Roger Kimball:
“…James Clapper, Obama’s director of national intelligence and now one of his spokesmen on CNN, was asked whether he was concerned that the investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia hoax (my term, not the interlocutor’s) might implicate senior members of the so-called intelligence community, i.e., chaps like James Clapper.
Clapper’s response was revealing, not to say hilarious. Remember, the question is: Are you “concerned” (i.e., worried, anxious) about the investigation overseen by Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham.
Clapper’s multipart answer: I don’t think there was any wrongdoing; I was just trying to help the country; if there was wrongdoing, it was not my fault; I was just following orders.
Ipse dixit: “I don’t think there was any wrongdoing.”
“All of us were trying to navigate a very, very difficult, politically fraught highly charged situation.”
“For my part, my main concern was the Russians, and the threat posed by the Russians to our very political fabric.”
The “message” he is getting from the controversy is that we should “ignore the Russian interference and meddling and the threat that it poses.” (Read: “Don’t blame me,” he seems to say, “if the Russkie’s take over.”)
Big takeaway: it is “disconcerting” now to be “investigated for doing our duty, what we were told to do by the president.”
And exactly what were they doing? Investigating a candidate, President-elect Trump, with the end, said Clapper, of preparing a big, comprehensive report for Congress and “the next administration.”
You see that James Clapper, despite appearances to the contrary, does have a wry sense of humor. He can say with a straight face that the covert investigation aimed at destroying Donald Trump was actually an investigation intended at least in part for the incoming Trump administration.
Yuck, yuck, yuck. What a card!
But note that Clapper, funny though he was, was not himself laughing. I don’t blame him. The spook-turned-media-lap-dog is as much in the crosshairs as anyone, except perhaps another spook-turned-media-lap-dog, former CIA director and Gus Hall voter John Brennan, who now lends his authoritative anti-Trump commentary to MSNBC…”
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