Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 11/24/21 Aaron Maté on the Award-Winning Lies Still Propping up Russiagate

Episode Date: November 30, 2021

On Antiwar Radio this Sunday, Scott was joined by Aaron Maté to discuss an article he wrote for Real Clear Investigations. Amidst the collapse of the Steele dossier, Maté wrote about five articles that either won the Pulitzer prize or were written by journalists who had won a Pulitzer, all of which were about disproven aspects of Russiagate unrelated to Christopher Steele. They discuss the framing of Michael Flynn, the fictional calls between Trump officials and Russian intelligence, the conflation of bots posting memes with the bombing of Pearl Harbor and more.  Discussed on the show: “Five Trump-Russia 'Collusion' Corrections We Need From the Media Now -- Just for Starters” (Real Clear Investigations) Aaron Maté is an NYC-based journalist and producer. He hosts the news show Pushback for The Grayzone, and writes regularly for The Nation. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter @AaronJMate. This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: The War State and Why The Vietnam War?, by Mike Swanson; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; EasyShip; Free Range Feeder; Thc Hemp Spot; Green Mill Supercritical; Bug-A-Salt; Lorenzotti Coffee and Listen and Think Audio. Shop Libertarian Institute merch or donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal or Bitcoin: 1DZBZNJrxUhQhEzgDh7k8JXHXRjYu5tZiG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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For Pacifica Radio, November 28, 2021, I'm Scott Horton. This is Anti-War Radio. All right, so it is Anti-War Radio. I'm your host, Scott Horton. I'm editorial director at anti-war.com, an author of Enough Already. Time to end the war on. terrorism. You can find my full interview archive, more than 5,600 of them now, going back to 2003 at Scott Horton.org and at YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. And you know what? I'm happy to be celebrating 11 years here on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. And introducing today's

guest, it's the great Aaron Mante. He's at the gray zone. He hosts a show called Pushback, and he's an investigative reporter specializing in the Duma Chemical Weapons Attack hoax of April 2018 as well as Russiagate, especially, and I'm happy to welcome you back to the show. How are you doing, Aaron? I'm good, Scott. Good to be here. I appreciate you joining me today. So I really want to spend time on your great piece about the Pulitzer Prize winners in the Russia Gate scandal, and your review of their work. And these days, things are so partisan and so black and white. But, you know, at the end of the day, the FBI and the CIA are always the bad guys, aren't they?

Well, look, I think that's a pretty safe rule. But listen, even from a partisan point of view, not that my journalism is motivated by partisan politics, but from a partisan point of view, what I've always argued from the start of Russiagate was that this was a gift to Because what bigger gift to Trump and the Republicans than turning their opposition into, you know, Trump, Russia conspiracy theory maniacs where, you know, the only answer to Trump is Robert Mueller who's going to find the collusion smoking gun? That's a huge gift to Trump. It distracted from all the harm he did to the country and the world. And it gave him the gift of having his opposition distracted and then gave him the additional gift of when it finally collapsed, he got exonerated. And this continues to repeat itself.

So even, you know, if I strictly define myself as a partisan and I was just a journalist who's responsible for following the facts, I'd still think that this was just a good thing to expose that Russia get was a good thing to expose because it was such a big gift, ultimately to Trump. Very well said. Which brings us to our piece here. It's in real clear investigations.com. five Trump-Russia collusion corrections

we need from the media now and just for starters November 24th here again Aaron Mate at real clear investigations dot com and I just love this thing I hope you can take us through it sort of step by step here can we start with Tom Hamburger

I like picking on him because I used to like him because back when he wrote for the LA Times in the Bush years he did a couple of good stories about Iraq War II but boy is he in trouble with you here, and boy, does he deserve it? There are unfortunately a lot, a growing list of journalists who, you know, did good work like challenging Iraq War II, but then proceeded to drink the Kool-Aid when it comes to

Russia Gate and also the Syria Dirty War. It's an unfortunate trend. So, yeah, look, the media narrative right now is that basically, all right, okay, fine, Christopher Steele, that whole thing, the Steele dossier, yeah, we promoted that, that was a mistake, our bet. And in the case of the Washington Post, they've even gone and corrected a couple of stories, written, co-authored by Tom Hamburger. But they're also saying that, okay, fine, even though Steele was wrong and flawed and all this stuff, the core narrative of a Trump-Russia relationship and of a sweeping Russian interference campaign to install Trump and so discord in U.S. society, that that's true. So basically, that's the narrative that they're sticking to now, that basically,

they're throwing steel under the bus, but they're trying to prop up everything else. And what I show here with this article is I look at five stories that either won the Pulitzer for Russiagate coverage or were written by reporters who won the Pulitzer for the Rushgate coverage that have nothing to do with Christopher Steele, but are still fundamentally just as flawed. They rely on dubious sources, and they contain demonstrably false claims. And we know this based now on public information that's come out since these stories were released. And so I just go through a list of five examples. I could have done many more. There's a long list to choose from. But I tried to pick five examples that, you know, sticking to what won the Pulitzer and also

sticking to stories that played a key role in advancing the overall fake Trump-Russia collusion narrative. So the first story has to do with Michael Flynn. And after BuzzFeed, if you remember in January 27, after BuzzFeed published the dossier, that sort of created the snowball effect where then we started getting these weekly or monthly so-called bombshells that fueled this narrative of a Trump-Russia conspiracy. And one of the big ones came in around January and early February 2017 when anonymous officials leaked claims that Michael Flynn discussed sanctions with the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak in the weeks after the November 2016 election, and that Flynn had even suggested

that the Trump administration might go soft on Russia's sanctions. And the innuendo that that fueled was that basically Flynn was offering Russia some payback for its alleged election interferenel. And this really began with a column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post, but it escalated when on February 9th, 2017, the Washington Post published a story called Officials Say Flynn discussed sanctions. And basically, it had a number of former and current officials telling the post that Flynn's discussions with Kislyak, the Russian ambassador, were explicit and that he had even floated this possibility that the Trump administration would go soft on the sanctions.

And Flynn had, up until the point, denied talking about sanctions with Kislyak. But when he was confronted with all these people contradicting him, and obviously they were citing wiretaps of Flynn and Kistley-X calls, Flynn backtracked. And he now said that instead of initially saying he did not discuss sanctions, now he said, I don't think I discussed sanctions, but I can't know for sure. And that slight change of his answer, basically, instead of mollifying the press corps, it actually only increased calls for his resignation because he was accused of basically lying to the White House and the public about his contacts with Kisleyak. And four days later, he stepped down. He resigned.

Right. The story was that he had lied directly to the face of Vice President Pence, which is funny to me that because we know, I'm sorry, I'm cutting to the chase here that we know from the transcripts that it never was true, but how come, because they were already sworn in at this point, how come they didn't just say, well, let us see the transcripts then to prove once and for all whether he lied or whether he didn't? That's a great question, Scott. And, uh, I, the only thing I can chuck it up to in the absence of any other explanation is just like complete incompetence on the part of Flynn and the people around him. Yeah.

I don't think they. There's no surprise there. He's a total wing nut anyway. The fact that he's innocent of this doesn't make him some hero or anything. He certainly turned into quite the kooky character with the thing he said now. And he was a war criminal before that. So anyway. Right.

Yeah. So look, so they didn't, yeah. So they basically, and look, Flynn even then validated the name. narrative when just under a year later, he pled guilty to lying to the FBI, including about discussing sanctions with Kisliak. And that was, and by then Robert Mueller was on the case, and Robert Mueller brought those charges. But then, as has been the case so many times with Russiagate, in 2020, so three years later, we got those transcripts you're talking about, which we should have gotten back then in 2017. Instead, it took three years for them to be

released. And what did they show? That sanctions were not discussed at all. except once in passing. And it's by Kislyak, who just mentions that the sanctions might make it difficult for the U.S. and Russia to cooperate against jihadist insurgents in Syria. And Flynn responds, yeah, yeah. What they do discuss more extensively is expulsions, because alongside these sanctions on Russia, Obama at the end of December 2016 also announced the expulsions of 35 Russian nationals. And that's what they discussed.

And what Flynn said there was he didn't talk about Trump going easy or, you know, revisiting its policy. All he said was whatever you do, just don't escalate. We don't want to get into a tit for tat where we have an escalating situation. Coolhead should prevail. That's all he said about that. In other words, what he did not say is, I promise I will do X if you anything. Exactly right. And again, they're talking about expulsions, which is a separate topic than sanctions.

Expulsions is like a one-time thing, and it's, you know, you expel some people, okay, sanctions is a serious thing. That involves, you know, financial penalties. That is like a very, very heavy thing. And if Flynn is offering some kind of payback on that, that's a much more serious thing. And that's what the post in its sources were alleging. But that's not what they discussed at all. Right.

And now, so just to zoom out again, hey, everybody, remember the story that the three-star general, who was the designated national security advisor of the president-elected the United States, was guilty of treason with the Kremlin and it made all of these promises to to his boss Donald Trump and his own KGB handlers

who are now in control of our government except that how much was there to this Aaron absolutely nothing at all to this absolutely and so what the post and its sources did was really tricky and the post is basically acknowledged this to me

now what they did was they conflated sanctions with expulsions. So in this story, they basically defined expulsions as meaning sanctions. They basically conflated the two. And they acknowledged that to me, the post did it. Because I wrote them with my findings for the story. And they said that by sanctions, we were referring to not just sanctions, but also the expulsions as well. And they called that appropriate. But the problem is, they didn't explain to their audience that they were blurring the distinction. Whereas in previous stories, including a story that's linked in the February 9th story in question second paragraph,

the post had drawn a very clear distinction between sanctions and expulsions. For this story, they blurred the distinction. And they're acknowledging that now, you know, whatever, how many years later, four years later. But it's, it's completely disingenuous, but it was successful in fueling this narrative. And remember how they got the guilty plea out of them, too, was in one, as you're saying here pretending to know that they had him caught red-handed saying something different than he said he said. And so there's lying to the FBI when he thought he was just having a friendly chat anyway, didn't even know he was being interviewed. But then also, they threatened to put his son in prison for some cooked-up thing. And that was how they got him to plead.

That's exactly. And what they also did, they did the exact same thing that the post and its sources did, where if you read what the quotes that Mueller pulls from Flynn from the transcripts, Mueller claims that those quotes are about sanctions, but all of them are about expulsions. So Mueller also conflated sanctions with expulsions. And that's how they did it. And amazingly, Flynn and his lawyers didn't get the transcripts to fact-check them for himself. It could have saved many years of legal drama. But finally, eventually Flynn changed his mind and he fought the case.

And that's what led to this process where the transcripts were actually released. And again, just to be clear, the accusation was that Flynn had promised them, I will lift the sanctions on you when I get in power in a quid pro quo kind of exchange here for what exactly was, were the Russians supposed to do here just for them not escalating? Well, one of the conspiracy theories was that Flynn was basically paying Russia back because Russia supposedly, of course, installed Trump in the White House. Oh, I see. This was just their payoff for the, thank you for giving us the. power of the presidency. Yeah, right. Exactly. But, you know, but, Scott, what's funny is, Flynn didn't even say don't retaliate. All he said was, I'll quote it, he said, don't go any further than you have to, because I don't want us to get into something that has to escalate into

a tit for tat. He also said that the Kremlin's response should be, quote, reciprocal and even killed. So he's not even saying, don't retaliate. He's saying, whatever you do, just don't go any further than you have to. And this was used to spin a narrative that Flynn was promising, Russia that Trump was going to go soft on them for sanctions and they were somehow conspiring. And then, of course, and then that fueled another story that actually the Russians possessed now blackmail leverage over Flynn because they knew something that the Trump administration didn't know, that they could somehow use that to blackmail him. That's literally what the post next story was, which also won them a Pulitzer, which I didn't

have time to get to in this story. But it's just amazing the kind of insane conspiracy theories that it fueled. So that's the Flynn story. It was very damaging. Flynn resigned. It fueled the narrative. It built momentum for a special counsel. And now it took over three years for the actual transcripts of the calls and question to be released, which undermined the entire thing. Look here, you and I both know that what you need is some Libertarian Institute things, like shirts and sweatshirts and mugs and stickers to put on the back of your truck. And it give to your friends, too, that say Libertarian Institute on them so that everyone will know the origins of your oppositional, defiant disorder and where they can listen to. all the best podcasts.

So here's what you do. Go to Libertasbella.com and look at all the great Libertarian Institute stuff they've got going there. Find the ad in the right-hand margin at Libertarian Institute.org. Libertasbella.com. You guys check it out.

This is so cool. The great Mike Swanson's new book is finally out. He's been working on this thing for years. And I admit, I haven't read it yet. I'm going to get to it as soon as I can, but I know you guys are going to want to beat me to it. It's called Why the Vietnam War. Nuclear bombs and nation building in Southeast Asia, 1945 through 61.

And as he explains on the back here, all of our popular culture and our retellings and our history and our movies are all about the height of the American war there in, say, 1964 through 1974. But how do we get there? Why is this all Harry Truman's fault? Find out in why the Vietnam War by the great Mike Swanson. Available now. Okay, now it's Aaron Mote. It's Real Clear Investigations.com for his great story here about five Trump-Russia collusion stories that the mainstream media gave each other Pulitzer Prizes for that aren't based on

the steel dossier, but on other Russiagate hoaxes because they were all hoaxes. And so talk about this really important New York Times story that came out, as you point out. One day after Flynn resigned. Oh, okay, a month after the inauguration almost then. Yeah. Yeah. And what's going on at this time is basically these, whoever these officials are, they're leaking this stuff to build a narrative.

So first they get Flynn out. And that's good because Flynn's a national security advisor. He has experience in the government. So if he's around, then maybe he'll be able to stop some what's going on. He'll be able to recognize what the FBI is doing that they're actually, that they're investigating Trump and they're trying to paint this false Trump Russia narrative. So getting Flynn out of the way was a good.

strategic move for the people who wanted to push this Trump-Russia narrative. Now, of course, Flynn doesn't turn out to be so sharp, but from the point of view of who you'd want to not be around, certainly someone with intelligence experience like Flynn was a good person to get rid of and they succeeded. So one day after he resigns, then a new story appears in the New York Times. It's even more of a bombshell. I'll read it to you. The first sentence, it says phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald

J. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials. That's the claim in the Times on February 14th, 2017. Now, this is a huge claim. You have close Trump associates talking to senior Russian intelligence officials and these have been wiretapped and intercepted. That's a huge claim. Now, the article doesn't provide any evidence for it and no evidence has ever emerged. What has emerged are denials from Jim Comey, who said it was not true. The Mueller report had zero evidence for any kind of intercepted calls between Trump associates and senior Russian intelligence

officials. Then in 2020, we got declassified notes from Peter Strach, who was the FBI agent who wrote the who opened up the trump russia probe and this document was struck he printed out the article and he annotated it and one of the things he wrote is that this is completely false we have no evidence of any contact between trump people and senior russian intelligence officials or in fact any russian intelligence officials senior or not but amazingly the times has never corrected the story they've never updated it significantly and they even claimed vindication they claimed vindication when earlier this year, the Treasury Department put out a press release calling Constantine Kalynik, who's a longtime associate of Paul Manaforts, that called him

a Russian intelligence officer. They said this with no evidence, and they ignored all the countervailing evidence that I reported on before, including that Klamnik was a valued U.S. State Department source. And the Times took this and said that this story, along with a Senate report that made the same claim, also with no evidence, confirmed the Times. February 2017 story, which is pretty extraordinary. Yep. And boy, and that's the one that always lasts and that they always retreat to. Well, come on.

I mean, we all know that there is something to this because you got this whole thing with the poll numbers there. And Maniford's a friend of a friend. Yeah. And what's funny about the Times claiming that this confirms their reporting is that, look, let's ignore all the countervailing evidence about Kalimik. Let's ignore the fact that no U.S. intelligence agency has called. called Kalimnik, a Russian intelligence officer. It's only the Treasury Department and a Senate report.

And without even explaining really what they mean, right? They just say that it's well known that he has these ties or whatever. They just say it, exactly. And let's ignore that the FBI has not adopted their characterization. The FBI earlier this year put out a statement about Kalimnik. And all it said about him is that he is known to have Russian intelligence ties. Whatever that means. Ties is very, very vague.

It could mean anything. But it certainly does not mean that they think he's a spy. Let's ignore all that. Let's assume for a second that they're right that Klamnik is somehow a Russian spy. The Times' original story was that Trump associates had multiple contacts with multiple senior Russian intelligence officials, not just one person, but multiple people and at a senior level. So, amazingly, the Times in claiming vindication is now twisting the meaning of their original story. right so it's just extraordinary it's extraordinary behavior and this story did not win the pulitzer but it's written by three people all of them were in were on the team that won the

politzer for their russia gate coverage and now can you tell us really quickly what was the context of the polling data thing polling data thing was basically so pretty late in the muller probe they had nothing they had no indictments for collusion whatsoever they had no evidence of collusion and all of a sudden rick gates their key witness in the manifort case because Rick Gates was working for Manafort, tells them that Kalimnik was given polling data to send to some Ukrainian oligarchs. And Andrew Weissman, who is a top Mueller prosecutor,

he spun this as potential evidence of collusion, that basically Kalimic was getting polling data from Manafort, from internal Trump campaign polling data, sending that to Russia, and then Russia was using that for their supposed sweeping social media interference campaign. That, of course, in reality, as we know, was juvenile clickbait in memes that didn't even really discuss the election except in a couple of cases. So the whole thing is a farce, but that's what became the dominant Trump-Russia conspiracy theory for a while,

that this polling data was a part of this Russian interference plot. Now, Gates told Mueller what this actually was, which is that basically Manafort asked Kalimic to take like top-line numbers like Trump 50, Clinton 49, send that to his former business clients in Ukraine to show them that he was working for a guy who might win the election because he wanted to help his status with Trump. He wanted to use that to help win business back in Ukraine and actually settle some old debts.

That that's what it was. But this got spun into this theory that somehow this polling data was being sent to Russian intelligence for their sweeping interference campaign to brainwash millions of Americans. It's so stupid, but somehow it still endures. Yeah, that's amazing. And it's the one, again, that they rely on all the time.

that. No, because there's still the Calimnic thing. But no, there's not still the Calimic thing. There's not. Yeah. And I've interviewed Calimic and Matt Taby's interviewed Calimic. And funnily, Mueller never tried to interview Calimic and the Senate Intelligence Committee never tried to interview Columnic. Why would they not want to speak to this guy who supposedly such a key operator in this Trump-Russia conspiracy? Too bad they can't dig up John McCain and ask him, how come you employed this Russian spy for so long if he's a Russian spy? I wouldn't be the first time he betrayed his country, but hey, listen, I think there's a real question here as to whether you deserve the Pulitzer or whether the Pulitzer itself is so damaged by this embarrassment that you wouldn't want to have it hanging around your neck and just be an albatross for you. I'll leave that to other people. I'm confident I will not be receiving a Pulitzer for my work on this year, but that's okay. You know, I've, you know, the whole point of this is just to do the work. And it's taken a long time for it to crumble, but it had to happen eventually because the edifice was just was not existent.

This thing was a scam from the start. Absolutely right. And when you think about all the people who got it right from the summer of 2016 all the way through, you know, just Romando and David Stockman and Robert Perry again, David Stockman called Papadopoulos Baby Doc. Oh, baby doc is a big kingpin in the Russian intent. intelligence network is that right you know and just you know no offense to poor old george but he never was important he was only useful for just a minute and and including getting peel surprises for more new york times reporters huh the uh the late bob perry of consortium news who you mentioned never gets enough credit for what he did he he was on this way before people like me came

along and you go back and read his columns and everything he said turned out to be exactly right and he made so much fun of all this Russia stuff because it was funny and he did it in such a brilliant way and it's uh you know he was just he was a legendary journalist well before he covered Russia Gate and it's just he his contribution should get way more attention because it was invaluable especially in those early months when it was so fashionable to go along with it and people who challenged it were faced face such derision and he of course you know had no interest in making friends or playing to liberals, he just wanted to tell the truth, and he did it exceptionally well. Right. And listen, people just search site colon, consortium news.com, Perry with an A, P-A-R-R-R-R-Y, Russia. Ooh, and you'll read all about the war in Ukraine and what really happened in 2014, too. It'll be a lot of fun. That's right. Yeah. But anyway, so who is Baby Doc Papadopoulos, and why should we be terrified to him anyway? And why should a New York Times reporter win a Pulitzer surprise for writing about him.

So that's the third story. And it came out in late 2017. And at that point, you know, after a long period where things were looking up for the, for the Trump-Russia conspiracy, Manafort, Flynn, Papadopoulos, Rick Gates had all been indicted. And there was his widespread impression that Mueller really was closing in on a Trump-Russia conspiracy, even though if you read his actual indictments, there was always the task to acknowledge that they had nothing.

But anyway. But then a problem came along in late. 2017, when the Clinton campaign had to admit that they were funding the Steele dossier. And that was a problem because if the Steele dossier was shown to be foundational to the Trump Russia probe, that could discredit the whole thing. So in late December 2017, the Times put out the story, saying that basically Steele had nothing to do with the launch of the Trump Russia probe. And really, the predicate was this guy George Popatopoulos who had told this Australian

diplomat named Alexander Downer that he had information, he had heard information, from Russia that they have dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails that they could release to help the Trump campaign win. And Popatopoulos had reportedly said this in the spring of 2016 before the theft of the DNC emails was public. So Downer, the Australian diplomat, relayed this to the U.S., and when the FBI got this, that's supposedly the tip that prompted them to open up the Trump-Russia investigation and nothing else.

And the idea here is that this was a potential sign. The Trump campaign had advanced knowledge of the theft of the stolen emails at the heart of Russia gate. And so that was the New York Times story, basically. But then, as again, it's been the case so many times, information came out later that undermined this. Downer gave an interview where he said that Popatopoulos never told him about stolen emails or dirt on Hillary Clinton. all he said was that Russia might have all he said was that Popatopoulos had suggested some kind of suggestion I'm quoting there that Russia might be able to help the Trump campaign with the anonymous release of some kind of information he didn't mention what it was he didn't say emails

he didn't even say dirt all he said was some kind of anonymous release of information and it wasn't even clear whether that information was public or not so it was very very vague and when we got declassified the FBI document that opened up the Trump-Russia probe citing purportedly Poppidopoulos' comments. It contained no mention of the thousands of emails that the Times had said. So basically, what this time's story was, was an attempt to make the opening of the Trump-Russia investigation look more credible than it actually was. What it actually was was, if it really came from Papadopoulos, based on an extremely vague

tip that I had no mention of the emails that are at the heart of Russia gate. Yeah. All right. Now, we're very short on time here, but can you just give a mention to the last two on the list here? The last two, so the fourth one is this stories in the Washington Post and New York Times that by refusing to take on supposed Russian election interference, Trump is leaving a Russian threat unchecked, a national security threat unchecked. That's from the Post. And the time story is called, to sway vote, Russia used army of fake Americans. And it's all about how the supposed army of Russian bots invaded America and fooled people in a voting for Trump, not Hillary.

Now, there's a few problems with the time story. At the bottom of it, they admit that their examples of supposed Russian bots might not even be Russian. they're not sure all they say is the reason why they think the russian bots is because they express the pro-russian worldview but they have no actual proof that these bots even supposed bots even came from russia and this like the way they discuss it it's like they it's like literally they're comparing it to pearl harbor 9-11 in the post story that michael hayden quote described the russian interference as the political equivalent of the 9-11 attacks unquote and then you read the time story and it's like they're talking about

bots posting messages on Facebook that nobody reads and that might not even be from Russia. So it's just hilarious that there was this level of fear mongering about these Russian bots that might not even be Russia and that we're supposed to fault Trump for not confronting a, quote, national security threat. And what I also point out is that these same outlets have refused to report all the counterbelling evidence that's come out about the supposed Russian threat, including what we've talked about before Scott, which is the admission from CrowdStrike, the Clinton contractor that generated the Russian hacking of the DNC allegation, that they had no evidence that these

alleged Russian hackers actually stole anything. So it's just amazing that these outlets push these hyperbolic claims about Russian interference. They bury the fact that these alleged Russian bots and cyber warriors might not even be Russian, and then they refused to report on the countervailing evidence, like the crowd strike. I'll tell you what. you know it's it's exactly as i said at the time it's just exactly what they did to saddam hussein only instead of the president leading the charge the president was the victim of it but it was just flood the zone with lies how can he deny it all look at all that smoke but it's not smoke it's steam

hot air and i'm so sorry that we're out of time because i'm not done with you here but great work as always and there's also a brand new and everybody at the gray zone about the o pcw and the duma scandal there it's the great aaron mate at real clear investigations on Russia Gate there. Thanks, Aaron. Thank you, Scott. That's anti-war radio for this morning. Thanks very much for listening. Find the full interview archive at Scott Horton.org and at

YouTube.com slash Scott Horton's show. I'm here every Sunday morning from 830 to 9 on KPFK, 90.7 FM in L.A. See you next week.