By David Ignatius




" The American intelligence community has never faced a problem quite like President Trump — a commander in chief who is suspected by a growing number of Republicans and Democrats of deferring to Russia’s views over the recommendations of his own intelligence agencies.

“There are almost two governments now,” worries John McLaughlin, a former acting CIA director. He discusses the Trump conundrum with the same vexation as a dozen other former intelligence officials I’ve spoken with since the president’s shockingly acquiescent performance onstage Monday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

How are current intelligence chiefs handling this unprecedented situation? They are operating carefully but correctly, trying to balance their obligations to the president with the oaths they have sworn to protect and defend the Constitution. The officials continue to serve the elected president, but they are also signaling that they work for the American people.

Daniel Coats, the director of national intelligence, admirably rebuffed Trump on Monday, a few hours after the president seemed to accept Putin’s denial of meddling in the 2016 election. Coats gave the White House a heads-up, but he didn’t clear his statement. He believed it was essential to defend the intelligence community immediately.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray made a similar show of independence here Wednesday at the Aspen Security Forum, saying the Russia investigation wasn’t a “witch hunt,” as Trump claims, and affirming, “Russia attempted to intervene with the last election, and . . . it continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”

The brazen contempt that Putin has shown for the United States is an extraordinary feature of this ultimate spy story. In Helsinki, Putin publicly affirmed that he had supported Trump and evaded a question about whether he had compromising information on him; in their private meeting, he asked for Trump’s help in questioning a former U.S. ambassador, Michael McFaul, with Trump promising he would study the matter.

Putin, the ex-KGB officer, has described himself as a specialist in dealing with people, according to Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA station chief in Moscow. Putin’s tradecraft, Hoffman says, is summarized in a phrase popular among Russian intelligence operatives: “What makes a person breathe?”



Putin seems to have an uncanny sense for how Trump breathes. That has led some observers to speculate that perhaps Trump is a controlled Russian agent. This seems unlikely to me, partly because the Russians would never allow a true mole to take such crazy risks of exposure. “He’s not a controlled agent, because if he was, they’d tell him how to behave so as not to endanger himself,” observes a former head of CIA operations against Russia.

No, Trump is something different. The phrase “useful idiot,” attributed to Vladimir Lenin, is often used, but the technical Russian term for an often unwitting but helpful asset is a “confidential contact.” What Trump offers Russia isn’t the information he knows but his role as a human wrecking ball against America’s traditional allies and trading partners.

What will be different in the spy world in the aftermath of this jaw-dropping week? Probably not much. Intelligence agencies are resilient; they “get on with it,” as legendary CIA Director Richard Helms liked to say. The president remains the first customer, and most veterans of the spy world can’t imagine withholding information from him. Officials may be more cautious, briefing especially sensitive details first to the national security adviser, say, or cautioning the president that he doesn’t want to know how a piece of information was obtained.

What about the agents who are risking their lives in Moscow or Beijing to spy for America? Will they balk now? Again, probably not: Spies have deep reasons for working for America, positive and negative, and they know the risks they’re taking. Agents who have helped America because it represented something different from Putin’s authoritarianism may have second thoughts, however. That’s the hidden intelligence cost of Trump’s presidency: We’re a less admirable nation.

Will foreign spy services that share sensitive intelligence through what’s termed “liaison” reduce the flow? Once again, probably not. Their relationships with the CIA, FBI, NSA and other agencies go back so many decades that cooperation is almost hard-wired. If Trump continues to speak of the European Union as a “foe,” or to undermine British or German politicians he doesn’t like, that cooperation could eventually change. But our foreign partners need U.S. intelligence, however much they dislike Trump.

“At the end of the day, our work is what endures,” Wray said here. His commitment to the law and the facts offered a moment to appreciate that Trump is checked, not by some imaginary “deep state,” but by patriotic men and women doing their jobs.  "

" Back when word first leaked that Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer and others offering dirt on Hillary Clinton, President Donald Trump seemed to think he was supplying an exculpatory cover story. Flying home from Germany on Air Force One, Trump reportedly instructed Don Jr. to claim that he and the Kremlin-linked lawyer had “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.”

There is apparently some debate about whether that misleading statement places the president in any legal jeopardy, but there is another aspect to the story that has received less attention. It came up again during the Helsinki debacle: Putin, the world’s richest man and most successful thief, is obsessed with the Magnitsky Act.


In fact, the very mention of Russian adoptions was a tipoff that the attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was probably representing Vladimir Putin. Whether Trump knew this at the time is unclear. After all, he could not say what the nuclear triad was and endorsed “Article XII” of the U.S. Constitution. Maybe he thought mentioning that they discussed Russian adoptions was the most anodyne-sounding explanation for the meeting.

Except it wasn’t. If they spoke of adoptions, it means they spoke of the Magnitsky Act, the sanctions bill the United States enacted at the urging of William Browder, a hedge fund manager and, at one time, the largest foreign investor in Russia. Funny, Browder’s name came up again in Helsinki, when Putin accused him of tax evasion and theft and contributing to the Hillary Clinton campaign (all totally false) and suggested that the United States should hand him over for questioning in exchange for permitting Robert Mueller to question the 12 GRU agents just indicted for meddling in our election. Putin later added former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul to the list of those his goons would interrogate. Our stable genius president leaped at this as an “incredible offer.” A few days later, he scaled back.

Those who follow relations with Russia know that Vladimir Putin used the fate of Russian orphans as a way to retaliate against the United States for the Magnitsky Act. If they were talking adoptions at Trump Tower, it’s because they were talking about sanctions relief, a matter dear to Putin’s heart. In exchange for what?

Sergei Magnitsky was the accountant who worked for William Browder. When Browder’s firm, Hermitage Capital, was the victim of a fraud and embezzlement scheme, Magnitsky patiently pieced together the truth. Those responsible, it turned out, were Russian government agents, living large and enjoying BMWs and seaside apartments. Magnitsky’s reward was to be arrested and tortured to death. Oh, and to add a nice Soviet-style touch, Putin’s government pinned the embezzlement on Magnitsky. Putin’s retaliation, halting adoptions of Russian babies by Americans, was another human rights abuse.

Browder was shaken to his core by Magnitsky’s fate and has since devoted his life to passing Magnitsky laws in every country he can convince. Ours passed in 2012. The law forbids Americans to do any business, including banking, with those who had a part in Magnitsky’s torture and death, thus making it more difficult for Russian criminals (i.e., state actors, including Putin) to stash stolen money in the United States or other countries that have adopted such laws.

It would not be strange for a president of the United States to award someone like Bill Browder a medal. It is pathetic for a president of the United States to be so obtuse or ignorant or both as to agree, before all the world, that such a man might be questioned by Putin’s trained attack dogs.

If you watched the Helsinki press conference, you saw Trump bowing and scraping to ingratiate himself with Putin. He kept thanking the Russian for attending the meeting, stressed that using the word “competitor” was intended as a compliment (in contrast to his treatment of NATO allies) and whined that the Mueller investigation had “kept (them) separated.” The man who swore to put America first blamed America first for poor relations with Russia.

What you saw in Putin was the cat who’d swallowed the canary. He was calm. He smiled. We later learned that, on his way to Helsinki, his plane had violated NATO air space by flying over Estonia without permission. He is rubbing our noses in it.

“There was no collusion,” President Trump keeps saying. It may be true, or it may not. But his behavior in Helsinki, like so much of what he says and does, reveals a shallow, unworthy, power-worshipping man who does not understand what he is sworn to uphold.  "

Some Guy ,   


My Good Drinking Buddy Emperor Xi and myself went to the Brazen Head Friday Evening .  Xi drank the place out of Guinness . 

That Cat Can DRINK !!!!!!!

Xi confided in me that he does not like the NoKo's anymore than we do but the last thing he needs is a unified  , Democratic , Capitalistic Korea right on his border ( not to mention U.S. Troops hugged up along the Yalu River )  .  He also mentioned that Holland Vodka SUCKS and that he prefers the Russian Stuff our Great President Donald J. Trump ( ' PARAMOUNT Leader ! ' ) is able to procure for his Entourage and Himself .  Word . 


'kins ™