Sunday, February 11, 2018

The FBI and Uranium One

From Sara Carter:
An informant who spent years gathering information on the Russian energy and uranium market industry for the FBI, met staff members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, House Oversight, and House Intelligence Committees on Wednesday. He gave explosive testimony on his years as an undercover informant providing information to the FBI on Russian criminal networks operating in the United States. He also contends in his testimony, and written briefs, to the FBI that Russia attempted to hide its ongoing aid to help sustain Iran’s nuclear industry, at the time the Obama administration approved the sale of 20 percent of U.S. uranium mining rights to Russia.

William D. Campbell, an American businessman, provided extensive information on other counterintelligence issues to the FBI for decades and he had also provided information to the CIA on various issues during his time overseas. “For several years my relationship with the CIA consisted of being debriefed after foreign travel,” Campbell noted in his testimony, which was obtained by this reporter. “Gradually, the relationship evolved into the CIA tasking me to travel to specific countries to obtain specific information. In the 1990’s I developed a working relationship with Kazakhstan and Russia in their nuclear energy industries. When I told the CIA of this development, I was turned over to FBI counterintelligence agents.”

The informant’s attorney, Victoria Toensing partner at the firm DiGenova & Toensing, said the following: “Mr. Campbell testified for over four hours until he answered every question from three Congressional committees; the Senate Judiciary, House Oversight and House Intelligence committees. He recounted numerous times that the Russians bragged that the Clintons’ influence in the Obama administration would ensure CIFIUS approval for Uranium One. And he was right.” (Read more.)

Why is the media ignoring the real bombshell FISA memo? From Townhall:

We'll bring you Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberly Strassel's tweetstorm in a moment, but I'll take a stab at answering her question about the media right out of the gate.  Three possibilities: (1) The GOP hyped the Nunes memo, which quickly became the center of this whole firestorm -- replete with counter-memos, FBI objections, etc.  The press followed the spotlight. (2) As we've been saying, there are so many complex pieces of this larger puzzle, following the plot is difficult.  It's not just news consumers wondering, "which memo is this now?" -- it's many of the people trying to cover this drama, too.  The document in question here is a second, less redacted, version of a Senate memo that few people have even heard of. (3) The Senate memo, produced by non-bomb-throwers Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham, is substantially more disruptive to the Democrats' narrative than the Nunes document.  And the press generally prefers Democratic narratives to Republican ones because most journalists are liberals.

My guess is that some blend of all three factors helps explain why the Grassley/Graham memo has barely registered on the national radar, even after we've endured multiple high-octane news cycles starring Nunes and Schiff.  But on the substance, does Strassel have a point, or is this just the latest shiny object the right-wing is waving around to distract from "the real story," now that the Nunes memo was arguably a bit of a dud? (Read more.)


Share

No comments: