Dan Kovalik - The plot to scapegoat Russia: how the CIA and the deep State have conspired to vilify Putin

Copyright 2017 by Dan Kovalik

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Brian Peterson

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3032-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3033-5

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions.

George W. Bush, July 2016

FOREWORD

T HE R USSIANS ARE COMING again. It seems that al-Qaeda, ISIS, North Koreans, Mexican bad hombres, and various other bogeymen were insufficient to the task of terrifying Americans. So now the US war machinethat vast complex of weapons manufacturers, Wall Street speculators, saber-rattling Washington politicians, armchair generals, and the media industry that thrives on boom and bang (or the beautiful pictures of our fearsome armaments in the unforgettable words of MSNBCs Brian Williams)has revived the tried and true Red Scare. Day after day, night after night, the US citizenry is bombarded with scare stories about the evil machinations of Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin henchmen. How they stole our democracy and are scheming to conquer the entire NATO alliance. How they are building a military machine and nuclear arsenal that threaten to eclipse our own. How they are subverting the global free press with its low-ratings Russia Today network and army of hackers and trolls. How they are blocking peace in the Middle East with their machinations in Syria.

This massive anti-Russian propaganda campaign is one of the biggest fake news operations in US history. And weve had some colossal ones, dating back to the days of the Spanish American War, when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst instructed artist Frederic Remington to help him fabricate a clash of forces that did not exist: You furnish the pictures and Ill furnish the war.

Ever since World War I, war has been Americas lucrative racket, in the mordant observation of Major General Smedley Darlington Butler, the most decorated marine of his day. The countrys economic engine runs on blood and oil. Without the constant specter of a foreign enemy, there is no American prosperity. President Donald Trump couldnt find the money to rebuild our collapsing infrastructure, but he could burn through $93 million to hurl fifty-nine Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield to send a message that he was no Putin puppet.

Trump promised to ease growing East-West tensions by finding common ground with Moscow. But the US national security stateand its numerous media assetssoon convinced him of the folly of peace. Putin is doomed to become the baddest hombre in the Trump shooting gallery.

I have no desire to live or work in Putins Russia. Independent journalists and dissident leaders are constantly at risk there. But while the Kremlin casts a shadow over Russias own freedom and democracy, its ability to project power and influence abroad is wildly overstated by the US war lobby. Russias economy has shrunk so much that its GDP is roughly that of Spain. The US military budget is bigger than that of the next seven countries combined, while Russia spends less than Saudi Arabia on defense.

Russias intervention in the sovereign affairs of other nations pales in comparison to the massive intrusions of the US security juggernaut. Over the past century, the US military and the CIA have overthrown democratically elected governments in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Chile, and Indonesia; assassinated, jailed, or exiled leaders in these and other countries; subverted governments and elections in even allied countries like France and Italy; and hacked the phones of friendly leaders in Germany and Brazil. When US covert operations prove unable to impose our will on foreign affairs, Washington puts boots on the ground, invading and occupying nations from Vietnam to Afghanistan. Accusations of Russian interference from a country that routinely big-foots the rest of the world surely rank as some of the biggest displays of chutzpah in history.

Despite its diminished stature in recent years, Russia (along with China) is the only country capable of even marginally standing in the way of Washingtons vast imperial ventures. Therefore, it must be turned into a pariah state by the dependable media servants of the US security complex. Its the so-called liberal mediaincluding the New York Times , Washington Post , CNN, and MSNBCthat is taking the lead in demonizing Russia, just as it did during the first Cold War when CIA spymasters like Allen Dulles wined and dined the Washington press corps and fed them their headlines and talking points.

The deep state crowed when Trump abandoned his flirtation with Putin. This was inevitable, opined Philip H. Gordon, a former NSC apparatchik now embedded at the Council on Foreign Relations, a national security bastion since the days of Dulles. Trumps early lets-be-friends initiative was incompatible with our interests, and you knew it would end in tears. Whose interests was Gordon referring to? Certainly not the interests of the American people, who are sick and tired of endless war and foreign intrigue and yearn for a leader who will truly put their well-beings first.

Unlike our war-obsessed media, human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik does understand that peace and diplomacy are in the best interests of the American and Russian peoples. His book is an urgently needed counterassault against the propaganda forces that are trying to push us over a precipice that is too terrifying to even contemplate. Its time for all of us to speak truth to power before its too late.

David Talbot

April 2017

INTRODUCTION

T HIS BOOK GREW OUT OF AN article I wrote for Huffington Post entitled Listen Liberals: Russia Is Not Our Enemy, which was written in response to what I view as the bizarre hysteria over Russiaa hysteria that has been reignited in the past several years and which is most recently being manifested in the current frenzy over what some are now calling, Russia-gate. The hubbub relates to allegations that Vladimir Putin somehow attemptedthough no one really thinks to great effectto influence the outcome of the 2016 elections in support of his friend or dupe or puppet, Donald J. Trump.

This harkens back to the 1962 film (re-made in 2004), The Manchurian Candidate , in which a man unwittingly becomes an assassin for the communists who have brain-washed him. Some currently pushing the anti-Russia conspiracy theory are even referring to Trump as the Manchurian candidate. As the synopsis for the film on Wikipedia explains, [t]he film was released in the United States on October 24, 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is universally viewed as the tensest and most dangerous moment of the (old) Cold War.