KEEPING THINGS CLASSYFIED
September 14, 2022 -Durt Fibo

As top secret documents disappear, reappear, are confiscated then sealed like mummies in the tomb of some great Special Master, as assertions of privacy and privilege, classified and de-classified clash in the winds of Great Blowhards, Americans are perishing and Ukrainians are fighting to resurrect the life of their country. But we are all connected by winds.

On July 25th, 2019, then-President Donald Trump telephoned and totally confused the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Ostensibly calling about the aid package he had been withholding, Trump baffled Zelenskiy with probes and requests regarding Joe and Hunter Biden’s business connections, and a Giuliani-concocted delusion that Ukraine was the state which had hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016. At least one week before phoning Zelenskiy, Trump had decided to suspend the nearly $400 million allotted to Ukraine. His order was passed from him to his acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, to the Office of Management and Budget, then to the State Department and the Pentagon. Zelenskiy had no idea what was happening with his nation’s security package.

Nor did we, until September 24 of that same year. That was only because the White House released a “memo” summarizing the Trump/Zelenskiy call, and that was only because a whistleblower wrote a memo of the call on July 26th, which he then presented as a formal complaint to the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community (ICIG) on August 12th. It was over that overheating period that the White House felt forced to issue its “memo”. But by October 4, the Inspector General was attesting to the House Intelligence Committee his methods of corroborating the whistleblower’s revelations. That was his third appearance before Congress in two weeks regarding the matter. Rep. Mike Quigley afterwards told the press how “thorough” the IG’s corroboration was, adding: “What the inspector general said last time was the whistleblower pulled the fire alarm. We have now seen the smoke and the fire.” The ICIG put out a statement explaining the issue was “both urgent and that it appeared credible.” At this point –October 5th– a second whistleblower, emerged with confirmations and further details of the first one’s report.

Although his October 29 Opening Statement to Congress says “I am not the whistleblower who brought this issue to the CIA and the Committee’s attention.” the person who did report the call to his National Security superiors was the Kyiv-born, US Army hero, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman. In 2019, he was Director for European Affairs for the United States National Security Council. Due to the investigations initiated by the congressional intelligence committees and the Department of Justice Criminal Division, Vindman became the first witness called to testify before Congress on November 19. Vindman said of Trump’s approach to Zelenskiy that “This would undermine US national security.”

Trump himself led the revenge attacks against Vindman, as well as US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, interim chargé d’affaires for Ukraine Bill Taylor (both of whom quit the State Department), and Jennifer Williams, Mike Pence’s special advisor on European and Russian affairs. Michael Atkinson –the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community– was fired by April 3, 2020. Trump petulantly pressed the Pentagon to retaliate with disciplinary action against Vindman, but the military ignored his directions at first. Trump then belched out rumors that he planned to fire Vindman, and the Lt. Colonel found himself ostracized in the White House. Trump did have him fired on February 7, 2020, and made sure he was strong-armed out of the White House by security goons, who dusted their hands, returned to the building and ran right into Yevgeny, Vindman’s identical twin brother, who worked in the same office. Shaking off shock, they hollered “What the hell? We just told you a minute ago to never show your face here again!” and hurled him off the premises, On hearing about this, Trump naturally had no choice but to fire Yevgeny, too, which is how both brothers lost their White House jobs the same day. Alexander was soon demoted on what the Army eventually admitted was Trump’s behalf, and he then resigned from the military entirely.

To return to the phone fiasco: Astoundingly, problems arose from Trump’s playing a shell-game with the information. Firstly, the world well knew that the “memo” was not a verbatim transcription of the call; the ‘memo’ had just that warning on its first page (actually headlined “CAUTION”). Even Trump’s inner team could only mutter the definition “summary,” and the extent of editing or invention was therefore impossible to set a hypothetical limit on; the phrases attributed to Zelenskiy read hilariously like Trump’s own utterances. This confection was released marked “Declassified by order of the President.” Secondly — although firstly– 9 pages of a redacted and declassified version of the whistleblower’s complaint was made available to the interested public around the same time the IG was reporting to Congress, and it stated that White House staff took extravagant measures to “lock down” all the authentic records of the July 25th phone call. It alleged that White House officials were “directed” to remove electronic records of the phone conversation from an internal computer system where it would usually be stored, and instead move the records into a high security system (NICE: NSC Intelligence Collaboration Environment) reserved for top secret classified information involving national security matters.

Why are things classified and some fabrications declassified? To ease our wrinkled brows, on October 19, 2019, Trump assembled the press in the White House Roosevelt Room and explained: “This city is like the leaking capital of the world.”

But our hot-air tour would not be complete without re-examining the scene of a previous crime. In 2014, after Putin absorbed Crimea with his Anschluss, the US created a special account towards the end of 2015 to help Ukraine stave off attacks by pro-Russian separatists in Crimea, and the Luhansk and Donetsk regions. For 2019, the US Congress legislated an allocation of $250 million in security aid to Ukraine, including training, equipment and intelligence support, with $50 million of the total specified for weaponry. The weapons allowed were still defensive, such as sniper rifles, radar systems to locate Russian artillery, grenade launchers, air-defense radar, and communications systems for Ukraine’s ships and naval infantry. The 2019 Javelins subsequently requested were to be purchases, paid for by Ukraine. The US legislation elaborated that Ukraine was not permitted to use such anti-tank missiles against any separatists.

Seemingly lost in the crosswinds is the primary fact that it is illegal for a US President to not disburse funds which have been appropriated by Congress for a specific purpose. This was confirmed on January 16, 2020, when the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded that the White House broke federal law by withholding of congressionaly-approved military aid to Ukraine.

(note: in my artistic reconstruction, the balloon says “Another prank call!”)