There is virtually no chance that Wednesday’s exclusive, hard-hitting story by Paul Sperry of Real Clear Investigations will make it past the CNN censors supervising Thursday night’s presidential debate. That is a shame because Sperry’s revelations suggest nothing less than that the American intelligence establishment helped Democrats to lie during the most critical periods during the presidential electoral campaigns of 2016 and 2020.

“Just before Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton faced off in their second presidential debate, then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper met in the White House with a small group of advisers to President Obama to hatch a plan to put out a first-of-its-kind intelligence report warning the voting public that "the Russian government" was interfering in the election by allegedly breaching the Clinton campaign’s email system.” https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/26/james_clapper_mr_october_surprise_how_obamas_intel_czar_rigged_2016_and_2020_debates_against_trump_1040444.html

Clapper’s subsequent release of an unprecedented “intelligence advisory” not only underlined his leadership of the nation’s intelligence authorities but also carried President Obama’s endorsement. The implied message to the media: “Trump was working with Russian President Vladimir Putin through a secret back channel to steal the election. Sure enough, the Democratic nominee pounced on it to smear Trump at the debate.”https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/26/james_clapper_mr_october_surprise_how_obamas_intel_czar_rigged_2016_and_2020_debates_against_trump_1040444.html

Although President Obama’s sponsorship and General Clapper’s extraordinary intervention could not propel Hillary Clinton through the White House glass ceiling, Democrats in and out of government are renowned for their persistence. Undaunted, the now retired General Clapper again proved his usefulness when the sudden appearance of the Hunter Biden laptop raised all kinds of nasty issues about the play-for-pay schemes that now seemed to ensnare both Hunter Biden and his father.

Promptly on cue, General Clapper suddenly re-appeared in the fall of 2020 as “lead signatory on the “intelligence" statement that discredited the New York Post’s October bombshell exposing emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop…(Released) just three days before Trump and Biden debated each other in Nashville, (fifty) other U.S. “Intelligence Community” officials and experts signed the seven-page document.” Their principal thesis: The allegedly mysterious laptop…” has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/26/james_clapper_mr_october_surprise_how_obamas_intel_czar_rigged_2016_and_2020_debates_against_trump_1040444.html

Nonsense of course but if your tastes run to bottom lines, then consider Mr Sperry’s apt summation: ”In hindsight, Clapper's well-timed pseudo-intelligence in 2016 and 2020 helped Clinton and Biden make the case against Trump as a potentially Kremlin-compromised figure, charges that crippled his presidency and later arguably denied him reelection….A post-election survey by The Polling Company, for one, found that thanks to the discrediting and suppression of the laptop story, 45% of Biden voters in swing states said they were “unaware of the financial scandal enveloping Biden and his son” and that full awareness of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal would have led more than 9% of these Biden voters to abandon their vote for him – thereby flipping all six of the swing states he won over to Trump and giving Trump the victory.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/26/james_clapper_mr_october_surprise_how_obamas_intel_czar_rigged_2016_and_2020_debates_against_trump_1040444.html

So how about them apples? If you thought the intelligence community let the nation down by its studied indifference to the numerous indications pointing to 911, then how do you feel about the post-911 monstrosity? It grows like topsy, nobody ever gets fired for incompetence or malfeasance and its multi-disciplined denizens conduct election interference whenever they feel like it! If you take the trouble to read Mr. Sperry’s excellent report in detail, you will find lots more, most notably the use of intelligence tradecraft to subvert an alleged journalist like Jake Tapper into just another befuddled government source.

More than 125 years later, it is as if Emile Zola and the logic of the Dreyfus Affair had been turned on their heads. Instead of accusing the Chief of the French general staff of treason, injustice and anti-Semitism, our villain ju jour is always Donald Trump, perpetually tracked down by the ubiquitous Inspectors Clouseau of our Surete, aided and abetted by a Fifth Estate driven mad by their blind devotion to social license and their own perquisites. How can they not see that the media is merely the latest American institution to have been utterly corrupted and prepared only for history’s rubbish bin?

Finally: what do you do about an 83-year-old general, now long and deservedly retired? Alas, Jim Clapper was once a trusted friend, an admired colleague who performed prodigies of good intelligence that strengthened our nation. But put multiple stars on a good man’s shoulders, decorate him with mythical honors and then place him in close proximity to ambitious Democrats – and his downfall has not been left to chance!

COL (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former Vietnam-era draftee, West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and NBC News military analyst.