Monday, December 11, 2017

Why is the bulk of the media ignoring an Inspector General turned whistle-blower

December 3rd, NEWSBUSTERS (media watchdog, from the right-wing) ran Tom Blumer's "Press Yawns at Threats to Man Who Revealed Presence of 'Beyond Classified' E-Mails on Hillary's Server" and we meant to note it last week but ran out of time.

The analysis deals with former Intel Community General Inspector Charles McCullough III who has been covered by FOX NEWS and other right-wing outlets but ignored by the majority of media outlets.


From the piece:

McCullough, an Obama appointee, was discussed or appeared three different times this week on Tucker Carlson's show:

  • On Monday, in a taped interview with the network's Catherine Herridge. McCullough emphasized that had the information in these 22 emails been released, "there would have been harm to national security," including putting lives at risk and "sources and methods." After revealing what he had found to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, McCullough says "his team was marginalized." After he sent a letter to Congress in January 2016 telling them what had happened, he "all of a sudden ... became a shill of the right." McCullough "absolutely" believes that the Clinton campaign and President Obama himself, who speciously claimed that "There's 'classified' and then there's 'classified,'" deliberately misled the public about these emails. He was promised he would be fired after Election Day for doing his job. McCullough observed that if had done what Mrs. Clinton did, "I'd be in Leavenworth."
  • On Tuesday, in an interview with Carlson which focused, in Carlson's words, "on who threatened him and why," McCullough said that seven Democrats, including California Senator Dianne Feinstein, sent him a letter in March 2016 that accused his General Inspector group of politicizing the situation. McCullough says that Feinstein spoke with him and played the "was it marked classified" game with him, even though "what matters is the information (on the documents), not the marking." (Feinstein now says she "doesn't remember" the conversation.) He also emphasized that the Clinton campaign, which was in on conversations about these matters from the beginning, "shouldn't have" been involved at all. Instead, there was possibly illegal and certainly unethical coordination between the State Department, the Clinton campaign, "certain law firms in town, and people on Capitol Hill." There was also criticism that McCullough wasn't taking "political considerations into account," which a person in his position is not allowed to do.
  • On Wednesday's show, the network's Brit Hume made obvious observations that "It sounds like this man was simply doing what it was his job to do, which is to bring this sort of information forward, and indeed to take it to Congress," and that his treatment at hands of the politicians and their apparatchiks was "howlingly improper," representing "political interference with matters that ought not be political."




It's very interesting how the above has not been explored in other media.

The decision to ignore McCullough's statements is puzzling and feeds into the narrative that large portions of the media were in the tank for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and worked overtime to minimize and ignore serious issues.