Former CIA Director John Brennan told Congress Tuesday he was aware of “intelligence that revealed contacts” between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians, giving Democrats new momentum in alleging collusion.

Still, some government watchdog groups don’t see how the testimony advances a probe that so far has shown no public evidence of ties.

During a House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearing, Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., asked Brennan, “Did evidence exist of collusion, coordination, conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russian state actors at the time you learned of 2016 efforts [in meddling with the U.S. election]?”

The former CIA director who served during President Barack Obama’s second term, gave a broad answer.

I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and U.S. persons involved in the Trump campaign I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. And it raised questions in my mind, again, whether or not the Russians were able to gain the cooperation of those individuals.

I don’t know whether such collusion—that’s your term—existed. I don’t know. I know there was a sufficient basis of information and intelligence that required further investigation by the bureau to determine whether or not U.S. persons were actively conspiring, colluding with Russian officials.

“I think this committee now has access to the type of information that I’m alluding to here. It’s classified, and I’m happy to talk about it in classified session,” he said.

Though Brennan is a prominent figure, his testimony changes very little, said Matthew Whitaker, executive director of the Foundation for Accountability and Civic Trust.

“It put some color and context into things, but he didn’t know about collusion,” Whitaker told The Daily Signal.

However, Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, said FBI investigations don’t just start on a hunch.

“There is usually some smoke and it doesn’t just start on baseless news reports,” Whitaker said. “It could have been the intelligence that Brennan was talking about that he referred to the FBI. It’s one of the many things we could eventually find out.”

The FBI began an investigation last July into Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election, which included potential ties to the Trump campaign, former FBI Director James Comey previously said. Last week, the Justice Department named Comey’s FBI predecessor, Robert Mueller, to be special counsel.

The White House did not respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal specifically regarding Brennan’s comment on intelligence about contacts between Russians and associates of the Trump campaign.

Mueller has a sterling reputation, but it’s unclear whether a connection between a Trump campaign employee and Russians warrants a probe, said Peter Flaherty, president of the National Legal and Policy Center, a government watchdog group.

“In order to justify an investigation there needs to be an underlying crime,” Flaherty told The Daily Signal. “It’s not illegal for political consultants to drum up business with foreign entities, as long as they register. Could it be unseemly? Yes. Could it be unpatriotic? Yes. But it’s not illegal. Now, if a political consultant accepted foreign funds and turns around and promises a quid pro quo, that would be a criminal matter.”

While Democrats have pushed for getting to the bottom of any potential ties between Russia and Trump, several lawmakers conceded they don’t yet have evidence of coordination.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member of the Senate intelligence committee, “You have had access from the intelligence committee, from the Judiciary Committee, all of the access you have had to very sensitive information, so far you have not seen any evidence of collusion, is that right?”

Feinstein, a California Democrat, responded, “Well, evidence that would establish that there’s collusion. There are all kinds of rumors around, there are newspaper stories, but that’s not necessarily evidence.”

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., while talking about impeaching Trump, in an appearance on MSNBC, was asked, “But just to be clear, there has been no actual evidence [of collusion] yet?”

She responded, “No, it has not been.”

After the Brennan testimony, though, Democrats made another push.

Waters tweeted Tuesday:

Listening to Brennan testify about Trump team's contact w/ Russians it's no wonder Trump is working so hard to obstruct the investigation!

— Maxine Waters (@MaxineWaters) May 23, 2017

After the hearing, the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California tweeted:

Today, former CIA Director Brennan testified he was aware of interactions between Russians & Trump campaign that warranted referral to FBI: pic.twitter.com/8n6y29NvlU

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) May 23, 2017

Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said Brennan’s testimony clearly shows the need to continue the probe.

“Today’s testimony by former CIA Director Brennan that the Russians brazenly interfered in our election, and that he became aware of interaction between Trump campaign officials and Russians that warranted referral to the FBI further, underscores the importance of our investigation,” Schiff said in a statement. (For more from the author of “Ex-CIA Chief’s Testimony Fails to Move Trump Russia Probe, Watchdog Groups Say” please click HERE)

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Immediately after WikiLeaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation — not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documents detailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

So goes the familiar whistleblower narrative in the United States. Whistleblowers step forward to expose wrongdoing on the part of government — something the government claims to support — and immediately, establishment institutions and the media bend the conversation away from the wrongdoing in order to focus on the unlawful release of secrets.

Putting aside the fact that, according to popular American mythology breaking the law is a patriotic duty, the government and politicians’ reactions are both hypocritical and habitual.

When Chelsea Manning revealed damning evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including soldiers directly targeting Reuters news staff, the response was not to investigate who allowed those crimes (in fact, a later Pentagon manual went on to describe instances in which it’s permissible to kill journalists; that version was later retracted after outcry from reporters). Rather, Manning was subject to a military tribunal and issued multiple life sentences, a cruel and unusual punishment reversed only in President Obama’s last days in office amid his attempts to salvage his abysmal human rights, transparency, and whistleblower record.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens and millions of others around the world, the government’s response was not to investigate why those programs existed in the first place. Rather, they thrashed and flailed around the world, ordering the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales to be grounded in the hopes of catching the whistleblower. Congress later passed the deceptive “USA Freedom Act,” which codified continued surveillance.

Edward Snowden remains in exile, and establishment politicians repeatedly call him a traitor for exposing the crimes of his government. Some, including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have called for his execution. Mass surveillance continues, and the president himself is seeking to retain those powers as he condemns former President Obama for allegedly spying on him.

And so on and so forth. The same was true for John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jeffrey Sterling. The government is exposed for wrongdoing, and rather than prove themselves to be representatives of the people by remedying those transgressions, they point fingers and divert, all the while refusing to relinquish the unjust power any given agency is exposed for having.

Many people are already aware that the government does little to actually serve them (Americans’ trust in political leaders and government, in general, is abysmally low). Rather, government agents and agencies operate to advance and concentrate their own interests and power. This is why penalties against killing government employees are more stringent than killing civilians. It is why stealing from the government is perceived as more outrageous to the State than stealing from a civilian. The government considers “crimes” committed against itself to carry the utmost offense, yet often fails to deliver justice to the people who provide their financial foundation.

s a result, the State does not even try to show remorse for its violative policies, even when they are exposed and splattered across social media for the world to see. Instead, with the help of corporate media, the debate is shifted to whether or not WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, or whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the leaks:

This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security. This alleged leak should concern every American for its impact on national security. … Anybody who leaks classified information will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law.

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to accept the government’s investigation of itself, which (surprise!) usually finds little or no wrongdoing on their own behalf and often consolidates and extends the very same power whistleblowers exposed in the first place. (For more from the author of “Whistleblowers vs. The State” please click HERE)

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Let’s frame the situation in simple terms. You work for a company that has a very lucrative partnership with a big-time money man. That money man gives you a piece of information and tells you it’s important.

What you do every day is spread information. That’s how you earn your living.

Are you going to take that piece of info from the money man and spread it, or are you going to question it and research it and shoot back hard-edged questions to the money man?

If you’re a loyal employee, and if you want to keep your job, and if you’re smart enough to understand how things work, you’re going to spread the money man’s piece of info and keep your head down.

You’re not going to worry your pretty little head about whether the piece of info is true.

Unless you’re a complete dolt, you certainly aren’t going to spread the info with a disclaimer stating that your source, the money man, has a major business contract with your company.

Getting the picture? The truth is irrelevant.

Here are key statements from Norman Solomon’s AlterNet article about the Washington Post, its owner, Jeff Bezos, and the CIA (12/18/13):

“The Post’s new owner, Jeff Bezos, is the founder and CEO of Amazon — which recently landed a $600 million contract with the CIA. But the Post’s articles about the CIA are not disclosing that the newspaper’s sole owner is the main owner of CIA business partner Amazon.”

“Even for a multi-billionaire like Bezos, a $600 million contract is a big deal. That’s more than twice as much as Bezos paid to buy the Post four months ago.”

“And there’s likely to be plenty more where that CIA largesse came from. Amazon’s offer wasn’t the low bid, but it won the CIA contract anyway by offering advanced high-tech ‘cloud’ infrastructure.”

“Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, ‘We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA’.”

“As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post’s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.”

“Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s ‘national security’ establishment. The media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: ‘WikiLeaks was booted from Amazon’s webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website’.”

“How’s that for a commitment to the public’s right to know?”

“Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that says: ‘The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon — and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA’…”

“While the Post functions as a powerhouse media outlet in the Nation’s Capital, it’s also a national and global entity — read every day by millions of people who never hold its newsprint edition in their hands. Hundreds of daily papers reprint the Post’s news articles and opinion pieces, while online readership spans the world.”

“Propaganda largely depends on patterns of omission and repetition. If, in its coverage of the CIA, the Washington Post were willing to fully disclose the financial ties that bind its owner to the CIA, such candor would shed some light on how top-down power actually works in our society.”

“Bezos personally and publicly touts Amazon Web Services, and it’s evident that Amazon will be seeking more CIA contracts. Last month, Amazon issued a statement saying, ‘We look forward to a successful relationship with the CIA’.”

“As Amazon’s majority owner and the Post’s only owner, Bezos stands to gain a lot more if his newspaper does less ruffling and more soothing of CIA feathers.”

“Amazon has a bad history of currying favor with the U.S. government’s ‘national security’ establishment. The media watch group FAIR pointed out what happened after WikiLeaks published State Department cables: ‘WikiLeaks was booted from Amazon’s webhosting service AWS. So at the height of public interest in what WikiLeaks was publishing, readers were unable to access the WikiLeaks website’.”

“How’s that for a commitment to the public’s right to know?”

“Days ago, my colleagues at RootsAction.org launched a petition that says: ‘The Washington Post’s coverage of the CIA should include full disclosure that the sole owner of the Post is also the main owner of Amazon — and Amazon is now gaining huge profits directly from the CIA’…”

“While the Post functions as a powerhouse media outlet in the Nation’s Capital, it’s also a national and global entity — read every day by millions of people who never hold its newsprint edition in their hands. Hundreds of daily papers reprint the Post’s news articles and opinion pieces, while online readership spans the world.”

“Propaganda largely depends on patterns of omission and repetition. If, in its coverage of the CIA, the Washington Post were willing to fully disclose the financial ties that bind its owner to the CIA, such candor would shed some light on how top-down power actually works in our society.”

You may recall that the Washington Post was a main player in launching stories about fake news sites after the presidential election.

One of the biggest fake news outlets in the world (cough, the Washington Post) took the lead in “exposing fake news.”

Then, on January 8, 2017, the Post ran a piece headlined: “It’s time to retire the tainted term ‘fake news’”. That was an attempt to stop the bleeding, because independent news sites all over the world were pointing out that mainstream news outlets had long been the biggest purveyors of fake news. The Post writer, Margaret Sullivan, stated:

“But though the term [fake news] hasn’t been around long, its meaning already is lost. Faster than you could say ‘Pizzagate,’ the label has been co-opted to mean any number of completely different things…”

Actually, the term has been around for quite a while. I named my site nomorefakenews.com in 2001. And the term, in 2016, wasn’t “co-opted.” It was turned against news outlets, like the Post, who were attacking independent media.

The Post is in bed with the CIA to the tune of $600 million. If that isn’t the foundation of fakery on a grand scale, what is?

Try to find one major news outlet that has exposed and pounded on this Washington Post-CIA marriage. You can’t. You see, the fakers protect their own. It’s a club. If you join, you keep your mouth shut about the inherent unholy alliances within the club. It’s a rule.

Memo to the New York Times, LA Times, CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, ABC, BBC, Reuters, AP: If you want to prove you’re not fake, go after the Washington Post, hammer and tongs, on their marriage to the CIA. Don’t let up. Demand conflict of interest statements from the Post, for starters.

And here’s a talking point for you. Was Jeff Bezos’ cash purchase of the Washington Post a mere coincidence, placed next to his $600 million contract with the CIA, or did he buy the Post so he could offer the CIA an even tighter relationship with the number-one paper of record?

Get it? Or am I going too fast for you? (For more from the author of “Washington Post: Fake News Partner With the CIA” please click HERE)

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