Here’s a wee bit o’ American trivia that’ll win you a free beer tonight: Lots of people know the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” as a patriotic, fun-to-sing song that’s been a staple of our culture and/or school recitals since the Civil War. So (after 5 p.m. of course), go to your neighborhood pub and make the following declaration:
“The ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was originally based on a folk song about a certain, specific person. I’ll bet you losers a beer that nobody can tell me who he was.”
Invariably, someone will pipe up that it was based on the abolitionist John Brown because that’s the common belief: The lyrics were adapted from the pro-Union marching song, “John Brown’s Body,” during the Civil War. That’s even the official explanation on the Kennedy Center’s government-run website.
But it wasn’t based on that John Brown. It was actually based on some random Union soldier who was also named “John Brown.” (Apparently, this John Brown was Scottish, but we don’t know much more about him.) One of the authors of the “John Brown’s Body” marching song spilled the beans in 1890:
We had a jovial Scotchman in the battalion, named John Brown … and as he happened to bear the identical name of the old hero of Harper's Ferry, he became at once the butt of his comrades. If he made his appearance a few minutes late among the working squad, or was a little tardy in falling into the company line, he was sure to be greeted with such expressions as "Come, old fellow, you ought to be at it if you are going to help us free the slaves"; or, "This can't be John Brown — why, John Brown is dead." And then some wag would add, in a solemn, drawling tone, as if it were his purpose to give particular emphasis to the fact that John Brown was really, actually dead: "Yes, yes, poor old John Brown is dead; his body lies mouldering in the grave."
Both John Browns risked their lives, but only one is immortalized. The other is all but forgotten. It demonstrates how thoroughly — and permanently — mythology supplants history in the popular culture, à la the gut-punch from “The Man Who Shot Liberty Vance:” “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”
History isn’t written by the victors — not necessarily. Instead, it’s written by the legend-makers and storytellers.
This brings us to the Deep State and its never-ending attempt to control the narrative. It's still insisting it was right about the Hunter Biden laptop!
In an utterly remarkable essay published today, ex-CIA officer John Sipher, who was one of the 51 nitwits who signed the infamous Hunter Biden laptop letter, has issued his rebuttal.
You need to read it because the person who wrote it spent nearly 30 years in the CIA. Sipher is a product of the Deep State; he’s part and parcel of their propaganda system. This makes this essay awfully revealing because when people lie, they reveal the truth about what they want you to believe.
Check it out. And we’ll dissect it together.
The nice thing about political propaganda is its transparency. Since the whole point is to control behavior, it can’t be too coy with its end goal. Sure, the propagandists may (ahem) “fudge the facts” along the way, but they’ve gotta be open and direct about the destination. And here, Sipher lets us know where he’s trying to lead us from the get-go with the header and subheader:
Trump Is Still Obsessed With the Hunter Biden Laptop Letter
But it doesn’t seem like he or his supporters actually know what we said.
So that’s the argument Sipher will make: Trump is “obsessed” with the letter, but it’s really just a big misunderstanding. (“Whoopsie!”) But alas, that evil Trump is manipulating this “misunderstanding” to do evil Trump things.
Interesting. Let’s see what he wrote:
When Trump lost the [2020] election, he and his supporters constructed a strawman argument by distorting our words and falsely attributing deceptive intentions to our letter. Ever since, Trump has repeatedly attacked the authors of the letter, including former CIA Directors Michael Hayden, Leon Panetta, and John Brennan.
[Mike] Walz and others exploit the public’s lack of understanding of the national security process to spread a false narrative. They must be fully aware that their allegations are untrue. They know all the signatories were retired, none used classified information, and none coordinated with the CIA. They also know that there is no “deep state” working against the president.
Nonetheless, the Republican reflex was apparently to assume that our letter was a partisan political stunt. They never seemed to consider that we might have meant what we said. We were careful.
Right. Their “careful” letter was entirely apolitical… even though it came out in late October 2020, just before Election Day. (That was purely coincidental.)
And they also had absolutely no idea that Joe Biden would “misrepresent” their letter. Nor did these 51 intelligence officers — who manipulate media and social groups as a profession! — have an inkling that American publications would falsely report what they wrote:
THE FIRST MAJOR STORY ABOUT THE LETTER ran under the headline: “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” We never said the story was false — only that its appearance may have been the work of the Russian government and that it gave Russia an opportunity to manipulate American voters. It didn’t help when, during a presidential debate, Joe Biden misrepresented the letter’s contents, claiming we said that the Hunter Biden laptop story was “a Russian plant” and “a bunch of garbage.”
Adam Schiff, then a member of the House, now a Senator, said before our letter was published that “we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin. … Clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the president [Trump] is only too happy to have Kremlin help and try to amplify it.” Those conclusions were hasty and overstated; we did not express such certainty in the letter.
There is still no firm evidence that I am aware of that the laptop itself was part of a Russian deception scheme. But Schiff’s and Biden’s message soon became fused with ours.1 Trump supporters encouraged the misunderstanding of our message. Rather than reading the letter and engaging with its content, they created a straw man. What was intended as a serious warning — that Russia could exploit the incident for malign purposes, similar to their hacking and release of Democratic National Committee emails before the 2016 election — was quickly swallowed by a narrative that the signatories had crafted the letter to aid the Biden campaign by distracting from the lewd material found on the laptop.
It’s a stunning, jaw-dropping admission by Sipher: These are the same “intelligence” officers who manipulate foreign media, foreign governments, and foreign politicians! Yet, their excuse is that they were blindsided by how they were “misrepresented” by American media and American politicians?
How the hell can they manipulate foreign enemies when they’re mystified by the media and politicians they’ve known all their lives?!
“We weren’t evil, we were just incompetent,” isn’t exactly a confidence-boosting argument.
The bizarre circumstances surrounding the story’s release heightened our concerns. According to reports, a computer store employee in Delaware gave a laptop — allegedly abandoned by Hunter Biden — to Rudy Giuliani. At the time, Giuliani was frequently traveling to Ukraine to dig up dirt on the Biden family. The FBI knew that Giuliani was interacting with known Russian intelligence officers in Ukraine. After the New York Post published the story, the FBI alerted Twitter — which was hesitant to promote a potentially misleading narrative — that Russian intelligence was attempting to manipulate Giuliani.
Giuliani held onto the laptop hard drives until just weeks before the 2020 election, at which point he shared the material with the New York Post. Giuliani and the Post seemingly hoped the contents would provide evidence of criminal activity by Hunter Biden and his father, thereby aiding the Trump campaign. The unusual circumstances of the story, along with the murky chain of custody — former congressman and Air Force officer Denver Riggleman, as a member of Hunter Biden’s legal team, reviewed the entirety of the data and found it forensically unsound, most likely containing a mix of information from multiple drives and devices — only heightened our concerns.
But political campaigns are always seeking dirt on the opposition. Not sure what’s so unusual about that. And as for the timing, how come these 51 “intelligence” officers were unfazed and unconcerned by all the weird, inexplicable, totally coincidental (wink) “September Surprises” that hurt GOP candidates? In 2000, days before the election, George W. Bush’s drunk driving arrest was released. In October of 2016, the “Access Hollywood” tapes of Trump speaking lewdly and graphically were released.
Those were normal?
If anything, perhaps the CIA should’ve done more digging into Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian dealings instead of investigating those who dared to investigate Hunter Biden!
It’s a pathetic excuse.
Related: Mike Waltz Wonders If It Was a Conspiracy. We’re Wondering About a Few OTHER Things.
Given Moscow’s history of covert attacks and the Trump team’s frantic efforts to unearth damaging information in Russia’s backyard, was it unreasonable to suspect Russia might exploit Giuliani’s desperation? To the contrary: If Russian intelligence ignored such an opportunity, it would have been professional negligence.
OF COURSE, THE TRUMP SUPPORTERS attacking the letter do not appear concerned about Russian sabotage or foreign interference in our elections — at least not when it seems to benefit them. Instead, many of them appear disappointed, even angry, that the major social media companies temporarily limited the speed at which the story could spread, and that the allegations in the story didn’t appear to have a major impact on the election. In other words, they’re upset that the obvious political ploy didn’t work. And now Trump is taking revenge on the people he deems responsible.
There’s much we could (gleefully) pick apart, but I’ll simply retort with this: About 80% of the American public believe that Donald Trump would’ve won reelection in 2020 if voters had known that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real.
This means that in the letter writers' ostensible quest to prevent Russia from interfering in the 2020 election… they interfered in the 2020 election!
Again, as excuses go, that one SUCKS. It’s weaponized incompetence writ large.
I signed the letter due to my concerns about Russian interference and the potential for another October surprise. Having written and delivered hundreds of articles, talks, and interviews on Russian political warfare and malign influence, I was keenly aware of how the Kremlin exploits and amplifies narratives that fuel division among Americans, using both true and false information to sow chaos.
Yes, you have a lot of experience: From not predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union, to not predicting 9/11, to being wrong about WMDs in Iraq, to misjudging the Afghanistan withdrawal, to a thousand other things, our “intelligence” officers have tons of experience… at getting everything absolutely wrong.
But with the Hunter Biden laptop story, I don’t buy the weaponized incompetence excuse. It was too direct; too specific; too calculated. They wrote a letter that was loaded with breadcrumbs, and they did it to hurt Trump and help Joe Biden. It was the CIA version of “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?”
The revisionism won’t work. Sorry.
The truth is marching on.
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