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Following being on a pair of accuracy.org news releases, FBI whistleblower Coleen Rowley and journalist Aaron Maté appeared on several programs just after Robert Mueller’s long-anticipated testimony on Capitol Hill. See Rowley on The Real News, where, among other things, she gives critical background on Mueller. And see Maté on the Jimmy Dore Show and CGTN’s “The Heat“scrutinizing much of the conventional wisdom on Russiagate.

CHARLES GLASS, [currently in France] charlesglass at gmx.com, @CharlesMGlass
Glass was ABC News Chief Middle East correspondent from 1983 to 1993. His latest book is They Fought Alone: The True Story of the Starr Brothers, British Agents in Nazi-Occupied France.

He recently wrote the piece “Julian Assange Languishes in Prison as His Journalistic Collaborators Brandish Their Prizes,” which states: “At my last meeting this year with Assange, the energy I recall at our first encounter in January 2011 was undiminished. He made coffee, glancing up at surveillance cameras in the tiny kitchen and every other room in the embassy that recorded his every movement. We talked for about an hour, when an embassy official ordered me to leave. In between, we discussed his health, his strategy to stay out of prison, his family, and the Democratic National Committee’s accusation that he colluded with President Donald Trump and Russia to hack its emails and publish them. The DNC was alleging that Assange revealed its ‘trade secrets,’ a reference to the methods the DNC used to deprive Bernie Sanders of the presidential nomination. The DNC is using the 1970 Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, meant to control organized crime, to pursue a journalist-publisher. If successful, it will set a precedent that should worry media everywhere.

“Trump’s personal lawyers insist that no crime was committed and therefore, no criminal conspiracy took place. That won’t stop the DOJ under Trump’s attorney general from pursuing criminal charges against Assange, not only for working with Manning to gain access to government secrets, but also to examine how Assange obtained confidential Defense and State Department documents, as well as the CIA’s hacking program that WikiLeaks published in 2017 under the name Vault 7. London’s Guardian newspaper, which had once cooperated with Assange, had accused him of meeting Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort in the embassy. Assange said, ‘I have never met or spoken to Paul Manafort.’ The embassy’s logbook, signed by all visitors, had no record of Manafort.”

STEPHEN KINZER, kinzer.stephen at gmail.com, @stephenkinzer
Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His books include Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq and most recently, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire.

He recently wrote the piece “The Folly of ‘Russiagate’” for the Boston Globe: “As long as Clinton and those who followed her off the electoral cliff believe [Russiagate], they can avoid self-criticism and blame someone else for her loss. Best of all, years of relentless attacks by American pundits and politicians have turned the person they want to blame — President Vladimir Putin of Russia — into a caricature of evil. That made it possible to imagine Putin as powerful enough to decide the outcome of a presidential election in the United States. Mueller’s report is a rude shock to those who dove down this rabbit hole.

“Media-driven hallucinations have shaped American political history. Spain’s 1898 destruction of the USS Maine in Havana Harbor propelled the United States into the Spanish-American War — but 70 years later the explosion was found to have been caused by sparks from the ship’s furnace. Congress voted to plunge into war in Vietnam after Communists attacked U.S. warships in the Gulf of Tonkin; later it became clear that no such attack occurred. As we prepared to invade Iraq in 2003, almost every important politician and media outlet parroted baseless assertions that Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.”

He warns that as “Russiagate” “becomes dogma, anyone in Washington who urges diplomacy with Russia is stigmatized. That is more dangerous to our security than anything that happened during the last presidential campaign.”

Also see Kinzer’s piece “How to Interfere in a Foreign Election.”

See some of the past Institute for Public Accuracy news releases on “Russiagate.” Also see from FAIR by Sam Husseini: “Triumph of Conventional Wisdom: AP Expunges Iran/Contra Pardons from Barr’s Record.”

Radio Free Europe is reporting that during a visit to the country of Georgia, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the South Caucasus country will join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, despite Russia’s strong opposition. See: “Stoltenberg: Georgia Will Join NATO, And Russia Can Do Nothing About It.” See NATO statement on NATO-Georgian military exercises. The country of Georgia borders Russia, Turkey and the eastern end of the Black Sea. It is about 2,000 miles from the Atlantic.

Stoltenberg is scheduled to address a joint session of Congress on April 3.

STEPHEN F. COHEN, sfc1 at nyu.edu
Available for a limited number of interviews, Cohen is professor emeritus of Russian studies, history, and politics at New York University and Princeton University. A Nation contributing editor, he is the author, most recently, of War With Russia? From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.

He recently wrote the piece “Even a Vacuous Mueller Report Won’t End ‘Russiagate.’”

Cohen writes: “The top Democratic congressional leadership evidently has concluded that promoting the new Cold War, of which Russiagate has become an integral part, is a winning issue in 2020. How else to explain Nancy Pelosi’s proposal — subsequently endorsed by the equally unstatesmanlike Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, and adopted — to invite the secretary general of NATO, a not-very-distinguished Norwegian politician named Jens Stoltenberg, to address a joint session of Congress? The honor was once bestowed on figures such as Winston Churchill and at the very least leaders of actual countries. Trump has reasonably questioned NATO’s mission and costs nearly 30 years after the Soviet Union disappeared, as did many Washington think tanks and pundits back in the 1990s. But for Pelosi and other Democratic leaders, there can be no such discussion, only valorization of NATO, even though the military alliance’s eastward expansion has brought the West to the brink of war with nuclear Russia.”

AARON MATÉ, aaronmate at gmail.com, @aaronjmate
For over two years, Maté has written a series of pieces for The Nation questioning the prevailing orthodoxy on “Russiagate” including: “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Russiagate Fixation,” “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in U.S. Politics,” “Don’t Let Russophobia Warp the Facts on Russiagate,” “Don’t Count on Russiagate to Bring Trump Down,” and from Feb. 2017: “Stop With the Conspiracy Theories — Trump Is Bad Enough.”

He was also featured on numerous Institute for Public Accuracy news releases on the subject, including: “Behind MSNBC’s Russia Obsession,” “From Cohen to Venezuela: Hollowness of ‘Russiagate,’” “Is Flynn/Kushner Actually Israelgate?” and “Why is Israelgate Being Downplayed?”

He said today: “Robert Mueller’s findings should put to rest the Trump-Russia collusion theory that has dominated U.S. media and political culture for more than two years. They also should come as no surprise to anyone who closely followed the available evidence in the case to date. The narrative of a Trump-Russia conspiracy was not grounded in fact. Unfortunately, prominent media and political voices ignored the countervailing evidence to blow it far out of proportion and mislead millions of people into expecting that Mueller would uncover a Trump-Russia plot.”

Maté also blamed the “intelligence agencies that relied on dubious evidence, namely the Steele dossier, to target a major presidential campaign — setting up a dangerous precedent, no matter one’s party affiliation.

“The collapse of Russiagate need not be a defeat for the anti-Trump resistance that got behind it. The Trump-Russia fixation has sidelined attention on Trump’s actual policies, and channelled liberal energy into unrealistic expectations. With Mueller no longer able to fill that fantasy role, those who oppose Trump have the opportunity to build a real resistance to his administration, and confront the serious issues that Russiagate has helped us avoid. The task will not be easy: as some of us progressive skeptics of Russiagate warned, the incessant faith in a conspiracy theory did not take into account that it not only overlooked Trump’s actual policies, but also stood to benefit Trump should it collapse. With Mueller’s probe wrapping up with no finding of a conspiracy, those who led their audiences to expect the opposite have just handed Trump a massive gift for his re-election campaign.”

AARON MATÉ, aaronmate at gmail.com, @aaronjmate
Since Trump became president, Maté has written a series of pieces for The Nation counter to the prevailing conventional wisdom on Russiagate, including: “Mueller Accuses Roger Stone of Lying and Bullying — but Not Collusion,” “The Manafort Revelation Is Not a Smoking Gun,” “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in U.S. Politics,” “Don’t Let Russophobia Warp the Facts on Russiagate,” “Russiagate Is More Fiction Than Fact” and “Stop With the Conspiracy Theories — Trump Is Bad Enough.”

He recently tweeted: “Do Russiagate peddlers get how bad this has gone? Cohen: – ‘I do not’ have collusion evidence – ‘Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress’ (cc @BuzzFeedBen) – Stone told Trump public info re: WL & false info re: Assange & we haven’t even heard his Prague denial yet.”

“Also crying out for explication is the claim that there were ‘negotiations over the Moscow project.’ There were no ‘negotiations’ in a meaningful sense because there was never any Russian approval or financing. The ‘negotiations’ were mainly Cohen & Sater bickering w/ each other.”

Maté was recently in Venezuela. He’s also recently tweeted: “The coda of collusion-free Mueller probe coinciding w/ top Democrats’ backing of Trump meddling in Venezuela underscores dangers some of us saw long ago: fixation on a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory is not real Resistance, & neither is supporting among worst of Trump’s policies.”

“‘Losing ties with Venezuela would be a huge blow to Russia. Putin will do his utmost to prevent regime change.’ Since regime change is Trump’s explicit goal, Russiagate peddlers will do their utmost to prevent this inconvenient fact from being acknowledged.”

STEPHEN F. COHEN, sfc1 at nyu.edu, and via Caitlin Graf, caitlin at thenation.com
Available for a very limited number of interviews, Cohen is professor emeritus at New York University and Princeton University.

He is author of the just-released book War with Russia? From Putin and Ukraine to Trump and Russiagate. He just wrote “Anti-Trump Frenzy Threatens to End Superpower Diplomacy” for The Nation: “Why the frenzy now? Perhaps because Russiagate promoters in high places are concerned that special counsel Robert Mueller will not produce the hoped-for ‘bombshell’ to end Trump’s presidency. Certainly, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt seems worried, demanding, ‘The president must go,’ his drop line exhorting, ‘What are we waiting for?’ …

“One of The New York Times’ own recent ‘bombshells,’ published on January 12, reported, for example, that in spring 2017, FBI officials ‘began investigating whether [President Trump] had been working on behalf of Russia against American interests.’ None of the three reporters bothered to point out that those ‘agents and officials’ almost certainly included ones later reprimanded and retired by the FBI itself for their political biases. (As usual, the Times buried its self-protective disclaimer deep in the story: ‘No evidence has emerged publicly that Mr. Trump was secretly in contact with or took direction from Russian government officials.’)

“In preparing U.S.-Russian (Soviet and post-Soviet) summits since the 1950s, aides on both sides have arranged ‘private time’ for their bosses for two essential reasons: so they can develop sufficient personal rapport to sustain any policy partnership they decide on; and so they can alert one another to constraints on their policy powers at home, to foes of such détente policies often centered in their respective intelligence agencies. (The KGB ran operations against Nikita Khrushchev’s détente policies with Eisenhower, and, as is well established, U.S. intelligence agencies have run operations against Trump’s proclaimed goal of ‘cooperation with Russia.’)

That is, in the modern history of U.S.-Russian summits, we are told by a former American ambassador who knows, the ‘secrecy of presidential private meetings…has been the rule, not the exception.’ He continues, ‘There’s nothing unusual about withholding information from the bureaucracy about the president’s private meetings with foreign leaders…. Sometimes they would dictate a memo afterward, sometimes not.’ Indeed, President Richard Nixon, distrustful of the U.S. ‘bureaucracy,’ sometimes met privately with Kremlin leader Leonid Brezhnev while only Brezhnev’s translator was present.

“Nor should we forget the national-security benefits that have come from private meetings between U.S. and Kremlin leaders. In February 1986, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, meeting alone with their translators, decided that all nuclear weapons should be abolished. The result, in 1987, was the first and still only treaty abolishing an entire category of such weapons, the exceedingly dangerous intermediate-range ones. (This is the historic treaty Trump has said he may abrogate.)

“And yet, congressional zealots are now threatening to subpoena the American translator who was present during Trump’s meetings with Putin. If this recklessness prevails, it will be the end of the nuclear-superpower summit diplomacy that has helped to keep America and the world safe from catastrophic war for nearly 70 years — and as a new, more perilous nuclear arms race between the two countries is unfolding.”

This commentary is based on the most recent of Cohen’s weekly discussions of the new U.S.-Russian Cold War with the host of the John Batchelor radio show. Cohen’s previous books include Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War.

ALI ABUNIMAH, aliabunimah at me.com, @AliAbunimah
Available for a limited number of interviews, Abunimah is founder of the Electronic Intifada, which reports Friday in “Watch the Film the Israel Lobby Didn’t Want You to See” that it “has obtained a complete copy of The Lobby — USA, a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States.

The Electronic Intifada “is today publishing the first two episodes. … The film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in October 2017.

“But it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film,” which “exposes the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate U.S. citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

Abunimah said today: “The influence of the Israel lobby is pervasive and detrimental to the cause of peace and democracy. Israel has also provided a proving ground for heinous policies, like shooting children who may throw stones. Quite predictably, Trump is proposing adopting this practice now along the U.S.-Mexican border. This highlights the authoritarian alliance between Netanyahu and Trump, but it builds on support that liberals have given Israel for decades. Standing against all this are activists. The film we’re releasing today documents some of the Israeli government’s efforts at silencing them.”

The New York Times reports on “How Trump-Fed Conspiracy Theories About Migrant Caravan Intersect With Deadly Hatred” — citing “the baseless claims that George Soros is financing the migrants as they trek north.” Meanwhile, influence of pro-Netanyahu casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson has received minimal scrutiny. See IPA news release: “Billionaires Fueling Trump on Iran Deal, Jerusalem Move.”

The New York Times reports: “When President Trump arrived Tuesday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to pay his respects to the 11 victims of a mass shooting three days earlier, the only public official standing there to greet him was Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.” Dermer took the occasion of the killing of Jews by a white supremacist to smear critics of Israel, including British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Electronic Intifada has reported extensively on efforts by the Israeli government to undermine Corbyn’s articulation of rights of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, after two years of establishment Democrats focusing on Russiagate, Aaron Mate notes in The Nation: “With Just Days to the Midterms, Russiagate Is MIA.” See past IPA news releases on Israeli influence.

ALAN MACLEOD, alanmacleod11 at gmail.com, @AlanRMacLeod
MacLeod is a member of the Glasgow University Media Group and just recently wrote the piece “The Utility of the Russiagate Conspiracy,” for the media watch group FAIR.

He writes: “For the Democrats, Russiagate allows them to ignore calls for change and not scrutinize why they lost to the most unpopular presidential candidate in history. Since Russia hacked the election, there is no need for introspection, and certainly no need to accommodate the Sanders wing or to engage with progressive challenges from activists on the left, who are Putin’s puppets anyway. The party can continue on the same course, painting over the deep cracks in American society. Similarly, for centrists in Europe, under threat from both left and right, the Russia narrative allows them to sow distrust among the public for any movement challenging the dominant order.

“For the state, Russiagate has encouraged liberals to forego their faculties and develop a state-worshiping, conspiratorial mindset in the face of a common, manufactured enemy. Liberal trust in institutions like the FBI has markedly increased since 2016, while liberals also now espouse a neocon foreign policy in Syria, Ukraine and other regions, with many supporting the vast increases in the U.S. military budget and attacking Trump from the right.

“For corporate media, too, the disciplining effect of the Russia narrative is highly useful, allowing them to reassert control over the means of communication under the guise of preventing a Russian ‘fake news’ infiltration. News sources that challenge the establishment are censored, defunded or deranked, as corporate sources stoke mistrust of them. Meanwhile, it allows them to portray themselves as arbiters of truth. This strategy has had some success, with Democrats’ trust in media increasing since the election.”

MacLeod’s most recent book is Bad News From Venezuela: 20 Years of Fake News and Misreporting. It was published by Routledge in April.

Controversies over “Russiagate” and U.S.-Russian relations took a new and possibly historic turn today as The Nation magazine published a rare open letter from an array of prominent Americans calling for “concrete steps … to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.”

Titled “Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security,” the open letter was signed by writer and feminist organizer Gloria Steinem; Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg; Pulitzer Prize-winning writers Alice Walker and Viet Thanh Nguyen; Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams; political analyst Noam Chomsky; former New Mexico governor and ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson; TV public-affairs pioneer Phil Donahue; former White House counsel John Dean; The Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel; and more than a dozen others.

“We must reach common ground,” the letter says, “to safeguard common interests — taking steps to protect the nation’s elections and to prevent war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.”

The open letter declares: “No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange.”

The full text of the open letter and the list of signers are below. The letter is posted on The Nation‘s website.

KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL, press at thenation.com, @KatrinaNation
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editor and publisher of The Nation magazine.

ANDREW BACEVICH, bacevich at bu.edu
Bacevich is professor emeritus of history and international relations at Boston University. His books include America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History.

THOMAS DRAKE, tadrake at earthlink.net, @Thomas_Drake1
Drake is a former NSA senior executive and whistle-blower.

Common Ground: For Secure Elections and True National Security

An open letter by Gloria Steinem, Noam Chomsky, John Dean, Governor Bill Richardson, Walter Mosley, Valerie Plame, and others.

Many Americans remain deeply concerned about reports of Russian interference with the 2016 election. Meanwhile, relations between the United States and Russia are at their lowest and most dangerous point in several decades. For the sake of democracy at home and true national security, we must reach common ground to safeguard common interests—taking steps to protect the nation’s elections and to prevent war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

Whatever the truth of varied charges that Russia interfered with the election, there should be no doubt that America’s digital-age infrastructure for the electoral process is in urgent need of protection. The overarching fact remains that the system is vulnerable to would-be hackers based anywhere. Solutions will require a much higher level of security for everything from voter-registration records to tabulation of ballots with verifiable paper trails. As a nation, we must fortify our election system against unlawful intrusions as well as official policies of voter suppression.

At the same time, the U.S. and Russian governments show numerous signs of being on a collision course. Diplomacy has given way to hostility and reciprocal consular expulsions, along with dozens of near-miss military encounters in Syria and in skies above Europe. Both sides are plunging ahead with major new weapons development programs. In contrast to prior eras, there is now an alarming lack of standard procedures to keep the armed forces of both countries in sufficient communication to prevent an escalation that could lead to conventional or even nuclear attack. These tensions are festering between two nations with large quantities of nuclear weapons on virtual hair-trigger alert; yet the current partisan fixations in Washington are ignoring the dangers to global stability and, ultimately, human survival.

The United States should implement a pronounced shift in approach toward Russia. No political advantage, real or imagined, could possibly compensate for the consequences if even a fraction of U.S. and Russian arsenals were to be utilized in a thermonuclear exchange. The tacit pretense that the worsening of U.S.-Russian relations does not worsen the odds of survival for the next generations is profoundly false. Concrete steps can and must be taken to ease tensions between the nuclear superpowers.

Andrew Bacevich, Professor Emeritus, Boston University

Phyllis Bennis, Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies

Noam Chomsky, Professor, Author, and Activist

Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian Studies and Politics, NYU and Princeton University, and Board Member, American Committee for East-West Accord

John Dean, Former Nixon White House Counsel

Phil Donahue, Journalist and Talk-Show Pioneer

Thomas Drake, Former NSA Senior Executive and Whistle-blower

Daniel Ellsberg, Activist, “Pentagon Papers” Whistle-blower, and Author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner

Jack F. Matlock Jr., Former US Ambassador to the USSR and Board Member, American Committee for East-West Accord

Walter Mosley, Writer and Screenwriter

John Nichols, National Affairs Correspondent, The Nation

Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize–Winning Novelist

Frances Fox Piven, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, CUNY Graduate School

Valerie Plame, Former Covert CIA Operations Officer and Author

Adolph Reed Jr., Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania

Bill Richardson, Former Governor of New Mexico

Patricia Schroeder, Former Congresswoman

Norman Solomon, National Coordinator, RootsAction.org

Gloria Steinem, Writer and Feminist Organizer

Adlai Stevenson III, Former US Senator and Chairman, Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor and Publisher, The Nation

Alice Walker, Writer, Poet, and Activist

Jody Williams, Professor and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate

James Zogby, President, Arab American Institute

Signers have endorsed this Open Letter as individuals and not on behalf of any organization.