The identification of a spy implanted in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign by a murky cabal of spooks, both foreign and domestic, has given us a whole new perspective on the Russia-gate hoax. We know the FBI had a source within Trump’s organization because Fusion-GPS chief executive Glenn Simpson testified before Congress on August 22, 2017 to that effect. We also know due to a New York Times story that tries mightily to justify it.
The outing of Stefan Halper, a veteran of three Republican administrations – and no amateur at spying on presidential campaigns – as a spy in the house of Trump shows that the effort to overthrow a democratically elected President a truly international flavor. Halper is a dual citizen of the US and the United Kingdom who, in 2016, was teaching at Cambridge University, where he and “Sir” Richard Dearlove, the former head of Britain’s MI6 intelligence bureau, were in residence. In alliance with historian Peter Martland, they recently created a ruckus about alleged “Russian influence” over an intelligence seminar, and reportedly worked on other “projects”: the two are close friends.
Recall the various versions of how the Russia-gate hoax got started. At first we were told it was all due to the “dirty dossier” compiled by “former” MI6 Moscow station chief Christopher Steele. When the sensationalistic details in the dossier couldn’t be verified, however, and other details were disproved, the Deep State’s journalistic camarilla concocted a new creation myth: the probe into Trump’s alleged “collusion” with Russia supposedly started when the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer related an alcohol-fueled conversation he’d had with George Papadopoulos, a marginal figure in the Trump campaign, in the course of which Papadopoulos supposedly revealed that the Russians had “thousands” of the Clinton campaign’s emails. The Australians reported this to the FBI, which opened their investigation in July of 2016.
That September, Halper requested a meeting with Papadopoulos on the pretext of having the young Trump supporter write a paper on energy for a $3000 fee and an all-expenses paid trip to London. They met a number of times, and “According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: ‘George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?’” Papadopoulos said he had no idea what Halper was talking about and the professor dropped the subject.
Halper’s history is quite interesting: during the Reagan-Carter presidential race he disseminated Carter’s stolen foreign policy briefings to the media and was reportedly in charge of the operation that procured them in the first place. His father-in-law, Ray S. Cline, was a top CIA official during the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, and Johnson administrations. Altogether, since 2012, Halper has reaped $1,058,161 from the US government, including over $400,000 since 2016: the nature of the work is classified.
Before reaching out to Papadopoulos, Halper met with Carter Page, who has since been indicted for supposedly lying to the FBI: he also met with a third, as yet unnamed Trump campaign associate. Halper was reportedly offering to help with the foreign policy aspect of the campaign.
Yet another dubious figure with links to British intelligence was instrumental in what is looking increasingly like a setup targeting Papadopoulos: one Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor of some sort who is, we are told, a Russian agent – except Russian agents don’t usually get to train NATO security teams in the company of British intelligence officers. It was Mifsud who reportedly took Papadopoulos under this wing and told him about the “thousands” of Clinton’s emails in Moscow’s possession. He vanished the moment Papadopoulos’s name appeared in the headlines.
Papadopoulos’s meetings with Mifsud, and Downer, and Halper’s first approach to the Trump campaign (via Carter Page) occurred well before the FBI officially opened its investigation on July 31, 2016. A few days later the FBI sent agent Peter Strzok to London to meet with an unknown person in the Australian embassy (probably Downer). And now we are learning that the preliminary stages of the probe began well before July – in March of that year. Writing in The Federalist, Margot Cleveland asks: “But on whose behalf? And for what purpose?”
As I wrote more than a year ago in “The Foreign Plot to Oust Trump”:
“[L]et’s step back and look at the players: the CIA, MI6, ‘the head of an Eastern European intelligence agency,’ and the ‘one of the Baltic states’ intelligence agencies’ – an international coalition out to oust Trump.
“Talk about ‘foreign interference’ in American politics! This makes Russia’s alleged intervention look like child’s play.”
The Russia-gate hoax has many actors, all playing their appointed roles as provocateurs, cutouts, and informants, but this was originally a British production, with Halper and Steele at the center of it. The Obama leftovers in the FBI, the Justice Department, and the CIA colluded with the British to frame the incoming President as a Russian agent: that’s the “insurance policy” FBI agent Strzok was texting his paramour about.
It’s the ultimate irony: an investigation into “collusion” between Trump and the Russians has revealed, after a year, that his accusers were merely projecting their own sins onto the President.
The lesson to be learned from all this is that America’s position as the most powerful nation on earth, and would-be global hegemon, makes Washington a target – not only by our enemies, but also by our alleged “friends” and “allies.” The British, in particular, have never hesitated to interfere in our domestic politics if they thought their own interests would be advanced: it happened in the run up to both world wars, and it is happening today. If we trace the origins of the Russia-gate hoax, and the campaign to dethrone Donald J. Trump, all roads lead to London.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
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I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
