Episode 39: "America This Week," with Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn

Yeah.

I think there are really two big events, one at the beginning of the week, where we had

the release of, I guess you could say the long-awaited report of Special Counsel John

Dorham on the origins of Russiagate, and then in somewhat of a surprise news story, there

was a hearing of the Weaponization of Government Committee yesterday involving three FBI whistleblowers,

one of whom I interviewed last year.

And I think there are things we can say about both of these things that will flow into a

discussion of the piece of literature that we picked to talk about this week, which is

the Great Loyalty Oath Crusade.

So I guess let's start with the Dorham report.

I was probably much more obsessed with the Russia story than you were for most of the

last six years.

I wasn't down in the weeds with it.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess we also weren't talking as regularly back then.

This was a major event in my life.

I mean, it was probably the reason I'm not working at Rolling Stone anymore.

I think I saw the writing on the wall when I saw how the company was responding to my

inability to deal with that story the way they wanted to do it.

And so I became obsessed with what actually happened, and it was very difficult to get

sources about this story.

And so there would have been a time, I think, maybe three or four years ago, where all the

information that's in this report would have been like manna from heaven to me, because

we were all lacking all those answers.

How did this thing start?

What actually is behind it all?

So there's a little bit of an anticlimax to some degree in reading some of this stuff.

But at the same time, it really fully exposed the entire Russiagate era as a fraud, and

there was no response.

It just landed with a complete thud.

Nobody acknowledged it.

Nothing.

I mean, I don't know.

What was your response to it?

For me, it was so long-awaited that I had forgotten it was even coming.

And secondly, though, it would have been nice to have this information a long time ago.

The truth is, we had almost all of the information a long time ago.

What we didn't have was the certification of the information by a government authority,

by a legal authority.

But Lee Smith wrote a book, The Plot Against the President, which largely included most

of these points and details, which come down to this for me.

This was an investigation which led to the, you know, Crossfire Hurricane, which led to

the Mueller investigation, predicated on really nothing.

Which led to the New York case.

You're right.

You're right.

And so, what we found out was that there was no there there from the very beginning.

That a misreported bar conversation with as low a level a Trump person as you could have

found was the basis for this, you know, great madness that the country went through.

Every broadcast, practically, that Rachel Maddow did, or headlines across the board,

or a kind of preoccupation with the Russian threat that exists even today, really, I mean.

And it was also shown, I think, in the report that there were many, many points at which

the whole thing was questioned internally and could have been ended and wasn't.

It was, in terms of literature, a document about inertia and cognitive dissonance and

doubling down and going on, trooping on in a crusade that had no basis, but which developed

its own logic, its own momentum and its own necessities.

But basically, what we had was a Hillary Clinton generated attack on Trump, which became a

legal and governmental initiative that grew and grew and which couldn't be stopped.

And which really, I think, Durham did a good job of showing, reached to the highest levels

of the government.

Apparently, everyone was briefed on the reality of this thing early on, very early on.

All the highest authorities knew it was bullshit.

And yet, for some mysterious reason, it blowed like the mighty Mississippi.

It's being diplomatic.

In a way, I guess it became necessary that the system vindicated itself by finding that

which could not be found and asserting that which could not be proved to the point that

the moment where it mattered passed away.

President Trump's no longer president.

All of the harms that were done by this thing have been done.

They changed our history.

They changed our media.

They changed our sort of sense of information and why it's important.

In other words, the disinformation complex that we talk about over and over on this show

is in some ways predicated on the heinous act that goes back to 2016, in which the Russians

allegedly penetrated not only the country, but the campaign of Donald Trump to such a

level that we have to build all these defenses against it ever happening again, except it

never happened in the first place.

Which, I think, when we were speaking off air, which to you is like, what?

I mean, it's a little bit like going back in time to 2001 and changing one minor little

fact.

It's as though somebody put up their hand in 2009 or so and said, we've just investigated

9-11 and found out it didn't happen.

It was a video.

It didn't actually occur.

But all of the wars and effluent activities that came from it are still in place, and

we need to protect them.

Yeah, it was.

It was the ultimate, oh, that?

And you talk about how the Durham Report has landed to a kind of silence.

Well, what other option do people who've won Pulitzers for reporting on something that

didn't happen have but to be quiet?

I mean, they can't really argue that it did happen now, and they can't really argue that

we should be able to report on things that didn't happen as though they did because the

issues themselves are important, and getting Donald Trump was such an overriding concern

that making stuff up was called for.

So I mean, they're stuck, and everybody just has to troop on in this strange double-think

way in which we know it didn't happen, but it was very important anyway.

And we had to change our system and our values around to accommodate this thing that didn't happen.

handle this information.

I mean, what would you do?

Would you have a special broadcast where Lawrence O'Donnell goes on the air and says,

you know, in light of some new information, basically everything that we've talked about

on this channel for the last seven years, we're going to have to retract or start over

or reconsider.

I mean, there were so many stories that now are no longer valid, and there would be no

place even to start, even for the most careful of these organizations.

I wouldn't consider the cable stations to be...

I have no expectations that they're going to go back and do anything.

But the New York Times, I'm sure there are a few editors who have some desire to go back

and try to repair this, but what do you do?

I mean, there's a passage in this report.

If we could, let's just read a little bit of this passage.

So this is all about the original meeting between the Australian diplomat Alexander

Downer and the very young, I think 28-year-old Russian, the 28-year-old Trump aide who had

just joined the Trump campaign and basically, as he said, could not have been a lower-level

figure in the campaign.

So the whole predicate of the investigation is based on what happened in the conversation

between these two people.

Now, I'm going to go back in time a little bit and talk about the news story that made

this moment in time a crucial piece of history.

There was a big feature in the New York Times on December 13, 2017.

The headline was, How the Russia Inquiry Began, a campaign aide drinks and talk of political

dirt.

And then it goes on to say that unlike what Trump had said, it was not, as Mr. Trump and

other politicians have alleged, a dossier compiled by a former British spy hired by

a rival campaign.

Instead, it was firsthand information from one of America's closest intelligence allies.

Interviews and previously undisclosed documents show that Mr. Papadopoulos played a critical

role in this drama and reveal a Russian operation that was more aggressive and widespread than

previously known.

It talks in this Times story about basically Papadopoulos telling Downer, mentioning dirt,

mentioning thousands of emails that the Russians allegedly had.

So now let's read from the report.

Both diplomats, I'm sorry, this all comes from one paragraph in an application for a

FISA warrant that the FBI submitted to the secret FISA court.

It was the fifth paragraph.

So they called this the paragraph five information.

And here's the line, the paragraph from Durham's report that's key.

Notably, the information in paragraph five does not include any mention of the hacking

of the DNC, the Russians being in possession of emails, or the public release of any emails.

In addition, when interviewed by the office, Downer stated that he would have characterized

the statements made by Papadopoulos differently than Australian diplomat one did in paragraph

five.

According to Downer, Papadopoulos made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt, or any specific

approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion

of providing assistance.

Rather, Downer's recollection was that Papadopoulos simply stated the Russians have information

and that was all.

And then he even went on to say that he wouldn't have characterized, Downer also said that

quote, he did not get the sense that Papadopoulos was the middleman to coordinate with the Russians.

So, again, let's compare that to the headline, you know, a campaign aid drinks and talk of

political dirt.

There's no dirt.

There's no emails.

There's no Russians.

We were drinks.

It remains true that the two had drinks.

So, so, so it's all bullshit.

And now it's been traced back to its source.

But Durham also talks about how the Clinton campaign launched an effort to link Trump

to the to to the DNC leak.

And and and Durham criticized him.

being skeptical about it, for not subjecting it to any reality tests whatsoever.

Which makes me wonder how this Downer thing happened so serendipitously.

In other words.

It sounds as though there was a decision made to tar Donald Trump with Russian connections.

And then you also had this alleged meeting at which drinks were actually consumed.

If nothing else happened that that supported that narrative.

How did that happen?

Exactly.

I guess I'm unclear on the timeline.

They wanted to get they wanted to get Donald Trump attached to Putin.

And they also had this drinks incident that allowed them to do it, which happened first.

They were documented by Downer on May 11th, 2016.

The DNC hack.

I'm not sure I have to go back because that timeline always confuses me.

It's one of the reasons why I never talk about, you know, Aaron Maté is the one who has gone

over this timeline a million times.

It's always confusing to me when that happened.

But the significant thing about what you're talking about is that this whole piece of

information about which they allegedly got by intercepting basically a Russian intelligence

communique, or they did some kind of analysis of Russian intelligence that the Russians

claimed that that approval took place on July 26, 2016.

That this plan was approved on July 26, 2016.

Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI probe, opened on July 31st, 2016.

CIA Chief John Brennan conveniently does not recall if he knew about this plan on July

28th when he met with Obama.

In other words, what you're suggesting is a very serious and legitimate question.

Does this thing with Downer, is it connected in some way to what they call the Clinton

intelligence plan in this report?

There isn't any great evidence for that.

Anybody went to Australia and suggested that they forward on some kind of complaint.

Or was Downer there to interview Papadopoulos, the sub Rosa?

I think they met twice actually.

And they did know that they had almost nothing initially.

But they decided they were going to keep going at Papadopoulos to try to get him to

confess something or say something injurious to Trump.

And they went at him with, you know, other people and tapes and attempts to get him

make a mistake or so on.

Literally dozens scores, 200 times, 200 times and still didn't get anything.

All they got was all they got was some some guy making a report that said his

denials seemed canned, quote unquote, and weird, quote unquote.

But they had absolutely consistent and endless chances to get something from him.

And they failed every time.

Do we want the FBI sending confidential human sources into political campaigns and

saying, hey, you know, what do you think about committing this crime?

Or, you know, wouldn't it be great if if this illegal thing happened in our favor

and, you know, taping that and forwarding it to the FBI and doing God knows what with

it? I mean, people aren't paying attention to this because, again, it's Trump.

They don't care.

The the the broader implications of this.

You know, the drinks were had in London.

In other words, how can I put this?

There is a you have an Australian diplomat and you have drinks in London and you

have a lot of international intrigue, which had it happened in the United States

might not have been kosher, I guess.

The whole throughout the Russia gate and Mueller business, there was a sense that

not only were our because because I never bought it from the beginning.

OK, I'll just put it out there.

It never met any evidentiary standards that I, as a journalist, held.

And so I was watching almost in horror from from the beginning, as as you might

have at Rolling Stone.

I was a I was a political commentator for Harper's magazine at the time this stuff

got going. I was at the Republican convention at the end of July.

And as it as it took on more and more monstrous proportions and I found myself

increasingly alienated, Harper's and other places ran cover after cover and story

after story, which which rapidly.

Didn't even treat this as an investigation.

This was the funny thing about the Mueller investigation was that it was one

whose conclusions were all were all prejudged.

People were merely waiting for Mueller to prove what they already knew in journalism.

It was an article of faith that it was all true.

It was just we're going to find out the details when Mueller time finally comes around.

cases in which the crime had the crime was known.

The sentence was being considered, but only the evidence was lacking.

And America basically waited in some kind of vigil in front of MSNBC and their copy

of the Sunday Times to find out exactly how this crime that they all knew had occurred

had worked.

And the first, you know, the first the first disappointment was, of course,

that it didn't lead to any convictions or any real consequences in a court of law,

except for tertiary or secondary characters.

How until now the crime is still assumed to have happened.

I don't know.

I mean, it's been so long since the since there was any substantive reason to believe

in any of it, but it has gone on almost like a religion.

And now this Durham thing comes along and it's as though they said the resurrection

actually never happened.

But wait, we've got a whole church built around the notion that it did.

Are we destroy the church or are we to move on from the niggling question of whether

the resurrection happened?

And it seems that the institutional decision across the board has been that the church

is far more important than the event.

Right.

I mean, it's Seventh-day Adventism all over again.

It's the Great Disappointment, which was the Mueller report.

And well, let's predict a new end of the world, which is going to be when Trump is

finally put in jail.

And they just need a new theory of how that's going to happen.

It doesn't seem to matter to anybody that the original predicate of this was that there

was nothing.

It was just vapor.

I've seen a lot of people comment on the fact that, hey, you can't say there was

nothing there because there was a meeting in the Trump Tower with Natalia Veselnitskaya

and Trump Jr.

And it doesn't bother anybody that this was a year forward in the process that this

manufactured FBI investigation had already been a year in the making before they ever

stumbled upon that piece of information, which I don't think is very significant anyway.

But whatever.

I mean, there's a little bit of bad optics in being willing to accept potentially some

dirt on a candidate from a dubious source.

But all the candidates do that stuff.

I mean, all the campaigns will do nasty oppo research.

None of the information about how the original story came to being, no matter how devastating

the information is, from the origins of the Steele report, from the fact that Steele's

primary source wasn't even in Russia, that the primary source's subsources were just

his childhood friends riffing on stuff that they talked about in bars over beers and stuff.

That doesn't bother anybody.

The way the Alpha server story, which was taken seriously, was investigated by the special

counsel.

It was made up by a bunch of, you know, researchers.

of error, madness and deception.

My old boss, my boss at the New Republic, the editor in chief, wrote the initial story

on the Alpha server.

And really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Frank Foyer.

OK.

And he was the editor in chief of the New Republic, someone who edited my copy, held

some authority in the organization.

Obviously, he was the boss.

And I remember when that story came out, it was a long one.

And it was it was it August of 2016, maybe it was.

And it was it was the first almost platform like story that started the notion that there

was a deep connection between Trump and Putin.

And I remember reading it and thinking, I can tell this isn't true.

I can tell for a lot of reasons it isn't true.

And going, well.

So.

Is this guy going to go on when this is proved not true?

Are journalists who have signed on to what almost instantly appeared to me to be a campaign

effort to get Hillary elected?

Are they going to face any consequences?

I have yet to see any journalists face any consequences whatsoever.

I can't really think of any.

Can you?

I mean, of the real big guys, Korn, Frank, the various Times reporters.

Yeah.

Mike Isikoff has has said, you know, I don't think I would have done it the same way.

Maybe I maybe I jumped to conclusions or was misled or something.

You have an untouched journalistic establishment, which was absolutely key to this whole thing,

because the way this captured the public's imagination was through leaks that were then

reported on.

Geez, some of the places like BuzzFeed politics don't even exist anymore.

In other words, there have been entire press organizations who have ended their life cycle

in the time of this thing.

It's gone on for so long.

And one of my problems with the Durham report is that it's so damned late.

It seems ridiculous that a that a report on election interference, which is what this

was, should come a couple of elections later.

I mean, is it not an urgent mission to make sure that that doesn't happen again?

You know, we're practically at our third election since then.

And, you know, we're just getting this now.

And I and I'm unclear on what in this report required all this time.

which was, you know, also quite in depth, went over a lot of the same material, but

came out in 2019.

You know, I don't I don't understand why Durham couldn't have come out a little bit after

that.

There isn't a whole lot of stuff that he's uncovered or that he says that he uncovered

or that he's revealing that he uncovered that warranted all that extra time.

I mean, there are there are a few things that we didn't know.

We didn't know about the engineering of the Alpha story.

We didn't know about some of the hijinks involving.

Eager Dench and Co.

And all that.

So there are some questions about what this report really is and why it was timed the

way it was and what its purpose is.

I get all that.

There are going to be some people.

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