WaPo | We learn, for example, from Tuesday’s spectacular WikiLeaks dump that
among the CIA’s various and nefarious cybertools is the capacity to
simulate intrusion by a foreign power, the equivalent of planting phony
fingerprints on a smoking gun.
Who are you going to believe now?
I can assure you that some enterprising Trumpite will use this
revelation to claim that the whole storyline pointing to Russian
interference in the U.S. election was a fabrication. And who was behind that ? There is no end to this hall of mirrors. My rule, therefore, is: Stay away.
Hard
to do with Washington caught up in one of its periodic conspiracy
frenzies. Actually, two. One, anti-Trump, is that he and his campaign
colluded with Russian intelligence. The other, anti-Obama-CIA-“deep
state,” is that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower to ensnare candidate Trump.
The
odd thing is that, as of today, there is no evidence for either charge.
That won’t, of course, stop the launch of multiple all-consuming
investigations.
(1) Collusion:
James Clapper,
Obama’s director of national intelligence, who has been deeply and
publicly at odds with Trump, unequivocally states that he has seen zero evidence of any Trump campaign collusion with Russia. Nor has anyone else.
(2) Wiretap:
The other storyline is simply fantastical. Congressional Republicans have uniformly run away from Trump’s Obama-wiretap accusation. Clapper denies it. FBI Director James Comey denies it. Not a single member of Trump’s own administration is willing to say it’s true.
Loopier still is to demand that Congress find the truth
when the president could just pick up the phone and instruct the FBI,
CIA and DNI to declare on the record whether this ever occurred. And if
there really was an October 2016 FISA court order to wiretap Trump, the president could unilaterally declassify the information yesterday.
The
bugging story is less plausible than a zombie invasion. Nevertheless,
one could spin a milder — and more plausible — scenario of executive
abuse. It goes like this:
