Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

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Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby elfismiles » Tue Jul 03, 2018 1:21 pm

Just made aware of this by a post from Larisa ...

https://www.facebook.com/larisa.alexand ... 2139092147

Putting a Face (Mine) to the Risks Posed by GOP Games on Mueller Investigation
July 3, 2018/80 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I’d like to put a human face — my own — to the risk posed by GOP gamesmanship on the Mueller investigation.

Sometime last year, I went to the FBI and provided information on a person whom I had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US. Since that time, a number of public events have made it clear I was correct.

I never in my life imagined I would share information with the FBI, especially not on someone I had a journalistic relationship with. I did so for many reasons. Some, but not all, of the reasons are:

* I believed he was doing serious harm to innocent people
* I believed (others agreed) that reporting the story at that time would risk doing far more harm than good
* I had concrete evidence he was lying to me and others, including but not limited to other journalists
* I had reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper with my website
* I believed that if the FBI otherwise came to understand what kind of information I had, their likely investigative steps would pose a risk to the privacy of my readers

To protect the investigation, I will not disclose this person’s true identity or the identity and/or role I believe he played in the attack. Nor will I disclose when I went to the FBI. I did so on my own, without subpoena; I did that in an effort to protect people who have spoken to me in confidence and other journalists. Largely because this effort involved a number of last minute trips to other cities, I spent around $6K of my own money traveling to meet with lawyers and for the meeting with the FBI.

I always planned to disclose this when this person’s role was publicly revealed. But I’m doing so now for two reasons. First, I think the public deserves to see the text he sent me at 3:15 PM on November 9, 2016.

Image

The substance of the text — that the Trump team started focusing on Syria right after the election — has been corroborated and tied to their discussions with Russia at least twice since then. Most importantly, in his statement to Congress, Jared Kushner explained his request for a back channel with the Russians by describing an effort to cooperate on Syria.

The Ambassador [Sergei Kislyak] expressed similar sentiments about relations, and then said he especially wanted to address U.S. policy in Syria, and that he wanted to convey information from what he called his “generals.” He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation. General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.


Less credibly, in the days after Mike Flynn pled guilty, an inflammatory Brian Ross report was corrected to reveal that “shortly after the election” Trump asked Flynn personally to work with Russia on Syria (Ross left ABC yesterday but as far as I understand the corrected story stands).

Retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn has promised “full cooperation” in the special counsel’s Russia investigation and, according to a confidant, is prepared to testify that Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.

[snip]

The source said Trump phoned Flynn shortly after the election to explicitly ask him to “serve as point person on Russia,” and to reach out personally to Russian officials to develop strategies to jointly combat ISIS.


The text sent to me matches both those reports — indeed, it makes it clear that “shortly after the election” means just over 14 hours after polls closed. But the text doesn’t come from anyone, like Kushner or Flynn, inside the Trump team. It comes from someone who, I believe, had already done real damage to the United States as part of the Russian attack. That person understood the cooperation with Syria in terms of the US backing Bashar al-Assad, not in terms of fighting ISIS.

I’m making this public now because a David Ignatius report Thursday maps out an imminent deal with Russia and Israel that sounds like what was described to me within hours of the election. This deal appears to be the culmination of an effort that those involved in the Russian attack worked to implement within hours after the election.

The other reason I’m disclosing this now is to put a human face to the danger in which the House Republicans are putting other people who, like me, provided information about the Russian attack on the US to the government.

Several times since I first considered sharing information with the FBI, I’ve asked my attorney to contact the FBI to tell them of what I perceived to be a real threat that arose from sharing that information. One of those times, I let law enforcement officers enter my house without a warrant, without me being present.

My risk isn’t going to go away — indeed, going public like this will surely exacerbate it. That’s to be expected, given the players involved.

But I’m a public figure. If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it. That affords me a small bit of protection. There are undoubtedly numerous other witnesses who have taken similar risks to share information with the government who aren’t public figures. The Republicans’ ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who’ve shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy.

I’m speaking out because they can’t — and shouldn’t have to.

It infuriates me to observe (and cover) a months-long charade by the House GOP to demand more and more details about those who have shared information with the government, at least some of whom were only trying to prevent real damage to innocent people, all in an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation. As someone who has worked to rein in dragnets for over a decade, I’m all the more disgusted to see so many lifelong cheerleaders of surveillance pretend to care now.

I only came to be convinced slowly about Russia’s role in the attack and I have been skeptical of the Steele dossier from the day it was published. That said, I obviously do not like Donald Trump — though I’m no Hillary fan, either. But my decision to share information with the FBI had nothing to do with my dislike for Donald Trump. It had to do with the serious damage that someone else I believed to be involved in the Russian attack — someone I had been friendly with — was doing to innocent people, almost all of those people totally uninvolved in American politics.

This investigation is not, primarily, an investigation into Donald Trump. It’s an investigation into people who attacked the United States. It’s time Republicans started acting like that matters.

On Thursday night, I reached out to the Special Counsel’s Office to inquire whether I could post this without damaging the investigation. After sharing the specific language from the passages I felt might pose the biggest concern. Last night at 10:15, I was informed they, “take no position” on my posting it.

image_print

Tags: Christopher Steele, Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn, Sergei Kislyak

http://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/03/pu ... stigation/
Last edited by elfismiles on Tue Jul 03, 2018 1:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Marcy Wheeler

Postby elfismiles » Tue Jul 03, 2018 1:29 pm

Links referenced in the above:

READ: Jared Kushner's statement on Russia to congressional committees
Updated 1913 GMT (0313 HKT) July 24, 2017
https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/24/poli ... index.html

Flynn prepared to testify that Trump directed him to contact Russians about ISIS, confidant says
By Brian Ross,
Matthew Mosk
Josh Margolin
Dec 1, 2017, 11:06 AM ET
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/michael ... d=50849354

Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria?
President Trump meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 Summit in Hamburg in July 2017. (Evan Vucci/Associated Press)
by David Ignatius Opinion writer June 28
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... 3e828b592d

I only came to be convinced slowly about Russia’s role in the attack and I have been skeptical of the Steele dossier from the day it was published.


Unpacking the New CIA Leak: Don’t Ignore the Aluminum Tube Footnote
December 9, 2016/57 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity, Russian hacks /by emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/12/09/u ... -footnote/

The Released Trump Dossier Is Not the Complete Dossier
January 13, 2017/13 Comments/in Russian hacks /by emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/01/13/t ... e-dossier/
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Re: Marcy Wheeler

Postby elfismiles » Tue Jul 03, 2018 1:57 pm

(Ross left ABC yesterday but as far as I understand the corrected story stands)


Brian Ross and longtime producer to leave ABC News months after Michael Flynn error
by Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy July 2, 2018: 5:17 PM ET
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/02/media/ ... index.html
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby Grizzly » Thu Jul 05, 2018 2:37 am

I DON'T TRUST Marcy Wheeler/Empty Wheel. Never have. Oh, don't take offence, I have nothing against her personally, I just think her perception about many things are skewed and that something is off and always has been with her work. Just as much as I LOST FAITH IN dailykos, and Markos Moulitsas, oh so many years ago....That's what my gut tells me and this is after-all, RI. Just as much as I don't trust Seymour Hersh nor Webster Tarpley. Not that it matters or that anyone here even cares....
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby Elvis » Thu Jul 05, 2018 3:42 am

Marcy Wheeler wrote:I always planned to disclose this when this person’s role was publicly revealed. But I’m doing so now for two reasons. First, I think the public deserves to see the text he sent me at 3:15 PM on November 9, 2016.


I'm missing something; about whom is she talking?
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Jul 05, 2018 11:37 am

Yeah, that was word salad, I feel much more confused now than when I started reading this thread.

... that someone else I believed to be involved in the Russian attack — someone I had been friendly with — was doing to innocent people, almost all of those people totally uninvolved in American politics.


Seems like the crux of it, and baffling.
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Jul 05, 2018 5:44 pm

If Moulitsas isn't still CIA (he was proud of his internship), he is certainly Exhibit A for a right-wing Democrat, "centrist" supporter of the bureaucratic party who gets all macho and sounds a lot like the Alt-Right when attacking anything he disdains as to the left of him.

Wheeler used to be better, on the Russia stuff she does pretty standard MSNBC lite, not to make her out into a Maddow or nothing. At least knows to insert disclaimers, but otherwise it's a lot of feints and winks and hints that go fucking nowhere.
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby elfismiles » Fri Jul 06, 2018 10:04 am

The Tea Leaves on Mueller’s Hand Off
July 5, 2018/40 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Cybersecurity, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

As part of writing this post, I confirmed for the first time that the prosecutor I spoke with regarding the Russian attack is not and never has been part of the Mueller team (among other things, I think that means Peter Strzok never got within a mile of my testimony, which is why I asked). But a prosecutor who was involved in discussions setting up my interview is, and the Special Counsel’s Office certainly seemed to recognize my interview as part of the investigation when I alerted them I was going to publish that text. Given that the FBI agents I spoke with didn’t know what topics I cover for a living (and seemed to get wiser about the person we were discussing over two breaks), my guess is that DOJ assigned a team segmented off from the investigation to ensure that no one accidentally dropped hints about the investigation. That’s all just a wildarseguess, though. DOJ has gone to great lengths to ensure I don’t learn anything from the process, as is proper.

Having that tiny glimpse into how DOJ used a prosecutor uninvolved in the case in chief to talk to me about what may have become part of the case in chief is background to explain why I doubt some of the conclusions made in this piece, reporting that Mueller has divvied up tasks to career prosecutors from elsewhere in DOJ.

As Mueller pursues his probe, he’s making more use of career prosecutors from the offices of U.S. attorneys and from Justice Department headquarters, as well as FBI agents — a sign that he may be laying the groundwork to hand off parts of his investigation eventually, several current and former U.S. officials said.

Mueller and his team of 17 federal prosecutors are coping with a higher-then-expected volume of court challenges that has added complexity in recent months, but there’s no political appetite at this time to increase the size of his staff, the officials said.

[snip]

Investigators in New York; Alexandria, Virginia; Pittsburgh and elsewhere have been tapped to supplement the work of Mueller’s team, the officials said. Mueller has already handed off one major investigation — into Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen — to the Southern District of New York.


The only thing that is clearly new in this paragraph is that Mueller has involved prosecutors in Pittsburgh. As the paragraph itself notes, [part of] the investigation into Michael Cohen got handed off to SDNY. But that’s because it involves conduct — a hush money payment that Cohen arranged from Manhattan and taxi medallion fraud — that don’t clearly relate to Russian election interference. Other reports suggest that conduct more closely tied to the election, such as Cohen’s involvement in inauguration graft, remains in Mueller’s hands.

Similarly, we know of at least one EDVA prosecutor involved in Mueller’s investigation. Uzo Asonye got moved onto the team to placate TS Ellis. He will presumably present a good part of the trial that starts later this month, freeing up another member of that team to focus on the DC side of Manafort’s corruption. But that move was driven, in significant part, from Ellis’ direction.

With Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort, there’s plenty of corruption to spread across multiple districts! Heck, Manafort’s former son-in-law is cooperating against him based off a case in LA, and Dmitri Firtash, who is under indictment in Chicago, is one of four oligarchs explicitly named in Manafort’s search warrant.

And, frankly, I’m offended by this passage.

Mueller indicted 13 Russian individuals and three entities in February on charges of violating criminal laws with the intent to interfere with the U.S. election through the manipulation of social media.

None of the targets are in the U.S., but one of them, the Internet Research Agency, has forced Mueller into another legal fight in federal court. The two sides have been sparring most recently over how to protect sensitive investigative materials from disclosure. Mueller has enlisted prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington to handle the case.


I’m offended not just because the passage is factually false: the entity mounting a defense is Concord Management, not Internet Research Agency. But because one should never label a defendant mounting a defense as “forc[ing the prosecutor] into another legal fight.” Yes, Concord’s defense is trollish lawfare aiming to discover intelligence. But that is the risk of using indictments to lay out nation-state information operations.

Also, as I suggested in this post and this post, commentators have made far too much of the technical requirements of the Concord case. The government will use no classified data in the trial, if the trial ever really happens. Which suggests the case will be a glorified call records case, showing that the people running certain accounts were operating from certain IP addresses. That’s not to minimize the import of call records in proving crimes. But it’s just not the most technically difficult case to prove.

Which brings us back to Pittsburgh. In fact, Pittsburgh has already been involved in this case — back when the investigation of the hack of the DNC lived there, as many nation-state hacking cases do. Now, it is definitely true that the hack investigation had, at some point, been moved under Mueller; I know of a witness to the hack who was interviewed at Mueller’s office. But if Mueller’s team of 17 were focused more closely on the “collusion” case, I could imagine them moving the hack case back to where it started.

If that’s actually what happened, it would amount to a hand off, of sorts. But it may not be all that momentous a development. Rather, it might reflect Mueller’s (and Rod Rosenstein’s) continued efforts to keep the matters he will prosecute (as distinct from investigate) closely related to the “collusion” case. That seems like a sound decision both form a resourcing perspective, but it’s a good way to rebut claims that he’s a runaway prosecutor.

image_print

Tags: Concord Management, Dmitri Firtash, Internet Research Agency, Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Peter Strzok, TS Ellis
https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/05/t ... -hand-off/


There Are No Heroes in This Story
July 4, 2018/90 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheel

I want to thank those who said kind things and even donated money to this post laying out how I ended up going to the FBI on the Russian election attack. I expected far more criticism, so I’m profoundly grateful for the support. The support has really validated my decision to come forward.

All that said, I want to emphasize that I’m no hero.

I say that for two reasons. First, leading up to the time I went to the FBI, I’m certain I did stupid things (one thing, well before my understanding of what was going on had changed, has long weighed on my mind). Further, while I still think I made the decisions that made sense at the time, had I made different choices, I might have prevented a whole lot of damage. So I want to be clear that when the full story is told I may take some hits.

The other reason is that when you decide to go the FBI, you don’t decide just for yourself. You decide for everyone downstream and upstream of you who will also undergo scrutiny by the FBI, people who may not share your beliefs or knowledge about the matter and who — more importantly — didn’t have the opportunity to plan to deal with authorities. I tried to limit such impact as much as I could while still providing the FBI the information they couldn’t get elsewhere, without doing their job for them. But ultimately the FBI is still the FBI. I absolutely stand by my decision, but I’m also acutely aware that my decision had real consequences for other people who did not have the luxury of knowing what and why I had decided and likely didn’t and still don’t agree with it. I get that some people question my decision and I absolutely respect that.

Also remember: I’m surely not the only or even first witness involved. Others were probably far more important than I was. Others might not have some privileges I do or the deference granted a journalist (to a vanishing degree). Others did something far more risky by coming forward. Just because I went public doesn’t mean I’m some great key to the Mueller investigation, so please don’t look to me as such!

The stories of Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe should warn us against investing too much hope in anyone as a hero. We’re all just humans, some of us trying to do the right thing and making very human mistakes along the way. In any case, we do far better looking to local organizers these days (to the extent I’ve got real heroes these days, they’re women of color really invigorating organizing), or talking (as I thankfully spent part of the afternoon yesterday doing) to someone with whom we disagree but also share common values, than to anyone within the immediate vicinity of the Mueller investigation.

Happy Fourth of July. We’re all in this together.

https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/07/04/t ... his-story/
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby elfismiles » Sun Jul 08, 2018 9:55 pm

https://www.facebook.com/larisa.alexand ... 7906626313

https://www.facebook.com/scott.horton.5 ... 4848235356

A journalist’s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI. Here’s why.

By Margaret Sullivan
Media Columnist
July 8 at 4:00 PM
Email the author
It’s pretty much an inviolable rule of journalism: Protect your sources.

Reporters have gone to jail to keep that covenant.

But Marcy Wheeler, who writes a well-regarded national security blog, not only revealed a source — she did so to the FBI, eventually becoming a witness in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of President Trump’s possible connections to Russia.

“On its face, I broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism, but what he was doing should cause a source to lose protection,” Wheeler told me in a lengthy phone interview.

“It’s not a decision I regret,” she added.

That she did so, as detailed in a post last week on her emptywheel blog, stunned those who have followed her work because she has so frequently criticized American intelligence agencies and their penchant for surveilling U.S. citizens.

5:09
The ‘scandals’ and progress of the Russia probe
President Trump has tried to shift public attention from the Russia investigation with outlandish claims but they haven't slowed the progress. (Meg Kelly/The Washington Post)

“For her to go to the FBI, that made my jaw drop,” said Daniel Drezner, a Tufts University professor of international politics. (He doesn’t know her personally but has followed her work.)

ADVERTISING

“It’s like Glenn Greenwald calling up the CIA and saying I’ve discovered a mole,” Drezner said. (He was referring to the Pulitzer-winning, anti-surveillance, civil liberties lawyer who is co-founder of the Intercept, which focuses on national security news.)

Wheeler hasn’t named the source publicly, though his name may soon be known to all who are following the Mueller investigation.

But her dealings with him have brought her around to believing something she initially questioned: that Russian interference in the 2016 election was a very real thing, and that Trump associates played a part.

What exactly did the source do to deserve outing to the FBI, in her view? Wheeler is circumspect in describing that.

Her blog post centers on a text message she says she got from the source on Nov. 9, 2016 — about 14 hours after the polls closed — predicting that Michael Flynn, who would be Trump’s appointee for national security adviser, would be meeting with “Team Al-Assad” within 48 hours. Russia has been perhaps the Assad regime’s staunchest ally.


As she noted: “The substance of the text — that the Trump team started focusing on Syria right after the election — has been corroborated and tied to their discussions with Russia at least twice since then.”

Wheeler won’t say when she went to the FBI other than that it was in 2017. In December 2017, Flynn flipped, pleading guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about his contact with the Russian government during the presidential transition; Trump had fired him in February.

In addition to the knowledge of her source’s inside information, Wheeler said, she had reason to believe that the source was involved with efforts to compromise her website and other communications. And perhaps most important, that he was involved in cyberattacks — past and future — that had done and could do real harm to innocent people.


Wheeler, who has written blog posts about national security for almost 15 years, is clear that she wasn’t motivated to talk to the FBI because she is out to get Trump. She certainly doesn’t like him, but she is also not at all a Hillary Clinton fan.

But what motivated her recent revelation that she went to the FBI has plenty to do with politics: She is disgusted by the way House Republicans are, in her view, weaponizing their oversight responsibilities and making it all too likely that FBI informants will have their names revealed — and their safety threatened.

“It infuriates me,” she wrote, to observe the “months-long charade by the House GOP to demand more and more details about those who have shared information with the government . . . all in an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation.”


But as a public figure, she has a measure of protection that others who have come forward don’t have.

“If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it,” she wrote.

Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people they find threatening.

Both decisions — to talk to the FBI and to write about it — required her wrestling with three main issues; concerns about journalistic ethics, the possibility of unintended national-security consequences, and the growing certainty that her suspicions about the source were true.

As a writer working without a newsroom, she had no editor with whom to talk but did consult with a number of lawyers before making her initial decision.


A priest or minister who hears a confession about a serious crime that has already happened, she said, can offer forgiveness. But one who hears of a serious crime in the making is morally required to inform police. She saw herself in that latter category.

Wheeler told me she believed herself to be “uniquely informed” about something that mattered a great deal.

In their reporting, journalists talk to criminals all the time and don’t turn them in.

Reporters aren’t an arm of law enforcement.

They properly resist subpoenas and fight like hell not to share their notes or what they know because doing so would compromise their independence and their ability to do their work in the future.

Wheeler knows all that — and believes in it. But she still came forward, not because of a subpoena but because of a conscience.

As Drezner told me, “She would not do this on a whim.”

And as Wheeler put it, “I believe this is one of those cases where it’s important to hold a source accountable for his actions.”

Without knowing all the details, it’s hard to judge whether she was right.

But it’s not hard to see that her decision was a careful and principled one.

For more by Margaret Sullivan visit wapo.st/sullivan

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyl ... story.html
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby elfismiles » Tue Jul 10, 2018 4:44 pm

Journalist reveals she provided source's identity to the FBI -- and explains why she's speaking out now
by Oliver Darcy @oliverdarcy July 10, 2018: 8:03 AM ET

Giuliani: could have Mueller subpoena 'squashed'

A prominent national security blogger revealed last week that she had provided the identity of a source last year to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a move that led to her becoming a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling.

Marcy Wheeler, the blogger, said the disclosure of her contact with the FBI was only being made now to "put a face to the human danger" she contends House Republicans are putting confidential informants in by demanding the Department of Justice provide Congress information that could unmask such confidential sources.

The decision by a journalist to reveal a source's identity to the FBI, and provide the law enforcement agency with information on the individual, without the person's explicit permission, is highly unusual. Journalists are trusted by sources to protect their identities at all cost, and reporters have previously chosen to be jailed to defend such arrangements.

But Wheeler, the publisher of the Empty Wheel blog, wrote that she felt compelled to talk to authorities about an individual she was convinced "played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US." Wheeler has not publicly named her source, but she told CNN in a Monday phone interview that the person "definitely did not want me to go to the FBI" and cautioned her in a text message against doing so.

"On its face, I broke one of the cardinal rules of journalism," Wheeler told The Washington Post in a story published Sunday, "but what he was doing should cause a source to lose protection."

"It's not a decision I regret," she added.

Wheeler first revealed in a July 3 blog post on her website that she had gone to the FBI with information about her source. Wheeler said that her source had contacted her in November 2016, suggesting that he had "very good intel" that Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser, would be speaking to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's camp soon.

Wheeler said in her blog post her source was not "inside the Trump team." But, beyond that, she did not reveal much else, declining to say precisely when last year she went to the FBI or elaborate on the role she believes her source played in Russian election meddling.

But Wheeler did delve into the journalistic dilemma she faced, writing, "I never in my life imagined I would share information with the FBI, especially not on someone I had a journalistic relationship with." Nonetheless, Wheeler said she felt it necessary to go to law enforcement, and listed several reasons for why she chose to do so.

Wheeler wrote that, among other things, she believed her source was "doing serious harm to innocent people," that she had "concrete evidence" he had been lying to her and others, and that she had "reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper" with her website.

Wheeler homed in on House Republicans, excoriating the lawmakers for, as she said it, putting government informants in "danger." Wheeler wrote in her blog post that exposing government informants could cause real harm, and said that she has communicated with authorities about perceived threats "that arose from sharing" information with the FBI.

She explained to CNN that she believes such threats could be matters of life and death.

"We're talking about Russians," Wheeler said. "They do kill journalists. That's the ultimate threat that is out there. And I don't think that's an empty threat in my case."

Wheeler, however, noted in her blog post that she is a "public figure" and, while her risk "isn't going to go away," if something were to happen to her, the reason would be clear -- a layer of defense other informants may not have.

"If something happens to me -- if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow -- everyone will now know why and who likely did it. That affords me a small bit of protection," Wheeler wrote. "There are undoubtedly numerous other witnesses who have taken similar risks to share information with the government who aren't public figures."

The FBI declined to comment for this story.

-- CNN's Evan Perez contributed reporting.
CNNMoney (New York) First published July 9, 2018: 5:51 PM ET

https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/09/media/ ... index.html
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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby JackRiddler » Tue Jul 10, 2018 5:54 pm

.

Now that I've read all of the above more carefully:

- Strikes me as bullshit.

- I think Wheeler believes her own bullshit. Not just self-promotion.

- I can't imagine any situation where I'd choose uninvited to go inform on anyone for any reason to the FBI. (Maybe if I figured out a most-wanted serial killer?!) Besides that it's the FBI, it's practically asking for them to turn on you. What the hell does she think they do, and have always done, is she this naive? If I felt something was so criminal, I'd publish the details as I knew them. (Also asking for trouble!) If I knew of an imminent threat to life (which this is not), I'd sigh once and call the cops.

- Talking to the FBI? Way too on-the-nose with the New Cold War Liberal stereotype.

- Confusing or confused presentation.

- IF there was genuine Russian state meddling in the U.S. election (and if there was, it still didn't affect the result), IF I say, then this is still not a fucking foreign "attack on America," unless that counts in a much bigger and permanent way for AIPAC, Saudi foundations, and even more in reverse for the U.S. meddling in Russian elections, which the State Department fucking brags about. It's the self-service whorehouse of financialized democracy we have built that welcomes all comers, billionaires, PACs, dark money, unlimited dark money, fucking planets full of dark money.

- Oh yeah, right: the FBI fucking meddled in the election, successfully I'm figuring, and did so in fucking public through the biggest imaginable press conference splash. And the most important moments in that were brought on by the now-heroic Comey. But other than that, have at'em Marcy.

- Wheeler's style currently reminds me of Sibel Edmonds' decline over the last decade or so.

.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

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Re: Marcy Wheeler, Trump Investigation, Flynn, Syria...

Postby Grizzly » Fri Jul 13, 2018 5:49 pm

^^^
Agreed.
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
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