2018fact\u2019 didn\u2019t say two signed it; but instead said that all 17 did \u2014 which was false. Politi\u2018fact\u2019 too lies, in order to make the \u2018facts\u2019 fit the government\u2019s policy. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then, on 21 October 2016, USA Today<\/i> headlined “Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and wrote \u2014 in this \u2018news\u2019report; this wasn\u2019t published as an opinion<\/i>-piece but \u2018news\u2019:<\/span><\/p>\n

The fact-checking website Politifact says Hillary Clinton is correct when she says 17 federal intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia is behind the hacking.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe have 17, 17 intelligence agencies, civilian and military who have all concluded that these espionage attacks, these cyber attacks, come from the highest levels of the Kremlin. And they are designed to influence our election. I find that deeply disturbing,\u201d Clinton said during Wednesday’s presidential debate in Las Vegas.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump pushed back, saying that Clinton and the United States had \u201cno idea whether it is Russia, China or anybody else.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

But Clinton is correct. On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. \u2026 The agencies all issued the statement together.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

That \u2018news\u2019-report was influential: it had 45 thousand shares online. Its statement that the Department of Homeland Security was authorized to speak for any other intelligence agency than itself, was entirely false. And the fundamental Russiagate narrative itself is almost certainly also a lie, which might help explain why Obama couldn\u2019t get the other 15 U.S. intelligence services (or at least the ones such as the CIA and NSA and FBI, which clearly possessed relevant intelligence about the matter) to attach their seals to it at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

An alternative narrative explaining the Wikileaks information-releases exists, and is supported by all of the available relevant evidence, and it doesn\u2019t entail any hacks at all, but instead leaks: both of the information-releases resulted from leaks by insiders, instead of from hacks by outsiders. This doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that nobody hacked anything, but just that neither of the information-releases came from a hack.<\/span><\/p>\n

Strong evidence exists that Craig Murray, a British friend of Julian Assange, picked up from a Democratic National Committee insider on 24 September 2016 in Washington DC<\/span><\/a> a thumb drive or other physical embodiment of the data that soon thereafter became leaked, and that he delivered it to the Wikileaks founder inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, according to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh speaking on 1 August 2017<\/span><\/a>, an earlier leak from a different DNC insider, had produced the June 2016 DNC computer-data release by Wikileaks. <\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, the technical evidence regarding the \u2018hacking\u2019 indicates there was no hack; that it was only (at least one) inside leak(s)<\/span><\/a>. <\/span><\/p>\n

The charge that Russia had \u2018hacked\u2019 \u2018the election\u2019 is the core \u2018justification\u2019 given for the 98-2 Senate and 419-3 House passage of the great hike in anti-Russia economic sanctions. Clearly, this Congress \u2014 both Parties in it \u2014 are determined to squeeze Russia harder and harder, until it\u2019s conquered. Maybe the reason why Trump signed this bill into law (which would have easily passed over his veto if he had vetoed it) is so as not to give Congress an additional \u2018reason\u2019 to impeach and replace him by Mike Pence, whom both Parties in Congress seem to prefer.<\/span><\/p>\n

America invaded Vietnam on the basis of lies. We invaded Iraq on the basis of lies. We\u2019ve done much else \u2014 in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine etc. \u2014 on the basis of lies. Are our leaders preparing to invade Russia on the basis of lies? (If so, those lies started on 24 February 1990<\/span><\/a>.) How much longer will the American public continue rewarding (instead of demanding prosecution of) the liars who are promoting Lockheed Martin and the rest of the U.S. military-industrial complex and destroying countries one after another? America isn\u2019t being ruled by the military; it\u2019s being ruled by the Military-Industrial Complex. To understand the MIC, the \u201crevolving door\u201d is essential. Without that revolving door, America could be a democracy. But that revolving door is controlled by billionaires; and, by means of it, the billionaires control the U.S. government<\/span><\/a>. The divisions within the U.S. government are only superficial, as is clearly shown by that virtually unanimous vote (98-2 and 419-3) in Congress, for lies. It\u2019s now become almost lock-step, in Washington. The U.S. aristocracy controls the U.S. MIC, by controlling both the government, and the press<\/span><\/a>. The only way to become a serious contender, to win a seat in Congress, or especially to win the Presidency, is to be acceptable to billionaires \u2014 Republican, Democratic, or otherwise. And America\u2019s billionaires are virtually unanimous<\/span><\/a> in their determination to conquer Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not likely to end well. Robert Mueller has now impanelled two grand juries<\/span><\/a> in order to find some crime by the President that\u2019s part of his Russiagate investigation, so that Trump can be criminally charged, then impeached, and then replaced by the hard-right, neoconservative, Mike Pence. At the present stage, it\u2019s an \u201cinvestigation in search of a crime\u201d<\/span><\/a>, and probably one or more crimes will be found, on which Trump can be prosecuted; but, why weren\u2019t Barack Obama\u2019s crimes even searched for (I could name several he could almost certainly have been indicted for, including his aiding and abetting the American public\u2019s actual enemies, in his policies on Honduras, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Ukraine, and elsewhere \u2014 and his protecting mega-banksters<\/span><\/a> whose frauds had produced the 2008 economic collapse, and he even told them privately \u201cI\u2019m protecting you\u201d<\/span><\/a>), much less investigated at all? Obviously, America\u2019s aristocracy detest Trump, though he\u2019s one of them. Trump is trying to give them almost everything they want, but that\u2019s clearly not sufficient. He\u2019s not bad enough to satisfy them, and they\u2019re in control. Most recently, the lies they are pumping out have focused against Venezuela<\/span><\/a>. Only ignoramuses and fools still trust the honesty of the U.S. government, and of its sycophantic press, which is controlled by the same aristocracy \u2014 both<\/i> Parties of it. Some \u2018democracy\u2019<\/span><\/a>!<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org The U.S. press don\u2019t report this fact, but that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not true. The following will document its truth, by recent prominent examples, and will explain how and why this rampant lying by the government and press is done. The lies are usually about the most important policies […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":320959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,32,96,3604,526,524,754,6257,523,1092,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-320958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-propaganda","14":"tag-russia","15":"tag-syria","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}