Why Wasn't The Clinton Campaign Investigated In 2016?

Sometimes the best way to determine bias is to look at what didn’t happen . . .

I am starting to slowly, very slowly, make my way through the 480 page report by the Inspector General of the Department of Justice regarding the FBI and DOJ role regarding the Russia investigation and the obtaining of four FISA warrants regarding Carter Page so I'm sure I'll have more to say on the matter, but having listened to IG Horowitz's Senate testimony and read analyses from the few sources I trust, there is no doubt he's confirmed what I've been writing about for the past year or so - we are seeing the biggest political scandal certainly of my lifetime, and perhaps in American history.

Having read the terms of reference from the report, a finding of political bias would only have been made if direct testimonial or documentary evidence was discovered (as in a document that said "I hate Trump, I know this is illegal, but will do anything to defeat him".  In his testimony Horowitz has consistently stated his report did not rule out bias, stating that the only explanations for the FBI/DOJ behavior were incompetence, gross negligence, or intentionality (bias) and he was not in a position to decide among the contenders.

I'll take a different approach and look at the dog that did not bark.
 

Using the standards employed by the FBI and DOJ in 2016 regarding the Trump campaign, for which the IG report has informed us that the standards for opening an investigation are very low, let’s look at Hillary Clinton and her campaign in that light:

During the 2016 campaign, one candidate employed a series of cut-outs to develop a dossier on the opposition candidate. The dossier claimed to include information sourced from Russian intelligence sources, information damaging to the reputation of the opposition candidate. At the same time, the candidate’s lead contractor (Fusion GPS) was representing a Kremlin-tied Russian oligarch in efforts to get the U.S. Congress to repeal sanctions damaging to Russia.

Contents of the dossier were leaked to the media, and representatives of the candidate met with FBI and DOJ officials in order to prompt them to take action against the opposition candidate based upon a dossier containing information from Russian intelligence, all in an effort to influence the 2016 election.

These were the actions of the Clinton, not Trump, campaign.

Now, let’s go back a few years to add some context that should have triggered further concern at the FBI and DOJ during 2016.

In 2008 both Democratic primary candidates (Obama and Clinton) denounced President Bush for damaging relations with Russia and Putin and both pledged to improve American relations with Russia.

In 2008 Putin openly endorsed Obama (the Kremlin hated McCain).

Upon becoming Secretary of State, H. Clinton proudly announced the “reset” in Russian relations, after blaming their breakdown solely on the actions of the prior administration.

During her term as SoS, H. Clinton urged American high tech companies to become involved in a new tech center in Moscow, touted as Russia’s version of Silicon Valley, a tech center which several years later was identified by American intelligence as a den of Russian technology spying.

During her term as SoS, H. Clinton approved the controversial transfer of ownership of 20 percent of America’s uranium supply to a Russian oligarch with Kremlin ties.

During her term as SoS, H. Clinton’s husband was paid $500,000 for a speech in Moscow and the Clinton Foundation received tens of millions of dollars in contributions from Russian oligarchs with Kremlin ties, including the one who ended up owning a portion of America’s uranium.

While still SoS, the Kremlin openly supported Obama’s 2012 reelection bid, in return for which Obama mocked Romney’s assertion that Russia was an enemy, and was caught on open mic promising Putin’s stooge that he would be more “flexible” after the election; positions supported by H. Clinton.

After H. Clinton left the SoS role, it was discovered that her private server, set up in violation of government regulations, was not secure, and government investigators concluded it was likely that hostile foreign governments had access to her communications. Was this just reckless behavior or was it designed to possibly allow the Russian government to have access?

There is certainly enough on the record to have justified the investigation of the Clinton campaign for potential coordination with the Russian government and, if such coordination occurred, to determine whether it was opportunistic, if Hillary Clinton had been compromised by the Russians, or was even a Russian asset.

When one looks at the skimpy and fraudulent justification for the Trump investigation, I think it fair to look at the Clinton campaign the same way. The difference in treatment during 2016 is strong evidence of political bias, particularly in light of the FBI Director's extraordinary action in deciding not to recommend pursuing criminal charges against candidate Clinton regarding her email server by reading an intent requirement into a statute that had no such requirement, less than a month before the official opening of the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign.

The Silo

We were twenty five miles south of Tucson, off I-19 the road to Nogales, Mexico.  To the east, we could see a striking range of sharp, ragged edged mountains looming above Green Valley.  To the north were the mountains behind distant Tucson.  A hundred feet below a control room where, from 1963 to 1982, two keys could be turned and 58 seconds later a Titan II missile emerge from a silo under us, a missile which 30 minutes later would deliver a 9 megaton nuclear warhead (500 times the explosive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945) to a target in the Soviet Union.

The THC Son and I were visiting the only intact Titan II missile silo remaining (including an actual Titan II), the rest decommissioned and destroyed even to be inoperable. It was a reminder of the era in which I grew up, in which a nuclear armageddon was always looming, with global destruction minutes away.  In the backs of all of our minds was the notion of a catastrophic end to civilization.  No one foresaw the collapse of the Soviet Union without war.  Thank God we made it through and can visit the silo as the relic of a past era.

Only 54 Titan II's were ever operational.  During the same time frame the U.S. installed about 1,000 Minutemen missiles, each of which was ultimately equipped with three warheads, capable of independent targeting, each of which had only about 1/20 the payload of the Titan II.

The Titan II was installed in three groupings of 18 missiles each, located in Arkansas, Kansas, and the Tucson area.  The 18 Tucson missiles were installed over a region about the size of the state of Rhode Island, controlled operationally from Davis-Monathan Air Force Base on the outskirts of the city.  In the event of a Soviet strike Tucson would have been the target of a massive nuclear attack.

The installation consists of three sections.  You enter through a staircase and go through two sets of massive steel doors in order to enter a 250 walkway that extend from the command center to the missile silo.

The command center sits on massive springs designed to isolate the area from the outside of the chamber.  The reason was so it could survive a nearby nuclear strike.  At the other end of the walkway was the 140 tall missile silo.

The commanding officer and their subordinate each had a launch key for two switches separated by several feet.  Both keys had to be installed and turned in order to start the launch sequence.  From the keys turning to launch only took 58 seconds.  If, in the interval, the President reversed his order to launch there was nothing that could be done to stop the sequence.

The Titan II was fueled by two highly flammable and explosive chemicals, which needed to be delivered and stored separately.  Operation and maintenance was very dangerous.  During its years of service 58 contractors died in accidents, 53 in one incident I was startled to learn about for the first time.  I'm shocked by the scale of this disaster and have been unable to determine whether it was publicly reported at the time.

On August 9, 1965 55 civilian contractors were performing maintenance in a silo near Searcy, Arkansas.  A ruptured line ignited a fire, generating toxic smoke.  Only 2 of the contractors survived.  You can find the recollections of one of the survivors in this 2015 newspaper article.  I also located an extensive incident report which you can find here.  Although the military blamed the accident on sloppy practices by the contractor, this passage jumped out at me:

Project YARD FENCE modifications included the flushing of Hydraulic System 2, located on Level 6 of the sile. The flushing system had been operating at 500 pounds per square inch pressure with a flow of 110 gallons per minute through a pari of hoses leading from the surface hydraulic reservoir and pubp. At the time of the accident, these hoses were arrached to the Hydraulic System 2 panel on Level 2 quadrant 4. The hoses ran within 14 inches of a welding operator who was attaching a triangular stiffener plate to the existing web stiffener on a support for the Motor Control Center 1 platform. The contractor personnel locator board showed the welder to be on Level 3. The location of the weld was in an extremely awkward position that was only accessible working from Level 2, kneeling on the floor, leaning through the guardrails, and reaching around the hydraulic lines to the stiffener plate. A hardhat located on Level 2 at the welding operation site confirmed that the welder had been on Level 2.

The accidental contact of the welding rod to the hose caused the failure of the exterior metal braiding. Thus weakened, the braiding no longer prevented the interior teflon hose from rupturing, spraying, and atomizing the fluid into a mist that permeated Levels 2 and 3. The heat for the just welded fixture or the heat from the electrode touching the metal braiding was significantly higher than the 200 degree fahrenheit flash point of the fluid and served as the ignition point. 

 I've been involved in accident investigations and it looks to me like the root cause was in the design of equipment within the silo, with the proximity of the hydraulic lines to the stiffener plate and in such a configuration as to force the welder to perform his operation in an awkward position with very little tolerance for error. This was an accident waiting to happen. I've been unable to find if the DoD redesigned the configuration after the incident.

My Friend

I've waited to write this to give me time to regain my bearings.  Early December was the most emotionally up and down period of my life.  On the evening of December 2 our first grandchild was born (the little dude is doing just fine - definitely best baby ever).  The next morning our daughter joked that with his curly hair and big round face he looked just like my best friend.  The following day my best friend of 50 years suddenly died and I flew back East to be with his family.

Larry (or Chunky as I knew him) Church was best man at our wedding (his only words of advice before the ceremony, "don't lock your knees") and the guy I did all the ballpark tours with (in 2019, having run out of ballparks, we did WW2 museums) and our last conversation over Thanksgiving was to plan our 2020 trip (Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, Wyoming, the Little Bighorn Battlefield and then Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse monuments).

I still remember my first encounter with him in February 1968 and so much more over the ensuing decades.  Driving cross country in 1972 with our late friend Rags; listening to a lot of loud music throughout, celebrating births of children and significant events in our lives; rooming with his dad for almost a year in 1999-2000 in the old Church family home when I was starting a new job in CT; during our years back in CT a zillion holiday dinners and meals out (many at Savin Roasters in Milford) with Barb, Chunk and his wife Beth (whom I've known since we were both 8 years old).  Endless discussions of history, rock n roll, and, of course, baseball, attending the Red Sox victory parade in 2004, and being in Fenway in 2013 when the Sox won the World Series.  And so much more.

All this amid a continuing torrent of talk and stories from Chunk (though as the years went by I learned to hold my own - at least I told myself that).  At the funeral service his brother Randy eulogized him as "the Babe Ruth of talk and conversation", a perfect description.  Did I mention the endless puns, both good and bad, usually accompanied by an extraordinarily long build up?

He delighted in being confounding and a contrarian, but always with a smile.  I am certain he would have enjoyed the funeral service at the Congregational Church presided over by both a Pastor and a Rabbi (with several other rabbis in the audience), a service filled both with laughter and tears, and kicked off with a rendition of It Ain't Necessarily So, which he once sang solo in the church (after asking the pastor's permission - if you don't know why, google the lyrics), but then he left us a lot of material to work with. 

How he touched people during his life was demonstrated by the turnout for his service; a church filled to overflowing.  I'm a fan of Michael Connelly's novels featuring LAPD detective Harry Bosch.  Bosch has a mantra, "Everybody counts, or nobody counts".  It was the same for Chunk in both his personal life and career as a lawyer.  When you were with him, you had his full attention, he listened, he took you seriously, and you could count on him (except to be on time!).  And always with cordiality and courtesy.

As my friend Mark Gerhard said, "Love is everywhere and Chunky spread it like sunshine".  (Mark's 94 year old mother wrote a lovely tribute published in the local paper)

For me, I find myself reading or watching something and, as happened so frequently for so long, thinking, "I need to tell Chunk about that."  I miss my friend.

Us in 1974

 At our daughter's wedding reception (2018)

 Dodger Stadium (2014)

 Quintessential Chunky

 Cover of our debut album (1972): Chunk on far left, Rags third from left, me third from right.

 Attorney Church in his summer attire

Boris Actually

Boris Johnson's Conservative Party just won a yuuge victory over Labor, led by anti-semite Jeremy Corbyn.  Maybe this ad did it.  Apparently a spoof on a scene from the movie Love Actually which I've never seen.  And yes, that really is Boris Johnson.  

The Red Jacket

My dad was born on December 5, 1920. Dad loved wearing red; shirts, sweaters, pants, hats, and for the last decade or so of his life, a bright red windbreaker jacket. Me, not so much. In fact I have always disliked wearing red. The closest I’d come was my blue Boston Red Sox cap with its red B.

Shortly after dad passed in 2014 my sister and I got together to go through his things. When we came across the red windbreaker I impulsively told her, “I’ll take it“. It was the only piece of his clothing I kept.

Now when we get cool mornings and evening in Arizona (yes, we do occasionally get them) I often put on dad’s red jacket before going out and each time I smile and remember. I often think of my first memory of him when I was 3 or 4. We are in the car, dad’s driving and he’s singing. Dad loved singing to my sister and I and he loved driving around. He had a standard repetoire – including I’ve Been Working On The Railroad, Skin a Marink a Dink, Take Me Out To The Ballgame, and all four military service songs. We learned them all, sang along and never tired of them. As I write this I can hear his soft and smooth singing voice. I’ve inherited his love of singing (I’m not very good but have a wider range of tunes) and, like him, enjoy going on drives with no particular destination in mind. And now my son has the same driving habits.

So I’ll continue to gladly make this exception to my aversion to red clothing. Just don’t ask me to wear anything else red.

And now we’re making new memories. Three days ago our first grandchild was born to our daughter and son-in-law. I wore the red jacket to the hospital. Dad would appreciate that.

Next Gen

The Next Gen family prototype arrived last night - the THC Grandson, our first grandchild.  Baby, along with the THC Daughter and Son-in-Law are all doing fine.  And so are the little dude's grandparents.  And, extra added bonus, the THC Son was in town for Thanksgiving and got to see his new nephew before leaving.  We are all very happy.