Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
When Sally Yates testified before a Senate judiciary sub-committee, her bombshell was not that National Security Advisor Michael Flynn had lied to his bosses about speaking to Russian officials.
Her big news was that the Russians could use this information to blackmail Flynn.
Yates’ testimony was backed up by the former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, who told the sub-committee that Moscow could use this type of information as leverage against Flynn and that, “This is a classic technique they would use going back to the Soviet era.”
As a side note, Yates failed to mention to the committee who authorized the “unmasking” of Flynn.
Both Yates and Clapper seem to have forgotten that blackmail only works if the information you use to threaten someone with remains secret. Once the information is made public, any leverage you may have gained becomes unusable.
For instance the Russians had no leverage on President Obama when he told Russian President Dmitri Medvedev he would have more flexibility to negotiate on issues like missile defense after the election. Obama said it into an open microphone.
When Jeh Johnson, former secretary of Homeland Security appeared before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence he confirmed that the Obama administration knew about the Russians meddling in our election process, but feared that going public with this information would reveal U.S. intelligence gathering methods.
In point of fact, the Obama administration showed no concern about the Russian meddling because they, along with everyone else, assumed Hillary Clinton would win the election.
Former FBI Director James Comey has stated publicly that the FBI believes foreign intelligence services to include Russia, China and Israel have the complete content of the Clinton bathroom server used by Hillary during her tenure as secretary of state. They believe this because Clinton routinely used an unsecure Blackberry device during her trips abroad, including to countries not friendly to the United States.
If the Russians wanted Trump to win the presidential election, why didn’t they make the data from Clinton’s server public? The Russians didn’t release Clinton’s data because they knew that Trump didn’t stand a chance of winning. The information would become much more valuable when Hillary Clinton was in the Whitehouse.
It appears to me that the only candidate with secret data susceptible to blackmail in this whole sordid affair is Hillary Clinton. That’s something to ask Sally Yates and James Clapper.
To understand what is happening in Washington today, start with the premise that Hillary was supposed to win the election. When Trump won, it destroyed the narrative.
Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at: