Tuesday 1 October 2019

Ukrainegate could catch Mike Pompeo and William Barr

Ukrainegate is building up to be a mighty scandal that could spell the end of Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, secretary of state, William Barr, attorney general and a whole host of others. They were all in on it, allegedly co-conspirators in the president's strategy of getting foreign leaders to dig dirt for the White House against Trump's political rivals and organisations, including the intelligence services, who the president accused of undermining his status. It seems incredible and bizarre that William Barr was sent off overseas to seek help from foreign governments to undermine the case put forward strongly by the CIA and FBI and others that the 2016 presidential election had been manipulated by Russia. How many foreign leaders did Barr go to with his begging bowl and what did he get for his pleading on behalf of the president? Trump is supposed to have made a call to the Australian prime minister to get him to collaborate with Barr in finding anything that could damage the investigation by Robert Mueller, special counsel for the Russia/Trump collusion allegation. Why Australia? Well Australia is part of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence club - the US, Britain, Australia, Canada, New Zealand - which shares all or nearly all secrets about everything gathered by the different intelligence services. The American National Security Agency has a twinned signals intelligence facility at Pine Gap in central Australia, southwest of Alice Springs. The Americans and Aussies work together at Pine Gap. It's a huge listening station. Was Barr supposed to pay a visit to Pine Gap to help himself to anything which disproved what the US intelligence services and Mueller were investigating - Russian skulduggery? Examining Barr's travel itinerary for 2018/19 might be an eye-opener! As for Pompeo he was one of many, perhaps a dozen officials who eavesdropped on Trump's phone call in July to President Zelensky, the Ukrainian leader, in which the US president sought his help in uncovering alleged wrongdoing by Joe Biden and his son Hunter. When the call was over did Pompeo raise any personal disquiet about the content of the conversation or did he just keep it to himself? Pompeo will be forced to give evidence to the Democrat impeachment committees and will be asked that very question. If he didn't object to the call and make this clear to Trump, where does that place him in the scheme of things? It also won't look good for him if he reveals he HAD been concerned but said nothing. And it won't do him any good vis a vis his relations with Trump if he says he WAS alarmed AND told the president as much but Trump did nothing but laugh in his face. In other words it's Catch 22 for Pompeo. Likewise what about the other officials who had their ears glued to the phone during the president-to-president call? We know a CIA analyst was seriously worried because he/she complained officially, eventually, to the intelligence community inspector-general and that led to the Nancy Pelosi decision to start impeachment proceedings in the House. But could there, should there, have been a dozen or so whistleblowers, all coming forward with their worries? Right now it's just the one whistleblower who is fighting to keep his/her name out of the public domain, no thanks to Trump who wants to meet him/her face to face to tell him/her what he thinks of him/her. Ukrainegate marches on.

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