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As with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the administration recently backed out of, Russia hasn't always been a perfect party to the agreement. For years, for instance, they have restricted flights over Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on Poland's border; as well as over Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. Specifically, in 2014, they announced a 500-kilometer sublimit on Open Skies flights over Kaliningrad and restricted several flights to above 500 km, according to the State Department. They also denied flight access to a ten-kilometer corridor over the disputed region of Georgia, which Russia claims is part of Russia but which the international community recognizes as Georgia. The United States responded by restricting Russian flights over its territory. Engel supports the U.S. restrictions. The State Department has concluded that Russia's moves don't actually present an obstacle to U.S. intelligence collection over the areas. But they did determine that the Russian restrictions violated Article VI of the treaty.
The bigger concern is that Russia gets more out of the treaty than does the United States since U.S. intelligence satellites are better than their Russian counterparts.
In 2016, Adm. Cecil Haney, then-commander of U.S. STRATCOM, testified to lawmakers, "I don't have the Russian intelligence guidebook available to me, but I will say that given the lack of overhead capability that the Russians have, Open Skies gives them a capability to be able to reconnoiter parts of our country and other nations as part of that."
While no official communication has come from the White House yet, Moscow has been expecting the move for some time. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the decision "has already been taken in Washington."
Lavrov said European members of the treaty are unlikely to pull out, because they understand it has "value as an instrument [to secure] trust, predictability, and transparency."
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Carr: Let me just point out again. This started according to Neil's source here in December of 2015. Donald Trump wasn't even the front runner for the Republican nomination at that point. It kind of puts the lie to this Susan Rice memo that was declassified today where they make it appear that they only became interested in Flynn when he began talking with the Russian ambassador after the election. So 11 months before the election they are not dipping into his phone records with the Russians but these hacks in the treasury, these Democrat hacks are looking at his financial transactions. Is that the bottom line?
McCabe: Yes, and I will point out maybe you know the details better than I do but it's my understanding that Flynn hadn't even endorsed Trump until later. Flynn was actually talking to other candidates. This was very much a Flynn centric operation.
The other name was Paul Manafort's name and Flynn's name are in her complaint to the office of the special counsel and the IG at the treasury. There are other names she can't say because they are not part of the paperwork. So I asked her who else? Where there members of Congress? Yes. Were there senior staffers in the Trump campaign? Yes. And I said (Inaudible talk) years? And members of the Trump family? Yes.
Carr: You know Trey Gowdy the former Congressman from South Carolina who was in a lot of these intelligence committee hearings and he said they were unmasking members of the Trump family on inauguration day in the morning. I just want to read something from the story here. This ruse tapping into their financial transactions was used to get around using classified resources to surveil Americans because they didn't have a court warrant and hadn't gone to FISA.
Once the treasury had more information is more accessible than they were targeting from the black box meaning more accessible information they would go to the white box for a faster and more informed search. This was a strictly illegal dirty tricks situation. This is the kind of stuff they accused Nixon of doing. He never had the capacity or resources. I don't think he had the will to do something like this you know?
McCabe: I will also point out if you want to talk about unmasking. On January 12 Obama signed a rendition of the executive order that governs surveillance EO-12333 and it was like the 12th that you see that the secretary to the treasury Jack Lew accesses Flynn's records. And on the 12th you see a ton of people access that list on the 12th because that was the day that Obama opened it up to everybody.
Carr: This surveillance program, again this is the illegal surveillance program that was run out of the Treasury Department. Which was then under the leadership of SS. Leslie Iowa. He was at the CIA and had a one year stint as an Obama intelligence briefer.
So, in other words, he was a soldier in the Obama crime family and they put him in their just like they put Lew in there because he was the chief of staff for Obama. They needed to keep the lid on these dirty tricks. Do you think they were dipping into all the financial records?
Is that where you think she's getting at, your whistleblower? Do you think they were dipping into the financial records of all the Republican candidates? Senator Grassley said they were probably illegally surveilling all the Republican candidates. Do you think that's what she was getting at your whistleblower?
McCabe: I mean think about it. You are a reporter. If a cop leaves a folder off a desk and walks away would you look through the folder? Why would you stop? Think about it if you go back to Watergate and Nixon most of those investigators weren't looking into Nixon. They were auditing Bob Dole. They were auditing Ronald Reagan. They investigated every Republican who could have run for president in '76 and just charged it to the Watergate account.
Carr: If you are digging through financial records and you do it very carefully you might be able to spot something a check, let's say just to make something up like an abortion and you got some kids adopted and you didn't do it in a proper way through a back door payment to somebody all of a sudden you have a lot of blackmail material even if they are not a candidate for president.
McCabe: So go back Howie to black-box versus the white box. In the black box, you see a check to the abortion clinic then you go to the white box and you say, "Oh, on Facebook they were out of town on the same day. Oh, OK let's go to the security cameras."
We see them walking into the building. Once you have all the details you need on the black box you can go to the open-source white box and that's sort of how they get a parallel description on you to say we don't need a warrant it's right on your Facebook page.
Carr: This is pretty amazing. We've got another woman coming up in the next hour that's sort of on the same topic how Adam Housely on Fox has been saying that this thing is just massive. It's almost unbelievable how many people were under surveillance and the depth of the surveillance that they were under. It could be hundreds of people couldn't it, Neil McCabe?
McCabe: Well, yes I don't have proof it was hundreds of people but why would you stop? If I had all afternoon to just look up anybody I want why wouldn't I?
Carr: Right. (Chuckles) We're both reporters. It's very addictive once you get started.
McCabe: Of course.
Carr: Then you are just digging. Pretty soon it becomes a hobby. You go home and put your feet up on the couch and you just dig through the evening. It's more fun than watching TV.
McCabe: OK. Then you see the connections. Then you see something in the Flynn file and you say oh, now I get what the connection is.
Carr: Yes. There have been other stories earlier on the surveillance on Flynn in various forms that were going back to 2014. Your story says you have it connected back to 2015. He's got a hell of a civil suit once he gets rid of this criminal case in front of Judge Sullivan. Can you imagine that? How much time and effort did they expend and how many people were involved in trying to kill this guy a three-star general?
McCabe: You saw what they disclosed today the declass of Susan Rice memo of Comey going after Flynn. I had no idea that Flynn was the scariest guy on earth. Who knew that Mike Flynn was such a scary guy.
Carr: Neil McCabe this is a great story. We're going to tweet it out.
This is really good. Keep us informed about this. You've really advanced the story here. This is quite interesting. I think we'll be reading more about this. Thank you, Neil McCabe, of the Star News Digital Media newspapers. He's also a media fellow from the Gold Institute.
The world's progress in eliminating poverty is set to suffer a major setback due to the Covid-19 outbreak, forcing more people to survive on less than $1.90 per day, the World Bank has said in its recent report.
"The pandemic and shutdown of advanced economies could push as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty - erasing much of the recent progress made in poverty alleviation," World Bank Group President David Malpass said. According to him, the unprecedented crisis could wipe out up to three years of progress in the area.
"Any attack against efforts to combat the coronavirus crisis is utterly reprehensible. We have seen an increased proportion of cyber-attacks related to coronavirus and our experts work around the clock to help organisations targeted".If Britain had one single mainstream media journalist willing to think, rather than just regurgitate government propaganda, they might have realised that there is a massive story here if you look at it the other way round. The quote from the Guardian deliberately attempted to give the impression that Russia, China and Iran were trying to disable, destroy or hamper coronavirus research: "Any attack against efforts to combat the coronavirus". But if you read carefully through those articles, you find that the allegation is merely that they are attempting to hack in to gain access to the research. Because the UK and the US are attempting to hide their vaccine and treatment research results from the rest of the world to make money out of them.
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