Clapper and Comey, Heads of NI and FBI, Visited Australia Last Month. What For?

James Clapper

By Mary W Maxwell

Thanks to Gumshoe readers Maree Baker and Phil Hingston for requesting an article on the visits of US spy leaders to Oz in March 2016. That would be James Clapper, 75-year-old head of National Intelligence (which includes CIA), and James Comey, a lad of 55 summers, Director of the FBI.

Really makes one cry to see that Clapper was given the Order of Australia in 2012. But let’s behead Comey first. He is the top official of an unconstitutional organization, the FBI. Well, at least it behaves unconstitutionally. The US Constitution has no role for a federal police. The very concept of a federal police would have offended the Founding  Parents to the point of apoplexy.

A “Bureau” of “Investigation”

Back in 1909, the head of Justice (think about it: the head of justice) declared that within his department there would now be a Bureau of Investigation. It consisted of 34 agents. (Heck, there were more agents than that dancing on the head of a pin on each street of Watertown on April 19, 2013.)

What, you might ask, is the difference between the two spy agencies – FBI and CIA? Beats me. Each is the enemy of the American people, and soon, of the Australian people. You may recall the words of NSW Acting Police Commissioner, in reaction to the Paris stadium incident of November 2015.  He “confirmed the change to FBI-style training” for his officers – as there might be future terrorist incidents in Australia.

(Note: the reason Baker and Hingston asked Gumshoe to cover the visits of US officials to Oz is with an eye to such a coming ‘incident.’ I agree. Though I think natural disasters are on the books, too. An earthquake in Adelaide, perhaps.)

I see from a World Socialist Website article by Tom Peters that James Clapper recently visited New Zealand for talks on ‘intel’. “Clapper held private discussions with both Key and Labour leader Little, who described his meeting as ‘very friendly’.” Peters notes:

“New legislation will be drawn up in close consultation with Washington. Key said General Clapper was in New Zealand on his way to a Five Eyes meeting in Australia. Clapper oversees 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA. His visit underlines the incorporation of New Zealand’s spying operations into the global network operated by the US.”

Dear God.

In the recommended Kiwi law:

“spies would be given immunities from civil and criminal liability if they broke the law during undercover operations.”

Look, what is the point of having law if you exempt certain persons from it? Particularly if those persons, by nature of their ‘work,’ are harming their society. Eh?

There can never be such a law, legitimately. I say bring back legitimacy.

Let’s Talk Bella Vista

This reminds me of George Brandis, QC, Commonwealth Attorney General. Did he or did he not stage an incident on September 25, 2014, in order to get Parliament to pass a bill giving extended anti-terrorism powers to government?

Dee McLachlan wrote her prize-winning (well, not really) essay, “Unremarkable Incident and the passing of Deplorable Legislation,” which I will now quote at length. This is serious business.

25th September (2014). Thursday morning at 6.30 am. A member of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) was attacked. The 41-year-old Navy man told police he was threatened and assaulted by two men of Middle Eastern appearance while wearing his full uniform at Bella Vista, Sydney. They threatened to cut his throat (Channel Nine News). Suffering “minor bruising”, he reported the matter to police and then attended Kings Cross police station in person.

ADF personnel are warned to be careful when wearing their uniform in public following the Bella Vista incident. The fight is now on Australian shores. The media did their usual blitz. The Australian, SBS, SMH, The Guardian, Business Insider etc.

Later than night…

Terror laws clear Senate, enabling entire Australian web to be monitored, and for whistleblowers, journalists, and bloggers to be jailed for 10 years if they disclose information about a special intelligence operations.

Then…

26th September. On Friday morning, the officer/sailor withdraws the assault claim.

I have reported this incident on several occasions and called the media unit in New South Wales on Friday. A very pleasant officer confirmed (via phone) that, “We don’t believe it happened”.

Dee’s further point was that the new legislation – brought about by this wanton skullduggery – included penalties of up to 10 years in prison for journalists like herself who would rat on any crimes committed by government.

Has everybody Down Under got Stockholm Syndrome or something?

Five Eyes

In 2005 it was revealed for the first time that Oz had signed a treaty in 1945, SO SECRET THAT THE PRIME MINISTER DID NOT KNOW OF IT. Hello?

I refer to the Five Eyes Treaty, the eyes being UK, US, Canada, NZ and the land that abounds in Nature’s gifts of beauty rich and rare.

It totally escapes me how that treaty, which requires Senate ratification in the American Congress, could have been anything but a public document. The Independent said this in a 1998 obituary of Harry Hinsley:

“In 1943 Harry Hinsley was sent to Washington to negotiate the ‘Brusa’ codebreaking agreement with the United States government, the agreement which committed both parties to exchange all intelligence information in their possession relating to the Axis powers. As well as preparing the emissary for the complexities and double dealing of the academic world [good heavens!] in which he was to spend the rest of his life, the entrusting of such a mission to a 24-year-old undergraduate serves as a striking reminder of the opportunities that the Second World War provided for highly intelligent individuals from very humble backgrounds.” [Emphasis added]

Harry Hinsley, Sir Edward Travis, Brig Tiltman, circa 1945

More on Five Eyes

Two writers for The Age, Nick Perry and Paisley Dodds (who must surely be somnambulant), had this to say in 2013 in support of a five-eyes type commitment:

“Britain needed US intelligence to help thwart a major terror attack. New Zealand relied on it to send troops to Afghanistan.[?????]  And Australia used it to help convict a would-be bomber.

All feats were the result of a spying alliance known as Five Eyes that groups together five English-speaking democracies, and they point to a vital lesson: American information is so valuable, experts say, that no amount of global outrage over secret US surveillance powers would cause Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand to ditch the Five Eyes relationship.”

Seriously? Listen again “no amount of outrage” will have any effect on a democratically elected government. Um, I don’t get it.

Perry and Dodds continue:

“The broader message is that the revelations from NSA leaker Edward Snowden are unlikely to stop or even slow the global growth of secret-hunting – an increasingly critical factor in the security and prosperity of nations. [Security? Prosperity?]

“Information is like gold,” said Bruce Ferguson, the former head of New Zealand’s foreign spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau. “If you don’t have it, you don’t survive.”

Well, actually that’s what we say at Gumshoe all the time.

Beheading Clapper

Please can we focus on legitimacy again? In 1947, a wonderful year, Congress felt sufficiently threatened to pass the National Security Act. It originally had a section on “interfering with homing pigeons owned by the United States,” but that section was repealed in 1948. I’m trying to be funny here (this is a satirical piece, not sure if you noticed).

Yes, there actually was a section on homing pigeons, but we Seppos tend to think of the National Security Act as being the Act that gave birth to the Central Intelligence Agency. (Not to be confused with the 1950 National Security Memo known as NSC-68 that we tend to associate with the name “Kissinger” – need I say more.)

Clapper, God help him, has under his NI command not only the CIA (which was founded by the Nazi General Richard Gehlen, was it not?), but also the NSA, National Security Agency.

If I recall correctly, NI (national intelligence, of which it is almost the opposite, nicht wahr?) got its start under Dubbya as a solution to the problem of – wait for it—“the intelligence failures surrounding 9/11.”

The first head of NI was British-born John Dimitri Negroponte. If I told you that he worked at embassies in Saigon, Honduras, and the UN, would that suffice?

Allow me to end this “satirical piece,”  with my most patriotic thoughts on the FBI, namely that this organization needs to be on the next train out.

–Mary W Maxwell is hot on the case of the Port Arthur massacre. She likes to be contacted at her website: ProsecutionForTreason.com