Top US intelligence chief declassifies unproven allegation against Hillary Clinton

Inexplicably, John Ratcliffe, the director of US national intelligence, has decided NOW to declassify details of an investigation into whether Hillary Clinton plotted to stir up a scandal involving Donald Trump and the Kremlin during the 2016 presidential election campaign. The claim had come from "Russian intelligence sources", allegedly. So the imputation is that, according to some sinister and mysterious Russians, the then Democratic Party presidential nominee deliberately fabricated a scandal linking Trump in a dark deed with Moscow to make sure he didn't win the election. Ratcliffe, a Trumpite and appointed to run the 17 US intelligence services earlier this year, admitted in a letter to Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that he didn't know whether any of this stuff was true. But still thought it was a good idea - less than five weeks from the November 3 election - to get the allegations out into the open. I thought intelligence services never put anything into the public domain unless they had pretty good proof that what they were doing was truthful, honest and accurate. Or am I being naive? This stuff about Hillary sounds and smells more like Russian dark disinformation to me. If this is the case, then Ratcliffe who should know better has done Moscow's job for them. Extraordinary. Hillary's spokesman described the contents of the Ratliffe letter as "baseless bullshit". I can just hear Hillary herself saying that. So much of the scandalous allegations about the 2016 presidential election was baseless bullshit, on both sides of the fence, Republican and Democrat, that it is impossible to know how much was pure Russian skuldugerry and how much was pure American political skulduggery. But for Ratcliffe, in his current position, to spread the word that Hillary may have been at the centre of an evil plot to tie Trump in with Moscow yet at the same time wash his hands of it is pretty outrageous. But then everything is outrageous about American politics right now. And don't tell me the Ratcliffe letter doesn't stink of politics. Just look at the Trump/Biden TV debate last night. Like two alleged grown-ups scrabbling around in the sandpit. Trump looked wild and violent and rabble-rousing. Biden just looked old.