The Deep State vs The People

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Deep State And It's Feeding The Anti-POTUS Mob

Authored by David Stockman via TargetLiberty.com,

The prepared statement of the latest UkraineGate whistle-blower is well worth the read. It tells you all you need to know about why the Deep State apparatchiks are coming out of the woodwork in a massive assault on America's duly elected president.

• They are deathly afraid Trump will begin to dismantle a far-flung Empire which has
• ...wreaked havoc around the world, 
• ...bled America's fiscal accounts dry, and  
• ...fostered unspeakable prosperity among the beltway's legions of empire-supporting agencies, contractors, think tanks, foreign lobbies, NGO's and K-street racketeers.

Whether out of common sense, naiveté or just contrariness, the Donald has dared to question and disrupt the Empire's core policy on the Ukraine/Russia file. And that's apparently exactly why the whistleblower de jour, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, wrote his now ballyhooed memos.

He feared that Trump's appropriate desire to get to the bottom of the well-documented Ukrainian involvement in the Obama Administration's illegal spying on his 2016 presidential campaign would undermine the bipartisan consensus on Capitol Hill for Washington's utterly wrong-headed Ukraine policy.

Stated more crudely, Washington overthrew the duly elected government of Ukraine in early 2014 because its leader was deemed too cozy with Moscow. And in the vanguard of that illegal meddling in the governance of a sovereign foreign state was Obama's state department led by neocon Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, Washington's self-appointed roving proconsul John McCain and at length Vice-President Joe Biden.

Folks, Lt. Col. Vindman was not elected to nothin'. If he's a proud 20-year veteran of the US Army and diplomatic service as he claims, fine. But his job is to implement policy as decided by the elected representatives of the people, not to free lance in the cause of the Empire group-think in which he is obviously and hopelessly steeped.

So let's cut to the chase: The policy he feared the Donald might be jeopardizing by his pressure tactics with President Zelensky has been a travesty from start to finish. The Ukraine has no bearing on America's homeland security whatsoever, and the policies of its government vis a vis Russia or any of its other neighbors are none of Washington's cotton picking business.

You can't be more emphatic about the utter irrelevancy of Ukraine to America's homeland security. Even at the pre-coup peak in 2013 it had a miniscule GDP of $185 billion, which has since plunged by 30% to $130 billion. Even if Putin were foolish enough to annex the approximate 30 million Russian-hating Ukrainians outside of the Russian-speaking eastern Donbas region, which he surely is not, it wouldn't amount to a hill of beans in the strategic equation.

Here's the thing. The expansion of NATO to the very doorstep of Russia was the most colossal mistake of the post-cold war period. And the War Party's insistence that this should to taken all the way to the incorporation of Ukraine and Georgia----historic vassals of Russia---actually trespasses upon the very border of insanity.

Indeed, the father of containment and the intellectual architect of NATO in the late 1940s, the great George F. Kennan, hit the nail on the head when lightweight Clintonistas like Strobe Talbot and Madeleine Albright launched the NATO expansion process in the 1990s:

''I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,'' said Mr. Kennan from his Princeton home. ''I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves. We have signed up to protect a whole series of countries, even though we have neither the resources nor the intention to do so in any serious way. [NATO expansion] was simply a light-hearted action by a Senate that has no real interest in foreign affairs.''

''And Russia's democracy is as far advanced, if not farther, as any of these countries we've just signed up to defend from Russia,'' said Mr. Kennan, who joined the State Department in 1926 and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow in 1952. ''It shows so little understanding of Russian history and Soviet history. Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are -- but this is just wrong.''

So there's your Deep State at work. It isn't some kind of sinister conspiracy lurking deep in the shadows of the national security machinery.

To the contrary, it's right there in the broad daylight of the Imperial City. It is populated by hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers like Colonel Vindman who make a career of drinking the Cool Aid, collecting a pay check from the state and propagating the policies of Empire First---policies which are immoral, illegal, unaffordable and have absolutely nothing to do with protecting America's liberty, prosperity and security inside the great ocean moats, which once upon a time birthed a peace-loving Republic.

We have no illusions, of course, that the Donald is a peace-lover. He's self-evidently first and foremost a Donald-lover.

Still, what is underway in Washington---first with the RussiaGate hoax and now with UkraineGate and impeachment---is an extra-constitutional political lynching, and one that has turned Washington's desperate, mendacious Dem pols into complaisant handmaids of the Deep State.

So Lt. Colonel Alexander Vindman isn't some kind of whistle-blowing hero. He's just another mindless cog in the wheel of Empire talking his own book and thereby abetting the political mob that is now threatening the very constitution he was sworn to uphold.




RealClear Investigations Suggests 'Whistleblower' Likely 33-Year-Old CIA Analyst Eric Ciaramella

The outlet reported that Ciaramella’s name has been raised privately in impeachment depositions, as well as at least one open hearing held by a House committee not involved in the impeachment inquiry.

RealClearInvestigations also reported that House Democrats this week blocked Republicans from asking questions about Ciaramella and “intend to redact his name from all deposition transcripts.”

It said Ciaramella is 33-years-old, a registered Democrat who began working at the White House during the Obama administration and previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan.

Ciaramella left the Trump administration’s National Security Council in mid-2017 over concerns about negative leaks to the media and then returned to the CIA, the outlet reported.

“He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” a former NSC official told RealClearInvestigiations.

The outlet also reported that Ciaramella huddled for “guidance” with the staff of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA), including former NSC colleagues who now work for Schiff.

A handful of former colleagues have compiled a roughly 40-page research dossier on Ciaramella, which has been circulating on Capitol Hill, the outlet reported.

“Everyone knows who he is. CNN knows. The Washington Post knows. The New York Times knows. Congress knows. The White House knows. Even the president knows who he is,” Fred Fleitz, former CIA analyst and NSC chief of staff, told RealClearInvestigations.

“They’re hiding him,” he added. “They’re hiding him because of his political bias.”

Ciaramella is reportedly a CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine who was detailed over to the National Security Council in the summer of 2015, working under former Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice. He also reportedly worked closely with Biden.