Friday, June 09, 2023
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Earlier this week, Douglas J. Hagmann of the Hagmann Report invited me on for a 90-minute- conversation about American Betrayal. I am happy to say that as a real-life primer on "Russian influence," the book is still finding new audiences, especially now that it has finally come out in "the director's cut" audiobook.

As a host, Douglas J. Hagmann could not have been more gracious and supportive. Our conversation starts at about the 30-minute mark.



Yesterday, I received an email from my friend and fellow scribe David Solway, who, as befits the Renaissance man that he is, has a new book of poetry out this spring. It's called The Herb Garden, and I am enjoying it mightily, even as my own garden comes to life.

David's email starts out with the bustle of his busy life -- a family visit, the book launch for The Herb Garden, a musical gig, a three-day conference, the upcoming teaching semester of David's wife, Janice Fiamengo, and the like. 

"Exhausted just thinking about it," he writes. "How have...

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NOW AT THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR!

Part IV is here.

--

After the Washington Post Outlook section catalogued KGB influence operations and American Betrayal both as  "myth," I sent in the following reply:

I am the author of that unnamed “book written in 2013”...

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This extraordinary rendition by human hand and graphite pencil of John McCain is by William Davies, patriot, artist and friend. Bill attached it to a recent letter to the editor he wrote to his local paper in Syracuse, New York. I asked Bill if I could post the artwork along with his letter, not only to share and showcase Bill's enormous talents, but also to give a small platform at least to the enormity of American rage against Sen. John McCain on the POW/MIA issue, which our elites have successfully sealed off from the public square. 

Bill wrote this letter after the Russian election.

Dear Editor (Shared with Traitor John McCain),

Anyone with half a brain could realize the satire in President Trump's congratulations to Putin for another rigged win in an election not unlike unsuccessful Democrat efforts, even with the Justice Department and FBI on Hillary's side.

...

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Still thinking about Fulang Lo and the donkey that is not a horse, I am posting something new, something previously unpublished from American Betrayal. It comes from Chapter 12, which was  the only chapter I cut down for size before publication in 2013. It was a sizeable cut -- I took the chapter from thirteen thousand words down to seven thousand words. The editorial idea was a clean sprint to the finish. I have now restored the chapter to its original form in the new audiobook.  Call it the director's cut.

...

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My friend Caroline Beckenhaupt writes in with a gem today from a memoir of the Cultural Revolution, Morning Breeze by Fulang Lo.  

Caroline explains that the author has asked her mentor, a writer, what the play she was writing was about. Her mentor replies:

"[It’s about] our daily life.  About how to be an honest citizen living in our land. It  is difficult to be an honest citizen, since many people have been trained to lie."

She looked at me with determination.  “Everyone has tears, as the sun has light, as the tree has leaves, everyone has a voice, as the birds in the trees. But we are taught not to be free and see and talk.  Even if we see a donkey, we must say it is a horse.”

She went on, “As a writer, one must write honestly to...

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"Influence and the Experts, III" is here.

Two Sundays ago, the audiobook of American Betrayal finally came to market nearly five years after its original hardback publication by St. Martin's Press. 

Last Sunday the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section dismissed it as "Myth No. 5" in "Five Myths about Espionage"...

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Every Wedesday, I look forward to participating in a ten-minute segment of Secure Freedome Radio with Frank Gaffney.  After last Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section dismissed Soviet influence operations and American Betrayal both as a "myth" about espionage, Frank decided it was high time to dig in again, and so he invited me to come on for the entire show today to talk about the relaunch of American Betrayal as an audiobook, the Kremlin's subversion of...

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The Ideological War Once Known As Communism is still on. It took shape here in the United States as American Betrayal, and it continues on in  "The Red Thread."

Jeff Nyquist, Allan Dos Santos and I discuss on the latest installment of Update Brazil. 



I just peeked at Twitter and discovered that tonight, Sunday, March 18, at 8pm ET, Brooks Agnew, host of X-Squared Radio, will be re-broadcasting the American Betrayal interview he conducted with me just days after the book's release from St. Martin's Press in 2013. Brooks writes:



As I recall, our interview was scheduled for the first hour of the program, but it turned out there was no stopping our conversation as it gathered speed, so the interview ended up lasting for the entire three-hour-show. Listen tonight here.

...

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Earlier in the week, Sandy Rios of American Family Radio and I followed a couple of the Red Threads through the anti-Trump network working to frame and destroy the presidency of Donald Trump before it began. Listen here. 

There are so many to keep straight. For more background on the Stalin apologetics (yes, you read that right -- Stalin apologetics) of a central figure in the anti-Trump network, see "Nellie Ohr, Woman in the Middle" at The American Spectator here.  

...

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I am extremely pleased to present the American Betrayal audio book! 

Narrated by Yours Truly, this has been a project long in the making, but also enjoyable in the making. 

I hope readers -- listeners -- find it so as well.

  



Dear Rush,

Megadittos. Knowing how you pride yourself on accuracy, I want to clue you in to something you got wrong on yesterday's show. 

You started out just fine:

And it reminds me that they hate Joe McCarthy, ’cause Joe McCarthy found communists everywhere in the government. 

This is true. Kudos to you for noting that Sen. McCarthy did, indeed, find secret communists inside the federal government, plotting the overthrow, violent and/or stealthy, of the United States government, even as they were on the payroll of the American taxpayer. Such simple clarity is a crucial step to take if the American people are ever to visualize the mechanism of communist subversion that continues to take our constitutional republic down, instead of continuing to fight blind. Nonetheless, it is our sad state that, following that grand ideological "victory" of ours in the Cold War against...

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The following excerpt is from "Nellie Ohr, Woman in the Middle."

Remember when the Soviet Union “vanished” in 1991? So, too, all of the experts told us, did its nasty communist strategies to destroy the United States and control the world. How marvelous it was, then, that Russia stopped running its Soviet-era intelligence armies and terror networks against us — except, of course, for CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who was arrested in 1994, three years after the “end” of the USSR, while working for a “defunct” KGB. Then there was Soviet-Russian spymaster Sergei Tretyakov, busily orchestrating old-time subversion against us until his defection in 2000. Oh, and don’t forget the FBI’s Robert Hanssen, dead-dropping away for the Kremlin until his shock-arrest in 2001. And what about...

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Thanks to Vlad Tepes for kindly editing the Center for Security Policy CPAC panel, "Whither Freedom," into each speaker's part. Here is mine.   



Remember the Indonesian Chinese banking family, the Riadys of Lippogate infamy? 

Maybe not. It's hard to keep so many crooks straight. I am refreshing my memory (and learning) in The Year of the Rat by Edward Timperlake and William C. Triplett II.

Early on, the authors explain that the Riadys had "a long-term relationship with a Chinese intelligence agency," as the Senate later learned from the CIA, and the Riadys had a long-term relationship with the Clintons.

As of Clinton-Gore Inauguration Day 1993 -- to which James Riady and the Riadys' American representative John Huang gave $100.000 apiece; and to which the Riadys brought a large number of friends from Indonesia -- here is what the authors say about the Riadys of Indonesia.

They were knowing, participating agents of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and its intelligence services.

...

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Some readers may remember columnist Bret Stephens as a generous contributor to the "The Right's Anti-Trump Lexicon," starting way back in August 2015, when he wrote in the Wall Street Journal:

If by now you don’t find Donald Trump appalling, you’re appalling."

"A is for Appalling": Takes you back, doesn't it? Then there was, "S is for Sewer": 

The candidacy of Donald Trump is the open sewer of American conservatism.

What nuance. And who could forget "S is for Stench"?

Trump's agenda is "a parade of semi-sophisticated policies that act as bathroom deodorizer to...

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If this hurts your head, good. 

We would seem to be looking at another in the series of "switches" I was talking about at CPAC last week in the CSP panel, "Whither Freedom." 

Hillary Clinton -- mother of Russian hypersonic missile technology, wife of Bill, father of the Chinese MIRV, and patron of the spying scandal "dossier" -- has the brazenness to tell us "the Russians are still coming," as if her entire career has not been devoted to weakening this democratic republic. What she is really doing, au fond, is whacking President Trump for his wanting to modernize the US nuclear arsenal. The audacity is almost literally mind-blowing -- Russian disinformation taken to rare heights.  

...

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