Despite
Email Scandal, Establishment Backs Hillary as the Ultimate Neocon
Hillary
Clinton's 'I’m Not a Crook' Moment
Pepe
Escobar
15
April, 2016
Originally
appeared at CounterPunch
As
the Battle of New York looms, an underground shadow war flirts with
High Noon. After nearly one year, the FBI has finally investigated
the treasure trove contained in Hillary Clinton’s subterranean
private email server. The FBI has refused to release any records.
Remember, this is a criminal investigation.
Former
State Department IT official Bryan Pagliano – who essentially set
up Clinton’s personal server – was granted immunity in
exchange for cooperating with the FBI’s investigation. A
whodunit applies on whether Pagliano was told this server might be
the conduit of secret State Department communications as well as top
secret National Security issues.
The
timeline of the Clinton subterranean homesick server blues does raise
eyebrows. The story first broke in March 2013, when Romanian hacker
“Guccifer” leaked four intercepted Sidney Blumenthal e-mails –
related to Libya and Benghazi – to selected global media outlets.
Only
RT – routinely denounced in the US as a Kremlin propaganda
arm published them
at the time. It took the New York Times a hefty two years to report
that Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, used a private email
account.
Now
Forbes comes out all guns blazing:
“The Kremlin’s cyber warfare army has had ample opportunity to steal Clinton’s entire e-mail cache (including 31,830 “private” e-mails). Such hacking would likely have taken place before the Kremlin’s propaganda arm, RT (Russia Today), published Sidney Blumenthal’s e-mails to Clinton on March 20, 2013, presumably sending out alarms at that late date to Clinton to secure her private server. The Clinton cache of e-mail correspondence in the hands of the Kremlin or other hostile intelligence agencies could represent one of America’s greatest intelligence disasters, giving Vladimir Putin the opportunity to determine the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election or, barring that, to cast a cloud over a Clinton presidency.”
Away
from Putin now cast as The Great Elector, the crucial player is
Pagliano. This is entering Grand Jury investigation territory. The
Department of Justice (DoJ) – to which the FBI is subordinated –
cannot grant immunity; only federal judges can, when formally
requested by a DoJ prosecutor. And that, in itself, is a big deal.
The
FBI team, led by Director James Comey, together with DoJ prosecutors,
is now on overdrive. There will be interviews ahead. Possibly in a
matter of days or weeks. And one of them will feature Comey talking
to Hillary Clinton in person.
There
will be, essentially, two answers to the key question. Either Hillary
Clinton ignored the rules of the secrecy game. Or she willfully
breached the rules. The undisputed top reason for the existence of
the subterranean private server was for Hillary Clinton to keep her
emails, well, secret, and thus not subjected to freedom of
information laws.
Clinton
even had a request for a government Blackberry denied by
the NSA in 2009. Yet immediately afterwards she was busy on a
Blackberry using private email accounts to contact State Department
staff. Legitimate questions in this case include whether the
subterranean server was protected against hacking. And whether State
Department information morphed into Clinton Foundation information.
The
Queen of Libya
If
we follow journalism’s golden rule, widely praised by Alex
Cockburn, of never trusting anything unless it’s officially denied,
President Obama may have – inadvertently –
placed Clinton in a world of grief. The President “guaranteed” on
Fox News that there will be “no political influence” from the
White House.
At
the same time, what he said could be legitimately deconstructed as a
sort of message to both the FBI and the DoJ.; “She would never
intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy.” Nothing
“intentional” then; it was just “carelessness”.
After
the upcoming interviews, Comey will have to make his recommendation
to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Exoneration or indictment?
Now
picture both Comey and Lynch confronted with the – highly
politicized – presidential message. Obama insisted it was
“carelessness”. Let’s assume they opt for exoneration. Public
perception that Comey and Lynch must have been influenced by the
presidential message will inevitably fall like a ton of – legal –
bricks.
This
might explain Comey’s recent acknowledgment that the investigation
could linger into the fall.
Well,
at least Hillary Clinton would have had the benefit of evidence being
duly examined. In Wild West Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff still
risks being impeached without any evidence examined that would
qualify as a “crime of responsibility”.
So
“careless” Hillary Clinton may have done some funny stuff with
her secret emails and still may get away with it. Dilma, instead,
still risks getting the boot on top of initially being a target of
NSA espionage, as revealed by WikiLeaks.
President
Obama has also admitted on the record that the US-led NATO war on
Libya in 2011 was “probably” his biggest mistake. Not the war
itself; that “was the right thing to do.” But “probably failing
to plan for the day after.”
True
to Queen
of Chaos form,
Hillary was the Queen
of Libya.
She also approved huge weapons deals that benefited proverbially
lavish GCC petrodollar sponsors of the Clinton Foundation – side by
side with Bill Clinton collecting massive fees for speeches to House
of Saud cronies.
As
much as Clinton refused to release the amount of fees paid for her
Wall Street speeches when she could have easily done it, all sorts of
pesky questions related to the Clinton Foundation persist. In
parallel, public opinion is required to believe that oil and gas
money makes up just an infinitesimal part of her fundraising
universe.
Yet
all this pales compared to Clinton as War Goddess. From Asia to Latin
America, her record – including these highlights – has been
scrutinized to oblivion; support for the contras in Nicaragua;
support for NATO’s bombing of the former Yugoslavia; support for
the 2003 Shock and Awe invasion and destruction of Iraq; support for
Operation Enduring Freedom forever in AfPak; then, as Secretary of
State, “her” war of turning Libya into a militia hell; the 2009
military coup in Honduras; and finally, support for regime change in
Syria via Salafi-jihadis.
All
this, predictably, translates into her full
support by
neocon stalwart Robert Kagan. Plus Pentagon insiders working overtime
to save her reputation as if she was one of their own. The Deep
State, anyway, knows; the Queen of Chaos is the ultimate neocon.
Yet
it ain’t over till the FBI man calls.
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