Issues & Insights
Oliver Stone at a Kremlin meeting with Vladimir Putin in 2017

And The Ukraine Whistleblower Is … Oliver Stone

I&I Editorial

The nine-page complaint regarding President Donald Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from a, so far, anonymous CIA “whistleblower” is like something from Hollywood’s favorite conspiracy-peddling director.

Investigative journalist Gerald Posner, author of the book on the John F. Kennedy assassination, 1993’s 600-plus page “Case Closed,” has called sensationalist left-wing moviemaker Oliver Stone a “master filmmaker … but just a terrible historian,” declaring that “the only thing he gets right in ‘JFK’ is the date on which Kennedy is killed.”

Oddly enough, Stone, who seldom meets a far-fetched plot he doesn’t fall in love with, and whose 1991 Kennedy film claiming the CIA engineered the assassination has direct roots in a 1967 KGB-backed hoax planted in the Italian Communist Party-owned organ Paese Sera, has an interest in Ukraine. He believes the nation’s successful 2014 revolt against a regime under the thumb of Russia’s ex-KGB officer ruler, Vladimir Putin, was a neo-Nazi, CIA-orchestrated coup.

It’s been quite a few years ago now since Stone fell in love with Putin, but the newest nameless toast of the town in Washington has other reasons for writing his or her August 12-dated action movie screenplay to the chairmen of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees.

Because of its wording and structure, two things become clear early on in reading the jump cut-filled missive:

  1. Its politicized purpose
  2. The impossibility of it being the work of a single individual

If you worked in a bank, and you heard from others that the bank president was pocketing cash, would you, as a whistleblower, appoint yourself judge and jury and declare that “In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple” fellow workers that the bank president “is using the power of his office to” steal from the bank?

Your knowledge of the incident being hearsay, you wouldn’t be 100% sure. So your written whistleblower complaint would read that he “may be using the power of his office” or you “strongly suspect” or “evidence suggests” a crime or misconduct, etc. And that you would like to see a formal investigation to find out.

Only an outright partisan on a mission to have Trump impeached would consider a phone call to which “I was not a direct witness” to be absolute evidence of guilt, as this letter asserts.

This government official states without any shimmer of doubt that “the president of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election,” and is therefore “deeply concerned that the actions described below,” further on in the complaint, “constitute ‘a serious or flagrant problem, abuse, or violation of law’” and then proceeds even to cite an exact statute in regard to the intel agencies’ inspector general: 50 U.S.C. § 3033(k)(5)(G). Again, not “may constitute”

A Carefully Crafted Impeachment Primer For The Media

Which brings us to the second clear characteristic of the whistleblower’s tract that becomes evident immediately in reading it: that these nine pages are the obvious work of a team of Democratic Party lawyers.

Ex-CIA analyst Fred Fleitz told Fox News Thursday night that he suspects “Democratic attorneys with the House Intelligence Committee” because back on August 28, the panel’s chairman, Democrat Adam Schiff of California, had an astounding premonition of the blowing of the whistle, as he made “almost identical complaints” in a tweet. He claimed: “Trump is withholding vital military aid to Ukraine, while his personal lawyer seeks help from the Ukraine government to investigate his political opponent. It doesn’t take a stable genius to see the magnitude of this conflict. Or how destructive it is to our national security.”

This begs the question: Why, if Schiff really believed “the magnitude of this conflict,” didn’t he move against Trump then? Perhaps because he knew that the audience was in for more exciting scenes from this skillfully shot action flick in just a few weeks’ time.

As Fleitz said, “this is one of the most unusual whistleblowing complaints I’ve ever seen; I’ve seen a bunch of them. Not only was it perfectly written, but it was written with long legal citations, suggesting that it was written by a team of attorneys.”

We already know that the individual is being represented by Andrew Bakaj of Compass Rose Legal Group. Bakaj has worked for some of Washington’s most powerful Democratic Party politicians, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton, and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as well as for the State Department — in, what do you know, the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

Interestingly, the bio of the whistleblower’s co-counsel, Mark Zaid, boasts that “He currently possesses TS/SCI eligibility and has had Q level access” — the very highest level of Top Secret clearance. That not only indicates legal expertise in dealing with espionage matters; it means he’s got plenty of friends within the intelligence agencies and the congressional intel committees, and no doubt at the State Department and the Pentagon as well.

When the whistleblower relates that “Over the past four months, more than half a dozen U.S. officials have informed me of various facts related to” the communications between Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani with Ukrainian officials, was it really “me,” or his or her legal representatives utilizing their Rolodex?

Moreover, the detail gone into in the complaint does not only extend to “long legal citations” as Fleitz notes; we’re provided with lengthy footnotes telling all about the background of Ukrainian politics too. Now who might the targeted readership of such a well-crafted document be? The inspector general of the intelligence community who already knows all this or can have his staff dig it up for him? Members and staff of the House and Senate intel committees, who also already know or have the information at their fingertips?

Of course not. These nine pages, whose lawyer co-authors knew would become public, are a primer for the media, to make sure they can cover the impending impeachment to the max.

A team of Democrat attorneys wrote the script. The establishment media will now dutifully project this Oliver Stone cinematic entertainment onto their screens.

Over 60% of Americans still prefer the anti-American, Putin-loving director’s myth about the JFK slaying, based on half-century-old communist disinformation, rather than what the easily accessible facts show to be true. As 2020 beckons, Trump’s enemies think the voters will believe the plot of this motion picture too.

— Written by Thomas McArdle


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The Issues and Insights Editorial Board has decades of experience in journalism, commentary and public policy.

11 comments

  • I wonder whether gnomish Nadler will ever acknowledge the great contribution Nancy Pelosi must have made to the creation of the whistleblower’s document. I am informed by a reliable source, me, that such is the only explanation for its tone and content.

  • This article is nonsense. Posner has been more discredited that the Steele Dossier. The sting of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK is still deeply felt by the establishment.Oliver Stone’s movie is relevant here though. It shows the same forces that worked against JFK working against Trump. Most of the actors have some connection with the CIA.

  • This is the most plausible solution to the source of the whistleblower document so far put forward. The source will be outed at some point, probably soon, as the impeachment inquiry turns to ashes in the hands of the Democrats who have been urging it for the past three years. The end of the impeachment inquiry will also be the end of the Biden campaign. And Biden’s China dealings will continue to haunt him, as well. All of which will further define the Obama legacy.

  • Great article. Having dealt with the legal profession roughly 55 years, dealing with mostly insurance, fraud, and a few other federal involvements.
    I had the responsibility of reviewing, analyzing, approving, changing, documents prepared by counsel, to address some rather seriously, and very expensive matters.
    I was never disappointed at the ingenuity demonstrated by most of the attorneys.
    It always seemed, that they prepared their presentations more like a play or movie plot, inserting relative points at times that made a “splash!”
    I commented about it once, and lead counsel said, you have to capture the audience, that being the jury, you have to develop in the juror, the feeling of anticipation, that will hopefully swing their viewpoint toward yours!
    I read the whistleblower documents, and saw Lot of “lead counsel” in them. These documents are designed to sway a voter rather than an impeachment panel or committee.
    It’s politicization, and attack on the office of President if the United States.
    I believe, it is unprecedented in American politics, and if allowed to go unaddressed in a legal manner, the President will have has handcuffs put in and will be unable to effectively conduct business with foreign leaders.
    Didn’t mean to be so long, but, it’s a topic where long, serious, discussions are needed. It’s really a damaging and dangerous path the democrats are taking.

    • Dealings with foreign leaders will go on, because they must. What I assume is already happening is that strict secrecy will be the order of the day. The public’s right to know will suffer, and with the current Media committed to working against the President no actual news will come out of the White House. What is favorable to the President will not be printed, and everything else will not have an authentic White House source, and be largely conjecture or simply made up. For those who have confidence in the President he will communicate by tweets and speeches, with an occasional ‘presser’. You are right, it really is a damaging and dangerous path.

  • Oliver Stone is right…her is President Obama admitting it to Fareed Zakaria on CNN in Feb 2015…Obama says ‘Yanukovich fled AFTER we brokered a deal’…and the coup ‘threw Putin off balance’, thus the annexation of Crimea and Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    it is all right here-

  • Biden was doing what Pelosi has been doing with her family for years regarding selling us to China for cash and favors. Talk about a criminal enterprise, that is what many in the party of the damned have done for years.

    • Shamefully, I have not yet read Bugliosi. I was just leafing through it online and I definitely must read it. BUT … it’s been criticized for its snide tone, which someone with the evidence on his side really shouldn’t feel compelled to resort to. And here’s one remark Bugliosi makes in his Mafia section: “To me, the thought that organized crime would actually decide to kill the president of the United States is completely far-fetched and preposterous.” I find that an un-sober assertion for an investigative author, especially in reference to over a half century ago. “Completely far-fetched and preposterous” — too superlative. “Highly unlikely” would be a more retrained way of making the point. But ‘Reclaiming History’ does look exhaustive and I’ll have to take it on. Thank you!

  • The Democrats live in the world of make believe. This is why they so easily associate with Hollyweird.

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