Cliff Kincaid
Biden exchanged a Russian arms dealer in an American prison for an American pothead lesbian basketball player held in Russia for drug dealing. Now, according to published reports, he wants Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, held in Russia on phony espionage charges, to be exchanged for a Kremlin hitman who murdered an anti-Putin activist in Germany in cold blood in a public park.
The problem for Biden and his notion of “justice” through such an exchange is that the hitman, Vadim Krasikov, was convicted in Germany and is being imprisoned there, serving a life sentence. He was determined in a court of law to be on the payroll of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his intelligence services. Biden will have to pressure Germany to release him.
Once again, Putin’s ability to strike on foreign soil has been demonstrated and he is audacious enough to demand the release of his assassin. Krasikov had a fake identity and was disguised as a tourist in Germany. But German police arrived in time after the murder of Georgian citizen Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in August 2019 to capture and arrest him.
In our recent reports about Trump being targeted by foreign enemies, as well as the domestic Deep State, we noted evidence that the former president has been personally threatened by Iranian leaders, in retaliation for the January 2020 death of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – Qods Force (IRGC-QF) commander Qasem Soleimani.
No information has been released publicly about an Iranian attempt to kill Trump. But the U.S. government acknowledges there was an attempt to take out one of Trump’s national security advisers, John Bolton, back in 2021, and the basic facts of the plot were acknowledged by the Biden Justice Department.
Shahram Poursafi, aka Mehdi Rezayi, 45, of Tehran, Iran, was charged with trying to arrange the murder of Bolton. The indictment says that Poursafi, working on behalf of the IRGC-QF, attempted to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.
Americans might be surprised to learn that this is standard operating procedure for Iranians on American soil and there seems to be no end to it.
Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, declared, “This is not the first time we have uncovered Iranian plots to exact revenge against individuals on U.S. soil and we will work tirelessly to expose and disrupt every one of these efforts.”
Executive Assistant Director Larissa L. Knapp of the FBI’s National Security Branch said, “Iran has a history of plotting to assassinate individuals in the U.S. it deems a threat, but the U.S. government has a longer history of holding accountable those who threaten the safety of our citizens.”
This is, of course, debatable, if not false. It is easy to issue indictments but not as easy to bring these terrorists to justice, especially when the Biden administration has pursued a pro-Iran policy. As a result, Poursafi has not been arrested and remains at large.
What is more, it appears more time and effort has been used to arrest and prosecute Trump supporters who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2021, than to protect law-abiding Americans.
The Department of Justice later confirmed that Trump’s former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was also a target of assassination.
The plots involved either a “small weapon” or a “larger weapon,” to be used at a distance, and one participant had access to the “specifics” of one target’s schedule “that do not appear to have been publicly available.” According to the official account, the Iranian Poursafi had information about one of the targets that was gathered “from the United States,” not “via Google,” an indication that “someone working on behalf of the IRGC-QF had already conducted pre-operational surveillance….”
These are very worrisome details about Iranian activities on American soil. They mean Trump’s life has to be considered in immediate danger.
While the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe, Energy, the Environment and Cyber has held hearings on Russian assassination squads operating outside Russian territory, there has been no effort to examine whether U.S. federal and law enforcement agencies can carry out such missions on American soil.
Yet, those who have been around Washington, D.C. for a few decades remember the federal assaults on Ruby Ridge and Waco, in which dozens were murdered by the FBI and ATF, as a result of snipers and tanks that instigated infernos that literally burned people to death.
In my column “Murder Incorporated: Theirs and Ours,” I noted that Russian President Putin had attempted to change the subject from his murder squads to ours, telling NBC News in an interview that somebody murdered Ashli Babbitt, a U.S. military veteran, who was among the Trump supporters that went into the Capitol on January 6.
With this reference, Putin cleverly moved the attention away from his former comrades in the KGB to the Deep State in Washington, D.C. covering up for its own crimes.
Putin was obviously aware that the Biden “Department of Justice” said it would not pursue criminal charges against the Capitol Police officer who killed Ashli Babbitt.
Those who objectively analyze the complete set of circumstances surrounding the incident must conclude that the shooting of unarmed Ashli Babbitt inside the Capitol qualified as murder. The massive, bank-vault-strong doors into the Capitol were open and pro-Trump protesters (and others) were able to just walk in. There were also reports indicating that police gestured Trump supporters inside the building through the open doors.
While Putin specializes in “suspicious deaths,” many of them caused by poisoning, America has its own share of questionable and mysterious high-profile deaths, as documented by former State Department intelligence analyst Kenneth J. Dillon.
I would add to the list Frank R. Olson, who, in a secret CIA experiment, was given LSD by government scientists from Fort Detrick in Maryland, where he was based, and “fell” to his death in New York. The federal government paid his family millions of dollars in damages.
Fort Detrick is still in business and part of the grounds has been declared hazardous to human health. Its “Area B” occupies approximately 399 acres and was initially established as a proving ground in the Army's Biological Warfare program, later to be used as “a disposal area for chemical, medical, and radiological (CBR) material.” Many who work at Fort Detrick will not drink the water.
In many ways, our “Deep State” functions like the American branch of the KGB.
Consider the health problems known as “Havana syndrome,” affecting U.S. diplomats, intelligence personnel and military officials overseas. It is named after the brain damage experienced by U.S. diplomats in Cuba. After it was first documented in 2016, eight years ago, and numerous official investigations, the federal government says it has still not figured out what happened. It blames “gaps” in the intelligence gathered on foreign enemies and adversaries.
If the Deep State is in fact dominated by the Soviet KGB, now known as the FSB, that would explain a lot. It would also explain why the Russia-gate hoax against Trump was based on Russian disinformation.
I have come to accept the view of spy catcher James Jesus Angleton, the former CIA counterintelligence chief, who concluded the CIA was hopelessly infiltrated by our enemies. It turns out so was the FBI, which employed Robert Hanssen as a counter-intelligence agent assigned to catch Soviet/Russian spies, when he was working for the Soviets and the Russians.
When you understand how America’s Deep State has become a branch of the KGB, your view of America and the world changes. You come to better understand the no-war wars of Joe Biden and the failure to back American allies and confront our enemies. You come to suspect that characters like Hunter Biden were protected for years by federal agencies like the FBI and the IRS because he (and his father) served the interests of American intelligence agencies.
I have been around too long to buy the excuse that federal agencies are just incompetent.
The answer is to completely dismantle the federal government except for agencies like the Pentagon that must be maintained in some form, if only to serve as a deterrent to a full-blown nuclear strike, as threatened by Vladimir Putin, now doing a tour of North Korea for more weapons.
While Trump remains a target of foreign terrorists as well as the FBI, his supporters have generally been targeted by the FBI and ATF.
A recent hearing on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government” featured testimony about the ATF murder of Bryan Malinowski, a prominent local official who sold firearms at gun shows on a part-time basis and had his home raided by ATF agents. He was killed while trading gunfire with federal agents that he thought were criminals staging a home invasion.
The Second Amendment Foundation notes, “This is not the first time ATF has been accused of using excessive force. There were scores of lives lost at Waco, and a Deputy U.S. Marshal and Randy Weaver’s wife and son were killed during ATF’s Ruby Ridge siege. The agency’s infamous Operation Fast & Furious resulted in the deaths of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry and hundreds of Mexican nationals.”
In another case, a Trump supporter named Craig Robertson was shot and killed by FBI agents. He was accused of violating a federal statute against threats “to take the life of, to kidnap, or to inflict bodily harm upon the President of the United States,” referring to Joe Biden.
It is Trump, however, who is under constant threat from Democrats claiming he is a “threat to democracy” and Iranian terrorists have already tried to assassinated two of his former top national security aides.
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.