{"id":58795,"date":"2018-04-08T03:11:07","date_gmt":"2018-04-08T03:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58795"},"modified":"2018-04-08T03:11:07","modified_gmt":"2018-04-08T03:11:07","slug":"the-wilderness-of-mirrors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=58795","title":{"rendered":"The Wilderness of Mirrors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron <\/strong>&#8212;  unequal sides of a coin spinning, methinks ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<p>Aw, c&#8217;mon, <strong>Friedman<\/strong>, c&#8217;mon now:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/QUO-dq-wilderness-of-mirrors.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"628\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-58796\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/QUO-dq-wilderness-of-mirrors.png 600w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/QUO-dq-wilderness-of-mirrors-287x300.png 287w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p><strong>Sources:<\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<li><strong>Business Insider<\/strong>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/james-clapper-putin-trump-russia-asset-2017-12\">Former DNI James Clapper: Putin is handling Trump like a Russian &#8216;asset&#8217;<\/a>\n<li><strong>New York Times<\/strong>, Thomas L. Friedman, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/04\/03\/opinion\/putin-cia-weakening-russia.html\">Is Putin a C.I.A. Agent?<\/a><\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Supporting <strong>James Clapper<\/strong>, we have this from <strong>Barry McCaffrey<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-lang=\"en\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/mccaffreyr3\/status\/974748724176941056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 16, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And this, by way of explanation, from <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/homenews\/administration\/377803-megyn-kelly-i-think-putin-has-something-on-trump\">Megyn Kelly<\/a><\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The host of \u201cMegyn Kelly Today\u201d recently sat down for an interview with Putin, and told MSNBC\u2019s Chris Matthews that she thinks the Russian president \u201cknows some things&#8221; that Trump would not want out in public. In the interview, she confronted Putin about why Trump speaks so highly of him, and said she does not think the Russian president likes Trump. \u201cI would not say that Putin likes Trump,\u201d she said. \u201cI did not glean that at all from him. I did glean that perhaps he has something on Donald Trump.&#8221; <\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think there\u2019s a very good chance Putin knows some things about Donald Trump that Mr. Trump does not want repeated publicly,\u201d she added. Kelly said that she doesn\u2019t think Putin\u2019s information has to do with the infamous dossier linking Trump to Russian nationals. \u201cMy money\u2019s not on the dossier,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it has to do with money and Trump\u2019s early years dealing with the Russians back in the &#8217;90s, his facilities here in the United States.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And from <strong>Brennan<\/strong>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>John O. Brennan, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, said Wednesday that he thought Russia may have some kind of compromising information on President Trump, setting off furious speculation about whether the former spy chief was basing that assertion on inside information.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Supporting <strong>Friedman?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Bupkis.<\/p>\n<p>But anyway.The two quotes in the DoubleQuote &#8212; they make a nice tai-chich symbol &#8212; &#x262f; &#8212; an ouroboros of sorts: Trump is Putin&#8217;s asset; Putin is Trump&#8217;s asset; Trump is Putin&#8217;s asset; ad infinitum or nauseam, whichever comes first.<\/p>\n<p>Hence <a href=\"https:\/\/20committee.com\/2012\/11\/18\/the-wilderness-of-mirrors\/\">The Wilderness of Mirrors<\/a>, via <strong>XX Committee<\/strong>. Tbis bears repeating:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Greg Treverton, a brainy wonk who has worked on the high margins of the U.S. Intelligence Community, famously explained that puzzles and mysteries are fundamentally different: the former, with their pieces, can be solved, while the latter, with inexact pieces and no firm map, defy easy solution. And some mysteries will defy solution indefinitely.<\/p>\n<p>One of the best things about working in counterintelligence, if you\u2019re comfy with imprecision, is that it\u2019s all about mysteries (one of the worst things is that it can make you crazy), some so vexing and intellectually challenging that they elude agreed-upon solutions for decades, in some cases in perpetuity. James Angleton, the poet-turned-counterspy who became CIA\u2019s genius\/flake chief of CI for much of the Cold War, referred to this experience as \u201cthe wilderness of mirrors,\u201d which captures the enduring mystery of never quite grasping up from down in a case, or knowing who\u2019s really running the show, no matter how closely you look at it (the memorable phrase also happens to be the title of the best book about the CIA\u2019s Angleton experience).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; unequal sides of a coin spinning, methinks ] . Aw, c&#8217;mon, Friedman, c&#8217;mon now: ** Sources: Business Insider, Former DNI James Clapper: Putin is handling Trump like a Russian &#8216;asset&#8217; New York Times, Thomas L. Friedman, Is Putin a C.I.A. Agent? ** Supporting James Clapper, we have this from Barry [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,1493,1314,627,1149,1613,1479,88,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-clapper","category-donald-trump","category-doublequotes","category-john-schindler","category-natsec","category-ouroboros","category-putin","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58795"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58795\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58808,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58795\/revisions\/58808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}