Flynn’s political assassination whips up more anti-Russian sentiment

Now-former White House National Security Adviser Michael T. Flynn said he “crossed no lines” in his discussion with Russia’s ambassador, but he was most concerned about the steady stream of classified information leaks to a media hostile to Trump as well as Russia.

It appears that a group of national security bureaucrats and former Obama officials are selectively leaking highly sensitive information to undermine the elected government, after the media launched a successful soft coup or political assassination against Flynn based on unverified, unsubstantiated information to inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously.

Michael Flynn is a “scapegoat,” talk radio host Michael Savage believes. “The old world order wants perennial friction with Russia,” Savage told WND.

When Barack Obama was caught on a hot mic about having more “flexibility” to work with Russia after his re-election in 2012, the media was silent. “Was there an outcry by the Lilliputians in the media then?” asked Savage.

“I see the demonization of Putin, Russia and Flynn as part of a campaign by neocons, the intel community and Democrats who want constant antagonism with Russia,” he said. “It’s like firemen who start fires to justify their jobs.”

Representative Devin Nunes, the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on Monday that he saw the leaks about Flynn’s conversations with Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak as part of a pattern. “There does appear to be a well orchestrated effort to attack Flynn and others in the administration,” he said. “From the leaking of phone calls between the president and foreign leaders to what appears to be high-level FISA Court information, to the leaking of American citizens being denied security clearances, it looks like a pattern.”

Nunes said he was going to bring this up with the FBI, and ask the agency to investigate the leak and find out whether Flynn himself is a target of a law enforcement investigation. The Washington Post last month reported that Flynn was not the target of an FBI probe. As FWM reported, Flynn himself traveled in 2015 to Russia to attend an RT conference, but it was not illegal.

Three people once affiliated with Trump’s presidential campaign – Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Roger Stone – are currently being investigated by the FBI and the intelligence community for their contacts with the Russian government. This is part of a wider campaign against Russia, accused of hacking and distributing emails of leading Democrats before the election.

Flynn was obviously a target as a reformer and a fierce critic of the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the director the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. His new role in the Trump administration threatened the bureaucratic prerogatives of his rivals, says Eli Lake, a columnist for Bloomberg.

“Imagine if intercepts of a call between Obama’s incoming national security adviser and Iran’s foreign minister leaked to the press before the nuclear negotiations began? The howls of indignation would be deafening,” says Lake.

Flynn insisted that he said nothing wrong in his telephone conversation with Russian Ambassador Kislyak: “If I did, believe me, the FBI would be down my throat, my clearances would be pulled. There were no lines crossed.” Flynn said there was only a brief discussion about the 35 Russian diplomats who were being expelled by Obama.

“It wasn’t about sanctions. It was about the 35 guys who were thrown out,” Flynn said. “So that’s what it turned out to be. It was basically, ‘Look, I know this happened. We’ll review everything.’ I never said anything such as, ‘We’re going to review sanctions,’ or anything like that,” Flynn told the Daily Caller.

Flynn had previously been in charge of military intelligence in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and served as director of intelligence for the US Central Command. After that, he was director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

President Barack Obama fired Flynn as DIA director in 2014 after he delivered testimony before Congress that was at odds with Obama’s contention that radical Islamic terrorism, including ISIS, was not a major threat. When Flynn, once a Democrat, joined the opposing camp at the Republican National Convention calling for Hillary Clinton to be jailed, his fate was all but sealed.

As Nunes remarked on Monday: “First it’s Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be Steve Bannon, then it will be Reince Priebus.” But the real target is Trump.

Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Trump’s critics appear not to care that these agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because they are pleased with the result. But it also means that a president might no longer be in charge. Instead those who favour war with Russia are.