First, let me wish all readers of New Times and its staff a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. That being said to the annoyance of the “PC police,” the Republic is in peril. Recent media revelations about the corruption surrounding the investigation of Trump and his election campaign are not simply depressing, they’re alarming.
In 1964, the movie Seven Days in May premiered, starring Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, Lancaster being a highly decorated general and Douglas an earthy and patriotic colonel. Lancaster’s character was planning a military coup d’état against a liberal president, and Douglas was the patriotic spoiler who discovered and exposed the plotters against the government. That plot line has been standard Hollywood fare for many decades, but what is happening in Washington today resurrects the theme in real life.
Last week, conservative media started talking about how the senior management of the Justice Department and the FBI may have conspired to sabotage the political campaign of the current president and possibly concocted a plot to remove a legitimately elected, sitting president. That should concern all of us whether you support Trump or not.
Hollywood has been obsessed with the danger of a military coup forever, but the real danger today is not from the military. Military officers have civilian control of the military embedded in their genes as do most sergeants and the troops they lead. A military coup in America is about as likely to occur as being struck by a meteor while in the shower and simultaneously winning the lottery.
What conservative media says could be occurring at the highest levels of our government today is emanating from federal law enforcement and the intelligence services. Fifty years ago, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover was notorious for covert snooping against elected officials (especially liberals) and compiling files on every aspect of their lives. Hoover purportedly used unsavory information to coerce elected officials into supporting the FBI and making the agency virtually untouchable or accountable to the public via their congressional representatives. The demise of Hoover opened a Pandora’s box of scandal and seriously undermined the FBI’s credibility and national standing with the public. We thought we fixed this but apparently not.
The current special counsel investigating collusion between the president’s election campaign with Russia and the subsequent firing of a highly politicized FBI director was supposed to be above reproach. Instead, the senior lead special agents investigating Trump were ethically compromised from the start as many made large monetary contributions to Clinton’s campaign. We also discovered that the “Trump dossier” was paid for by the Democratic Party, contracted through a former British intelligence operative who passed it through British intelligence to American agencies. When we receive reports from the British, it is considered to be information from a “trusted agent” and is not usually given the same level of vetting. Negative and highly salacious information from this dossier was leaked to the media, thereby contributing to generation of a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court warrant and may have provided the justification for initiation of the special counsel investigation of Trump and his campaign.
We’ve learned that these same senior agents, while investigating Clinton’s illegal, private email server allowed Clinton’s top aides to be interviewed together versus apart, were not placed under oath, and electronic devices (hard drives, phones, and laptops) were permitted to be destroyed without consequences. The original recommendation from FBI field investigators concluded that there was a “reasonable probability” that Clinton’s emails were compromised by foreign agents, but senior FBI/Justice Department officials reduced that finding to a simple “potentially compromised.” In the national security world, that is a significant change as the former characterization would warrant criminal prosecution under the espionage laws.
Last weekend, an organization that was part of Trump’s transition team claimed that the special counsel surreptitiously obtained transition team emails and phone records without a warrant. Trump’s legal counsel accused federal agents of violating Trump’s Fourth Amendment protection against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and violating privileged communications laws.
You don’t have to like Trump; you can even despise him, as he makes it easy. However, all of us should be very concerned when federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies apparently join together in a conspiracy to undermine and overthrow a duly elected president. These same agencies have thus far spurned lawfully issued subpoenas from congressional oversight committees. The danger of a coup d’état by rogue federal agencies poses the gravest threat to everyone’s liberty.
We’ve spent millions of dollars on the investigation of Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election. Thus far it has revealed an ineffective effort by disparate Russian agencies to influence American politics but no collusion with any U.S. candidate or campaign (See The Atlantic, January/February 2018 issue, “What Putin Really Wants,” by Julia Ioffe).
In spite of all of this, have a Merry Christmas (eggnog helps) and remember those patriots who defend us far from home and the firefighters defending the home front. Δ
Al Fonzi is an Army lieutenant colonel of military intelligence who had a 35-year military career, serving in both the Vietnam and Iraq wars. Send comments through the editor atclanham@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Dec 21-31, 2017.
I seldom agree with Mr. Fonzi’s musings, but this one goes beyond standard-fare right wing schtick and slops over into John Birch Society conspiratorial nonsense–and it’s dangerous. He gives credence to blog hysterics who imagine that there was a “coup” attempt brewing within the FBI, designed to bring down his happy King Mordred. This puts him in Alex Jones territory, the fever swamp of Pizzagate, of black helicopters and trilateral commissions that are working in clandestine cells, using code names and microchips, conspiring against the Caligula simpleton whom the minority of this country elected, and the majority of this country distrusts. This may make his fellow yokels slap the ground and hoot, but the rest of us know that the FBI itself–by its very nature–tilts to the right of center. These are law enforcement professionals who distrust Fonzi’s “Antifa” bogeyman just as much as they distrust the Black Lives Matter movement. Fonzi goes too far, here, spreading dangerous nonsense.
Clearly there is merit to this article. It is a warning of what COULD be occurring. Linking this to every bogus threat available does not address a single word of the warning. Just because the FBI is an enforcement agency does not make it tilt right….ask anyone in Venezuela , they will tell you state apparatus serves the state. Most Federal employees donate Democrat so I think it is nutso to think they are conservative or libertarian.
Fonzi well may be the canary in the coal mine, let’s hope not, but pretending everything is fine is a good way to put us all on a path to that coal mine.
Once one leaves California and travels throughout the rest of the United States, it is very easy to see, and one must be blind, to not see the effect that Trump has had on our nation this past year. Other than the occasional “red states,” there is a tremendous amount of growth, not just in income, but in business, new facilities going up in places we would not expect there to be growth. Businesses seem to be flourishing! Billboards and signage stretched across an occasional semi everywhere proclaim “Help Wanted” abound. New construction, new car sales, new homes ABOUND! New roads! Open and clean and well maintained rest stops! It only stops when you get to the blue states. It makes one wonder what do those of us Californians do not see in the current president??? Obviously, they are not smoking weed as it’s not legal in most of the flourishing states. It almost makes it depressing to come back home.
Al Fonzi’s lame efforts to denigrate the FBI and our nation’s justice department are shameful and a danger to our republic. Fonzi either doesn’t understand the tenets and value of our U.S. Constitution, or else purposely misleads readers about it. No, Mr. Fonzi, Donald Trump is NOT above the law. Mr. Fonzi needs to respect our U.S. Constitution, rather than trash it the way he does, with propaganda aimed at decimating the brilliantly conceived “separation of powers” policy that has made America so great.
Fonzi should give respect to brave law enforcers who are willing got risk their lives to make sure that foreign powers and domestic criminals don’t conspire to corrupt the greatest political office of our nation. Fonzi’s continual pandering to the interests of Vladimir Putin and other infamous Russian criminals is disgusting. No Mr. Fonzi, the U.S presidency should NOT be handed over to Russia and be treated as a personal asset of Putin.
For good reason, more Americans trust and respect Robert Mueller more than they do Donald Trump. Trump is an infamous liar, con man and cheat. This is well documented. If Trump, as many suspect, is truly a criminal, his crimes should be investigated and he should be brought to justice even if he is President. No, Mr. Fonzi, Trumo does NOT automatically get a pass on criminal behavior by himself or family members. A thorough investigation is certainly in order. Fonzi is clearly out of order and his words threaten the integrity of our republic. That Fonzi has the nerve to association himself wit the Republican party is a slap in the face to all good Republicans. He owes us all a huge public apology for aiding and abetting Vladimir Putin and all those who are working to weaken the United States.