Venezuela Arrests an American Spy at Oil Refinery

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Primer: He’s a marine who has served at CIA bases in Iraq and was found with specialized weapons and a large amount of USD. In April of 2020:

(Reuters) – Venezuela has received refining materials via plane shipment from Iran to help it start the catalytic cracking unit at the 310,000 barrels-per-day Cardon refinery, which is necessary to produce gasoline, an official said on Thursday.

The shipments mark a new stage in cooperation between the two OPEC nations that are both facing crippling U.S. sanctions, with their levels of oil production and exports declining in recent years due in part to the pressure from Washington.

Erling Rojas, vice minister for refining and petrochemicals in Venezuela’s Oil Ministry, announced the arrival of the material on Twitter. “Thanks to the support of our allies in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” he tweeted.

***

Word of the alleged U.S. spy came after a Venezuelan court last month sentenced two former U.S. Green Berets to 20 years in prison for their role in a failed incursion in May.

Separately during Friday’s broadcast, Maduro said that in recent days security forces had also foiled a plot to cause an explosion at another oil refinery, El Palito in Carabobo state. He did not elaborate.

The President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, announced on Friday the arrest of an alleged “American spy”, who was reportedly arrested near the largest oil refinery complex in the country. The alleged spy, who has not been named, was reportedly in the vicinity of the Paraguaná Refinery Complex, which is known as the third largest refinery complex in the world. It combines the Amuay, Bajo Grande and Cardón refineries, which together produce nearly a third of Venezuela’s daily oil output.

Venezuelan Cardón Refinery paralyzes crude processing ...

During a live address on Venezuelan national television, Maduro said an American citizen had been arrested on Thursday in Falcon State, in Venezuela’s northeast. Falcon is the site of the Amuay and Cardón oil refineries and much of the local population is employed in the state-owned oil industry. The Venezuelan president said the alleged spy is “a marine” who was “serving on [Central Intelligence Agency] bases in Iraq” prior to arriving in Venezuela. He added that the alleged spy was “captured with large amounts of cash, large quantities of dollars and other items”. He did not elaborate further, but said the detainee was in the process of “giving a statement in custody”.

Maduro also said that Venezuelan security forces had foiled a separate plot to bomb El Palito, which is another oil refinery, located in Carabobo State. He then urged workers in oil refineries to “be on alert” in case more attacks are planned. Venezuela’s oil production has fallen to nearly a third of its peak output in 2009, when the country was producing 3.2 million barrels per day. The government blames the oil shortage on acts of sabotage from domestic and foreign enemies of President Maduro, but opposition parties claim that mismanagement and corruption are behind the demise of the Venezuelan oil industry.

Earlier this year, a Venezuelan court sentenced two American former servicemen to 20 years in prison for their role in what the Venezuelan media refer to as “enfrentamiento en El Junquito” (“El Junquito raid”), or “Operación GEDEÓN”. GEDEÓN refers to a failed coup plot carried out on May 3 and 4, 2020, by a group of up to 60 armed men. It is alleged that the coup was masterminded by Major General Clíver Alcalá Cordones, a retired member of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Army, with the support of Silvercorp USA, a private security group led by Jordan Goudreau, a Canadian-born former sergeant in the US Green Berets. The United States government has denied involvement in the coup plot.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Partner with Netflix to Produce BLM

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Anyone think this documentary would be comprehensive and honest? Anyone?

Source: As a part of her and Prince Harry’s mega-deal with Netflix, Meghan Markle is reportedly pitching a documentary about a Black Lives Matter (BLM) co-founder, The Sun reports.

Patrisse Cullors, who is one of the three individuals who founded the BLM movement, would be the subject of the documentary that Meghan Markle would apparently like to produce with Netflix.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, as Meghan, 39, and Harry, 35, are also known, have inked a deal with the streaming giant estimated (by some prognosticators) to score them $100 million to $150 million over perhaps five years. These are desperately needed funds considering the couple’s lavish lifestyle, sky-high security costs, debt to the British taxpayers for the renovation of their English home, (now reimbursed) and the reported lack of financial support they are now receiving from the Windsor purse.

The Mirror heard from a source who said that Meghan Markle pitched the documentary to Netflix because she’s been “blown away by the incredible work Patrisse has done” in spearheading the BLM movement.

“She thinks her story needs to be told – and she would love to be the one to make it.”

Meghan Markle pitches movie idea to Netflix about Black Lives Matter co-founder

Patrisse, 36, was driven into action by the acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting young Trayvon Martin to death in Florida.

She, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi founded Black Lives Matter in 2013. And if Meghan Markle has anything to do with it, Patrisse will soon star in a Netflix documentary.

Meghan Markle is a historic first for the British royal family: an African-American spouse of a senior royal. So perhaps it is a natural fit she should seek to produce a Black Lives Matter documentary with Netflix.

Meanwhile, outspoken British TV host Piers Morgan has lashed out at the Sussexes for being such greedy gobble gannets where money is concerned, according to the Daily Star. Sure, they’ve reported paid back the millions of dollars in British taxpayer funds used to renovate their English home, Frogmore Cottage. But the great wealth that the couple has sought out rubs the ever stuffy and huffy TV personality quite the wrong way.

Taking a jibe a Meghan, 39, and Harry, 35, Piers exclaimed: “It’s great they’ve paid back the Frogmore money, it’s great they’re not taking any more of Charles’s money, but they’ve kept the titles – and if you really want to find freedom, and you really want to divorce the country, why would you keep the titles ‘Duke and Duchess of Sussex’?

Meghan Markle ‘has pitched Black Lives Matter movie to Netflix’ amid £112m deal

In a lamentation evocative of Welsh complaints that ever-English Prince Charles was undeserving of the Prince of Wales title he received at his 1969 investiture, Morgan continued in his verbal thrashing of Meghan and Harry: “I’m from Sussex and I bet I’ve spent more time there over the past week than they have in their entire lives, and yet they want to trade off their royal names to get all this money.”

Oh, but Morgan wasn’t done. As the duchess reportedly plans for a Black Lives Matter documentary, he said, “The only reason Netflix is paying them all this money is because of their royal titles – you think Meghan Markle would have got £1.50 out of them without it?

Co-founder of Black Lives Matter Movement Patrisse Cullors

When Meghan Markle and Harry announced their Netflix mega-deal earlier this month — one that may spawn the Black Lives Matter documentary — they said, “Our focus will be on creating content that informs but also gives hope. As new parents, making inspirational family programming is also important to us.”

Other royal commentators, according to the Express, have recently reflected that Harry and Meghan have apparently severed the last cord tying them to their past lives as working senior royals in the British royal family.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have repaid their £2.4 million taxpayer-funded renovation of Frogmore Cottage, their UK residence. The New York Times also reports that the Sussexes are no longer receiving any income from Prince Charles’ Duchy of Cornwall. ITV Royal Rota podcast hosts Chris Ship and Lizzie Robinson discussed how the couple’s financial independence is sending a stark message.

‘They are done’ – Meghan and Harry issue ‘clear warning’ as they cut final royal ties

According to Ship, Harry and Meghan cut these financial ties to the Windsor fortune to serve as a justification for blocking the media from their lives.

Which is ironic, since media interest in Meghan and Harry has only grown since they announced in January that they were bolting from their positions as senior royals.

Now, eight months later, they’re firmly ensconced in the Los Angeles area, having purchased a $14.7 estate in Montecito, California. And of course they have landed the deal with Netflix. Apparently to come: the Black Lives Matter documentary.

For Harry’s, a considerable downside to the split, the Mirror reports, has been the loss of the duke’s treasured military titles.

Prince Harry was “emotional and demoralised” after being stripped of his military titles when he stepped down from the royal duties, a biography has claimed. The Duke of Sussex was forced to relinquish his cherished roles in the British Army after moving to California with Meghan earlier this year. Harry vowed to maintain links with servicemen and women after leaving the forces in 2015, reports the Daily Star. It is this aspect of ‘Megxit’ that he found most “demoralising”, according to Finding Freedom authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.

Prince Harry ’emotional and demoralised’ after being stripped of military titles

Assigned Mueller Team Cell Phones Wiped Clean of all Data

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It is a pattern. It is Weismann…. It is Strzok….It is a cover-up…..now what?

NR: More than two dozen phones belonging to members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team were wiped clean of data before the Justice Department’s inspector general could comb them for records, the DOJ said in records released Thursday.

At least 27 cell phones were wiped of data before the DOJ inspector general could review them, some reset to factory settings and some wiped “accidentally” after the wrong password was entered too many times, according to 87 pages of DOJ records regarding the phones issued to members of the special counsel’s office. Including mobile phones that were “reassigned,” the Special Counsel’s office wiped a total of 31 phones.

**

A phone belong to assistant special counsel James Quarles “wiped itself without intervention from him,” the DOJ’s records state.

Andrew Weismann, a top prosecutor on Mueller’s team, “accidentally wiped” his cell phone, causing the data to be lost. Other members of the team also accidentally wiped their phones, the DOJ said.

Additionally, the cell phone of FBI lawyer Lisa Page was misplaced by the special counsel’s office. While it was eventually obtained by the DOJ inspector general, by that point the phone had been restored to its factory settings, wiping it of all data. The phone of FBI agent Peter Strzok was also obtained by the inspector general’s office, which found “no substantive texts, notes or reminders” on it.

Strzok and Page texted each other about their aversion to Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election cycle. In their messages to each other, Strzok and Page, who were carrying on an extramarital affair at the time, both called then-candidate Trump an “idiot” and made vague mention of an “insurance policy” to ensure he would not be elected. Critics have speculated that the “insurance policy” referred to the investigation of potential ties between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, but the two former FBI officials have denied that suggestion.

In March of last year, Mueller submitted his final report to Attorney General William Barr on the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The report, a redacted version of which was released to Congress and the public the next month, concluded that the Trump campaign did not conspire with Russians to influence the election, but said investigators could not reach a conclusion on whether President Trump committed obstruction of justice.

Facing the Justice Department’s frustration that he left the question of obstruction open in his final report, Mueller said in May of last year that charging Trump with a crime was “not an option” since, per guidance issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, a sitting president cannot be indicted.

Phones issued to at least three other Mueller prosecutors, Kyle Freeny, Rush Atkinson, and senior prosecutor Greg Andres were also wiped of data.

*** Politipage | Conservative News Aggregator and Curator

During Rosenstein’s May 23, 2017, interview with Mueller’s team, FBI notes indicate Rosenstein considered appointing a special counsel on May 10, the day after Comey was fired, and that Rosenstein’s “first conversation with Mueller for the position of special counsel” was that day. Rosenstein met with Mueller in person on May 12, and Hunt called Mueller that evening. Rosenstein and Sessions spoke with Mueller the next day, and “Mueller informed them he did not want to be interviewed for FBI director.” Rosenstein told the FBI that “the first candidate to be interviewed at the White House was Mueller,” but that section is redacted.

“Rosenstein and Sessions spoke with Mueller on Saturday, May 13. Mueller informed them he did not want to be interviewed for the FBI director position. Rosenstein instead convinced Mueller to share with Sessions Mueller’s views about ‘what should be done with the FBI.’ Sessions thought Mueller’s comments were ‘brilliant.’ Rosenstein did not want to interview Mueller and then reject him, so they made it clear they only sought his opinion,” the FBI interview with Rosenstein states. “Nevertheless, Mueller was placed on the White House’s list of potential candidates for FBI director … Mueller was interviewed for the position of FBI director, but later decided to withdraw from consideration.” More here.

 

Moscow Seems to Habitually Poison Dissenters

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Novichok is a series of nerve agent weapons developed as part of a secret Soviet program and continued once the Soviet Union collapsed.

A Novichok nerve agent was used to poison the former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal in the English town of Salisbury in 2018. Also in 2018, British counterterrorism officials on Wednesday confirmed that two people found unconscious near the same site where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned earlier this year were exposed to the same nerve agent, novichok, The Guardian reported.

British nationals Dawn Sturgess, 44, from Salisbury, and Charlie Rowley, 45, of Amesbury, were the victims reported by Scotland Yard.

PHOTO: Novichok nerve agent   The weapons were developed under a program known as “Foliant,” according to Mirzayanov. In the 1990s, he had been tasked with ensuring the secrecy of Russia’s chemical weapons program, but he decided to go public because he believed the program violated the country’s commitment to the Chemical Weapons Convention that it had signed along with the United States. More here.

NPR: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hospitalized in Berlin for several weeks after being poisoned, has been taken out of his medically induced coma.

In this August photo, Alexei Navalny poses for a photo with Siberian politician Ksenia Fadeyeva. Navalny was removed from a medically-induced coma in a Berlin hospital after suffering what German authorities say was a poisoning with a chemical nerve agent while traveling in Siberia in August. Andrei Fateyev/AP

In a statement Monday, Berlin’s Charité hospital said Navalny’s condition has improved and he is being weaned off mechanical ventilation. Navalny is responding to verbal stimuli, however, “it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” the hospital said.

The hospital only released details of Navalny’s condition after first consulting with his wife, who reassured doctors that Navalny would want that information released.

The 44-year-old politician, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics, became ill from poison on Aug. 20 during a domestic flight in Russia. Suspicion immediately fell on the Russian government, which has poisoned critics of the state before.

Two days later, Navalny was flown to Germany for treatment, where doctors put him into a coma. A German military laboratory confirmed last week that Navalny had consumed a variant of Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, prompting the German government to demand a Russian investigation.

“There’s no doubt whatsoever” that Navalny’s poisoning was approved by the highest levels of Russia’s government, former CIA chief of Russia operations Steven Hall told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.

The U.K. summoned the Russian ambassador to the country Monday to express its “deep concern” over Navalny’s poisoning, First Secretary of State Dominic Raab said on Twitter. “It’s completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation,” he said.

The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that it had anything to do with poisoning Navalny. “Attempts to somehow associate Russia with what happened are unacceptable to us, they are absurd,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the BBC.

***

Now the big question is what is the consequence to be against Russia and where will the United States, Britain or Germany be on this matter……crickets

Debate = Vindman is the Whistleblower not Ciaramella

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Head fakes or rather deep fakes everywhere. Remember there was some robust chatter claiming that Ukraine was the genesis of the Trump impeachment process? Looks like he could be more right than wrong….

Hat tip to Byron York:

The most interesting thing about Byron York’s exhaustively reported and richly detailed new impeachment book, “Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump,” is that the whistleblower who filed the official complaint that got impeachment rolling isn’t ever identified.

It turns out that the heated discussion over the whistleblower, who was previously identified by Real Clear Investigations as the CIA’s Eric Ciaramella, was a diversion from allowing the American people to understand who was the actual instigator of the failed effort to oust President Donald Trump from office.

Rather than being a witness who independently supported the claims of the whistleblower, the National Security Council’s Lt. Col Alex Vindman was the driving force behind the entire operation, according to the book’s interviews with key figures in the impeachment probe and other evidence. The whistleblower’s information came directly from Vindman, investigators determined.

“Vindman was the person on the call who went to the whistleblower after the call, to give the whistleblower the information he needed to file his complaint,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.

“For all intents and purposes, Vindman is the whistleblower here, but he was able to get somebody else to do his dirty work for him,” explained one senior congressional aide.

Vindman was the only person at the National Security Council (NSC) listening in on the infamous call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to be concerned by it. Vindman immediately began talking to his identical twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also worked at the NSC. The twins both complained to NSC Counsel John Eisenberg. Alex Vindman talked about it with his direct supervisor Tim Morrison, who was also on the call. He talked about it with another NSC lawyer, Michael Ellis.

Vindman’s identical twin may be called in impeachment probe Vindman twins

Vindman testified that he talked to only two people outside the NSC. One was George Kent, a State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. He refused to say who the other person was. Both Vindman and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the impeachment proceedings, strenuously resisted any attempt by investigators to discuss who the other individual was, admitting only that it was a member of the “intelligence community,” the same nebulous descriptor used for the whistleblower.

In his complaint, the whistleblower claimed “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” described to him the contents of the conversation. It is unclear if he was sourcing his knowledge  just to multiple Vindmans or any other White House officials.

The description of the call appeared to come from the White House’s rough transcript, which Vindman helped prepare. It repeated Vindman’s unique interpretation of the call as seeking foreign interference in a campaign. It mentioned that lawyers had been informed, and Vindman had done just that. The complaint also included information from public news reports.

At first Schiff publicly promised that the whistleblower would testify and that any attempt by the White House to thwart that would be fought vigorously. But then news broke that Schiff’s office had worked with the whistleblower prior to him filing his complaint. Schiff switched his stance to refusing to allow the whistleblower to testify. What’s more, he refused to allow any investigation into how the Ukraine investigation began.

The real instigator of the Ukraine investigation, Vindman, testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on October 29, 2019, and returned to the House in November for public testimony. York writes that Vindman’s extensive testimony was more complex than news reports suggested.

Vindman repeatedly said that he viewed Trump’s phone call with Zelensky as “wrong,” but he was unable to articulate precisely why. He expressed frustration that the elected president was pushing a foreign policy at odds from the “interagency consensus” of the bureaucracy that he felt should control foreign policy.

Vindman admitted under questioning that he had thrice been offered the prestigious position of defense minister for the Ukraine government. Despite his focus on Ukraine at the NSC, Vindman did not appear knowledgeable about well-established Ukrainian corruption problems. Vindman is a Ukrainian American. He grew hostile with members who sought to understand exactly to whom he had disclosed the phone call.

Using detailed information from interviews with White House officials, members of Congress, and their key staff, York shows how Republicans had to deal with Rep. Adam Schiff’s determination to hide from the American public not just who the whistleblower was but anything about the process that led to the whistleblower complaint.

But Schiff’s behavior inadvertently confirmed how the whistleblower found his information. Every time that members asked about the second non-NSC person Vindman disclosed the call to, Schiff and other Democrats would direct the witness to not answer in order to “protect the whistleblower.” York writes:

Could that have been any clearer? The Republican line of questioning established that: 1) Vindman told two people outside the NSC. 2) One of them was George Kent. And 3) The other was in the Intelligence Community but could not be revealed because Democrats did not want to identify the whistleblower. It did not take a rocket scientist to conclude that that unidentified other person was the whistleblower.

York shows that one of the reasons Republicans stopped pressing the issue was that while they opposed Vindman pushing his own foreign policy goals over the president’s, they respected his military service. “Republicans saw Vindman as a loyal American who had strong and inflexible views on what U.S. policy toward Ukraine should be and who was offended, and spurred to action, when the President of the United States appeared to change them,” York writes.

When Vindman retired from the Army in July 2020, media reports claimed he did so because of a hostile work environment. He had been transferred from the NSC in February 2020, following Trump’s acquittal on the charges that Vindman’s complaints instigated. Vindman received no punishment for his insubordination and disobeying of a direct order to not work with Congress on impeachment.

“Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump” was released today.