The major source for Trump's UK wiretap claims was Larry Johnson!

[Denzil_DC]

Link to tweet

John Podhoretz ✔ @jpodhoretz



Oh my God. The reappearance of Larry Johnson.

In case you're lucky enough not to know who Larry (C.) Johnson is, he has a few claims to fame.

He didn't complete his PhD dissertation, instead going to work as a "community organizer" in Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

He then got Orrin Hatch to recommend him for a job at the CIA, which he joined in 1985, serving as an analyst on the Caribbean, then moved to the State Department Office of Counterterrorism in 1989, where he worked until 1993, when he went freelance, setting up BERG Associates.

I know about him because he was a rabid opponent of Obama during the 2008 election, turning his No Quarter blog into a revolting cesspool where any old racist clatrap and absurd conspiracy theory was tolerated, if not encouraged by the frontpagers.

His finest moment was championing "The Whitey Tape" (as mentioned in the tweet above), a mythical video of Michelle Obama supposedly making racially charged comments during a speech - a video which he kept insisting for months that shadowy "sources" told him was just about to be released, and when it was, would scupper Obama's chances of election even if he defeated Hillary Clinton in the primary race. The video has never appeared.

He's a member of the inaptly named Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which pops up from time to time, most recently dismissing the Russian election hacking allegations as "baseless" and demanding "proof".

He nowadays appears as a regular pundit on Russia Today.

Johnson told Fox News's Judge Napolitano that GCHQ had been tapping Trump, and Trump believes everything he reads and sees on TV as long as it's from one of his pet RW sources.

Needless to say, this revelation is not going down well among some of our favorite intelligence pundits and their associates:

Link to tweet

John Schindler ✔ @20committee

Larry Johnson is a flake and fabricator who regularly appears on RT. Way to go, "judge" -- and POTUS!
cc @FoxNews http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4326152/UK-spying-Trump-source-invented-Michelle-Obama-hoax.html …

Link to tweet

John Schindler ✔ @20committee

.@FoxNews Kremlin Larry is also the idiot who told everyone that terrorism was an imaginary threat -- 2 months before 9/11http://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/10/opinion/the-declining-terrorist-threat.html …

John Schindler ✔ @20committee

.@FoxNews Kremlin Larry is RT's go-to guy for crackpot conspiracy theories about the IC and USG, here's one example of MANY:

…

Link to tweet

Jeff B/DDHQ? ✔ @EsotericCD

Jeff B/DDHQ Retweeted John Podhoretz

I am just utterly fucking appalled that this famously insane person was Napolitano's source, which led to an international incident.

[JHan]

1. ..............

[Kittycow]

3. ....

and I'll raise you one

I wonder what blogger will start WW3? The Gateway Pundit?

[JHan]

4. Anything is damn possible at this point.

[dalton99a]

2. Crazy asshole quoting crazy asshole, basically.

[Turbineguy]

5. When Obama was there, this shit

was irritating, but relatively harmless. With a lunatic like trump it becomes dangerous.

These clowns and Fox news should start thinking about that.

BTW at the supermarket checkout I saw that the National Enquirer has proof that Obama tapped Trumps phone. So now we know for certain he didn't do it.

[Tanuki]

6. "He nowadays appears as a regular pundit on Russia Today. "

Not surprising that Trump is once again valuing Kremlin propaganda over our own professionals, who have deep loyalty to our nation and who have sworn to defend us.

[UTUSN]

7. As if Andy Nap is so credible on his own.

Last edited Sat Mar 18, 2017, 10:45 PM - Edit history (6)

[speaktruthtopower]

8. Thought he played for UNLV..

on the 1990 team.

[Fred Sanders]

9. Napolitano spreads fake news on Fox Fake News? Paranoid Trump falls for it? SAD!

[Denzil_DC]

10. More from Media Matters:

... Larry C. Johnson, floated the conspiracy theory on the Russian state-sponsored news network RT on March 6, the week after Trump’s original accusation that Obama was responsible for an illegal wiretap.

It seems so long ago now, but that original accusation came from Breitbart.

On March 13, Napolitano told hosts of Fox News’ Fox & Friends that Obama circumvented the American intelligence community to ask “the British spying agency” for “transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump” without “American fingerprints.” Napolitano’s claims were cited by White House press secretary Sean Spicer while defending Trump’s baseless claims that Obama wiretapped Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential election.

On March 14, Media Matters uncovered the link between Napolitano's claims and an interview Johnson gave to RT. The New York Times confirmed Media Matters' reporting that Napolitano used Johnson as "one of the sources" for his "claim about British intelligence."

https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/17/report-confirms-fox-news-napolitano-repeated-russian-media-his-british-intelligence-conspiracy/215751

And Larry Johnson is now having an extended whine on his blog (amazed it's still going, let alone has a readership) about mean old NYT reporter Michael Grynbaum, who covered the Napolitano-Johnson link.

No one involved with the Trump campaign reached out to me and asked me to get involved with this. I spoke three months ago with a source that, if the source’s name was revealed, would be known and recognized as a reliable source of information. Based on that contact I reached out to friends in the intel community and asked them about the possibility that a back channel was used to get the Brits to collect on Trump associates. My sources said, “absolutely.” I later confirmed this via a cut out with a person who is a Senior Intelligence Service executive in the CIA.

This information was passed to Judge Andrew Napolitano. I did not speak with the Judge before his appearance on Fox and Friends earlier this week. He said he had three sources. I only count as one. The key point is that I have been told that there was a back channel used to pass info on electronic surveillance of Trump associates to senior officials in the Obama Administration. I stand by that and will be happy to take a polygraph.

But that is not the story that this disgrace of a reporter, Michael Grynbaum, chose to tell. It may not be his fault. Very possible that editors cut his story to spin it in a particular way. I will never trust these guys to do the right thing. My bad. I still am naive enough to believe that reporters, when given specific information, will report it accurately. Michael Gyrnbaum did not.

http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/79653/dishonest-ny-times-hit-piece/

He takes up most of the earlier part of this post raking over and defending his "Whitey Tape" allegations - for which he claimed the same sort of "independent sources" as he's now saying there are for the wiretap allegations.

His reliability can be judged by the fact he's still quoting one of his posts about it at the time (all caps in the original):

THEN THERE IS THE MATTER OF THE EMAIL/DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN THE OBAMA FOLKS ARE TRYING. FIRST THEY SENT SOME OF THEIR BLOGGERS AN EMAIL CLAIMING THAT MICHELLE SAID “WHY DID HE” RATHER THAN USE THE PEJORATIVE, “WHITEY.” AND NOW THE EXCUSE IS BEING CIRCULATED THAT SOMEHOW I, OR SOMEONE ELSE, IS CRIBBING FROM SOME SILLY BOOK I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF UNTIL NOW. A CAMPAIGN DOES NOT REACT THIS WAY TO A FABRICATION.

As a matter of fact, "they" didn't send some of their bloggers any such email. It was a post at Booman Tribune:

My old friend, Larry Johnson, knows about manipulating elections from his training with the Central Intelligence Agency. He doesn't want Obama to win the nomination for whatever reason, and he's in full propaganda mode to do everything he can to frighten the superdelegates. He claims to have a shocking tape of Michelle Obama ranting in some anti-white diatribe. He promises to produce this tape tomorrow at 9am.

From what I understand, it is a tape of Michelle Obama criticizing the Bush administration.

How you'd write it:

Why did Bush cut folks off medicaid?
Why did Bush let New Orleans drown?
Why did Bush do nothing about Jena?
Why did Bush put us in Iraq for no reason?

How you'd say it:

Why'd he cut folks off medicaid?
Why'd he let New Orleans drown?
Why'd he do nothing about Jena?
Why'd he put us in Iraq for no reason?

How Larry Johnson wants you to hear it:

Whitie cut folks off medicaid?
Whitie let New Orleans drown?
Whitie do nothing about Jena?
Whitie put us in Iraq for no reason?

http://www.boomantribune.com/story/2008/6/1/235757/2325

It's believed by some folks who know Booman that he planted this misinformation in his blog post in the hope Johnson (with whom he'd seriously fallen out, having once been a campaign colleague) would lap it up, run with it, and make an even bigger fool of himself. And he did. And he apparently still doesn't realize how he was set up to this day. Some former intelligence officer!