Bush Spy Games? Carter Spy Campaign Template For Trump Set Up

UPI 1983: A former Ronald Reagan campaign official charged Thursday

A former Ronald Reagan campaign official charged Thursday administration conservatives are trying to manipulate the Jimmy Carter papers controversy to force the ouster of White House Chief of Staff James Baker.

The charge was leveled as two junior officials of the 1980 Reagan campaign were singled out as receiving inside information from Carter's campaign camp and one was labeled the head of a network of former CIA agents who spied on the Carter administration.

The source in the Carter administration had a grudge:

The station quoted Ed Coyle, deputy director of John Anderson's independent presidential campaign, as saying a former Carter campaign worker with 'a vendetta' against Carter approached him during the campaign and offered to provide information about Carter's political strategy.

'He clearly implied that he had access to campaign strategy memos, personal, political memorandum from various people in the White House during the campaign,' Coyle said in the interview. 'He also suggested that his woman friend was in a position to know personal information about people with whom she worked and for whom she worked in the White House.

'He was never very specific. He struck me as being just obsessed with the idea of hurting Jimmy Carter's re-election.' Coyle said he believed the man, who was not identified, was upset because he was refused some kind of grant. He said he told the man to leave and informed Carter officials in the summer of 1980 about the incident.

NYTimes 1984: A BANK THAT BANKS ON CONSERVATIVE DOLLARS

Mr. Halper worked on Mr. Bush's campaign, and the bank grew out of a conversation in 1980 between Mr. Halper and Mr. McLean, according to Mr. Halper. Mr. Halper was also policy director of the Reagan-Bush campaign that year, and he later figured in the investigations into the unauthorized transfers of campaign strategy information from the Carter camp to the Reagan camp.

A report by a House committee earlier this year said, ''Halper appears to have claimed that he saw Carter debate briefing material during the 1980 campaign.'' But Mr. Halper gave an affidavit to the committee saying he did not recall seeing any debate-related information or material or having made statements to that effect to anyone.

Halper had a grudge against Carter. And he was a "Never Trumper" who hates Trump

The Intercept, today: The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election

But now, as a result of some very odd choices by the nation’s largest media outlets, everyone knows the name of the FBI’s informant: Stefan Halper. And Halper’s history is quite troubling, particularly his central role in the scandal in the 1980 election. Equally troubling are the DOJ and FBI’s highly inflammatory and, at best, misleading claims that they made to try to prevent Halper’s identity from being reported.

To begin with, it’s obviously notable that the person the FBI used to monitor the Trump campaign is the same person who worked as a CIA operative running that 1980 Presidential election spying campaign.

It was not until several years after Reagan’s victory over Carter did this scandal emerge. It was leaked by right-wing officials inside the Reagan administration who wanted to undermine officials they regarded as too moderate, including then White House Chief of Staff James Baker, who was a Bush loyalist.

One point being overlooked is the role of the Bushes. Halper was with the Bush campaign, not the Reagan campaign. It was the Jeb Bush campaign that initially paid Fusion GPS for dirt on Trump.

When the scandal first broke in 1983, the UPI suggested that Halper’s handler for this operation was Reagan’s Vice Presidential candidate, George H.W. Bush, who had been the CIA Director and worked there with Halper’s father-in-law, former CIA Deputy Director Ray Cline, who worked on Bush’s 1980 presidential campaign before Bush ultimately became Reagan’s Vice President. It quoted a former Reagan campaign official as blaming the leak on “conservatives [who] are trying to manipulate the Jimmy Carter papers controversy to force the ouster of White House Chief of Staff James Baker.”

Halper, through his CIA work, has extensive ties to the Bush family. Few remember that the CIA’s perceived meddling in the 1980 election – its open support for its former Director, George H.W. Bush to become President – was a somewhat serious political controversy. And Halper was in that middle of that, too.

...Whatever else is true, the CIA operative and FBI informant used to gather information on the Trump campaign in the 2016 campaign has, for weeks, been falsely depicted as a sensitive intelligence asset rather than what he actually is: a long-time CIA operative with extensive links to the Bush family who was responsible for a dirty and likely illegal spying operation in the 1980 presidential election. For that reason, it’s easy to understand why many people in Washington were so desperate to conceal his identity, but that desperation had nothing to do with the lofty and noble concerns for national security they claimed were motivating them.

The irony now is that if there aren't major jail sentences for those involved in this operation and all the poison fruit that came from it (Mueller investigation), then the world will have a hearty laugh next time the United States crows about "free and fair elections." If you want to see who is the greatest threat to democracy, look no further than the U.S. government and its media enablers.