Timeline of U.S. Political Transformation — Making Enemies

U.S. mass surveillance targets domestic opponents while ignoring Chinese espionage.

Please see updates to this section at Substack:

§4. Notes on Making Enemies, April 2013 – Dec 2015 and

§4. Making Enemies, April 2013 – December 2015:

April 2013 – Dec 2015

[As revealed by Edward Snowden, the spy agencies had in effect deputized Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, telephone companies, Internet Service Providers, and others to record email messages, telephone conversations, Web-browsing, and virtually everything else done on-line. Despite these revelations, the scope of the spying increased exponentially, and crossed national borders freely, as U.S. and British spies collaborated to eavesdrop on trans-Atlantic conversations and Internet traffic. The bulk of this enormous effort focused on ordinary citizens of whom not the slightest cause for suspicion, let alone the constitutional ‘probable cause’ standard, existed. While Chinese spies were freely helping themselves to U.S. Defense secrets and valuable industrial technology, U.S. spy agencies assessed the American populace to be their worst enemy, judging by where the spying effort was directed.]

[The staggering volume of data, measure in petabytes, hoovered up by the spy agencies was not very good for finding domestic or foreign terrorists, but what it proved to be good at was harassing political opponents like the Tea Party groups. ]

[Anglo-American cooperation materialized during this period in the unlikely person of an unemployed British spy with a penchant for self-dramatization, lacking, however, the literary talent required to supply even a hint of verisimilitude to his fanciful reports of life in Moscow. Fortunately for him, a vodka-addled Russian source in the employ of the Brookings Institution supplied the creative details needed to cobble together a series of notes sold once to a major political party, and then, enterprisingly, the revised edition sold again to the U.S. spy agencies. The cast of characters included an MI5 Director with a name LeCarré might have invented, John Dearlove, supplying a touch of British class without which any spy story would be incomplete.]

[Several occurrences with consequences that sprang seemingly out of nowhere, years later, originated during this period. Little noted or effectively concealed at the time, their later significance merits a place in this part of the timeline. These include continuing payments from China, Ukraine, and Russia to the family of the Vice-President for unspecified services, the U.S. ceding of Iraq to Iran, the shutdown of the DEA investigation of Hezbollah, NIH funding of research enabling bat viruses to attach to human airways, and the removal of hundreds of top military officers for having failed ‘micro-aggression’ training and their replacement with politically compliant officers. All of these proved extremely consequential later.]

PM

This section is now (May 2022) located here: https://peterdanielmiller.substack.com/p/timeline-of-us-political-transformation-f51?s=w

4. Making Enemies

April 30, 2013: Senator John McCain’s staff director, Henry Kerner, urges top IRS officials, including director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner, to ‘audit so many [Tea Party groups] that it becomes financially ruinous‘.

May 10, 2013: Former IRS director of exempt organizations Lois Lerner admits the IRS intentionally delays applications for tax-exempt status from conservative non-profit groups, apologizes to Tea Party groups for having pursued malicious pretexts for prosecution. || Source

June 5, 2013: Edward Snowden reveals warrantless mass surveillance and bulk collection of phone, Internet, bank, and other records without any cause to suspect crime, by NSA and other spy agencies in the U.S. He provides evidence to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post. NSA software called PRISM collects data directly from servers of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, and others. It is later disclosed on Aug 29, 2013 that NSA pays hundreds of millions of dollars to these companies for access to their networks.

Pursuant to a top-secret memo dated Sept 15, 2009, NSA shares data, surveillance assets, and conclusions with Britain’s GCHQ, a relationship originating in WWII and maintained throughout the Cold War. The relationship enables both parties to circumvent laws limiting surveillance to domestic targets and requiring probable cause to spy on specific individuals.

Snowden is granted asylum in Russia for two months. || Source and the Intercept

June 15, 2013: Hunter Biden and other shareholders sign agreement in Beijing to form Bohai Capital together with Chinese State agencies including Bank of China, China Postal Savings Bank, China Development Bank, National Council for Social Security Funds, and China Life. The company is later incorporated in China in Dec 2015, and becomes the vehicle for Hunter’s initial $400,000 stake to expand to $1.6 billion with funds supplied by Chinese government agencies. || Source

June 20, 2013: IRS pays bonuses of $42,000 and $100,000 to two former IRS Commissioners who had directed IRS special scrutiny of Obama-opposition Tea Party groups.

June 20, 2013: Guardian (Greenwald) publishes Snowden secret documents with U.S. NSA rules for conducting mass surveillance that merge domestic and foreign targets, contrary to ‘minimization’ standards. || Source

June 21, 2013: Snowden documents show Britain’s GCHQ taps fiber-optic cables to collect and store global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories, and calls, and then shares the data with the NSA. GCHQ works within NSA’s Fort Meade Md HQ.

July 2, 2013: DNI Clapper apologizes for lying to Congress in March 2013 testimony.

July 3, 2013: Egyptian Field Marshall Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrows Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi in military coup.

July 2013: FISA Court broadens scope of secret warrantless searches from terrorism cases to those involving nuclear proliferation, cyber-attacks, and other security concerns. NYTimes Eric Lichtblau characterizes the 11-member FISA Court’s expanded role as that of a ‘parallel Supreme Court’. || Source

July 31, 2013: Snowden reveals that low-level NSA analysts like himself could find the phone, email, and any Internet activity of anyone in the world through simple queries to a program called XKeyscore, which integrates highly focused content and metadata searches. || Source

July 31, 2013: Bradley (later Chelsea) Manning convicted of violating Espionage Act.

Aug 1, 2013: U.S. Government pays Britain’s GCHQ $155 million for use of its spying programs.

Aug 2, 2013: Telecom companies (owners of undersea cables) provide GCHQ secret unlimited access to all traffic through their undersea cables.

Aug 7, 2013: Russia extends Snowden’s period of asylum for three years.

2013 – 2015: Johnathan Winer distributes more than 100 memos from ex-spy Christopher Steele’s company, Orbis Business Intelligence, to U.S. policy-makers, on behalf of Steele’s client, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. || Source

Sept 4, 2013: James Comey becomes FBI Director, succeeding Robert Mueller.

Oct 2013: FBI officially names Steele as a Confidential Human Source (CHS), in part to compensate Steele for his assistance with the a previous investigation of FIFA. Source: Senate Intel Committee Report, V5, p 856.

Oct 2013: Amazon owner Jeff Bezos purchases Washington Post, using funds from cloud services contract awarded to Amazon by CIA in March 2013.

Nov 1, 2013: Edward Snowden reveals Britain’s GCHQ and other European spy agencies work together to conduct mass surveillance. || Source

Nov 2013: Donald Trump brings Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, collecting an estimated $3 million from the local hosts billionaire real estate tycoon Aras Agalarov and his son Emin, a pop singer. || Source

Nov 20, 2013: UK government and NSA agree to share phone, internet, and email records of UK citizens, and cooperate on evading each country’s privacy laws.

Dec 2013: Trump Organization agrees to brand an Agalarov property in Moscow, but deal stalls due to Ukraine turmoil, falling oil prices, collapse of real-estate market, and sanctions.

 

2013 – 2020: U.S. DOD Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) provides $39 million in grants to Eco-Health Alliance (Peter Daszak, Chairman) for ‘understanding the risk of bat-borne zoonotic disease emergence in Western Asia’, for onward transfer to research organizations in China. The DOD grants are part of $123 million given to Eco-Health Alliance by various U.S. agencies, including $64.7 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), $13 million from Health and Human Services, which includes the National Institutes of Health and Centers for Disease Control, $2.3 million from the Department of Homeland Security, and $2.6 million from the National Science Foundation. || Source, based on independent research by James Baratta and Marianne Everett, Independent Science News, Dec 2020.

Dec 16, 2013: BHR (Bohai Harvest RST; RS = Rosemont Seneca, T = Thornton) is incorporated in Shanghai China, one week after VP Joe Biden and son Hunter visit Beijing. BHR is financed by Chinese Government banks including Bank of China, Postal Savings Bank of China, China Development Bank, National Council for Social Security Funds, and China Life. Hunter Biden becomes a BHR Board member and receives a 10 percent share of the company. || Source: Chinese records and Riding the Dragon; and Source2

Dec 20, 2013: Chinese Government via BHR invests $1.5 billion in Hunter Biden’s equity fund Rosemont Seneca Partners. || Source: Peter Schweizer, ‘Riding the Dragon’ film

Jan 20, 2014: President Obama in New Yorker interview dismisses ISIS as ‘JV team‘ and ‘not a direct threat to us‘. ISIS leader Baghdadi later declares Caliphate in captured territory in Iraq and Syria in June 2014.

 

Feb 4, 2014: George Soros’ Open Society Institute sponsors riots on Maidan in Kiev, the prototype for similar operations in the United States in 2020. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland instructs U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt to have Arseniy Yatsenyuk (aka Yats) appointed Prime Minister after the soon-to-be-completed coup d’etat. When Pyatt expresses concern about EU misgivings, Nuland says ‘Fuck the EU‘.

Feb 11, 2014: DIA Director Flynn testifies to Senate Armed Services Committee re Annual Threat Assessment that ISIS would ‘attempt to take territory in Iraq and Syria‘, contradicting President Obama’s assessment that ISIS is not a significant threat.

 

Feb 14, 2014: Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina, widow of the former mayor of Moscow, wires $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, an investment firm owned by Hunter Biden and Devon Archer, incorporated on May 28, 2013 in Wilmington, Delaware, for a ‘consultancy agreement’. || Source1 , Source2 , Senate HSGA and Finance report, Oct 2020; Source3

 

Feb 15, 2014: Wanxiang Group acquires U.S. tax-funded Fisker Automotive and its plug-in hybrid technology in Delaware auction for $149 million. || Source

Feb 18, 2014: Snipers shoot and kill police officers and Soros activists to provoke insurrection in Ukraine.

Feb 22, 2014: Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is ousted, flees to Russia. New U.S.-backed Ukraine Prime Minister Yatsenyuk expresses Ukraine’s intention to join NATO.

March 16, 2014: Crimeans vote to re-incorporate Crimea into Russia.

March 18, 2014: Russian Federal Assembly ratifies re-incorporation of Crimea into Russia after Crimea plebiscite.

 

March 2014: CIA secretly intercepts and collects communications of Congressional staff on anonymous reports of Intelligence Community abuses and on torture of prisoners through ‘routine counterintelligence monitoring of government computer systems’. Senate Intelligence and Finance Committees are two of the CIA targets. CIA Director Brennan falsely denies hacking into computer system of Senate Intelligence Committee: ‘Nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.’ IG report later confirms CIA hacking of Senate Intelligence Committee computers. Later, Brennan apologizes. || Source ; and Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson disclosure Nov 2018 in response to Sen Grassley request.

 

March 20, 2014: Hackers employed by Chinese Government are discovered to have broken into U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) computer systems and stolen the records of more than 22 million people. OPM does not know when the breach occurred. The theft involves anyone whose background was checked as part of their applications for government positions, since 2000. Targets of the hack include security clearances, covert activities, biometric data, birthdates, health information, addresses, and other personal information. Such data can be used to recruit future intelligence agents or to acquire compromising information about persons who may become top officials in future. || Source

March 26, 2014: World Trade Organization rules China violated trade rules by restricting exports of rare-earth minerals used for mobile phones and electric vehicles, and molybdenum (used to produce corrosion-resistant steel). China asserts its sovereign right to promote sustainable development of these materials.

 

April 2014: DEA concludes Hezbollah ‘has leveraged relationships with corrupt foreign government officials and transnational criminal actors… creating a network that can be utilized to move metric ton quantities of cocaine, launder drug proceeds on a global scale, and procure weapons and precursors for explosives.’ Hezbollah ‘has at its disposal one of the most capable networks of actors coalescing elements of transnational organized crime with terrorism in the world’. || Source , Jack Riley, DEA chief of operations.

April 13, 2014: Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s business partner, joins the Board of Ukranian gas-distributor Burisma.

April 14, 2014: 276 African Christian schoolgirls are kidnapped by Boko Haram, for auction by Muslim groups as sex slaves. Obama declines to designate Boko Haram as terror group or to send Special Operations forces, encourages people to tweet about the crime on social media. Boko Haram is allied with Muslim Brotherhood, protected by Obama Admin under secret order PSD-11.

April 18, 2014: Hunter Biden is appointed to the Board of Directors of Ukranian gas distributor Burisma, with compensation of $50,000/month.

April 22, 2014: VP Joe Biden travels to Ukraine, offers $50 million in aid to Ukranian Govt.

April 25, 2014: Chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko elected president of Ukraine.

April 28, 2014: British officials seize $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky, for money-laundering.

April 30, 2014: President Obama fires DIA Director Lt Gen Flynn for ‘insubordination’ following an article calling for defeat of radical Islamic terrorists. || Source

May 2014: Ukranian Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema receives $7 million bribe to stop the investigation of oligarch Burisma owner Mykola Vlochevsky and Burisma Board member Hunter Biden. Source: George Kent, then U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Charge d’Affaires, public testimony in impeachment inquiry November 14, 2019.

May 7, 2014: Second tranche of Chinese Government hack of OPM, with hackers disguised as employees of KeyPoint Government Solutions, a subcontractor. || Source

May 7, 2014: Burisma sends its first payment to Hunter Biden, $250,000 to the Boies Schiller law firm, for ‘Legal and Consulting Services’. || Source: Senate HSGA and Finance Committees report, Oct 2020.

May 12, 2014: Hunter Biden joins Burisma Board. Burisma Advisor Vadim Pozharskyi sends email to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer requesting urgent advice on how to use their influence to stop Ukranian government interference with Burisma’s business. || Source

May 12, 2014: Burisma Advisor Vadim Pozharskyi sends email to Hunter Biden and Devon Archer requesting urgent advice on how to use their influence to stop Ukranian government interference with Burisma’s business. || Source

May 15, 2014 – Feb 12, 2016: Burisma sends 48 wires to Rosemont Seneca Bohai totaling $3,489,490.78. Of the 48 transactions, 39 are for ‘Consulting Services’ each in the amount of $83,333.33, with the last of the payments occurring on Feb 12, 2016.

June 9, 2014: Islamic State captures Mosul, Iraq’s 2nd-largest city, Ramadi, Fallujah, and Tikrit. After one trillion dollars of U.S. expenditure and a decade of training, Iraqi Army flees, leaving territory, guns, rockets, humvees and other equipment and control to terrorists. This development is in line with former DIA Director Lt Gen Flynn’s Threat Assessment testimony to Senate Armed Services Committee on Feb 11, 2014. || Source

July 31, 2014: CIA Inspector General David Buckley reports CIA had broken into Senate Intelligence Committee computers. Senators call for CIA Director Brennan to resign. || Source

Aug 2014: State Dept turns over 15,000 pages of documents to Congressional Benghazi committee, revealing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used private server for government email. Her mishandling of classified info on this private system becomes subject of FBI probe, which is later set aside with no action.

Sept 4, 2014: IRS reports emails of staff that had targeted Tea Party for special scrutiny were lost or destroyed due to hard drive crashes and other technical problems. || Source

Sept 16, 2014: Burisma makes second payment to Hunter Biden via Boies Schiller law firm of $33,039.77, ‘for Legal and Consulting Services’. || Source: Senate HSGA and Finance Committees report, Oct 2020.

Sept 25, 2014: AG Eric Holder resigns.

2014: President Obama appoints CFIUS Staff Chair Aimen Mir Deputy Assistant Secretary for Investment Security. Mir had assisted CFIUS approval of Rosatom-owned Uranium One’s acquisition of 20 percent of American uranium resources.

August 2014: State Dept turns over 15,000 pages of documents to Congressional Benghazi committee, revealing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used private server for government email. Her mishandling of classified info on this private system becomes subject of FBI probe.

Nov 19, 2014: Johnathan Winer writes in a memo: ‘Toria [Victoria Nuland] and Paul [Jones], Three reports from Orbis. The man behind them and Orbis, Chris Steele (as previously mentioned, former MI6 Russia expert, and a trusted friend of mine) is in DC next couple of days. If you’d like to meet with him, let me know and I can put it together.’ || Source: Judicial Watch FOIA request

Dec 2014: Ukranian Prosecutor’s investigation of Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky and Hunter Biden ends suddenly, following payment of $7 million bribe to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Vitaly Yarema, to ‘shut the case against Zlochevsky’. || Source: Testimony of former U.S. Ukranian Embassy Chargé  d’Affaires George Kent to Senate

Dec 2014: BHR invests in China General Nuclear (CGN), a company under FBI investigation for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets. CGN and U.S. citizen Allen Ho, owner of Wilmington Delaware-based Energy Techology International (ETI), are charged by the U.S. Dept of Justice with stealing U.S. nuclear secrets in April 2016.

2015: Eco-Health Alliance Director Peter Daszak states publicly at a National Academy of Sciences conference: ‘We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical countermeasures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process‘. || Source

2015: Dr. Zhengli et al ‘re-engineer HKU4 spike to build its capacity to infect human cells, with two mutations [which] demonstrate dramatic effects on viral entry into human cells‘. || Source: Zhengli S, Baric RS, et al, ‘Two Mutations Were Critical for Bat-to-Human Transmission of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus’. J Virol.2015;89(17):9199-9123. Funded by NIH grants RO1AI089728, RO1AI110700.

2015: Ye Jianming founds China Energy Company (CEFC) to acquire independent oil refineries around the world, with financing from several Chinese Government banks. || Source: Senate HGSA and Finance report, Oct 2020.

Jan 2015: Obama Admin warns Iran of imminent assassination of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani near Damascus by Israel, enabling Soleimani to escape. Quds Force continues attacking U.S. soldiers with roadside bombs (IEDs), until Soleimani is killed by drone in 2018. || Source , Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida.

Jan 21, 2015: Hunter Biden’s BHR plus AVIC Auto, a subsidiary of the Chinese Government’s Aviation Industry Company, agree to purchase Henniges Automotive, a Michigan-based manufacturer whose vibration-dampening technology is used in the F-35 stealth aircraft, for $800 million. The Henniges technology is considered dual-use because it has both military and civilian (automotive) applications, therefore CFIUS approval is required. The stepson of Secretary of State John Kerry who chairs CFIUS is a partner of Hunter Biden in BHR (Rosemont is named after the Heinz family estate near Fox Chapel). Kerry does not recuse himself from participating in the CFIUS approval of the Henniges sale. || Source

Feb 15, 2015: Sandler Foundation executes contract to pay $7,000/month to Podesta Group. Herb and Marion Sandler had sold a bank they owned that specialized in adjustable-rate mortgages, for a $2.6 billion profit. The buyer, Wachovia Bank, having over-estimated the value of the mortgages, goes bankrupt shortly thereafter. John Podesta becomes Clinton campaign manager in late 2015. || Source

2015: Dennis Montgomery gathers 47 hard drives of evidence of NSA/CIA spying on prominent business people such as Donald Trump, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts, FISA judges, and others, tries to alert Senate Judiciary Committee and FBI, is rebuffed.

March 2015: Susan Rice orders spy agencies to produce ‘detailed spreadsheets’ of legal phone calls Donald Trump and his aides made during presidential campaign, including intercepted phone calls to persons ‘unmasked’, that is, non-targeted individuals incidentally identified in investigations. The unmasked names are provided to CIA Director John Brennan and DNI James Clapper. Ben Rhodes assists Rice in these illegal operations. || Source and former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova.

March 2, 2015: NY Times reports that Sec of State Hillary Clinton uses a secret, personal server, instead of the official State Dept server, for email communications.

March 21, 2015: Clinton associates delete thousands of emails that were under subpoena. || Source

March 31, 2015: Clinton IT specialist Paul Combetta realizes he had not deleted all of Clinton’s emails, uses BleachBit software to do so.

2015: More than 50 intelligence analysts complain that their reports on ISIS and al-Qaeda are altered by senior officials in order to support misleading administration narratives. || Source

April 17, 2015: Burisma Advisor Vadim Pozharskyi email to Hunter Biden ‘Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together‘, referring to introduction to VP Joe Biden.

May 2015: Amazon discovers the cloud storage servers it provides for CIA, DOD, HHS and many other government and private customers are infiltrated by a microchip disguised to look like a signal router. The chip, however, about the size of a grain of rice, incorporates memory, networking, and processing power sufficient to hack, upon remote command, any system in which it is embedded. The chip, designed by a Chinese military unit, was inserted into circuit boards manufactured in China and supplied to San Jose-based Supermicro, for sale to Amazon and others. || Source

Summer 2015: FBI warns DNC about alleged Russian hacking. DNC ignores the warning.

Sept 2015: FBI informant and real-estate advisor Felix Sater contacts Trump Organization lawyer Michael Cohen to propose Trump Tower project in Moscow. Sater is an FBI informant under a 1998 plea agreement with U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissman, in exchange for leniency on convictions for assault (stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass) and racketeering. || Source

Sept 25, 2015: DOD Office of Net Assessment (ONA) awards $245,000 contract to longtime CIA informant Stephen Halper.

Oct 28, 2015: Trump Organization signs letter of intent, brokered by Felix Sater, to brand an office and residential tower in Moscow, to be built by local developer Andrey Rozov. Sater proposes obtaining funding from Arkady and Boris Rotenberg who are under U.S. Treasury-imposed sanctions since 2014, but fails to obtain commitment. Trump lawyer Michael Cohen cancels proposed deal in Dec 2015. Sater also seeks funds from Genbank and VTB Bank, both of which are also under U.S. Treasury-imposed sanctions, though again nothing materializes.

Late 2015: Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe gives $675,000 to the political campaign of Jill McCabe, wife of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. McCabe is in charge of investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private server for classified communications.

Nov 2015: FBI conducts nebulous ‘about’ searches on Americans whose names ‘incidentally’ appear in searches of counterintelligence targets, fails to use minimization safeguards designed to protect people’s privacy from unconstitutional searches and seizures, and allows private contractors such as Fusion GPS access to raw surveillance information. || Source: FISA Court ruling of April 2017: ‘The FBI had disclosed raw FISA information, including but not limited to Section 702-acquired information,…to private contractors. ‘Private contractors had access to raw FISA information on FBI storage systems. Contractors had access to raw FISA information that went well beyond what was necessary to respond to the FBI’s requests…. The Court is concerned about the FBI’s apparent disregard of minimization rules and whether the FBI may be engaging in similar disclosures of raw Section 702 information that have not been reported.’

Nov 13, 2015: President Obama declares ISIS ‘contained’. || Source

Nov 13, 2015: ISIS executes a series of terror attacks in Paris, killing 130 people.

Nov 22, 2015: U.S. State Dept memo to VP Joe Biden summarizing goals of impending meeting with Ukraine President Poroshenko lists the first goal as ‘removal of Prosecutor General Shokin’. Viktor Shokin is investigating illicit payments from Burisma to Board Member Hunter Biden.

Dec 2015: Dennis Montgomery, the CIA contractor who built a mass surveillance tool in 2003, delivers 47 computer hard drives of illegally-harvested surveillance data to DOJ (Holder) and FBI under two limited immunity agreements.

Dec 8, 2015: New York Times article reports that Ukranian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin is investigating Burisma holdings and oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, who received five billion dollars from Government of Ukraine.

Dec 10, 2015: Former DIA Dir Lt Gen Michael Flynn, speaks at RT event in Moscow, is paid $45,000. Putin is seated at same table.

Dec 15, 2015: President Obama issues Executive Order placing hand-picked members of the Senior Executive Service in key positions throughout Federal agencies, including:

Department of the Air Force – 182; Department of Labor – 200; Department of State – 204; Department of Transportation – 231; Department of Interior – 258; Department of the Army – 261; Department of the Navy – 326 Department of Veterans Affairs – 357; Department of Agriculture – 361; Department of Commerce – 425; Department of the Treasury – 458; Department of Health & Human Services – 468; Department of Defense – 478; Department of Energy – 490; Department of Homeland Security – 639.

Timeline of U.S. Political Transformation, Prelude 2001 – 2010

Placing delayed revelations in their actual time-sequence reveals the U.S. election fraud of 2020 growing out of Hugo Chavez’s software investment in 2004, Chinese military advances derived from their hack of DOD in 2007, alliances between spies and an ambitious political candidate dating back to 2008, and the beginnings of a failed campaign to take down the Hezbollah international drug-trafficking empire.

Please see this section at Substack

§1. 9/11 and Its Aftermath, 2000 – 2007

[Much of today’s dissolution grew out of actions and policies little-noted when they occurred, decades earlier. They were either not newsworthy, not salient to people other than those ‘in the know’, or intentionally concealed for fear of the negative reaction they would provoke.]

[Long gaps between action and consequence lead to collective amnesia, a sort of brain-fog about how things came to be the way they are. That in turn induces passive acceptance, as if current circumstances were not contingent on prior causes. So here in the early 2000s, visible but unappreciated, are several of the features of contemporary life that loom so large now — mass surveillance, election fraud, and Chinese espionage.]

PM

Dec 14, 1999: Port Angeles (Washington) Customs Inspector Diana Dean thwarts Al Qaida plan to blow up Los Angeles airport by questioning Algerian terrorist Ahmed Ressam, part of a sleeper cell based in Canada.

Jan 28, 2000: An application for a patent on a spike protein virus vaccine for canine coronavirus is filed with the U.S. Patent Office.

2001: Patent attorney David Martin’s firm publishes a report warning of the dangers posed by the use of coronavirus as a vaccine vector also being used, with no modification needed, as a bio-weapon. || Source

Sept 11, 2001: Airline ticket agent Michael Tuohey checks Mohammed Atta onto Flight 11. Tuohey later recalls ‘I said to myself, ‘If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does‘. But he lets the terrorists board without any enhanced security screening: ‘I gave myself a mental slap, because in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this. You’ve checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you’ve never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed.‘ || Source: John Schindler, Top Secret Umbra topsecretumbra@substack.com

Sept 11, 2001: Islamists commanded by Osama Bin Laden hijack four passenger planes, flying three of them into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York, and one of them into the Pentagon in Washington DC. Passengers take control of the fourth plane and crash it into the ground in southwest Pennsylvania before it could reach its intended target, the White House. An FBI field office had previously sent a report of Saudi Arabian students at a flight school in Minnesota seeking instruction in taking off but not landing an airplane. FBI Headquarters ignored the report. More than 3,000 people are killed in the 9/11 attacks.

Oct 4, 2001: In response to 9/11 attack, U.S. Govt authorizes spy agencies to do warrantless mass surveillance, that is, to spy on ordinary citizens without obtaining a warrant stating a reason or ‘probable cause’ of suspicion, in effect repealing the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. In 2002, the first full year of operation, the total number of people in the U.S. subject to such surveillance is 500 or less. || Source

April 19, 2002: National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Dir Anthony Fauci, and Christopher M Curtis, Boyd Young and Ralph Baric apply for patent on a recombinant (chimeric) DNA means of producing an infectious replication-defective coronavirus specifically targeted for human lung epithelium. The 2002 patent application specifies the ACE-2 binding domain for the S-1 spike protein, exactly as it later came to be known in SARS-CoV2. The pathogen had been created by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, under NIH NIAID Grant #GM63228. NIAID exercises the U.S. Government’s ‘march-in’ right to acquire ownership of any research it funds. The patent on this pathogen is later granted as U.S. Patent #727-9327. Dr. Shi Zhengli and Wuhan Virology Institute colleagues increase infectivity by combining an HIV pseudovirus with SARS-CoV-1. || Source

2003: Russian oligarch, aluminum magnate, and Putin associate Oleg Deripaska retains law firm Alston & Bird, where Johnathan Winer is a partner. Putin seeks major share of world uranium resources. Winer later joins State Dept, acts as conduit for dossier prepared by British ex-spy Christopher Steele.

April 25, 2003: U.S. Patent Office rejects, for lack of novelty, a CDC application seeking to patent the SARS coronavirus genome. 35 U.S.Code § 101 prohibits issuance of a patent for a naturally occurring substance.

April 28, 2003: Sequoia Pharmaceuticals, whose holdings are later acquired by Pfizer and J&J, applies for a patent on ‘antiviral agents of treatment and control of infections by coronavirus’. || Source

March 10, 2004: With the warrantless spying program (called ‘Stellar Wind’) set to expire, and Attorney General Ashcroft in hospital in intensive care, Acting Attorney General James Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller threaten to resign rather than approve an extension. Ashcroft, Comey, and Mueller all state their belief that the ‘Stellar Wind’ component on Internet metadata violates the Constitution. They inform President George W Bush that a mass resignation of DOJ lawyers would ensue, imperiling his re-election later in the year. Bush extends the program without the metadata component, over the objections of VP Cheney, averting any resignations. A secret FISA Court decision re-approves Internet metadata spying in June 2004. || Source: George W Bush, Decision Points, and Source

May 28, 2004: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez buys 28 percent share of Bizta, a venture developer of voting machine software.

Jan 2005: Hunter Biden, Chris Heinz, and Devon Archer establish Rosemont Capital. The firm is named after a Heinz family estate in Sewickley Pennsylvania. Heinz, heir to the food-processing conglomerate, supplies the capital, is the step-son of Senator John Kerry.

March 2005: Smartmatic purchases Sequoia Voting Systems for $16 million.

Nov 2005: CIA veteran John Brennan appointed CEO of The Analysis Corp (TAC), whose products are pattern recognition and data mining software for U.S. Government’s terrorist watchlist database called TIPOFF.

Dec 2005: Eric Lichtblau and James Risen reveal in New York Times the ‘Stellar Wind’ program of unconstitutional warrantless domestic spying and unauthorized NSA collection of Internet metadata, which had been in operation since Oct 2001. || Source

2006: Oleg Deripaska agrees to pay $10 million annual compensation to Paul Manafort to improve Putin image in U.S. Payments continue through 2009.

May 4, 2006: Rep Carolyn Maloney (D, NY) writes to Treasury Secretary John Snow, asking whether Venezuelan company Smartmatic had complied with CFIUS regulations in its acquisition of Sequoia, a U.S. voting machine company. ‘As you can imagine, having a foreign government investing in or owning a company that supplies voting machines for U.S. elections could raise concerns over the integrity of elections conducted with these machines.

Aug 2006: Hunter Biden and uncle James Biden purchase hedge fund Paradigm Global Advisors. James Biden tells employees Don’t worry about investors. We’ve got people all around the world who want to invest in Joe Biden. Non-U.S. persons could provide money to such companies without campaign-finance or foreign-agent reporting requirements. || Source ; Independent CPAs Briggs, Bunting & Dougherty report to SEC on July 25, 2008, cites Paradigm for ‘failure to reconcile reimbursements, cash accounts, and other accounts’. || Source

October 29, 2006: Smartmatic and Sequoia Voting Systems deny Venezuelan Govt ownership, seek CFIUS review, claim no national security risk and no substantiated allegations of tampering with voting results.

Oct 31, 2006: San Francisco Mayor (later California Governor) Gavin Newsom installs Dominion voting machines in SF. || Source

2007: Hackers from Chinese military unit Technical Reconnaissance Bureau, in Chengdu, on behalf of China’s Aviation Industry Company (AVIC), hack into DOD and contractors’ computer systems, stealing 50 terabytes of data on U.S. F-35 aircraft design, including engine schematics, radar, electro-optical system for missile warning, navigation support, and night operations, turbine cooling system, engine heat reduction, and other elements of stealth design. According to NSA estimates, Chinese hackers conducted more than 30,000 cyber attacks into DOD and contractors including Lockheed Martin and Norhtrup Grumman. AVIC subsidiary Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group uses the stolen data to design and build the J-20. Photos posted on Chinese military forums on Jan 17, 2014 show the J-20 with F-35 features. || Sources: Snowden files and Source1 , Source2

June 8, 2007: DOD contracts with Dynology to help U.S. military graduate from dropping leaflets from airplanes to micro-targeting psychological warfare via social-media. Dynology, headed by Gen James Jones, develops methods of influencing groups politically according to their religion, ethnicity, demographic profile, anxiety, and personal background, and retains these algorithms for later commercial use.

Sept 5, 2007: Hunter Biden and James Bulger establish Thornton, a government relations consultancy specializing in U.S. ties with China. Taiwan-born, Yale-educated Michael Lin also participates in Thornton.

Oct 25, 2007: By Executive Orders 13224 and 13382, State Department designates Qassem Soleimani and Quds Force (Iranian-trained militia) and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as terrorists. Treasury designates IRGC-Qods Force under E.O. 13224 for providing material support to the Taliban and other terrorist organizations, and Iran’s state-owned Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier. || Source

§2. Monetization of U.S. Foreign Policy, 2008 – 2010

Please see Notes on this section here, and this section at Substack

[With the prospect of a Constitutionally impaired president, the spy agencies vastly expanded the reach of their surveillance and the scope of their influence. Future CIA Director John Brennan and future President Barack Obama formed an alliance whose first overt act was the cleansing of the latter’s passport records. This was followed by legislation repealing the Constitutional protection against ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’, while the U.S. economy was in full meltdown after the bankruptcies of the fourth- and fifth-largest investment banks. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts established by the stealth legislation later operated as a parallel though secret Supreme Court, enabling illegal investigations by the FBI on its own initiative, driven by its officials’ personal biases and political preferences.]

[These years also saw atomic deal-making with Russia in which the national security of the United States was secretly exchanged for donations to a personal political foundation. When later revealed, these deals proved extremely embarrassing, though prosecution was averted. Treasonous relations with Russia were later attributed to another person first by fabricating evidence, then reifying the fabrications by having the spy agencies solemnly pore over the suspicious details contrived for their investigation. Even the purported details from a widely circulated ‘dossier’ were provided by a ‘sub-source’, one Igor Danchenko, an employee of the Brookings Institution who had offered jobs in the incoming Obama Administration to his co-workers. Future Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein was acquainted with him by virtue of having arrested and prosecuted him for disorderly behavior in public. Federal officials considered ‘the consent of the governed’ subordinate to a ‘higher calling’ to use newly-available mass-surveillance resources for their own political purposes. The Russia story that first took shape during these years unraveled a decade later, having served its purpose, while far more ruinous penetration of the U.S. government by Chinese spies remained unreported.]

[During these same years, as revealed more than a decade later, Chinese Government agencies paid billions of dollars to the family of the then Vice-President, in exchange for official non-prosecution of illicit technology transfers through industrial espionage. The timeline grants us retrospective foresight by placing these later-revealed consequences in the actual order they occurred.]

[Organizing a new Administration typically takes one-and-a-half to two years. During that initial period, some agencies not ‘in synch’ with policies that cannot be discussed in public continue operating as before. So it was with the Drug Enforcement Administration, whose officials thought they were supposed to round up drug smugglers. They launched an investigation of Hezbollah’s billion-dollar drug-smuggling empire, unaware that the entire investigation would fall victim to a nuclear deal with Iran.]

PM

2008: Johnathan Winer joins APCO, a lobbying and political influence firm.

 

March 14, 2008: A contract employee of TAC, formerly a retired State Department employee, gains unauthorized access to the passport records of Barack Obama, John McCain, and Hillary Clinton. Neither the employee nor the motive are identified or investigated. The passport files may have contained original copies of birth certificates and records of Obama’s 1981 travel to Pakistan. Source: State Dept Inspector General’s Report.

March 16, 2008: Bear Stearns, the 5th-largest investment bank in the U.S., collapses, bankrupt, and is taken over by JP Morgan Chase for the fire-sale price of two dollars per share.

 

April 19, 2008: Police find Lt Quarles Harris Jr, 24, shot dead in a car in Northeast Washington DC. Harris had cooperated with federal investigation into March 14 breach of State Dept passport files. || Source

June 2008: Obama campaign releases short-form birth Certificate.

July 10, 2008: Congress passes Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), authorizing National Security Agency (NSA) under Section 702, operating inside the United States, to collect communications of foreigners overseas for foreign intelligence purposes without a warrant. The law (110-261) substitutes a general warrant from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the individual warrant required by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment prohibition of ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’. Because this surveillance inevitably sweeps in domestic communications, NSA is required to minimize such collections by defining its search queries as narrowly as possible. || Source

Aug 2008: Former Pennsylvania Deputy Attorney General Philip Berg sues in Federal District Court to obtain Obama birth certificate. || Source

2008: DEA launches Project Cassandra to investigate Hezbollah’s and Iran’s billion-dollar drug and weapons trafficking organization. DOJ refuses to prosecute Hezbollah’s Iran envoy Abdallah Safieddine for drug trafficking. Obama Admin refuses to designate Hezbollah a ‘significant transnational criminal organization’, due to prioritizing of nuclear deal with Iran. || Source

Aug 23, 2008: Joe Biden named as Democrat candidate for Vice-President.

Sept 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers, 4th-largest U.S. investment bank, goes bankrupt, starting an international credit freeze-up, meltdown of the U.S. economy, and insolvency of major commercial banks and insurers. Bankruptcy of ‘too-big-to-fail’ financial institutions is only averted by transferring newly issued Federal Reserve currency, at taxpayers’ expense, to them.

Oct 2008: John Brennan’s The Analysis Corporation (TAC), CGI, and Global Strategies Group consult for Illinois Sen Barack Obama on Internet influence operations.

Nov 2008: Brookings employee Igor Danchenko, later identified as the primary source for the Steele dossier, offers two Brookings co-workers that if they ‘did get a job in the government and had access to classified information, and wanted to make a little extra money’, Danchenko knew some people to whom they could speak. This offer by a possible Russian spy is reported to FBI several months later. Source: FBI Overview of the Counterintelligence Investigation of Christopher Steele’s Primary Sub-source, declassified Sept 23, 2020.

Nov 4, 2008: Barack Obama elected President, Joe Biden elected Vice-President.

2008 – 2010: Canadian mining company Uranium One seeks to ensure validity of its mining licenses in Kazakhstan, following arrest of Kazatomprom President who granted the licenses. Chairman Ian Telfer and former Ur-Asia investor Frank Giustra donate $8.65 million to Clinton Foundation. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton accompanies them to Kazakhstan.

2009: FBI begins investigation of Transport Logistics International for $2 Million bribery in and money laundering in relation to transportation of Russia’s uranium around the United States. Robert Mueller is FBI Director.

2009 – Jan 2012: Rosatom Tenex head Vadim Mikerin ‘did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons… to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion’. FBI in 2009 collects eyewitness evidence backed by documents, of money-laundering, blackmail and bribery by Russian nuclear officials, all aimed at growing Vladimir Putin’s atomic-energy business inside the United States in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Mikerin pleads guilty in U.S. court in 2014 to orchestrating more than $2 million in bribe payments through shadowy accounts in Cyprus, Latvia, and Switzerland. || Source and Nov 2014 indictment

2009: Rosatom subsidiary ARMZ acquires 17% stake in Uranium One; they seek an initial Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) review.

2009: President Obama appoints former Muslim Brotherhood official Aimen Mir as CFIUS Staff Chair.

2009: FBI Director Robert Mueller and agent Andrew McCabe request assistance of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska to retrieve former FBI officer and CIA resource Robert Levinson who was captured in Iran in 2007. Deripaska spends $25 million of his own funds but fails, due to State Department backing out. || Source

June 4, 2009: President Obama apologizes at Cairo University for colonialism and for the U.S. slighting Muslim interests in pursuit of Cold War rivalry, attributes 9/11 attacks to extremists ‘exploiting these tensions’. || Source

 

June 10, 2009: U.S. Sec State Clinton meets with Kazakh dictator Nazarbayev to secure Uranium One’s ownership of uranium in Kazakhstan after arrest of Kazatomprom President Moukhtar Dzhakishev, the official responsible for selling the uranium mining rights to Giustra’s company. Rosatom subsidiary completes acquisition of 17 percent of Uranium One.

 

June 25 2009: Hunter Biden and Chris Heinz form Rosemont Seneca, which partners with the Thornton Group run by Devon Archer, and the Bank of China, to form Bohai Harvest RST (BHR) in China. Devon Archer is the nephew of Whitey Bulger, head of the Boston Irish mafia who received federal protection under FBI Director Robert Mueller as an informant.

Sept 15, 2009: NSA and Britain’s GCHQ agree to share data, surveillance assets, and conclusions.

Oct 4, 2009: U.S. citizen Allen Ho, under direction of China General Nuclear, seeks assistance of U.S. nuclear scientists surreptitiously to enable China to design and manufacture its own nuclear instrumentation systems. Hunter Biden’s BHR later invests in China General Nuclear (CGN) in Dec 2014. || Source: DOJ indictment April 14, 2016

Nov 27, 2009: First kickback payment by Mikerin to trucking company for transport of enriched uranium documented by FBI.

April 2010: APCO (Johnathan Winer) executes contract with Rosatom to ‘create and promote a new image of State Atomic Energy corporation Rosatom supporting the interests of Rosatom in the USA’, and to overcome ‘existing political and trade barriers’.

 

June 2010: Rosatom, via ARMZ, seeks 51 percent ownership in Uranium One, which requires CFIUS approval. Uranium One Chair Telfer donates additional $250,000 to Clinton Foundation while CFIUS review pending.

June 29, 2010: Bill Clinton delivers speech at Renaissance Capital in Moscow, receives $500,000. || Source

Next


A Timeline of 21st-century U.S. Political Transformation

Perhaps this timeline will help dispel the collective amnesia, the tendency to tune-out, that engulfs everyone who tries to make sense of what goes on from day to day.

Please see §1. Introduction: A New Method of Understanding the Unprecedented at Substack.

Our knowledge of significant events comes to us in reverse order to their actual occurrence. First something unexpected bursts upon the scene — a war, a political upset, a plague, a terror attack, an economic collapse. Then we learn a little background information. The belligerent parties were already at each others’ throats, the economy had been teetering on the edge of collapse for years, sleeper cells had been lying in wait undetected. Inconvenient facts emerge, implicating people responsible for preventing the very calamity that occurred. Trivial details ‘hiding in plain sight’ take on new salience. Records of cash transactions, secret communications, confidential meetings, travel documents are revealed. Lawsuits, legislative hearings, and FOIA requests extract more information in mind-numbing detail. Recognition-seekers boast about their roles. Conspirators have a falling-out, and blab. Finally a pattern falls into place, or if not a fully coherent pattern, at least a perspective that suggests where to look for answers. [Continued here]

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Contents

§1. 9/11 and Its Aftermath, 2000 – 2007

§2. Monetization of U.S. Foreign Policy, 2008 – June 2010

§3. A Secret Alliance, August 2010 – March 2013

§4. Making Enemies, April 2013 – December 2015

§5. Perfidious Albion and the Walrus, January – June 2016

§6a. The Insurance Policy, Pre-Election, July – November 2016

§6b. The Insurance Policy, Post-Election, November 2016 – January 2017

§7a. A Higher Calling, January – June 2017

§7b. The Sino-Sinecure and Secret Courts, July – Dec 2017

§7c. The Bat Lady and Other Precursors, January – December 2018

§8. Trial and Error, January – December 2019

§9a. Hijacking the Presidency, January – June 2020

§9b. Hijacking the Presidency, June – October 2020

§9c. Hijacking the Presidency, November 2020 – January 2021