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Thursday, November 21, 2019

Looks Like Durham's Doing A Deep Dive On The Deep State

Sara Carter is reporting this afternoon that Barr's Russia Hoax prosecutor of choice, John Durham is questioning personnel at the Office of Net Assessment about Stefan Halper (Carter misspells Halper's first name). The ONA is about as Deep State as it comes. Here's Wikipedia's description:

The United States Department of Defense's Office of Net Assessment (ONA) was created in 1973 by Richard Nixon to serve as the Pentagon's "internal think tank" that "looks 20 to 30 years into the military's future, often with the assistance of outside contractors, and produces reports on the results of its research". The Director of Net Assessment is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Defense on net assessment.

Apparently ONA was used to launder payments to high level, or supposedly high level, CIA operatives. Like Stefan Halper, who was paid over a million dollars by the Obama administration through ONA for doing only God knows what.

This could signal a major expansion of Durham's investigation, as Carter suggests: Durham Probe Expands to Pentagon Office That Contracted FBI Spy Stephan Halper, although "FBI spy" is probably not the most accurate characterization. I suspect Halper was more or less on loan to the FBI. Here's what Carter's sources have told her:

Justice Department prosecutor U.S. Attorney John Durham is questioning personnel connected to the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, which awarded multiple contracts to FBI informant Stephan Halper. Halper, who was informing the bureau on Trump campaign advisors, is a central figure in the FBI’s original investigation into President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, SaraACarter.com has learned.
These latest developments reveal the expansive nature of what is now a Justice Department criminal probe into the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign. ... 
Multiple sources confirmed to this news site that Durham has spoken extensively with sources working in the Office of Net Assessment, as well as outside contractors, that were paid through Pentagon office. 

Senator Chuck Grassley is also in on the action. Grassley now heads the Senate Finance Committee, which has learned that--get ready for this--ONA kept sloppy records about their payments. As if a money laundering operation for CIA sources would keep in depth and accurate records! That would violate deniability, which is a far higher bureaucratic principle than the Constitutional principle of Legislative oversight. Carter reports:


Moreover, this news site has learned that the Pentagon has finally sent Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley’s committee the information it requested in July, regarding Halper’s contracts and the Office of Net Assessment. Grassley sent the request in a letter to Department of Defense Acting Secretary Mark Esper, after a Pentagon Inspector General investigation discovered that the office failed to conduct appropriate oversight of the contracts. Grassley urged Esper for the information. 
According to the DoD Inspector General’s report the Office of Net Assessment (ONA) Contracting Officer’s Representatives (CORs) “did not maintain documentation of the work performed by Professor Halper or any communication that ONA personnel had with Professor Halper; therefore, ONA CORs could not provide sufficient documentation that Professor Halper conducted all of his work in accordance with applicable laws and regulations. We determined that while the ONA CORs established a file to maintain documents, they did not maintain sufficient documentation to comply with all the FAR requirements related to having a complete COR.”

Grassley’s July letter stated that “shockingly, the audit found that these types of discrepancies were not unique to contracts with Professor Halper, which indicates ONA must take immediate steps to shore up its management and oversight of the contracting process.” 

I love that "shockingly"!

The Office of Net Assessment came under fire in 2016, when Bill Gertz, a columnist for The Washington Times, revealed that it failed to produce the top-secret net assessments the office was established to do for more than a decade, despite its then nearly $20 million annual budget. 
In August, a Pentagon Inspector General report revealed that the office failed to document the research Halper had conducted for the Pentagon in four separate studies worth roughly $1 million. The inspector general’s report revealed that loose contracting practices at the office and failed oversight was to blame.

"Loose contracting practices." How's that for a euphemism? This could be fun.

ADDENDUM: Here's a good recent article re Halper and ONA, by Eric Felten: The Labyrinthine Ways and Wages of Stefan Halper. Felten's article is both informative and hilarious. There's lots more out there on this topic.

13 comments:

  1. And the head of ONA, James Baker (not the FBI's Baker), was Halper's handler and apparently regularly lunched with WaPo'a David Ignatius, making Baker a classified leak source to Ignatius. The rot runs deep.

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    1. Baker is in a very unenviable position. I imagine Durham is squeezing him hard. It's not hard to figure what's going on. Durham asks what was done for the money paid and who authorized the payments. Those authorizations will go right to the top somewhere and will lead, IMO, to John Brennan.

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  2. Stefan Halper...Stephen Halper...what good spook doesn't have at least a couple of names...

    At one time -- in 1963 -- he was Stefan Allan Halper, when he married his first first wife, and his father was Dr. S. Harvey Halper See: https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1963/09/07/82147616.html?pageNumber=17

    Later on he was Stefan Alan Halper (and sometimes Stefan A. Halper) when he married his second first wife, Sibyl Cline, whose father was a senior CIA operative, and his father had become Saul Harvey Halper.

    In 1990 he married his first second wife (actually his third wife), Lezlee Brown (who is sometimes known as Lezlee Brown Halper).

    I think he has also gone by Steven Halper from time to time...and possibly Mr. Azra Turk. :)

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  3. This is why Langley must be razed and the earth salted. It has been corrupt and malign since its inception. There is no good in it. The only just outcome is that those who work there would be barred for life from any occupation above manual labor. Alas we have no mechanism to guarantee that. I don't want to hear that there are good people there. That they accommodate the obvious stench of corruption is enough to condemn them, one and all.
    Tom S.

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  4. This is what happens to the Intelligence Community when it meddles in US Presidential elections.

    Sources and methods are exposed. Cut-outs and money-laundering are exposed.

    All these Intelligence resources are being exposed -- and Donald Trump still is the elected US President.

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    1. True. If they had stayed the hell out of politics this wouldn't be a problem for them--nobody would know. But, it all makes you wonder: Was this the first time, the only time?

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    2. -->Was this the first time, the only time?<--

      The first time they got caught.

      Remember what the FBI, et al., were getting up to back in the Weather Underground era, with Bill Ayers, "guilty as sin, free as a bird."

      The CIA's constraint is against domestic activity--but who's gonna find out? The FBI's counter-intelligence operations are classified, and not intended for a court of law.

      The hoax and coup were never intended to get into a court of law, so any restrictions were tossed to the wind. They intended to use the media to create a popular uprising to trigger a resignation or impeachment.

      It's only a crime if you get caught. Right?

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    3. I can't say this was the only time, which is why I raised the issue. However, none of what we know of from the past compares to what we already know now re the entire 2016 election.

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    4. "none of what we know of from the past compares"

      Where's that "ackshually" guy when you need him?

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  5. Everyone should read Eric Felton's article, The Labyrinthine Ways and Wages of Stefan Halper.

    This is an Intelligence Community arrangement that must be exposed.

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    1. The bonus is that, as a former bureaucrat myself, I found it very amusing--it left me "slackjawed" as Felton says.

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