CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To
Manipulate Trump
An ass kissing portrait of Gina Haspel, torture queen and director of the CIA,
reveals that she lied to Trump to push for more aggression against Russia.
In March
2018 the British government asserted, without providing any evidence, that the
alleged 'Novichok' poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal was the fault of
Russia. It urged its allies to expel Russian officials from their countries.
The U.S.
alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU
countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington
Post described the scene:
President Trump seemed distracted in March as his aides briefed
him at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the administration’s plan to expel 60 Russian
diplomats and suspected spies.
The United
States, they explained, would be ousting roughly the same number of Russians as
its European allies — part of a coordinated move to punish Moscow for the
poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil.
“We’ll match
their numbers,” Trump instructed, according to a senior administration
official. “We’re not taking the lead. We’re matching.”
The next
day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials
said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four
Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on.
The
president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely
equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being
portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.
The
expulsion marked a turn in the Trump administration's relation with Russia:
The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump
administration’s increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The
president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his
Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The past
month, in particular, has marked a major turning point in the administration’s
stance, according to senior administration officials. There have been mass
expulsions of Russian diplomats, sanctions on oligarchs that have bled billions
of dollars from Russia’s already weak economy and, for the first time, a
presidential tweet that criticized Putin by name for backing Syrian leader
Bashar al-Assad.
Today
the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with
Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include
an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine
in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for
its own purpose:
Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the
White House to discuss with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack
in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent.
London was
pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian operatives,
but Mr. Trump was skeptical.
...
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the “strong option” was to expel 60 diplomats.
...
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the “strong option” was to expel 60 diplomats.
To persuade
Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including
Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not
the only victims of Russia’s attack.
Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had
supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok
nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks
that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the
Russian operatives.
Ms Haspel
was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but
pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump
fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end
of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.
The Skripal
case was widely covered and we followed it diligently (scroll down).
There were no reports of any children affected by 'Novichok' nor were their any
reports of dead ducks. In the official storyline the Skripals, before visiting
a restaurant, fed bread to ducks at a pond in the Queen
Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury. They also gave duck-bread to three children to
do the same. The children were examined and their blood was tested. No poison was found and none of them fell ill.
No duck died. (The duck feeding episode also disproves the claim that the Skripals
were poisoned by touching a door handle.)
If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in
cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident.
Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with
Russia. The ruse worked.
The NYT piece
does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It
pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not
out to manipulate him:
The outcome was an example, officials said, of how Ms. Haspel is
one of the few people who can get Mr. Trump to shift position based on new
information.
Co-workers
and friends of Ms. Haspel push back on any notion that she is manipulating the
president. She is instead trying to get him to listen and to protect the
agency, according to former intelligence officials who know her.
The job of the
CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own
policies. Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was
had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her
protector who likely had a role in the game:
Ms. Haspel won the trust of Mr. Pompeo, however, and has stayed
loyal to him. As a result, Mr. Trump sees Ms. Haspel as an extension of Mr.
Pompeo, a view that has helped protect her, current and former intelligence
officials said.