Letter From Former Senior National Security, Military, and Elected Officials Calling On Congress To Create A Bipartisan 1/6 Commission

The Deep State just sent a declaration of war to American Patriots. This time, at least, they had the courtesy to all sign it.

On Wednesday afternoon, a collection of more than one hundred former government officials published an open letter to Congress demanding an “independent and bipartisan national commission” to “investigate” the January 6 disturbance at the U.S. Capitol.

What an absolute masterpiece of cynical mendacity.

January 6 was not a case of “domestic terrorism.” There were no “armed extremists” executing a “lethal breach” of the Capitol Complex. Only one individual has been charged with illegally bringing a gun into the Capitol. The only shots fired at the Capitol on January 6th were fired by a Capitol policeman who shot unarmed civilian Ashli Babbitt through the neck. There was no planned assault. January 6 absolutely was an isolated event. The Capitol riot was the product of bad police crowd control rather than a concerted plan to attack anyone or anything.

This dishonest and error-ridden letter isn’t a call for an “investigation.” It is a call for an anti-MAGA Patriot Act. It’s a demand for a new War on Terror, this time aimed at the American people.

It’s all obvious from the wording of the letter, and all so predictable.

From the breathless wording of their letter, one can surmise that these federal goons believe that the only way to fight a so-called “coordinated disinformation campaign” is with restrictions on free speech, social media bans and criminal prosecutions for “disinformation.”

The Deep State will want to fight the so-called “nontransparent funding of extremist networks” with new financial laws to end anonymous political donations and dox those providing support to causes unpopular inside the Beltway.

They will use the phantom threat of “white supremacists” to transform patriots of all backgrounds into nascent terrorists who must be purged from America’s institutions as an internal ideological threat.

The wording of the letter isn’t unprecedented. The Deep State apparatchiks who authored the letter liberally employ rhetorical stunts that are typically used to stoke wars and color revolutions around the globe. What’s changed is that now, instead of targeting regimes that stand against the Globalist American Empire, their rhetoric targets domestic enemies instead.

Revolver warned about the rise of  “counter-American intelligence” a few weeks in the seminal expose, “Dark New Dem Bill Uses “Counter American Intelligence” To Wage War on MAGA”:

What we are witnessing, in effect, is a foreign counterintelligence operation turned inward and aimed directly at the American people. “Counterintelligence” concerns insider threats to the operational integrity of US military-intelligence organizations and missions. As originally designed, American counter-intelligence is meant to prevent the American security apparatus from being infiltrated by hostile foreign actors.

What we are seeing now, however, is something quite different — a deliberate effort to cleanse our entire security apparatus of patriots — perhaps as preparation for a full scale effort to cleanse the entire country of American patriots, or anyone, for that matter, who objects to the open air prison that the Globalist American Empire has become.

Traditional counter-intelligence techniques, strategies, and mindsets are being re-purposed domestically, in order to cleanse the entire U.S. national security apparatus, including the DOD, of latent political sympathies.

Today, the top target of this Counter-American Intelligence operation is President Trump’s MAGA movement.

Adding insult to injury, the U.S. national security state’s pretext for launching this operation was itself based on the wild-eyed conspiracy theory that thousands of Trump supporters in military and law enforcement are training in state-sanctioned violence by day, then secretly moonlighting as vigilante militiamen plotting government overthrow by night. They’re forming networks, the theory goes, and now it’s the nation’s top national security threat. [Revolver News]

But the most offensive part of the letter isn’t its hideous demands for a MAGA witch hunt. No, the worst part is simply the list of “senior officials” who put their name to the letter. 

At least twelve of the signatories of this obscene and atrocious letter held senior positions at the Department of Defense. Thirteen are veterans of the CIA. Twenty-three were ambassadors. More than two dozen were members of Congress. The list of more than 100 names is a (sometimes literal) murderer’s row of the American ruling class from 1990 through the present; the class of dilettantes, mediocrities, incompetents, and frauds who squandered America’s superpower status, bankrupted the middle class with wars and bank bailouts, and led this country to the brink of ruin.

President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement arose in part to simply repair the damage caused by the Deep State’s catastrophic mismanagement of foreign policy. Now, the entrenched career bureaucrats of the Deep State want that movement annihilated.

The events of January 6th provided them with a fig leaf they needed to excuse their war on Trump and the America First movement. Without January 6th, they’d have found or fabricated some other excuse to say the exact same thing.

But if any group of people deserves a bipartisan commission to investigate their crimes, it’s the signatories of this letter.

James Clapper committed open perjury before the Senate Intelligence Committee. When asked directly whether the NSA collected bulk data from ordinary Americans, Clapper categorically said they did not. Mere months later, whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed Clapper’s lie. While Clapper should have been arrested and sent to prison, he was instead left untouched, and rewarded with a CNN job after leaving the White House.

Michael McFaul was Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia, who in the last five years has reinvented himself as one of the leading advocates for “color revolutions,” or as McFaul prefers to label them, “democratic breakthroughs.”

Besides literally writing the book on such revolutions, McFaul spent years trying to foment a “democratic breakthrough” here in the U.S. Not always the brightest bulb, McFaul was shockingly blunt about what he was trying to do. In September 2020, he tweeted (and then deleted) the following:

Now, having executed his color revolution in America, McFaul wants an ideological crackdown to make sure the new regime cannot ever be challenged, externally or internally.

As CIA Director, Michael Hayden built his reputation telling one lie after another to bolster the U.S. intelligence apparatus while threatening its critics.

In 2017, Hayden reacted to President Trump’s allegation of wiretapping by saying it “couldn’t happen” since that would be illegal.

How quaint! In fact, after the 9/11 attacks, Hayden himself spearheaded a program to spy on Americans’ phone calls without running it by a single court.

Hayden “joked” about putting Edward Snowden on a targeted assassination list. He bragged that stealing the emails of foreign political parties is “what we do.” A 2014 Senate report on the CIA’s torture program concludes with more than three dozen pages of appendix breaking down all the lies Hayden told to the Senate Intelligence Committee. In the words of the Columbia Journalism Review:

Hayden has a long history of making misleading and outright false statements, and by the estimation of many lawyers, likely committed countless felonies during the Bush administration. It is something of a wonder that someone responsible for so many reprehensible acts is now considered a totally above-the-fray, honest commentator on all issues intelligence. [CJR]

Alexander Vindman is the Ukraine-born defense official who decided that he, not the elected U.S. president, had the right to set America’s foreign policy toward his home country. Vindman, who was three times offered the post of Ukrainian defense minister, went rogue after deciding his policy for Ukraine was better than President Trump’s. After President Trump requested an investigation into Hunter Biden’s corruption, Vindman violated Article 88 of the Code of Military Justice, deciding that he, not the Commander in Chief, got to dictate American foreign policy. Vindman more or less admitted this in his own 2019 impeachment testimony:

I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security. [NPR]

Byron York’s 2020 book Obsession reveals that Vindman himself was the one who got the impeachment ball rolling by encouraging Eric Ciaramella’s politically-motivated “whistleblower” report to Congress. Vindman’s stunt did far more to undermine America’s democratic government than anything that happened January 6, but he’ll never face real consequences for it, because his rebellion was on behalf of the status quo rather than against it.

Zach Wamp, a 16-year Congressman from Tennessee, is one of the more obscure signatories of the petition. But Wamp’s signature is proof that nothing in the letter is motivated by actual fears of an insurrection against the government. In 2010, Wamp suggested that ObamaCare might be bad enough to justify a secession movement:

“I hope that the American people will go to the ballot box in 2010 and 2012 so that states are not forced to consider separation from this government.” [US News]

Wamp broaching secession is far more extreme than anything from Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, or the vast majority of the MAGA movement, and thus reveals the sham at the heart of this narrative. This isn’t about stopping secessionist or insurrectionist rhetoric. It’s about crushing anyone who wants serious changes to the American system. Even the most restrained and reasoned attack on the Globalist American Empire’s agenda of open borders, endless wars, and cultural imperialism, must now be met with maximum force–the full force of the American national security state.

Similarly, former Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays is very concerned about danger of “violent insurrectionists,” most of whom attacked nobody. This is a break from the past, where Shays has been tolerant of all kinds of wrongdoing:

“Now I’ve seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture,” Shays said at a debate Wednesday. “It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked,” added Shays. “And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn’t torture.” [AP]

Perhaps Shays was just eager to protect American troops from vicious attacks. Surely he’d be more incensed about sexual abuse of Americans.

The congressional sex scandal threatening House Speaker Dennis Hastert got even nastier yesterday, as Republican Rep. Chris Shays of Connecticut delivered a searing indictment of Sen. Ted Kennedy’s fateful actions at Chappaquiddick.

“I know the speaker didn’t go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water and then have a press conference the next day,” Shays fumed.

“Dennis Hastert didn’t kill anybody,” he told the Hartford Courant.

Shays slammed Kennedy after Shays’ Democratic opponent, Westport Selectwoman Diane Farrell, called on Hastert to resign because of his handling of Rep. Mark Foley’s seduction attempts on boys. Kennedy made a campaign appearance with Farrell last week. [NY Post]

Hmm, guess not.

Revolver could continue on for ages. Signatory Francis Fukuyama’s vision of The End of History provided the framework for the Iraq War and three decades of disastrous neoconservative interventions dressed up as campaigns to promote “democracy.” Eric Edelman agitated for the U.S. to impose sanctions on Turkey, because America evidently doesn’t have enough enemies and should punish its nominal allies. Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, and other lawmakers on the list spent years providing the votes for the globalist agenda of endless wars coupled with zero border security at home.

In a sane country, the signatories of this letter would be the ones getting investigated, or at least exiled from public life before they could utterly destroy the land they rule. Instead, they’re making a bid to render dissent against their corrupt, dysfunctional, evil, and illegitimate regime a criminal offense.

Just another day in the Globalist American Empire.

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THE LETTER:

Former Nat. Sec., Military, & Elected Officials2 days ago·8 min read

Dear Members of Congress,

We are former senior national security, military, and elected officials who have represented or served Democrats, Republicans, or administrations of both parties. We write to encourage this Congress to establish an independent and bipartisan national commission to investigate the January 6th assault of the U.S. Capitol Complex and its direct causes, and to make recommendations to prevent future assaults and strengthen the resilience of our democratic institutions.

We also write to you with great urgency in light of what we collectively see as an exigent and growing threat. The events of January 6th exposed severe vulnerabilities in the nation’s preparedness for preventing and responding to domestic terrorist attacks. The immediate security failings that permitted a lethal breach of the Capitol Complex by armed extremists raise serious questions and demand immediate solutions.

But January 6th was also the result of complex national security threats. These include coordinated disinformation campaigns, nontransparent financing of extremist networks, potential foreign influences, and white supremacist violent extremism, which the Department of Homeland Security identified in an October 2020 report as among “the most persistent and lethal threat[s] in the Homeland.” As FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to you recently, “January 6th was not an isolated event. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon.” Understanding how these forces culminated in an attack on the infrastructure of our democracy is critical to preventing future attacks.

In the wake of September 11th, the administration and Congress jointly acknowledged that the attack’s causes were complex and that an independent and well-equipped national commission was an essential tool to aid the federal government. Congressional inquiries, law enforcement activities, and a national commission not only worked in parallel, but critically complemented each other’s necessary work. An independent commission should not supplant the ongoing work by the legislative and executive branches, but it can uniquely support them by providing comprehensive and expert recommendations for Congress to act upon.

Commissions — properly empowered, resourced, and led — can establish a full picture of events and an analysis of their causes, from which nonpartisan recommendations can authoritatively flow. With dedicated time, resources, and expert staffing, they can also exclusively focus on the matter at hand over an appropriate time horizon. Given the gravity of January 6th as a national security matter — the violent disruption to the transition of power and the continuing threat of future attacks — a national commission examining the lead up to the January 6th assault, and the attendant security lapses, is not only appropriate, but a critical component of the national response.

A failure to deploy the full suite of tools available to fully understand January 6th and address its causes will leave the Capitol, and the nation, vulnerable to future attacks. In bipartisan fashion, we have successfully marshaled these tools before, and we implore you to do so once again.

Sincerely,

(Note: All titles are former positions or military ranks held prior to retirement.)

Javed Ali, Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council

Thad Allen, Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard; Commandant of the Coast Guard

Wendy R. Anderson, Deputy Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of Defense

Daniel Baer, U.S. Ambassador; Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Brian Baird, U.S. Representative, 1999–2011

Daniella Ballou-Aares, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State

Rand Beers, Acting Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Deputy Homeland Security Advisor

John Bellinger, Legal Adviser, U.S. Department of State; Legal Advisor, National Security Council

Tatyana Bolton, Cyber Policy Lead — Senior Policy Analyst, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Charles Boustany, U.S. Representative, 2005–2017

Steven Browning, U.S. Ambassador; Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Todd F. Buchwald, U.S. Ambassador, Office of Global Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State

Sharon Burke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Operational Energy

Daniel Byman, Professional Staff Member, 9/11 Commission

Piper Campbell, U.S. Ambassador; Head U.S. Mission to ASEAN

Kevin Carroll, Senior Counselor to the Secretary of Homeland Security; Senior Counsel to the House Homeland Security Committee

J. E. Cartwright, General, U.S. Marine Corps; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Steven Cash, Chief Counsel, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein; Intelligence Officer, CIA; Assistant District Attorney, New York

Michael Chertoff, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Peter Chiarelli, General, U.S. Army, 32nd Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army

James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence

William Cohen, Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense

Tom Coleman, U.S. Representative, 1976–1993

Gary Corn, Colonel, U.S. Army, Staff Judge Advocate, U.S. Cyber Command

Thomas Countryman, Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation

Ryan Crocker, U.S. Ambassador

George Croner, Litigation Counsel, National Security Agency; Special Assistant U.S. Attorney, Criminal Division, U.S. Department of Justice

Carlos Curbelo, U.S. Representative, 2015–2019

John Danforth, U.S. Senator, 1976–1995

J. Michael Daniel, Special Assistant to President Obama and Cybersecurity Coordinator

Tom Daschle, U.S. Senator, 1987–2005

Greg Delawie, U.S. Ambassador

Charles W. Dent, U.S. Representative, 2005–2018

Murray Dickman, Chief of Staff to the Attorney General

David Durenberger, U.S. Senator, 1978–1995

Eric Edelman, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Mickey Edwards, U.S. Representative, 1977–1993; Chair, House Republican Policy Committee, 1989–1993

Susan Elliott, U.S. Ambassador

Jeffrey Feltman, United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs; U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

Brenner Fissell, Appellate Counsel, Guantanamo Bay Military Commissions

Emil Frankel, Assistant Secretary for Transportation Policy, U.S. Department of Transportation

Charles Fried, Solicitor General of the United States

Francis Fukuyama, Deputy Director, Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State

Kim Fuller, U.S. Department of the Army, Director of International Affairs (Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary)

Larry Garber, USAID Mission Director, West Bank/Gaza

Richard Gephardt, U.S. Representative, 1977–2005

Stuart Gerson, Acting Attorney General of the U.S.; Assistant Attorney General; U.S. Air Force Counterintelligence Officer

Glenn Gerstell, General Counsel, National Security Agency

James Glassman, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, U.S. Department of State

Kevin Green, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy

Nina Hachigian, U.S. Ambassador

Chuck Hagel, Secretary, U.S. Department of Defense

Morton Halperin, Director, Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State

Jane Harman, U.S. Representative, 1993–1991, 2001–2011

Gary Hart, U.S. Senator, 1975–1987

Luke Hartig, Senior Director for Counterterrorism, National Security Council

Michael V. Hayden, General, U.S. Air Force; Director, CIA; Director, NSA

Jason Healey, Director, Critical Infrastructure Protection, Homeland Security Council

Margaret Henoch, CIA Senior Intelligence Service

Rush D. Holt, U.S. Representative, 1999–2015

Cameron Hume, U.S. Ambassador

Gordon Humphrey, U.S. Senator, 1979–1991

Paul Douglas Humphries, CIA

Carol Humphries, CIA, Captain, U.S. Navy Reserve

Bob Inglis, U.S. Representative, 1993–1999, 2005–2011

Steve Israel, U.S. Representative, 2001–2017

Jeh Johnson, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Susan Koch, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Threat Reduction Policy

Jim Kolbe, U.S. Representative, 1985–2007

David J. Kramer, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights & Labor

David Laufman, Chief of the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section in the National Security Division, U.S. Department of Justice

J. William Leonard, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (Security & Information Operations)

Jason Lewis-Berry, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of State

Andrew Liepman, Deputy Director, National Counterrorism Center; Deputy Director, CIA/Counterterrorism Center; Director, Office of Iraq Analysis; Deputy Director, Weapons Intelligence Non Proliferation and Arms Control Center

Robert Litt, General Counsel, Office of the Director of National Intelligence

George Little, Press Secretary, Pentagon; Spokesman, CIA

James Loy, Admiral, U.S. Coast Guard; Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard; Deputy Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Lewis Lukens, U.S. Ambassador

Michael McFaul, Ambassador; Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russian and Eurasian Affairs at the National Security Council

Steven McGann, U.S. Ambassador

Dennis McGinn, Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy; Assistant Secretary of the Navy

Joseph Medina, Brigadier General, U.S. Marine Corps

Christopher Mellon, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense

Connie Morella, U.S. Representative, 2003–2006; U.S. Ambassador

Janet Napolitano, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Elizabeth Neumann, Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and Threat Prevention, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Suzanne Nossel, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

William Owens, Admiral, U.S. Navy; Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Christopher Painter, Coordinator for Cyber Issues, U.S. Department of State

William Perry, Secretary of Defense

Larry Pfeiffer, Chief of Staff, CIA; Senior Director, White House Situation Room

Annie Pforzheimer, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan

Randal Phillips, Senior Intelligence Service, CIA

William Piekney, Senior Operations Manager, CIA

Steven Pifer, Senior Foreign Service Officer; U.S. Ambassador

Tony Pipa, Chief Strategy Officer, USAID

Marc Polymeropoulos, Senior Intelligence Service, Directorate of Operations, CIA

Allison Price, Senior Spokesperson, U.S. Department of Justice

Deborah Pryce, U.S. Representative, 1993–2009

Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor

Thomas Ridge, Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Denver Riggleman, U.S. Representative, 2019–2021

Thomas B. Robertson, U.S. Ambassador

Tim Roemer, 9/11 Commissioner; U.S. Ambassador; U.S. Representative, 1991–2003

Michael Rogers, Admiral, U.S. Navy; Commander, U.S. Cyber Command; Director, National Security Agency

Todd Rosenblum, Deputy Under Secretary of Intelligence, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Paul Rosenzweig, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Nicholas Rostow, Legal Advisor to the National Security Council; Staff Director, U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Joel Rubin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Nilmini Rubin, Director, National Security Council

David Scheffer, U.S. Ambassador

Robert Shanks, Deputy Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice; General Counsel, Overseas Private Investment Corporation; General Counsel, Peace Corps

Christopher Shays, U.S. Representative, 1987–2009

Douglas Silliman, U.S. Ambassador

John Sipher, Senior Intelligence Service, CIA Clandestine Service

Peter Smith, U.S. Representative, 1989–1991

Suzanne Spaulding, Under Secretary, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State

Miles Taylor, Chief of Staff, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Tomicah Tillemann, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State; Speechwriter to the Secretary of State

Kurt Tong, U.S. Ambassador

Olivia Troye, Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor to Vice President Mike Pence

Stanley A. Twardy, Jr., United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, 1985–1991

Alexander Vershbow, NATO Deputy Secretary General; Assistant Secretary of Defense; U.S. Ambassador

Alexander Vindman, Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army; Director for European Affairs, National Security Council

Edward Walker, U.S. Ambassador; Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs

James Walsh, U.S. Representative, 1989–2009

Zach Wamp, U.S. Representative, 1995–2011

Thomas Warrick, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism Policy, U.S. Department of Homeland Security

William Wechsler, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Special Operations and Combatting Terrorism

Pamela White, U.S. Ambassador

Christine Todd Whitman, Governor of New Jersey; Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency

Jonathan Winer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement; Special Envoy for Libya

Tim Wirth, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs; U.S. Senator, 1987–1993; U.S. Representative, 1975–1987

Douglas H. Wise, CIA Senior Intelligence Service; Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency

Tamara Cofman Wittes, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State

Stephen N. Xenakis, Brigadier General, U.S. Army

Marie Yovanovitch, U.S. Ambassador

Dov S. Zakheim, Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller)

Peter D. Zimmerman, Chief Scientist, Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Chief Scientific Advisor, US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; Science Advisor for Arms Control, U.S. Department of State