Nunes and Schiff unintentionally let the Trump cat out of the bag By The Wayne Madsen Report

Nunes and Schiff unintentionally let the Trump cat out of the bag

By The Wayne Madsen Report

Although journalists and those who believe in open government hate it, there is a reason why senior intelligence officials often reply "no comment" to questions surrounding intelligence matters. In the world of intelligence gathering, even the most innocuous comment can reveal information not intended for the ears of the general public. In the world of operational security, these minor tidbits of information are known as "essential elements of friendly information" or simply, EEFI.

In the partisan bickering that broke out on March 22 between House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) and the ranking member on the intelligence oversight committee, Adam Schiff (D-CA), both, likely unintentionally, revealed EEFI concerning the U.S. intelligence community's "incidental surveillance" of Donald Trump and his transition team between Election Day, November 8, and the inauguration on January 20.

During a March 22 briefing for reporters outside the White House after a controversial briefing for Trump and his advisers, Nunes revealed that "dozens" of intelligence reports he was given about the Trump "incidental surveillance" made "no mention of Russia." Nunes said the information was brought to him by "sources who thought we should know it." Nunes said the interceptions of the Trump team were "legally collected" pursuant to a warrant issued by a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge and involved "foreign" surveillance not involving Russia.
Nunes elaborated further in stating that “normal, formal surveillance” provided to him yielded "significant information" about both Trump and his "team." But Nunes provided a caveat to that particular revelation, stating that details about Trump and his team had "little or no apparent foreign intelligence value" and  "were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting" because their identities had been "unmasked" within the U.S. intelligence community during the transition phase. However, if the "formal" surveillance of Team Trump did not involve foreign intelligence, that means it must have involved a law enforcement matter and was authorized by a Title III "wiretap" order authorized by a normal federal court outside of the FISA aegis and carried out by the FBI and Justice Department's Electronic Surveillance Unit.

Nunes's EEFI offering provides the following points of interest:

- The incidental surveillance made no mention of Russia.
- The formal surveillance was of little or no intelligence value.
- The formal surveillance, while of no value to intelligence agencies, may have been of great interest to law enforcement, especially the FBI. Hence, FBI director James Comey's reticence to provide details concerning its investigation of the Trump transition team during his recent testimony before the House Intelligence Committee.
- If some of the surveillance information made no mention of Russia, perhaps it did mention other countries.

The definition of "team" is important since if it extended beyond the transition team to the campaign team, it would include Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort, national security adviser Michael Flynn, and foreign policy adviser Carter Page. It is now known that Manafort was contracted to the pro-Russian political party in Ukraine that was ousted in the 2014 U.S.-inspired coup while Page also had business dealings with the Russian government-owned energy firm Gazprom and Flynn's consulting company had Russian business connections.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said that Nunes's statement appeared to reveal "classified information." It, at the very least, revealed EEFI from which more sensitive intelligence can be derived.

Trump's problems may not be found with Russia but, ironically, south of the U.S. border, a border which the president is trying to seal with a great and "beautiful" wall.

The "incidental surveillance" of Trump and his associates, which was cited by Nunes and made no mention of Russia, may very well been a result of National Security Agency and its FIVE EYES partners' surveillance of a major fraud case involving billionaire former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who escaped an arrest warrant in Panama and is now living in Miami. Last September, at the height of the U.S. presidential campaign, Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela requested the Obama administration's State and Justice Departments to extradite Martinelli.

Martinelli is wanted by Panama for embezzlement of funds, wiretapping his political and business enemies, insider stock trading, money laundering, and other crimes. So far, the Trump administration has taken no action on the Panamanian extradition request. Perhaps that is because in Panama, Trump is known as the "American Martinelli." Moreover, Martinelli is a close friend and business associate of Trump. Martinelli, exiled in Miami as a fugitive from justice and wanted by Panama, was invited to attend Trump's inauguration in Washington. Before he deleted it, Martinelli posted a photograph of his Inaugural invitation on Twitter. As president, Martinelli was on hand for the 2011 opening of Trump's first tower in Panama City, the Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower. During the ceremony, Trump referred to Martinelli as his "friend."

The ties between Trump and Martinelli run even deeper. The bank in which Martinelli owns a significant stake, Global Bank Corporation, was a co-trustee of Trump's Ocean Club. When the Trump property developer, Newland International Properties Corporation, defaulted on its Global Bank loan in 2013, the Martinelli bank was forced to bail out Newland. The real estate scams surrounding the Trump Panama Hotel Management LLC, Trump Panama Condominium Management LLC -- both incorporated in Delaware -- Newland Properties, Trump Ocean Club Unit 2710 Inc., K Group -- which pays Trump Marks Panama $5 million per year for using the Trump brand name -- the Trump Organization, the Trump Ocean Club, and Global Bank are merely the tip of the iceberg surrounding the overall criminal accusations surrounding Trump's friend Martinelli.

 
Left: Trump [center] at ribbon cutting ceremony for Trump Ocean Club tower in Panama City in 2011. Now a wanted fugitive, President Ricardo Martinelli [right], as well as Donald Trump Jr. [left], join Trump. Right: Trump at White House meeting with Peruvian President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski on February 24, 2017. Martinelli and Kuczynski are subjects of major international criminal investigations. Were Trump and his associates caught up in FISA and Title III surveillance of the Odebrecht scandal and are they also involved?

Hundreds of thousands of documents were leaked from the Panama City law firm Mossack Fonseca, which incorporated thousands of offshore shell companies for the Central Intelligence Agency, narcotics syndicates, Arab oil sheikhs, and businessmen like Martinelli, Trump, and Trump's Argentine friend, President Mauricio Macri. It is known that Latin America's largest ever bribery scandal that involves the huge Brazilian building contractor Odebrecht SA, now laps at the shores of the Trump Organization via Martinelli.

In December 2016, during the presidential transition phase, the U.S. Justice Department announced a settlement with Odebrecht in which the firm and its affiliate Braskem agreed to pay a fine of $3.6 billion for violation of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Most of the fine collected by Justice was to be turned over to Brazil, which began the investigation of Odebrecht with its "Lava Jato" (Car Wash) probe.

As part of its deal with DOJ, what information did Odebrecht's executives share with Justice Department prosecutors concerning its operations in Panama, especially those involving the Trump Tower and Martinelli? Any involvement of Trump with the Odebrecht and Mossack Fonseca criminal scandals would have prompted any U.S. judge on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or on the bench of a regular U.S. court district to authorize electronic surveillance of the Trump Organization. When Nunes stated the "incidental surveillance" of Trump and his associates did not involve Russia, was he actually implying it involved another country, perhaps Panama?

The political fallout from Odebrecht is beginning to stick to Trump. Odebrecht paid hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to politicians in Brazil, Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Chile, Guatemala,the Dominican Republic, Antigua and Barbuda, Angola, Mozambique, and other countries and some of these politicians are linked to Trump business enterprises. 
Argentina's Macri has been linked to the Odebrecht bribery scandal mainly through the connections to the firm of his cousin Angelo Calcaterra, Macri's Energy Minister Juan José Aranguren, and other officials of his government. With the help of business associates of Macri, a Trump Tower was built in Uruguay in 2012. Trump has been pressuring Macri and his friends to build the first Trump Tower in Buenos Aires and a Buenos Aires building permit for the deal was apparently the subject of a phone conversation between Trump and Macri after Trump's election in November.

However, not all has been well between the Trump and Macri families over the years. Franco Macri, the father of the Argentine president, believed the mastermind behind the kidnapping for ransom of Mauricio Macri in 1991 was none other than Donald Trump, who the elder Macri described as the "true intellectual author" of the crime. Perhaps that is why the right-wing Mauricio Macri openly endorsed Hillary Clinton for president in 2016.
In Peru, an arrest warrant has been issued for former President Alejandro Toledo who stands accused of receiving a $10 million bribe from Odebrecht for a highway contract. Toledo was on his way to Israel but is now in the United States. The current President of Peru, Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, was Toledo's finance minister. The Trump administration has not responded to Peruvian requests for Toledo's extradition from the U.S. and Kuczynski has been mired in allegations concerning his own connections with Odebrecht. Perhaps that was the reason why Kuczynski followed up a phone call with Trump with a personal visit to the White House in February. All Trump and Kuczynski spoke about during their joint remarks was Kuczynski receiving an award from Princeton University, Kuczynski's two daughters attending Princeton and Columbia, and Peru's decision to buy some U.S. military vehicles. If Kuczynski and Trump are subject to FISA and Title III wiretaps concerning Odebrecht, they may have found more than family to chat about. Kuczynski previously asked Trump to extradite his former boss Toledo to Peru. But with Kucynski now a target of the Odebrecht probe, he may have asked Trump to keep Toledo under wraps in the U.S. and not singing to a Peruvian court.

The U.S. Attorney's Office most likely to have been assigned the investigation of the Martinelli extradition request is the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in Miami. This office has historically been occupied by right-wing prosecutors linked to Latin American right-wing leaders, many of which, like Martinelli, maintain residences in the Miami area. If Trump is looking at protecting those who could spill the beans on his and his Trump Organization's own ties to Odebrecht, what better way than to nominate a former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida to his cabinet. Trump nominated such a former U.S. Attorney, Alexander Acosta, to be his Secretary of Labor. Acosta was involved in negotiating as U.S. Attorney the sweetheart plea deal with convicted child molester and Trump billionaire friend Jeffrey Epstein. The deal immunized from future prosecution Epstein's VIP friends who were involved in his underage sex operations. 

As a former U.S. Attorney in Miami and former dean of Florida International University law school, Acosta has enough clout to help ward off any federal investigations emanating from the Miami U.S. Attorney's Office, which would include advocating for the extraditions of Martinelli and Toledo back to their home countries where they might start naming names, including that of Trump and his associates. Odebrecht, the company that built Miami International Airport, may also have dirt on southern Florida politicians, including members of the Republican Cuban-American political "mafia," which also includes Acosta. Odebrecht maintained a Division of Structured Operations, which was dubbed the "Department of Bribery" by U.S. Justice Department investigators. Were Trump and members of his business empire caught up in a legitimate DOJ investigation of Odebrecht, with ancillary intelligence being provided by the NSA and its Canadian counterpart, Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which conducts full-time surveillance of Latin American communications? If the answer is yes, and it appears to be so, that would explain Nunes and Schiff talking around the issue, which involves the collection of raw signals intelligence data on a massive number of foreign businesses and "U.S. persons."

Putting Black Faces on Imperial Policies

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

As African Americans contemplate the possibility of Barack Obama in the Oval Office, they should consider the ramifications of a Black face at the helm of an unreconstructed imperial policy. During the Secretary of State tenures of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, the face of U.S. aggression and lawlessness in the world, has been Black - a hell of an image to present to the planet! Barack Obama shows no inclination to abandon imperialism as state policy - only to avoid "dumb" wars, while placing U.S.-designated "interests" above international law.

Putting Black Faces on Imperial Policies

by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

"What a spectacle: American imperialism in black-face.

"Barack Obama is our son and he deserves our support," declared Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr., speaking to a gathering of Black Democrats at the party's winter meeting, in Washington, earlier this month. By Jones' logic, Condoleezza Rice deserves automatic African American support as "our daughter," and Colin Powell, her predecessor as George Bush's Secretary of State, was due fealty as "our brother."

Jones' embrace of the entire African American family tree must also, therefore, extend to U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the most reactionary, anti-Black member of the High Court; and to "our brother" J. Kenneth Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State whose consuming mission in 2004 was to deny the franchise to as many fellow Blacks as possible.

Although the winter meetings are traditionally showcases for candidates to display their positions on the issues of the day, State Sen. Jones saw no need to present his appeal on Obama's behalf in any packaging other than race. In effect, Jones attempted to relieve Obama of any political obligation to Black people. Under Jones' formula, the relationship between the Black office-seeker and the African American public is reversed: it is the people that owe allegiance to the candidate, who is in turn set free to woo groups and promote interests that may be inimical to those of the Black public.

"Jones would utterly gut Black politics of all substance, rendering the entire electoral process worthless to the Black masses."

Jones and the larger political current he represents would utterly gut Black politics of all substance, rendering the entire electoral process worthless to the Black masses. Perhaps the greatest irony of Jones' issue-less directive is that it masquerades as a Black empowerment strategy. In a transparent bid to shame Blacks in the Hillary Clinton camp - another political desert - Jones said African Americans don't "owe" anyone. Jones elaborated later, in a conversation with a Chicago Sun-Times reporter. "How long do we have to owe before we have an opportunity to support our son?" he said.

In other words, Black people's "debt" to the Clintons - as if such ever existed - has been paid, and now it's time to herd Black voters behind Obama, like so many cattle. Jones' brand of politics holds that Black people don't have interests or political ideals, only obligations to one politician or the other. In Jones' world, African Americans are constantly indebted, but nobody owes them anything - certainly not Obama, "our son."

The Emil Jones brand of Black politics is based on the assumption that African American aspirations are limited to a simple desire to see Black faces on display in high places, no matter the public policy content of that representation. It is as if emancipation of the slaves could be achieved by moving Ol' Massa out of the Big House, and installing the Black butler in his place, while the conditions of life and labor in the fields remain unchanged. After all, the butler is one of "ours." The slaves should be happy to experience a vicarious freedom, through their "son." Further, it would be downright unfamily-like to pester our own kin about the need for forty acres and a mule per household.

"Barack Obama's stealth corporate presidential candidacy could create the conditions for a ‘perfect storm' that sweeps away what remains of issues-based coherence in Black electoral and institutional politics."

Jones' remarks exemplify an extraordinary vulgarization of African American politics, the product of uncritical, Jim Crow-era reflexes that linger within the Black polity, combined with the growing influence of corporate money in the Black leadership-creation process. The advent of Barack Obama's stealth corporate presidential candidacy could create the conditions for a "perfect storm" that sweeps away what remains of issues-based coherence in Black electoral and institutional politics. Should that occur - and there is much evidence that the unraveling is already well advanced - the collapse of progressive American politics becomes inevitable, a high price to pay for a Black face in the Oval Office.

Imperial Obama

African Americans will pay a special, historical price if a corporate-molded Black politician becomes the titular leader of an unreconstructed U.S. imperial state - and, make no mistake about it, Barack Obama is an imperialist. No one but a deep-fried imperialist could describe U.S. behavior in Iraq as "coddling" the Iraqis, as Obama said to an establishment foreign policy gathering in Chicago, late last year. His Iraq War De-escalation Act, carefully calibrated to make him appear slightly less belligerent than Hillary Clinton, allows the U.S. to wage war until March 31, 2008, at the very least, and to maintain a military presence in the country thereafter. It is a sham measure, more helpful in buying time for Bush than in encouraging effective dissent.

At his core, Obama is not opposed to U.S. violations of other nations' sovereignty; he simply opposes "dumb wars" - as he told a reporter for the Chicago Reader - meaning, aggressions executed by less-than-bright American Commanders-in-Chief. U.S.-designated "interests," not adherence to international law, are paramount - the fundamental tenet of imperialism.

"Obama is not opposed to U.S. violations of other nations' sovereignty; he simply opposes ‘dumb wars'"

Of the declared Democratic candidates, only Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich can pass anti-imperialist muster; thus the near-certainty of another imperialist in the White House in 2009. Which brings us to the special price that African Americans will pay if the face of U.S. imperialism, is Black.

The Face of Aggression

There was a time not that long ago, when the historic struggles of Black Americans for racial equality, decolonization and peace were admired throughout the African Diaspora and beyond. Especially in what was called the Third World, African Americans were perceived as different than the arrogant, racist "ugly Americans" - the whites that strutted around other people's nations as if they owned them. In the early years of the Vietnam War, there were many reports of Viet Cong attempts to spare Black American soldiers' lives, if practical, as an acknowledgment of shared suffering under white rule. When Iranian students seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, in 1979, African Americans were soon released, along with female staffers.

"Colin Powell emerged from Gulf War One as the personification of American military might - and threat."

It is difficult to imagine such differentiations being made on foreign shores, today. General Colin Powell emerged from Gulf War One as the personification of American military might - and threat. As George Bush's Secretary of State, Powell sacrificed his reputation - and an immeasurable portion of remaining African American planetary good will - in a lie-soaked justification of the impending invasion of Iraq before the United Nations.

Colin Powell became the Black face of international piracy, to be succeeded by Condoleezza Rice.

In her first act as the Black American female face of imperial aggression, in April, 2002, then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice could not contain her disappointment at the failure of a U.S.-backed coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "We do hope that Chávez recognizes that the whole world is watching," she sneered, "and that he takes advantage of this opportunity to right his own ship, which has been moving, frankly, in the wrong direction for quite a long time."

As Secretary of State, Rice is the reigning imperial drum major. Despite a string of Chavez victories in fair elections and his overwhelming support among the poor and mostly non-white Venezuelan majority, Rice last week loosed another transparent threat against his government. "I believe there is an assault on democracy in Venezuela," she told a congressional committee. "I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically." What a spectacle: American imperialism in black-face, threatening a mixed-race president whose government has arguably adopted the most racially progressive and inclusive policies on the South American continent.

"Condoleezza Rice is the Black, snarling symbol of U.S. lawlessness."

When Rice claimed that the U.S. had been meeting with Venezuelan Catholic leaders who were "under fire" from Chavez's government, the vice-president of the Venezuelan Bishops' Conference - no friend of Chavez - called her a "liar." Contrast this with Barack Obama's exchange of pleasantries with Rice before voting to confirm her as chief diplomatic operative of the Bush endless war doctrine.

From Beirut to Caracas, Condoleezza Rice is the Black, snarling symbol of U.S. lawlessness - a perception of our African American "daughter" that the NAACP must not have anticipated when it bestowed on her its Image Award, in early 2002. Back then, Rice told the civil rights group's gala affair: "As I travel with President Bush around the world and as we meet with leaders from around the world, I see America through other people's eyes."

After two consecutive Black Secretaries of State fronting for a hyper-aggressive U.S. regime, the world no doubt sees Black America in a very different light.

African Americans, who care so much for image - some, to the exclusion of all else - should contemplate what the ascension of a Black face to the Oval Office will mean to world perceptions of Black Americans as a group. Would Barack Obama be a worse international criminal than Hillary Clinton? My guess is, they'd function identically, as stewards of empire. But a Barack Obama presidency would leave an unindelible impression on the planet: The Blacks of the United States have arrived! They, too, are "ugly Americans."

BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford (at) BlackAgendaReport.com.