IG report about FBI conduct ahead of the 2016 presidential election date set

Politics
595

They lay the case out in pretty good detail here.

Thanks to the work cited above, some details regarding a very private UK Intelligence firm have surfaced.

Hakluyt is British strategic intelligence and advisory firm. It was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK Intelligence services.

In the small circular world of professional spooks, Hakluyt has ties with three unexpected individuals:

Australian diplomat Alexander Downer.
Stefan Halper, a former policy advisor to Nixon, Ford and Reagan.
George Papadopoulos
Alexander Downer famously met with George Papadopoulos at a London Bar in May 2016. This meeting would be used by the FBI as their excuse behind opening the July 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation.

Note: The FBI didn’t bother to interview Papadopoulos until January 27, 2017. The conversation in question took place in May 2016. The FBI knew of this conversation no later than July 2016.

From the New York Times:

During a night of heavy drinking at an upscale London bar in May 2016, George Papadopoulos, a young foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, made a startling revelation to Australia’s top diplomat in Britain: Russia had political dirt on Hillary Clinton.

About three weeks earlier, Mr. Papadopoulos had been told that Moscow had thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton, apparently stolen in an effort to try to damage her campaign.

The diplomat, Alexander Downer, informed the Australian government of the conversation.

Two months later, when leaked Democratic emails began appearing online, Australian officials passed the information about Mr. Papadopoulos to their American counterparts.

The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016.

Buried at the bottom of the Times article was the following:

It is unclear whether Mr. Downer was fishing for that information that night in May 2016. The meeting at the bar came about because of a series of connections, beginning with an Israeli Embassy official who introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to another Australian diplomat in London.

An Israeli official, who Papadopoulos knew, introduced him to another Australian diplomat who introduced Papadopoulos to Downer. There’s more to this story.

As previously noted, Alexander Downer has long-standing ties to the Clinton Foundation.

Downer personally arranged one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation – $25 million from the Australian government.

Less known is that Downer was on the Advisory Board of Hakluyt (the private UK intelligence firm) from 2008-2014.

Refute it if you can.

596

Misfud has no associations with UK or US intelligence.

There. Now a random guy in the internet says he is. And another random guy on the internet says he isn’t.

Back to square one.

For the record, sources from the internet should come from legitimate government, academic or journalism sources if you want to be taken seriously.

1 Like
597

You haven’t refuted anything, you’re just acting like a petulant child who doesn’t like the facts.

598

Some random guy on the internet writing a blog post with an unsourced claim is now a fact?

You’re probably smarter than that.

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What I provided is sourced, you, you’re nobody.

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Step forward, mystery professor Joseph Mifsud of the London Academy of Diplomacy, originally from Malta, who mixed with Britain’s foreign secretary and ex-CIA people

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-43488581

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Sort of. It’s sourced to more bloggers, aka nobodies.

Did you look at the nobody sources from your nobody blogger?

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Ex CIA people like Ray Cline? I wonder.

603

It’s sourced right to where he works.

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Yes. The London Center for International Law Practice.

Notably the LCILP is not MI6 or the CIA.

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Keep reading.

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One thing at a time. You have a habit of jumping to a different line of discussion when the previous one is going up in flames. We are still talking about Misfud and I just got my marshmallows to roast over the fire.

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Mifsud’s alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitterthread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].”

The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: “…Training program on International Security which was organised by Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy.” The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant for a number of reasons.

First, the training program Smith attended with high-ranking members of the Italian military was organized by the London Academy of Diplomacy, where Joseph Mifsud served as Director, as noted by The Washington Post. That Claire Smith was training military and law enforcement officials alongside Mifsud in 2012 during her tenure as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Security Vetting Appeals Panel, which oversees the vetting process for UK intelligence placement, strongly suggests that Mifsud has been incorrectly characterized as a Russian intelligence asset. It is extremely unlikely that Claire Smith’s role in vetting UK intelligence personnel would lead to her accidentally working with a Russian agent.

The connection between Mifsud and Smith does not end at bumped elbows in a photograph. Mifsud’s LinkedIn profile lists the University of Stirling as a place of occupation in connection with his service as Director of the London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD), where Claire Smith served as a visiting professor from 2013-2014 according to her LinkedIn profile. This adds yet another verifiable connection between a man who is at the center of already-flimsy Trump-Russia allegations and a high-ranking British intelligence figure.

Go ahead, dismiss it “because if he was a real spy the Britt’s would out him just to satisfy me”.

608

Do you hear yourself? Does this seem reasonable to you? “I posted a random blog that claims someone’s a spy so disprove it!”

609

As I was saying.

He appeared in a group photo with her so they must have a close working relationship. I don’t even see citations for the claims that she’s UK intelligence. As far as I can tell the source is a Julian Assange twitter thread with no citations and he’s not exactly a disinterested party here.

This is a load of conspiracy theory nonsense from people desperate to create a counter-narrative.

610

Seriously, get a grip and learn to read.

First, the training program Smith attended with high-ranking members of the Italian military was organized by the London Academy of Diplomacy, where Joseph Mifsud served as Director, as noted by The Washington Post. That Claire Smith was training military and law enforcement officials alongside Mifsud in 2012 during her tenure as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Security Vetting Appeals Panel, which oversees the vetting process for UK intelligence placement, strongly suggests that Mifsud has been incorrectly characterized as a Russian intelligence asset. It is extremely unlikely that Claire Smith’s role in vetting UK intelligence personnel would lead to her accidentally working with a Russian agent.

If Joseph Mifsud is a Russian spy known to be a democratic destabiliser, then why is he pictured next to the current UK Foreign Secretary at a November 2017 reception in London following Johnson’s appointment?

image

Ad of course, back to Claire.

Claire Smith has now retired as head of the Cabinet Security vetting committee, but she still works actively as an espionage and security consultant. We are not allowed to know if she still attends JIC meetings….but I’d be astonished if she isn’t in the loop concerning what the Skripal case is really about.

You don’t get into such positions without your own serious intelligence credentials and connections.

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Dismiss what? Misfud was photographed with a Claire Smith. That’s a fact. It’s your inference that makes him an “intelligence” operator which is not factual and is extremely thin.

I don’t have to dismiss anything. I just have to ask you to acknowledge what I’ve been saying all along. You have few facts and many assumptions.

1 Like
612

I read that. Maybe you should learn to read critically. Where are the sources for any of these claims on this anonymous blog?

The London Academy of Diplomacy wasn’t a real thing and closed up shop as soon as reporters started asking about it. Mifsud seems to have used his ‘position’ there to talk up Kremlin discussion groups.

I also can’t find any reliable source that Claire Smith ever worked there let alone “alongside” Mifsud.

Be honest: you’ve never heard of the Cabinet Security Vetting Committee in your life. You don’t have a clue what credentials it takes but you’ll buy an unsourced claim that it’s responsible for “UK intelligence placement”.

The Security Vetting Appeals Panel was set up in 1997 to provide an independent means of challenging a decision to refuse or withdraw national security vetting clearance. It is available to hear appeals from individuals in government departments, the armed forces and other organisations, or their contractors, who have exhausted the internal appeals process and remain dissatisfied with the outcome.

The Chair and Deputy Chair are retired members of the judiciary, with other members having relevant experience at a senior level both inside and outside government. They form a panel from which 3, including the Chair or the Deputy Chair, are normally selected on each occasion when the Panel is required to hear an appeal.

These appointments have been made in accordance with the Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies.

It’s a public body that deals with the appeals process for the UK equivalent of security clearances for White House staff. One doesn’t even have to be a government employee to be appointed let alone an intelligence agent.

So this guy was photographed with a pro-Trump, anti-Western alliance politician who doesn’t even seem to be aware the picture’s being taken and that proves he’s an anti-Trump intelligence agent? Cool story, bro.

BTW that zerohedge link is a cross-post of the disobedientmedia post your other link used as a source. Same text same author, which I noticed right away because I actually read it! So I hope you didn’t think you were posting corroborating sources or something.

That author and co-founder of the site, Elizabeth Vos, just graduated college last year and coincidentally is a multimedia intern with the Indiana State Senate Republicans.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-vos-3a7b05104/

Her co-founder, William Craddick, apparently honed the journalistic talents he now wields for disobedientmedia by starting fake conspiracy theories on reddit’s /r/The_Donald about Angela Merkel building armies of ISIS terrorists to use against other EU countries:

Anyway, I’ve spent far too much time on this already but maybe try being a little more critical of the sources you use instead of just grabbing whatever fits the story you want to be true.

2 Likes
613

Almost every admin he was in had a special counsel because of a leaker within the admin. try arguing the topic and not disparaging my character.

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Fun exercise: try counting how many other Republicans that would apply to.