Alphabet Soup

As I watch the news on the recent revelations about even more info coming to light vis a vis Mrs. Clinton and her email situation, courtesy of disgraced US Representative Anthony Weiner and his proclivity for showing his body parts to members of the fairer sex, I keep coming back to one question concerning all of Mrs. Clinton’s scandals. Why now?

She’s already been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing concerning her use of a private email server. Although, in testimony before Congress, FBI Director Comey’s responses to a litany of committee members’ questions, at the very least, sounded like a disqualification against her bid to hold the highest office in the land. The WikiLeaks brouhaha made her, her campaign, and the entire Democrat party establishment (deservedly so) the objects of a lot of scorn, derision, ire, and betrayal, especially among Bernie Sanders supporters.

The Russians, or at least hackers with ties to the Russian government have been blamed for the release of these documents to Mr. Assange and Company. The reason given, of course, was to directly or indirectly influence the outcome of a US presidential election. The Democrats, the media, and a few establishment Republicans feigned outrage over such an act, despite the fact that we’ve had our own dealings overseas doing just that in the third world. 

I’m going to go out on another limb and suggest that it wasn’t the Russians, the Chinese, or anyone closely associated with those governments who pulled this off. I’m thinking that we need to look a little closer to home. We have a hodgepodge of alphabet soup agencies in this country responsible for maintaining the security of this nation and ensuring the safety of its citizenry. In the process of accomplishing these tasks, they have been empowered by an all-encompassing law that was passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Of course, I’m referring to the Patriot Act.

Edward Snowden has been called a lot of things, patriot, traitor, useful idiot, but the one thing that needs to be reinforced amongst all reading this is that he was the source of the disclosure about how much information that federal agencies like the NSA have been collecting on the average American. In testimony before a Senate committee, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, was asked the question about whether he knew that the federal government was spying on American citizens. His response was that the government didn’t do so willingly. The senator posing the question already knew that statement to be a bare faced lie.

In light of the fact that we now know that Big Brother really is watching us, should it come as a surprise to anyone that those at the highest levels of government would be given even more scrutiny? It has been put forward by a television talking head or two that the NSA may actually have all of Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. That should not surprise anyone, especially in light of the fact that it was recently uncovered that at least one email service provider may have been charging law enforcement agencies a fee for emails collected on certain individuals, without a warrant. That’s right, corporate America is getting rich selling our information to the government. Barring any sort of written policies or agreements between the subscriber and the company to safeguard personal info, this action is completely legal.

If the NSA had access to the trove of emails from Mrs. Clinton’s servers, as well as gaining access to the accounts of those individuals and organizations she may have been in contact with, then it stands to reason that the folks poring through the information contained therein may have become deeply troubled by the picture that was being painted for them. These sorts of revelations would have been earth shattering, to say the least. You have a candidate for the presidency of this nation who has engaged in the very sort of activities that have sent “untouchable” mafia chieftains to prison, yet their political masters, based on previous instances of corruption and malfeasance at the highest levels of government, haven’t even bothered to lift a finger.

It may be one thing for the hacks in DC to politicize the security of this nation, but the Clintons have taken things a step further and commoditized it. They have been able to capitalize on their positions of power and influence to enrich themselves and their cohorts at the expense of the US taxpayer and our national security (Google the name Uranium One). It’s not much of a stretch to see how a fifth column movement could come into being with the express purpose of exposing such egregious/criminal behavior. Remember, these folks are not political. They are hard-working career people who swore an oath to protect the Constitution, the very fabric of our republic, from all enemies, foreign or domestic.

The question concerning who these documents should be “leaked” to was a no brainer. The only major concern was how to cover their tracks, or in this case, the fingerprint they would leave behind. Given the fact that Vladimir Putin and his government had become a thorn in our sides over the past few years, I’m sure that played a major role in deciding how to disperse the trail of breadcrumbs in such a manner that there could be only one conclusion drawn from what had transpired. Just about everyone fell for it, they were successful.

Based on what we now know, due to waves of disgruntled FBI agents who were about ready to mutiny, Director Comey was basically given no choice but to re-examine any and all Clinton related emails coming his way courtesy of one Anthony Weiner. But what if this wasn’t the only driver of his change of heart? What if that fifth column I mentioned earlier was also whispering into Mr. Comey’s ear? 

Of course, what they’d be whispering to him about would be the scope of information that they had collected on Mrs. Clinton, her campaign, and the party establishment. They’d let him know that he didn’t need to feel intimidated by his political superiors, that he wasn’t alone and that all he needed to do to get back into the fight was to act on the information being provided. This truly was becoming a conspiracy of light.

Pushing all of the political rhetoric aside, no one really knows what a Trump or Clinton presidency would look like. All one can go off of are the track records that the candidates bring to the table. In Mrs. Clinton’s case, it’s one riddled with corruption, double dealing, malfeasance, and vote rigging, to name a few. My guess is that this was more than enough for the keepers of the flame to step in and actually live up to that oath of office.

Q: Who watches the watchers?

A: They’re doing a damn good job taking care of themselves.