Carter Page is an FBI target of investigation, and he shouldn’t
be. He has been under surveillance for years, and he shouldn’t be. The FBI’s
reasons are his associations with Russians, built through business and
financial matters, and his views on U.S. foreign policy toward Russia that are
critical of U.S. foreign policy.
On grounds like these, the FBI could build a case for spying on
a large number of people looking to do business with Russians. The FBI
could also spy on many, many people in the pro-liberty and anti-empire camp who
are critical of U.S. foreign policy: Justin Raimondo, Lew Rockwell, Daniel
McAdams and Ron Paul, to name a few of the more prominent.
Here are
the incontrovertible facts about Carter Page, as best as I can assemble them.
My statements are all based on evidence available to anyone who will do the
research. The source articles are here, here, here, here, here and here. They will support the conclusion that the
FBI is operating way out of bounds, along police state lines in which the Bill
of Rights is seriously violated.
Carter Page is not a spy for the Russians. He never has been a
spy for the Russians. Carter Page is not a dupe in the hands of Russian agents
and never has been. The Russians didn’t infiltrate the Trump campaign through
Carter Page or anyone else.
Page didn’t advise Trump on foreign policy. He didn’t attend
national security meetings. Trump had never met Page when, under pressure from
the media, he released a list of national security advisers that included the
name of Carter Page. Page was strictly a junior figure for a brief period,
splitting the campaign before the election.
Carter Page is a businessman and financier, an investment
banker, who has specialized in Russian investments for years. That’s his
career. He worked at a Merrill Lynch office in Moscow in 2004. He developed
relationships with Gazprom executives before returning to New York in 2007.
Speaking from experience, he takes issue with the “conventional
wisdom that these are all crooks and bad guys.”
The FBI has brought no charges against Page, and they’ve been
spying on him for 4 years. The spying began when he met with Victor Podobnyy,
who turned out to be a “Russian operative”. Page denies knowing that the man
was a spy. He says he gave him some extracts of lectures he gave at NYU.
According
to the New York Times, “The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in
2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not
known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.”
Page made a speech in July of 2016 in Russia in which he
criticized U.S. foreign policy toward Russia. He said that the West was
prolonging “Cold War tendencies”. He said that the U.S. was “condescending and
hostile” toward Russia. He said “Ironically, Washington and other Western
capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus
on democratization, inequality, corruption and regime change.”
Two months later, the FBI, its suspicions aroused, got a FISA
warrant from a federal judge so that they could electronically surveil Page. To
get this, the FBI had to affirm through “facts and circumstances” that Page is
an “agent of a foreign power”.
CNN now reports that the investigation has come up with no
evidence of wrongdoing by Page or anyone else in the Trump campaign:
“Intelligence analysts and FBI investigators who analyzed various strands of
intelligence from human sources to electronic and financial records have found
signs of possible collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. But
there is not enough evidence to show that crimes were committed, US officials
say.”
There is no Russiagate scandal in the sense of Trump
collaborating with Russia or winning an election through dastardly Russian
intervention or hacking, and, if one believes that there is such a scandal,
Carter Page is not a key figure in this imagined but non-existent scandal. That
version of Russiagate is fake.
The FBI
has a habit of investigating people they shouldn’t. This includes Jackie
Robinson, Arthur Miller, Martin Luther King, Jr., Helen Keller, Charlie
Chaplin, Rock Hudson, Truman Capote, and Lucille Ball. (See here.)
If a warrant can be issued because Carter Page had Russian
friends, criticized the sanctions against Russia and lambasted U.S. foreign
policy toward Russia, then when you come right down to it, no one is safe from
FBI spying. Ron Paul is not safe. Lew Rockwell is not safe. Daniel McAdams is
not safe. Justin Raimondo is not safe.
Trump and his team were not safe. A real scandal or the real
Russiagate scandal has to include as one facet the FBI’s extended, superfluous
and invasive investigations of people like Carter Page on the basis of no
evidence worthy of probable cause of a crime.
Many irresponsible media used these investigations and
associated leaks from other intelligence sources as a means to attack the Trump
administration. This has had the very real effect of undermining a nascent
alteration in policy that would have sought better relations with Russia. Obama
poisoned that well to some extent, but it was reversible. The poison could have
been cleansed from the well. The fake Russiagate and publicity have halted that
process.
What
we have now is heightened suspicion, which is a risk factor for outright
hostilities. We have Nikki Haley, our UN Ambassador saying “Take it seriously. We cannot trust
Russia. We should never trust Russia.” This is an extraordinary sentiment
coming from someone who is supposed to be a diplomat and who is supposed to
interact to our benefit with Russia at the UN.
If this is a sign of the attitude that’s in power, why would we
not expect Haley or her domestic counterparts to begin attacking Americans whom
they brand as untrustworthy because they trust Russians enough to want to do
business with them? Why won’t Haley and her ilk next be attacking Americans who
criticize U.S. foreign policy toward Russia, who criticize the sanctions and
the expansion of NATO, and who accept the annexation of Crimea as legitimate
and not a Russian invasion? Why should we not expect the FBI to bear down upon
outspoken critics of U.S. foreign policy like Ron Paul?
Michael S.
Rozeff [send him
mail] is a retired Professor of Finance living in East Amherst, New
York. He is the author of the free e-book Essays on
American Empire: Liberty vs. Domination and the free
e-book The
U.S. Constitution and Money: Corruption and Decline.
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