Monday, October 31, 2016

FBI, Circling the Drain?

I have had the honor and the privilege of working closely with the FBI many times during my nearly 34 years at State. We worked against Soviets, Cubans, East Germans, Bulgarians, drug dealers, pedophiles, criminal fugitives, money launderers, terrorists, fraudsters, and on suspected security breaches. I had tremendous respect for the professionalism and dedication of these FBI agents. They were world class in every way. My respect for the FBI was shared by many in foreign intelligence and security services with whom we worked. I remember, in particular, the British, who were markedly ambiguous in their attitude towards the CIA, had great respect for the FBI's investigative prowess and, as one Brit friend in the intel service said to me, "their humourless thoroughness." I had a lot of friends in the Bureau; they were terrific patriots with a morale and esprit d'corps rare among civilians and more akin to what I found with SEALs, Rangers, SAS, US and Royal Marines, and French Legionnaires. They were incredibly proud of their agency's history and accomplishments, and took it hard and personally when that agency or agents screwed up, e.g., Robert Hansen.

Given what we have seen of late, however, I, reluctantly, have to give vent to growing skepticism about the FBI and to the damage wrought on that jewel of an agency by political interference and correctness.

The investigation of the Clinton Crime Family and, in particular, that of SecState Clinton's use of  a private email server for classified information, and her use of the State Department as her and Bill's ATM leaves much to be desired. I, for example, cannot understand how an apparently morally upright and professionally competent Director, such as James Comey, did not go public with a resignation slammed down on the President's desk when Attorney General Lynch met "secretly" with Bill Clinton on that Arizona tarmac days before the FBI was to wrap-up its initial investigation into the Hillary Clinton email scandal. I do not understand how Comey could have made the public statement that he made on July 5 when he gave Hillary Clinton a pass on her scandalous, unethical, dangerous, and illegal use of a private server for official work. I do not for a second believe, despite what Comey said at the time, that nobody, including presumably Lynch, Obama, and the Clintons, knew Comey would recommend no indictment. I knew it the minute Lynch announced beforehand that she would accept whatever recommendation the FBI made. Right. Sure thing. Did Donna Brazile send you an email?

The FBI leadership made a hash of the investigation into Clinton. It was such a hash, that, reportedly, Comey's desk received a large number of outraged letters of resignation from agents justifiably angry over what Comey had done. He needed an excuse to try to save his reputation, when along comes Huma Abedin's husband El Perverso Anthony Carlos Danger Weiner.  Apparently, an investigation into his "sexting" with a minor girl revealed tens-of-thousands of emails on his computer which MIGHT have relevance to the original investigation into Hillary's emails. So, reboot: A public reboot via a vague letter to the Congress that requires a lot of reading between the lines.

The Dems, once full of praise for Comey, have exploded in anger calling Comey the most foul of names imaginable, including the foulest of all, "Republican." The Dems are desperately trying to put the focus on Comey and take it from the core issue: Hillary Clinton's despicable behavior.

But do they have a point? Yes, somewhat. I understand Comey's predicament. I understand that he called Lynch's bluff when she said she would not interfere and would accept whatever the FBI concluded.

That said, however, this would not have been necessary had the FBI done the right thing to begin with; I am just an amateur but it sure seems to me that the investigation did not press key individuals, including Hillary, very hard. Why wasn't this computer found initially? Was Huma Abedin's house searched? The letter sent to Congress by Comey, I have to say, was unfair to Hillary Clinton and to the electoral process. It is a massive innuendo which raises all sorts of questions that nobody can answer and leaves the field open to all sorts of speculation.

Now, that said, of course, we have the relentless deluge of Wikileaks data which has provided a context for concluding that Hillary and her Gang are crooks of the grossest kind. So maybe Comey was trying to get ahead of the Wikileaks? I don't know. Maybe he hates Clinton as much as Obama does--note Obama's defense of Comey. I don't know. All that and more is possible.

What I do know is that one of the last institutions held in high regard, the FBI, has been dragged into the political swamp created by the progressives. Another victory for the Alinsky brigades.


34 comments:

  1. I cannot help but think something huge must lie within those emails which makes Coney feel like his ass is covered no matter the fallout. Time will tell...

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  2. The FBI has stated as not having a search warrant in place for the emails themselves, but only the “metadata”, of the emails. Metadata is a buzzword for the email headers. This alone provides a good amount of information about what you would expect to find in the body of the message. The header will contain, who sent the email, who were the recipients, a time and date stamp, the route the message took to delivery, and the text of the email subject line.
    Based on what can be inferred by the header information you can determine how fast communications were going back and forth, and between who, which would indicate the urgency of what is being discussed. The subject line would give some indication of the topic being discussed. The date stamps, allow you to fix that email conversation into context of past events.
    I think the director got one of those nice power point briefings that he likely has several times a day, detailing events and the emails flowing during that event. With this information, he felt moved enough to make the written statement to congress. He could have just called the appropriate leadership in Congress and told them, that there is some new information, and to pinky swear no telling.
    Instead he does the equivalent of pulling the fire alarm. Which tells me he thinks there is convincing evidence.

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    1. Metadata in this context would not be the Email header, or the subject line. It would be information that an email was sent, or received, at this and that time, by this and that email adress.
      Metadata is not unlike your old fashioned phone bill: It shows that calls were made, but says absolutely nothing about what was said in those calls.

      Having metadata for phone calls, or emails, is a GREAT investigative tool, and can even be used as evidence in some instances. But metadata is not the same as email headers.

      /A reader in Denmark

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    2. Thais would be the email header because where else would sender receiver info come from? Here is a sample header, and below a link to the definition of email metadata data.

      Received: from lists.securityfocus.com (lists.securityfocus.com [205.206.231.19])
      by outgoing2.securityfocus.com (Postfix) with QMQP
      id 7E9971460C9; Mon, 9 Jan 2006 08:01:36 -0700 (MST)
      Mailing-List: contact forensics-help@securityfocus.com; run by ezmlm
      Precedence: bulk
      List-Id:
      List-Post:
      List-Help:
      List-Unsubscribe:
      List-Subscribe:
      Delivered-To: mailing list forensics@securityfocus.com
      Delivered-To: moderator for forensics@securityfocus.com
      Received: (qmail 20564 invoked from network); 5 Jan 2006 16:11:57 -0000
      From: YJesus
      To: forensics@securityfocus.com
      Subject: New Tool : Unhide
      User-Agent: KMail/1.9
      MIME-Version: 1.0
      Content-Disposition: inline
      Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2006 16:41:30 +0100
      Content-Type: text/plain;
      charset="iso-8859-1"
      Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
      Message-Id: <200601051641.31830.yjesus@security-projects.com>
      X-HE-Spam-Level: /
      X-HE-Spam-Score: 0.0
      X-HE-Virus-Scanned: yes
      Status: RO
      Content-Length: 586
      Lines: 26

      http://forensicswiki.org/wiki/Email_Headers

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  3. There was convincing evidence before this. the problem was that it would have brought POTUS down.
    Comey now has evidence that won't implicate POTUS.
    My two cents...

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  4. The FBI is in this mess because Comey couldn't resist the pressure (which in fairness must have been enormous) and probably sought the easy way out; which was to leave the issue to the voters but give them enough information upon which to reject Clinton. Maybe he is now doing the same thing; the material discovered Weiner's laptop is obviously damaging, and Comey then faced a situation where the outcome of the election was going to be affected whether he disclosed the new facts / investigation or not, and the FBI will eventually be accused of affecting the election result either way. If Comey held back and then took up the issue after the election the GOP will say it was a political decision to benefit Clinton; if Comey acts, as he has done, the DNC will say that he acted to benefit trump. It is a no win situation, and in that circumstance Comey has to err on the side of transparency, and tell the voters that there is more to the scandal. There is no perfect solution, but on balance I think Comey has belatedly done the right thing; and he must know that he will pay for it in the end. And it might just salvage a small part of his reputation for integrity.

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    1. I take it back; Comey is weak and captured. He should resign.

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    2. Captured men do not resign. They do as they are told and conceal the crimes of their masters.

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  5. What everyone is forgetting is that Comey is not the problem.
    The problem is Hillary stating she had turned over all her emails, when she clearly hadn't.
    The problem is Abedin stating she had also provided all the emails she had, when she knew full well she had stashed an extra copy onto Weiner's computer.
    So we blame the Director for this?

    Clearly he got tired of being the fall guy and decided to open up. He likely will not last long into the next administration, so may as well not continue to be the foil.

    Graham

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  6. I can't help but think Obama is behind all of this. When has he EVER come out and expressed his support for someone who even gave a sideways glance at a fellow Democrat? Never as far as I can remember. And now he comes out and expresses support for Comey? That is utterly inconsistent with his past behavior.

    I fully expected him to announce that the FBI and Comey in particular had "acted stupidly."

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    Replies
    1. Obama is playing this cute. He "supports" Comey and may be ready to put Hillary under that bus with all the others. His problem is that he e-mailed her illegal account multiple times.

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  7. There are disruptions in the swamp even before Trump can pull the plug. If Hellary believed Comey would release any of these e-mails, she wouldn't have called for same. Perhaps precisely why he should show we voters a few of the doozies. Wouldn't that be a hoot.

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  8. I have some sympathy for Comey. The DoJ is the organization that empanels grand juries. Without a grand jury, there are no subpeonas. The FBI could not investigate this case without DoJ cooperation. Comey probably vented his frustration with his list of illegal acts by Clinton but he should then have resigned. Had he done so in July, the Democrats would have had the chance to replace Hillary, although I doubt she would step aside. Like so many bureaucrats, he likes his pension and his perks as Director, too much.

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  9. I won't gainsay your experience with the FBI, but remember this is the same agency that turned over raw files to Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady.

    The agency was politicized and compromised well before the Obama cluster$%^&.

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  10. Comey severely damaged his own and the reputation and credibility of the FBI. That said, the real evil and corruption resides in DOJ. It took almost no time for Podesta to arrange for "oversight" by his old Georgetown buddy Peter Kadzik.

    Should we be so fortunate as to escape another Democrat POTUS it will take years and true commitment to houseclean the bureaucracy which rules us.

    The only avenue left for me is prayer.



    pmc

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  11. The narrative is that Comey is a good man.

    “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” - Edmund Burke

    Comey did nothing, he did not question HRC under oath, no grand jury, no indictemt.
    How can he be a good man.

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  12. And then Comey may simply be a "necessary" man for the moment.

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  13. Time for the FBI to do the Right Thing...and publicly arrest Hillary Clinton.

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  14. Reputations........ FBI, meet the IRS !

    Hangtown Bob

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  15. Similarly, British opinion of our own intelligence services was terribly disappointed by their antics before the Iraq Attack.

    The reason is that Blair, like the Clintons, polluted everything he came into contact with.

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  16. With apologies in advance, here are a couple of links with some speculation (and not many real facts) about what is really going on:

    http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2016/11/01/ed-klein-comey-pressure-redeem-letting-clinton-off-hook/

    http://www.anonews.co/fbi-clinton/

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  17. yeah, I'm pretty sure Hillary's buddy Abedin could single-handedly grant investigators open access to all of those emails.... and the authority to 'release them' as Hillary is supposedly demanding.

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  18. I, unfortunately,disagree with the commenters berating Comey.After he laid out his case to the public where he demurred in proceeding he took awful flack.His only response was a request that people re read his statement. Thus,if you take his statement as truthful, there could be only one answer: Hillary was ordered (or she said and the president backed it up) to use the server. Ponder that for a moment.
    That would mean the server was a CIA attempt at disinformation, or heaven forbid, something far worse.
    Either way, with the revelation that Huma had copies on a laptop creates far worse scenarios.

    Let me put it this way, when was the last time you saw a Muslim woman marry a Jewish guy and not take any heat from the usual suspects?

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  19. Well, let's not kid ourselves. Mr. Comey, like anyone who rises to such a high position in the federal government, is first and foremost a politician. He wasn't seeking elective office, just working the levers to advance himself. That's not necessarily a bad thing -- just a fact of the rarefied life at the highest levels of non-elective government. Alexander Hamilton, to pick one example, did essentially the same thing. It's still political.

    Comey's July press conference can only be seen as a play to keep his job, since it was dead certain that the Justice Department would never convene a grand jury or prosecute Hillary no matter what he urged. (And don't forget that the first 13 or 14 minutes of his presentation that day was a comprehensive recital of Hillary's wrongdoing.)

    And now there's his notorious letter to Congress. Can anyone think of a better way to ensure that he won't be fired by the incoming president, no matter who it is? A president who sent him packing would be seen, and rightly, as trying to derail the course of justice in the middle of an ongoing investigation.

    But if Comey is a politician first, he's a lawman second. Only if he remains in charge of the FBI can there be any certainty that the investigations of Hillary and the Clinton Foundation will continue after Jan. 20.

    In what may have turned out to be his shrewdest political move last week, Comey made certain that a partisan hack of a puppet won't replace him next year and end up demolishing the Bureau, whose reputation is already sorely frayed.

    There may be a bigger game being played than some people realize, both by Comey and by Hillary (who makes Nixon look like an amateur).

    But there's one thing that I think is a pretty good bet. Comey would have never delivered his letter to Congress if he hadn't found the smoking gun, or something pretty darn close to it, that has eluded investigators for decades.

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  20. Here is an interesting take on the Comey situation:

    http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152531307171/james-comey-as-seen-through-the-persuasion

    The other part is that the laptop was supposedly found by the NYPD, (who eventually turned it over to the FBI) and the possible reason(s) for all those emails being on that computer are perhaps why the Dems are acting so blindsided. It may be possible that virtually no one, that mattered, was aware of their existence.

    Supposedly the NYPD was outraged by what they found. There is speculation that there is proof that both Clintons were involved in that child sex ring that their buddy ran on a jetliner, among other locations. If true, it would certainly explain all this public discourse by Comey and others.

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    Replies
    1. Not a bad take on Comey. Most of us probably figure everyone in Washington is an opportunistic weasel and there can be no exceptions. Maybe there are some.

      Delete
  21. I can't believe that Piers Morgan actually "gets it." He is usually on the wrong side of everything.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3902876/PIERS-MORGAN-high-horse-Hillary-one-candidate-neck-FBI-probes-isn-t-Donald.html

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  22. The same thing happens to everything touched by Mr. Obama, including the FBI.

    According to legend, King Midas had a similar problem, only in his case everything turned to gold.

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  23. Just a late aside, but in my experience, the Brits like the FBI better than the CIA because the FBI gives them everything and doesn't want anything in return. Who doesn't love a patsy -- um, I mean partner -- like that.

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  24. I wish I could say that I didn't know this was going to happen, but I knew it would. The fix, having been put in, was going to stay in. Nothing anyone found on anything was going to change that.

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