Four days after The New York Post story had been released and then immediately squelched, more than 50 former intelligence officials — including five former CIA chiefs (John Brennan, Michael Hayden, John McLaughlin, Michael Morell and Leon Panetta) — signed a letter declaring the laptop story “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
It was a hilarious formulation. These well-informed individuals surely knew the laptop story, as depressing as it is, was the real deal. They knew it because the Bidens did not deny it, among other things. It’s since been confirmed as an authentic story by everyone from CBS News to the U.S. Justice Department and The New York Times. So it’s real now, and it was real then. Hence the letter’s meaninglessly vague formulation — the story “has all the classic earmarks” of something is different than saying it actually is that something.
What a spectacle. Five former chiefs of the CIA — dozens of top intelligence officials — all of them openly using deception to meddle in the American democratic process. Remember: The laptop had been in the possession of the FBI. They knew exactly what it was! Yet they had just spent weeks briefing social media companies to watch out for a “Russian deception” involving the Hunter Biden laptop story, a story they all knew was actually true — and now they were doubling down on the deception with this corny public letter.
Nor were any of them being called out over this obvious deception by The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN or other leading media. No doubt no one wanted to accidentally help get Trump re-elected — to pull a Jim Comey, and then be trapped in Comey’s “nightmare I can’t awaken from”. (Twitter’s Site Security chief Roth might well have had the ghost of Comey in mind when he e-mailed colleagues they would continue to suppress The New York Post story, “Given the SEVERE risks here and the lessons of 2016 …”)