It is illegal, or at least on paper it is, for the CIA to spy on American citizens on American soil. So why was the CIA spying on Mr. Edward Butowsky and/or Matt Couch? If you have read Joe Hoft’s excellent piece (see here) on the latest trials and travails of Ty Clevenger, an intrepid attorney battling the Deep State, who has been fighting for more than three years to secure the release of damning documents exposing the Russia hoax and sedition by the Obama Administration, you know he is forcing the FBI to cough it up.
But the latest response also contained this bombshell–the CIA was spying on his clients as well. Ty’s latest account of this new info dump from the US Department of Justice is posted at LawFlog. Here are some key snippets:
In The Transparency Project v. Department of Justice, et al., my client asked to see records indicating whether the CIA or its Directorate of Digital Innovation, its contractors, etc. inserted Russian “fingerprints” into the metadata of the emails that were released publicly. (You can review the entire request by clicking here and reading Paragraph 11).
In a joint report filed today, the CIA informed the court that it intends to assert a Glomar response to the request, i.e., that it “cannot confirm or deny” the existence of such records. . . . [In other words], The Central Intelligence Agency will neither confirm nor deny that it fabricated the Russian “fingerprints” in Democratic National Committee emails published in 2016 by Wikileaks and “Guccifer 2.0.”, and the FBI implicitly acknowledged today that it never reviewed the contents of DNC employee Seth Rich’s laptop despite gaining custody of the laptop after his murder.
Full disclosure–Mr. Clevenger is a friend of mine. He writes in his article that he reached out to me and I made some phone calls to retired friends who held senior positions at the CIA. My friends and I agreed that a GLOMAR response to the basic question, Did you spy on Mr. Butowsky and/or Mr. Couch was a tacit admission-yes!
Ty explains this point clearly and succinctly:
Allow me to illustrate the point. If I asked the CIA for intercepted emails from the president of another country, the CIA would rightly issue a Glomar response, because it would not want to confirm or deny that it has been spying on the foreign president. That’s what Glomar is for, because the CIA is in the business of secretly spying on foreign presidents, officials, agents, etc.
My client’s request, on the other hand, is more akin to asking the CIA for records showing whether it helped Lee Harvey Oswald assassinate President John F. Kennedy. We would expect the CIA to declare that it has no such records because it would never do such a thing.
Why would the CIA spy on Mr. Butowsky, for example. Ed Butowsky was brought into the Seth Rich saga in December 2016 by Ellen Ratner, the sister-in-law of Julian Assange’s former lawyer. Ellen spoke with Julian in November 2016 and asked Mr. Butowsky to reach out to the parents of Seth Rich and get them some help investigating who murdered their son. It should come as no surprise that the CIA, the NSA and Britain’s GCHQ were monitoring every communication going in and out of Wikileaks, including all communications of all personnel working at or associated with Wikileaks. We know this thanks to the evidence and writings of Mr. Edward Snowden. Once Snowden made his escape to Russia with the help of Wikileaks, Wikileaks became a number one intelligence target. Both the United States and the United Kingdom had ample cause to ensure that no new secrets leaked out of Wiki and caught them unawares. In light of the comprehensive monitoring of all Wiki communications, I believe the intel folks knew exactly the contents of Ratner’s chat with Assange, which ultimately led them to Ed (i.e, Ellen Ratner talked to Julian and then talked to Ed to relay a request from Julian to help the Rich family).
Now that Donald Trump has finally released FBI documents on Russiagate (I do not know if there are any CIA documents in the pile), we shall see what the FBI had to say about Mr. Rich. Too bad the President waited so long to do this. If he had forced the issue last year the plot to steal the 2020 election might have been disrupted.
Does Nancy Pelosi work for, or against, the United States? Which is the same as “is Hillary Clinton” working for against. The best answer would be they work for their own agendas.
We have known for some time that we can’t trust our own government, that’s why Donald Trump was elected and that’s why the Deep State needed to get Biden in the White House. They are officially turning America into a third world shit hole.
Wether Trump is in or out as President or Biden is in or out, remains to be seen. But there is a war going on that is not televised. Buckle your seatbelt, it’s about to get rough. We haven’t seen nothin yet. There should be a purge coming up.
A purge indeed and I suspect it WILL HAPPEN before 20 January – -just sayin. I’ve done a lot of research, in various military places; rumors you’ve been hearing are true, so buckle up and be prepared. It has already begun, with 15,000 or 20,000 national guard personnel in place, in DC.
Who would trust the CIA or FBI anymore? You can easily look up some of the horrendous things they have done in the past to U.S. citizens. What makes you think they aren’t doing it now?
I kept saying in my mind that president Trump was basically railroaded since he took office. He wasn’t in office nineteen minutes and the impeachment began. Now he only has five days left and the impeachment started after the election was over. Because president Trump refused to acknowledge the election that’s when the democrats decided to start the process of impeachment. Like someone said buckel your seat belts. I believe that Biden and I will give him two months and the democrats will deem him incompetent to carry out his duties as president. Then we will be seeing a female president that knows nothing about anything.
A whole two months? It started before the election. When Pelosi was talking about amendment 25, it was though she was going after Trump. However, I think maybe she was already thinking it for Biden. Then we come up with KH as president, a person who couldn’t even win her own district. And so the circus goes on but no one with any common sense is laughing😞
Ex-president Obama said on Jimmy Kimball show that his dream job would be to “have a frontman and work from his basement”…WELLWELL is not that exactly what he has in Joe Biden!
This is Obama’s play for a third term!
All of his comments about Trump not leaving the White House are exactly what he is doing right now…?
Republicans are having to experience “humbleness” because we forgot it was about “America” and not a person.
Even worse, that “female” is INELLIGIBLE to occupy the oval office; her parents were immigrants and NOT naturalized by the time she was born. I know, you probably think the Kenyan set some kind of precedent, but he didn’t; he was simply an illegal squatter, in OUR White House, for eight years. That should be coming back to bite him fairly soon.
CIA spying on American citizens? This is unusual. They have very clear and separate Jurisdictions.
Spying on American citizens is the FBI’s job.
The CIA handles ‘foreign’ false flag events and the FBI handles ‘domestic’ false flag events.
That way they …seldom shoot each other.
Not usual at all. It’s SOP (standard operating procedure) That separation jurisdiction wall (formally) ended just after 9/11 when the 9/11 report detailed the lack of cooperation between intelligence agencies. The Patriot act made it official. The FISA court, with only 3 or 4 exceptions, gives intelligence agencies carte blanche to surveil (spy) on everyone. Edward Snowden confirmed this suspicion. Everyone’s records, every word one says, writes online, any phone calls are gathered and archived. And the “two-step rule” gives intelligence agencies the right to jump two steps over to anyone who has communicated with anyone you have communicated with- far reaching, no?
I thought the 9/11 report “detailed” the lack of “ability” for the intelligence agencies to communicate with each other!
I read this post today and found it interesting so here it goes, if the @moderators find it harsh they can delete it. This post is not open for debate. I have listened to everyone else’s hatred, rhetoric and outright lies for the last four years, so now I am having my say. If you don’t like it, you know where the delete button is.
Let me be clear, I am not a Biden fan. I think he is corrupt, a liar, a racist bigot, is in bed with China and probably suffering from dementia. He has done nothing to improve anything in his 47-year political career.
But what has Trump done in the past 4 years?
The “arrogant” in the White House brokered four Middle East Peace Accords, something that 71 years of political intervention and endless war failed to produce.
The “buffoon” in the White House is the first president that has not engaged us in a foreign war since Eisenhower.
The “racist” in the White House has had the greatest impact on the economy, bringing jobs, and lowering unemployment to the Black and Latino population of ANY other president. Ever.
The “liar” in the White House has exposed the deep, widespread, and long-standing corruption in the FBI, the CIA, the NSA, and the Republican and Democratic parties.
The “buffoon” in the White House turned NATO around and had them start paying their dues.
The “fool” in the White House neutralized the North Koreans and stopped them sending missiles toward Japan, and threatening the West Coast of the US.
The “xenophobe” in the White House turned our relationship with the Chinese around, brought hundreds of business back to the US, and revived the economy.
This same “clown” lowered your taxes, increased the standard deduction on your IRS return from $12,500 to $24,400 for married couples and caused the stock market to rise to record levels, positively impacting the retirement accounts of tens of millions of citizens.
The “clown” in the White House fast-tracked the development of multiple COVID Vaccines which are now available or will be soon. And yet we still don’t have a vaccine for SARS, Bird Flu, Ebola, or a host of diseases that arose during previous administrations.
The “clown” in the White House rebuilt our military which the Obama administration crippled and fired 214 key generals and admirals in his first year of office.
I got it, you don’t like him. Many of you utterly hate and despise him. How special of you. He is serving you and ALL the American people. What are you doing besides calling him names and laughing about him catching the China virus? Some of you were even hoping that COVID would be the cause of his demise. (Ah, the left. The party of “tolerance”. )
Please educate me again as to what Biden has accomplished for America in his 47 years in office, besides making the whole Biden family richer? By the way, where is Hunter?
I’ll take the “clown” any day versus a fork tongued, smooth talking hypocritical corrupt liar. I want a strong leader who isn’t afraid to kick some ass when needed. I don’t need a fatherly figure. I don’t need a liar. That’s what Hollywood, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and the New York Times are for.
Call me a chump, a racist, or part of the basket of deplorables. I do not care!
God bless Donald Trump – the best, most unappreciated President in U.S. history.
Feel free to copy/paste, I did.
Congratulation Mark! The only thing the Left has for rebuttal is YOUR CENSORED! This charade has been going on since about 1914 when the Brainiacs in Academia embraced Marx, Engels diatribe designed to overthrow the Czars, Monarchs, and Dictators that were the norm in 1880. If people take the time to read thru the many ‘updates,’ the prose is still captivating. DEAD WRONG, but by trickle-down theory, has managed to infect almost every aspect of our life, especially education.
I hope that enough Patriots don’t abandon Trump because, without him, the R Party is dead in the water, which is the EXACT MOTIVE behind the left’s push for Trump’s total annihilation of ALL his followers. Consider that Trump UPSET the Progressive/Socialist/ Leftist grab for Total Power. Why should the Oligarchs controlling 90+% of ALL media settle for anyone meddling in their Game. They are looking at the Pocketbooks of 1,400,000,000 souls V. the measly 325,000,000 American pockets to pick. They actually believe the CCP will allow them to act as they please WHEN they have destroyed the Republic! This results from Never having been exposed to anything but School and an Idea that brought them Billions under the Capitalist system. They want TOTAL control, and the CCP has other ideas, and they do not tolerate people working outside THEIR Control! The morons in Congress are about to learn that lesson the hard way.
Mark Welsch, that is the most brilliant, powerful and accurate assessment I have ever read; there is nothing I could ever add to or subtract from it! If you are ever in the Atlanta Area, I would be honored to provide you with your favorite beverage at any institution in the City!!
I will not comment to Mr. Welsch but I will comment on his post. Most of his post is devoted to some issues that I can relate to but I either disagree on the importance of the issue, the response to it or the current resolution.
I’ll start with lying, No one comes close to producing the lies Trump does, in terms of difference from reality, in terms of volume. The BS factor in his lies are off the wall. I’ll criticize Mark for claiming there is anyone who ever comes close to Trump. There’s not even any commitment to the lies. He’ll change a lie to another lie during a speech. He’s lied every time he’s opened his mouth or his lips quivered since the election. How much more lying does anyone have to do to be called a liar. The man’s tongue needs to be removed from his mouth and inserted in the orifice most of his statements come from.
The military is fresh from being denigrated, overruled, belittled and forced to revise damn near everything it does at the whim of the “Idiot”. I’ll explain more about the term “Idiot” a little further along. Returning to the military, Mr. Welsch asserts that our military is in much better shape after Trump. What did he do other than give them money and be the “ball-less” wonder he is and talk like he’s done something. I’m not aware of any new battlefield technologies he has implemented, that is, other than the cut and run. I’m not aware of any new game changing weapons or the implementation of new and effective policies or battlespace organizations.
While I support his effort to reduce the use of American troops as the world’s policeman, we still the most powerful nation on the planet and we must provide some leadership, even when we ever get to the point of other nations take on the military burden
His effort to get NATO and other allies to pay more for defense absolutely sucked. The idea and desire were good, but the effort to convince other nations to put out more was closer to placing all the Ambassadors dressed for a very formal ceremony in a cage with a loose-bowelled, feces-flinging monkey. You can get results if the rougher part of negotiations aren’t conducted in public complete with insults for each of the representatives. I haven’t seen anything resembling real improvement yet. This is one of those successes in which he simply took what little he got and declared it a rousing success. He has not had a lot of success pushing NATO around.
A major reason for the lack of success is the knowledge, not absorbed by Trump that a good chunk of our power needs the backing of NATO. I’ll put it like this, when the stuff hits the fan, where do you want the ground action to be, Here or There? I prefer there. Missiles certainly will be sent into the combatants homes but conventional air warfare and ground warfare will be conducted on land and in the air above. If it is Russia, still our number one enemy, they will have to contend with Europe to be able to ever get to us on our territory. If they can convince Europe to remain out of any conflict, they can get a pretty good shot in at getting to the homeland. If Russia invades Europe, they have too many years to figure the best ways to overrun Europe. Without our blocking forces remaining to defend Europe, Russia can pour troops through the Fulda Gap and out into the main continent and over run the European countries. Without an effective fighting force to block the Fulda Gap it wouldn’t take long for the Russians to overrun Europe and then it’s on to our homeland. The same scenario exist for China. They would be hard-pressed to get by Korea, Japan, Taiwan Pakistan and India, the last two being nuclear-armed nations. I can’t find anything he’s done to improve our national defensive posture. Pulling back from the rest of the world isn’t going to cut it. His military posture has been to turn his back or turn tail and run. He did it in Syria, he’s trying to do it in Afghanistan and Iraq. Russian bounties on American troops was a non-event for him.
Now I must be careful here because I absolutely would give him the Benito Mussolini farewell for his private calls to Putin. Head comrade
Putin is a murdering snake in the grass and effortless liar who would crap his pants if given a way to overtake this country. Currently he’s playing his fun game of screw with Trump while jerking their election around. He has had multiple one on one calls with Putin and admires his manly qualities. I really don’t give a hoot what his feelings about Putin are (man-crush), I want private conversations with the leader of our number one enemy stopped. I’m sure it’s far-fetched, but I hope when they start looking at charges after he leaves office there is going to be one for aiding and abetting the enemy, perhaps providing state secrets. Naw, he owned those classified materials and could do what he wanted with them.
Economics is one of those places where he is given by many of his followers and assumed by himself that he knows what he’s doing. His only talent is figuring out how to stiff the business opposite by flinging phalanxes’ of lawyers and court suits at them. He is not without some business acumen but much of his success comes from the lawyers. His only knowledge of economics is to cut taxes to stimulate or raise taxes to put on the brakes..
Taxes are not as effective as monetary policy for stimulating or reducing economic activity. Tax reductions provide a single shot stimulus to the economy and then it’s back to the same old, same old. It’s not going to recur the next year and the boost effect is gone. The boost effect on Trump’s cut was badly wasted by the businesses and investors banking the great majority of their savings. Looking back on prior tax cuts for stimulus purposes there not a lot of boost from such cuts because they go to people who either pocket the savings or spend it or invest it in something that has little effect on the economy.
Checks to the people has more effect then tax cuts, but pay raises does a whole lot more than any of those stimuli. Check out the recent (since 2010) economic results of the states that tried tax cuts. States such as Kansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana and others to a lesser extent thought they could slash taxes and put more money in the investors pockets because businesses would use the savings to grow their businesses, employing more and raising wages. Oh snap! It didn’t happen. All of them dang near went broke before increasing taxes back to normal levels. In the meantime, all their State supported operations and functions, schools, transportation, health care and so forth suffered to the extent that some were ordered by the courts to put more money into their support and operation. Trump don’t know squat.
Health care which Trump tried to turn into disaster care continues to have cost increases far greater than the rest of the economy. He and most of the rest of country don’t have a clue what to do. There are only two ways to effectively control health care cost. They are government pricing and good old fashion competition. Trump and most Republicans were going to be happy with competition but without the competition. In other words they wanted to remove all the government regs pertaining to regulating the cost. That just makes it easier to raise the price. First question is what do the insurance companies base their premiums on. How much they expect to pay providers next year plus their profit. Next question is what do the providers, doctors, hospitals, labs, therapists etc. base their service rates on? Whatever they can get from the insurance companies. I’m sure that sounds a little cavalier but the insurance companies will low-ball it to start. There’s a whole history behind the politics, provision and pricing of services. It’s all very secretive, information held as close as the nuclear codes. There is no public knowledge of actual cost of services the providers give. It used to be that all medical services and fees were set by medical associations. That went away after doctors sued their associations wanting to set their own fees. Court said okay and the race was on. It might have been fine if the government had let competition and public pricing take hold, but no the AMA still wanted secretive pricing and percent of satisfactory outcomes, a quality measure. Congress and the State Legislatures were accommodating and passed laws severely restricting access to State Health Records which are the most complete for each state. In most states and the Medicare records only special researchers are allowed access and nothing of any consequence is published. There is no way to get competing pricing for a procedure over a wide area if you are looking for a deal. There have been a couple of researchers that gathered up several hundred post grads for a summer of telephoning. After calling several thousand providers and making inquiries on their pricing they found no rhyme nor reason for the pricing. An appendectomy in a small rural hospital might run $10,000 and in an equal size hospital in California cost half that. Although they collected a lot of data that way, they never got close to anything comprehensive. What they did find was no control of pricing existed. There was no way for patients to find the best doctors for the least price and still isn’t. Trump doesn’t have a clue. He and the rest all jack their jaws for a competitive environment, but nobody makes it happen. Trump acolytes will be pleased to know that neither did Obama. His best effort went into providing government subsidies so more folks could get insurance. That’s the best we have so far. What needs to be done is to repeal all those secrecy laws and allow researchers access to currently restricted portions of the health record. It does not require personal data on patients or any association with patients’ procedures or diagnoses.
I’ll wrap up at this point and not even get into immigration. All I’ll say is I was born and mostly raised in Texas. I’ve lived around legal and illegal immigrants most of my life. Where I live now is probably 50/50 between legal and illegal. I have more problem with racists, xenophobes and all the other types than I do with the aliens. I was raised in the old Deep South parts of East Texas and spent my junior year in High School in Montgomery, Alabama in ’62-’63, moved back to Dallas in October of ’63. It was a case of being where the action was.
I am disappointed, I haven’t had a chance to detail all the harm to families Trump has caused with his stupid wall. Blow that sucker uop and be done with it, It’s a disaster for the people in the valley and all to appease people that don’t even live anywhere close. Those people often have families that have been there for 150 years or more and have provided for those families running cattle and farming on the rich soil of the bottom lands that get flooded ever so often so the jerkus humongus has taken their land and in some cases separated them from their land with the wall. There are retirement villages that will end up half inside the wall and half out. The damn thing will end up costing as much for yearly maintenance
Covid19, a disaster of major proportions that as of this writing may claim more American lives that the Spanish Flu did a hundred years ago. Guess what the reason we still don’t have vaccines or treatments for those other viruses is because they have been controlled and aren’t killing people daily as the Covid-19 is. Trump pulled up stakes and didn’t walk, but cut and ran from this virus. He tossed it to the states who have no real ability to deal with it. IT’s Trump’s fault. Any other president that did half of his outrageous and illegal crap would not have survived mid-term before being impeached.
The term “Idiot” refers to the feeble brained, such as those who choose to engage in a hilarious but deadly political battle with a freaking virus. Who with even a partially functioning brain thinks that 300,000 dead and many more coming is not really a dangerous virus. There are far too many who think that way, so I suggest herding them all into a couple of big stadiums, and see how long it takes to achieve “herd immunity”. That’s one that Trump blew me away on. He heard a term and tried to use it consequently he has millions of used idiots repeating his idiocy and dying. One of the things that studies have predicted for at least thirty years, maybe longer is that viruses in the wild will produce an unknown number of variants that may be more or less dangerous than the original. I made that prediction that variants would show up and may put us all back to the starting line back in August. I’m no smarter than the rest. It’s nothing more than reading something other than the Bible or cleaning my guns. What do these fools think they are going to gain from having political battles with a virus. The virus will win every time because crying “out, out damned spot” isn’t going to make it go away.
What’s really scary is how many of these idiots are compounding the problem by carrying a gun. God help us when those weenies get loose. My view is if you’re too stupid to understand what’s going on with a virus killing the hundreds of thousands and the need for protection because of your political thinking, you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near anything dangerous not to mention a gun. I suspect The virus will get you before a gun.
Thank you Mr. Welsch for your statement, this is about fifty percent of mine