The Conspiracy Memo About Obama Aides That Circulated in the Trump White House

[GURPS]

The memo claimed that the “communications infrastructure” that the Obama White House used to “sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public” had been moved to the private sector, now that the former aides were out of government. It called the network the Echo Chamber and accused its members of mounting a coördinated effort “to undermine President Trump’s foreign policy” through organized attacks in the press against Trump and his advisers. “These are the Obama loyalists who are probably among those coordinating the daily/weekly battle rhythm,” the memo said, adding that they likely operated a “virtual war room.” The memo lists Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national-security adviser to President Obama, as “likely the brain behind this operation” and Colin Kahl, Vice-President Joe Biden’s former national-security adviser, as its “likely ops chief.” Rhodes and Kahl both said in interviews that the allegations are false and no such organization exists.

The memo is unsigned and undated, and Trump Administration officials familiar with it offered conflicting accounts of who authored it and whether it originated inside or outside the White House. The officials said that it was circulated within the National Security Council and other parts of the Trump White House in early 2017. They said the memo may have had additional pages. A National Security Council spokesperson declined to comment.

Some of the same conspiracy theories expressed in the memo appear in internal documents from an Israeli private-intelligence firm that mounted a covert effort to collect damaging information about aides to President Obama who had advocated for the Iran deal. In May, 2017, that firm, Black Cube, provided its operatives with instructions and other briefing materials that included the same ideas and names discussed in the memo. The Black Cube documents obtained by The New Yorker referred to Rhodes and Kahl, arguing that they were using allies in the media to undermine the Trump Administration. The Black Cube documents use the term “echo chamber” five times, including in a document describing the operatives’ directive as “Investigating the Rhodes’ / Kahl ‘Eco-chamber.’ ” The same document states that “Rhodes and Kahl are suspected to make use of privileged access and information leveraging it against the incumbent administration.”



The Conspiracy Memo About Obama Aides That Circulated in the Trump White House

 

[GURPS]

The ‘Echo Chamber’ Isn’t A Conspiracy Theory, It’s A Fact


When I finally got to the end of a supposed blockbuster piece by the New Yorker’s Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow regarding a dark conspiracy theory that had been spreading within the Trump White House, I was struck by two things: 1) the innocuousness of the memo in question, and 2) how the basis of the memo was plainly true. The piece, in fact, goes a long way in substantiating the memo’s contention about the media, allowing former Obama administration officials and their allies to offer ludicrous claims without even a scintilla of journalistic skepticism.

To put the reporting in some perspective, the memo is 478 words long. Much of the short document is nothing more than names and titles. The breathless piece, more conspiratorial than the memo, contains 1,360 words of assumptions and misleading characterizations about the both the document and Obama officials.

Here is a taste: “Some of the same conspiracy theories expressed in the memo appear in internal documents from an Israeli private-intelligence firm that mounted a covert effort to collect damaging information about aides to President Obama who had advocated for the Iran deal,” claims the New Yorker.

For one thing, you don’t need an Israeli private-intelligence firm (in this case, the scary sounding and secretive “Black Cube”) to write a run-of-the-mill political oppo memo that could have been thrown together by anyone using public reports in less than an hour. This was my thought as I fruitlessly read the piece once again searching for these supposed conspiracy theories.

The unsigned memo alleges that the “communications infrastructure” of the Obama White House that was used to “sell Obamacare and the Iran Deal to the public” had been moved to the private sector. This is a circumstance known to be true to anyone who’s paid any attention to the news over the past two years. The memo also cites former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as “likely the brain behind this operation” and Colin Kahl, Vice-President Joe Biden’s former national-security adviser, as its “likely ops chief.” All this is “likely” true.

Rhodes and Kahl told the reporters that the “allegations” are false “and no such organization exists.” That’s nice. But the memo doesn’t say anything about being part of an official “organization,” it claims there is a “communications infrastructure” engaged in undermining the administration. People can work in concerted ways without being official members of SPECTRE.