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June 27, 2017 - InfoWars Special Reports
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The Plot To Scapegoat Russia
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The book is The Plot to Scapegoat Russia.
We're talking to the author, Dan Kovalik.
And this is, I think, a book that its time has come.
As Oliver Stone said, it's a powerful contradiction to the present U.S. narrative of the world.
As shown here, fake news is thriving in Washington, D.C. And we have a lot to cover here.
I read most of this book, and I've got to say, Mr. Kovalik, that there were some things about...
Putin's Russia that I did not know, that I think very important for the audience to know as well when we take a look at this.
But as someone who is a, I guess I would call you the opposite of what we see now, the neolibs.
We've got neocons who are conservatives who do nothing but push war.
And I guess we've now seen with this election here a new class of individuals called neolibs, people unlike Oliver Stone, the traditional liberals who would say, Let's give peace a chance.
There were always, in the past, liberals were opposed to wars, but now they are embracing the Russian restart, the Cold War, and they are pushing a narrative that I think is incredibly reckless.
And I believe that many people on the left believe that as well.
People like you, people like Oliver Stone, would hate to see us pushing ourselves to the brink of another Cold War and perhaps nuclear disaster.
Exactly.
And as you say, it's interesting.
There's kind of been this almost switch where, as you say, liberals who would tend to be against war seem to be embracing it, at least when it comes to Russia.
And that's why I wrote the book.
I mean, as you pointed out, myself and Oliver Stone, we come from the left.
We oppose war when the Republicans do it.
We oppose it when the Democrats do it.
You know, it's called having principles.
Yeah, and we have people like that on both sides.
We've got Ron Paul, who is that way.
We have Dennis Kucinich who is that way.
We have people who were a part of the Reagan administration, Paul Craig Roberts and Matlock and others, who were not anti-Russian, who were not pro-war.
They were against the Soviet Union, and they did not want to continue down this road that we have seen coming, you know, in the latest...
In this last year.
Yeah.
In fact, as you know, the Reaganites, the two you mentioned, Matlock and Paul Craig Roberts, the Reaganites may be the most disappointed about the current confrontation with Russia.
They were proud that Ronald Reagan, along with Mikhail Gorbachev, negotiated an end to the Cold War, and they did so peacefully.
Yes.
And now they're scratching their heads as to why we need to...
And I think it's interesting that we've seen just in the last couple of days, we're starting to see this Russian narrative really fall apart for the Democrats, fall apart for the mainstream media.
We've had CNN come out and do this retraction.
Of course, we had New York Times has done several of those recently.
And now CNN is putting restrictions on saying, you're not going to talk about Russia without getting a vice president's approval.
So that's a very unusual move for them to take.
We've also got the Democrat Party.
We need to push our leaders to talk about something other than Russia.
They're out of touch with what the people are looking for.
So it's very clear as we look at this, as CNN is even stonewalling its own reporter, when he asks questions about this fake Russia story, Zucker is not giving any answers.
So I think it's very clear they realize that they've jumped the shark here.
But let's take a look at some of the things that you point out in your book.
I think one of the things that was interesting, we talked about fake news and propaganda.
You know, who are the masters of this?
Who is really effective in terms of propaganda?
On the Western side, as you point out, we've got Hollywood.
We've got rock and roll.
We've got blue jeans, McDonald's, Starbucks.
We've got ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, CNN, Fox News.
What do they have on the other side?
RT. This is kind of a lump-sided narrative here.
I mean, what are we afraid of?
Well, exactly.
And RT, at least, is honest.
About what it is.
RT stands for Russia Today.
People know what it is.
If they're interested in it, they can watch it.
If they're not, they don't have to.
I mean, the idea that somehow we're being outgunned by the Russians in terms of propaganda is just a joke.
And you pointed out in your book about NPR saying, hey, we've got to have Voice of America.
Many of us on the right were very alarmed.
When they repealed the Smith-Munt Act, which would prohibit these propaganda outlets that had been created at the height of the Cold War, would prohibit them from operating here in the United States.
We thought NPR was more than enough.
And NPR is pushing the need for Voice of America.
So there's many of us on the right who don't want to see this kind of mindless pro-government propaganda.
No, exactly.
And I'm concerned.
So I would be a person who I listen to NPR daily.
Mostly as a habit.
And as we know, many habits are not good for you.
I don't know why I do anymore.
But every day they hammer about Russia.
And every day they hammer about Venezuela.
Those are their two bugaboos.
Do we hear about Saudi Arabia?
Do we hear about Saudi Arabia and Yemen?
What they're doing with U.S. support?
Which is putting millions at Shepard.
That's right.
And they give that a pass.
They give the atrocities that are happening in Saudi Arabia a complete pass.
And they're not really opposing.
You would think that they would just oppose anything that Donald Trump does, but not when it comes to the military-industrial complex.
If he wants to give a massive military contract to Saudi Arabia, they're not going to oppose that.
Yeah, it's incredible.
He just gave a $110 billion contract to the Saudis.
You heard no protest, virtually no protest.
Again, this war in Yemen is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world.
You would never know that from places like NPR. You would never know it even from the New York Times.
So what is going on here?
I mean, as I point out in my book, I think one of the problems is the people who we usually counted on for being peaceniks, again, those in the liberal to left sphere, they ceded that ground under Obama.
I mean, they didn't protest when he destroyed Libya.
They didn't protest when he doubled down on Iraq and Afghanistan or when he meddled himself into Syria.
And so once Trump comes into power, they really have no moral high ground to challenge it when he's in power.
So the only thing that Trump is credited for being presidential with is his bombing.
Of Syria with 59 Tomahawk missiles.
That's being presidential, right?
Yes.
Oh yeah, they loved that.
They absolutely loved that, didn't they?
And yeah, it's crazy.
And by the way, did you see the Seymour Hersh article, which Cy Hersh, who won the Pulitzer, he can't even write in the U.S. anymore.
Or London, he's getting farther and farther from our shores.
He's in Germany now writing.
And we fought very hard back in 2013 against the narrative that was being used at the time by the Obama administration.
To say that this was a sarin gas attack at that time.
And because of that, we had to have American intervention.
We pointed out at the time, we said, that's not clear from the evidence.
We need to stop and wait.
And this time, they didn't even wait that long.
They shot from the hip into Syria saying that it was a sarin gas attack.
And now Seymour Hersh is pointing out, well, no, it's not.
It's actually the same playbook that we keep seeing over and over again from those who are part of the national security apparatus who are pushing for constant war, constant regime change.
Yeah, so what Seymour Hersh is now saying is that the military who informed Trump knew darn well that there was no sarin gas attack from the Russians or Syrians earlier this year, that in fact the raid that happened by the Syrians was told to by the U.S. before it happened.
Chemical weapons weren't involved.
And therefore, something else happened.
But it was not them who carried out this chemical attack.
Maybe they accidentally hit some of the rebels' chemical stores or whatever.
But Trump even knew before he spent $59 million on 59 Tomahawk missiles that it wasn't the Russians or Syrians.
And yet, Seymour Hersh, who's won the Pulitzer Prize, he has no voice in this country anymore.
I mean, people with any opposition have no voice.
And you mentioned Oliver Stone earlier.
He's been very supportive of my book.
He, of course, put out the Putin interviews.
He has been absolutely vilified in the media.
Yes.
And I think it's very interesting, too, that when he did the Putin interviews, one of the things that he said at the time, because Bernie Sanders was running and Oliver Stone on the left liked Bernie Sanders, so he goes, what do you think of Bernie Sanders?
Do you think he can really change things in the U.S.? And Putin said, well, I'm not going to say one way or the other.
But he goes, Let me explain to you how power works.
There's this entrenched deep state, essentially, and it's going to protect its interests regardless of who becomes president.
Very prophetic.
I think it's also very understandable in terms of even what's going on in Russia.
We understand there's these massive bureaucracies that have a life of their own.
This is one of the things I was anxious to do this interview because this red herring...
This McCarthyism that we see continuing on here, it's so blatant, so obvious to those of us who've watched politics for any amount of time.
It's very distressing that they're allowed to get away with these kinds of lies and propaganda, and we need to call them out on it, regardless of where we are politically.
There are people on the left, people on the right.
We need to come together, and we need to shut this down, because this is an insidious lie, and we do not need to be manipulated like this.
Now, one of the things I thought was very interesting about your book, Mr. Colley, is...
What you pointed out, what happened in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Clinton administration's support for Boris Yeltsin, a guy who had not just alcohol problems, but this guy had a lot of problems.
And the misery and the destruction that came to Russia through the Yeltsin presidency and how he was supported across the spectrum By the Clintons.
Point out some of the issues there.
Of course, it was a greater disaster economically than the Great Depression was for the United States.
Yes, about 80% of Russian and Soviet countries' industry collapsed after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The life expectancy plummeted to somewhere in the 50s for people.
You had anywhere from 2 to 6 million.
I've even heard up to 15 million premature deaths because of this economic collapse.
And this was not inevitable.
A lot of this was due to the economic policies imposed upon Russia by the Clinton administration, upon Boris Yeltsin.
And given this, Yeltsin was horribly unpopular.
So going into the 1996 elections, Yeltsin had about a 6% approval rate.
And so a few of folks from the Clinton campaign went to Russia.
And the IMF gives him a nice infusion of cash.
About $10 billion.
Right, right.
Which, you know, by the way, his own Medvedev, who was prime minister, who's now prime minister of Russia and was president, says that, in fact, the election was stolen by Yeltsin, in part by, you know, buying votes with some of the money sent by the IMF, And also by using these dirty tricks that folks from Clinton's own campaign came down to teach him about.
So really, and in fact, again, Time magazine has this article from 1996 says, you know, Americans to the rescue with a picture of Boris Yeltsin, that without that intervention, Yeltsin would not have won the election.
Again, to this day, Medvedev says that Yeltsin didn't win, in fact.
I like the quote you have in your from Time Magazine in your book.
This is what Time Magazine said at the time.
Democracy triumphed.
And along with it came the tools of modern campaigns, including trickery and slickery that Americans know so well.
Boy, does that say it all.
When we talk about somebody hacking the election, we need to go back and look at this election of Boer Sheldon that the Clintons directed, because I think really the big story here that's going to come out is how they used trickery and slickery against Bernie Sanders.
That's where all this Russian stuff started in the first place.
But just to list some of the things that you had there, disrupting opposition rallies.
Of course, that's a Soros tactic that was used against Trump.
Spreading disinformation among Yeltsin supporters.
Denying media access to the opposition.
You know, the establishment and Clinton pretty much bought up all the TV advertising, but Trump used Twitter to get through that.
He didn't have Twitter in Russia.
Announcing false dates for opposition rallies.
Disseminating alarming campaign materials deceitfully attributed to the opposition.
And then all the usual favorites.
Bribery.
Voter fraud, intimidation, ballot stuffing.
This is what the American government with the Clintons and with the IMF did, along with $10 billion to get Boris Yeltsin re-elected after this guy had inflicted a greater depression on them than we had in the United States during the 1930s.
Yes, and inflicting it through use of Clinton's economic advisors.
Yes, exactly.
And then his response is also amazing that you point out, which I was also not aware of.
You know, we have all the Democrats now saying democracy is threatened.
We're going to see the end of democracy.
But that's actually what happened with Yeltsin as a winner.
You had the Duma, as you pointed out, tried to dissolve the Duma.
They said, no, no, you can't do that constitutionally.
We're not going anywhere.
So they said, but we're going to replace you as vice president.
So then he cut off their water.
He cut off their electricity.
They wouldn't leave.
So he shelled the building that the Duma was meeting in.
And killed anywhere from 200 to 2,000 people, as you pointed out.
That was only four years after Tiananmen Square, where there was 300 to 3,000 people that were killed at Tiananmen Square.
But we didn't hear anything about that in the Western press.
I knew nothing about that until I read your book.
Yeah, and to the extent you did hear about it, they were cheering it.
You know, the West was applauding the tanks that this was an act of democracy.
And that's the incredible thing.
When people talk about Putin, I think, you know, hey, it's...
It's fair game to talk about Putin.
It's fair game to talk about how he rules in Russia and whether he's authoritarian or not.
Certainly, there's authoritarian qualities.
But you can trace those qualities back to the Yeltsin administration, which helped give rise to him.
And no one cared when Yeltsin was due, right?
No one cared when Yeltsin was destroying Chechnya.
And it's the hypocrisy of it and the ahistorical nature of it.
You know, I mean, to talk about democracy in Russia, I mean...
It's fair to say Russia doesn't have much of a democratic history to even harken back to.
They have their own form of development that they're going through.
As you pointed out in your book, you said you would not want to be a journalist in Russia.
I wouldn't want to be a journalist in Russia either.
These guys are getting killed all the time.
But we also have to look at what direction we are going.
As they're struggling with this authoritarianism, we are rushing to embrace A kind of authoritarianism, both people on the left and people on the right, especially those people who are selling this Russian false narrative.
They are rushing to embrace a high-tech authoritarian dystopia that we have never, couldn't imagine outside of science fiction in this country.
And people like William Benny have warned us where we're headed with us.
When Megyn Kelly was here and she asked me, I guess she wanted me to comment on her Putin interview.
I said, I'm not concerned about Putin.
I'm concerned about people like Brennan.
I'm concerned about people like Clapper.
I'm concerned about people like Hayden.
They're the ones who are violating the law, the Constitution in this country for their own benefit.
They're being used as politicized intelligence community and law enforcement against their political enemies.
That's what I'm really concerned about.
Yeah, well, there's a lot of things we can point to in terms of, you know, failings of our democratic system.
As I quote in the book, Jimmy Carter was saying, Way before this election cycle that the U.S. could not even be considered a functioning democracy at the present.
There's a problem with big money in the elections.
There's a problem with gerrymandering, which the courts are now dealing with.
We need to look at our own problems, and we need to deal with our own problems and fix them, fix our own democracy.
And hey, by the way...
If we have electoral systems that are not secure, we need to secure.
We may need to have to go back to paper ballots.
Most of the world still does paper ballots.
And guess what?
It works just fine.
I'm absolutely with you on that.
I mean, you know, why would we not be just as concerned when I talk about what's been happening?
Of course, Homeland Security, Jay Johnson, we had multiple attempts to break into state elections.
I'm just as concerned about people domestically.
I'm just as concerned about politicians in our own country, whether it's people like Richard Nixon or people like Hillary Clinton.
Trying to rig the electronic systems and it's very easy to do that.
We need to worry about people, not just Russians, but people in America who would like to hack and rig the elections.
That's very clear that that's happening and they have a much greater interest in doing that.
So I agree with you.
We need to go back to paper ballots.
That is easily the best way to monitor our systems.
I absolutely agree.
And one journalist to read about some of this, by the way, is Greg Palast, a great old journalist, who has written about how it's very common during elections for thousands of voters to be knocked off the rolls through some of these cross-checks that are done with the electoral system.
And again, we need to get those figured out.
We need to get our own house in order.
The Russians are not the problem with our democracy.
Let's talk about one more thing here, and that is, you know, we have this idea, as they have revived the Cold War, we have this idea in the American mind of a bipolar Cold War, of a rough parity between these two countries.
And you do a great job of explaining this in your book when you talk about the fact that the Russian GDP, gross domestic product, is less than that of Portugal.
Portugal is one of the sick children of the European Union, along with Italy and Greece and Spain.
Russia's GDP is less than Portugal now, thanks in large part to the economic havoc inflicted on them by the Clintons, by Boris Yeltsin, the Clintons' puppet.
But let's also look at the military budget.
As you point out, 8% of NATO's budget, and that's in a situation where most of the countries don't even pay their 2%, but they're less than 8% of NATO's budget.
But then, of course, we also have the Pentagon.
If you looked at it from the Pentagon's standpoint...
Less than 10% of the Pentagon's budget.
Who's the greater threat to world peace, as you pointed out in a survey?
66,000 people in 65 countries.
25% said the U.S. Only 8% said the number two, Pakistan.
China came in in third place at 6%.
Russia in fourth place at 4%.
Russia wasn't even in the top five in terms of perceived threat.
So when we look at this...
What is the big threat to us?
What is the Cold War here?
It really is fiction.
It really is fiction that is being sold to us by the establishment media by the permanently entrenched military-industrial complex that will embrace Democrats or Republicans to get what they want, and that is more weapons sold.
Exactly.
This is a bipartisan issue.
There is bipartisan buy-in to the idea that we need to spend $600 billion a year on the military.
When we can't fix roads in this country.
I heard this statistic.
We have 6,500 bridges in this country in urgent need of repair.
And once in a while, you see they collapse, right?
Because we're blowing up other people's infrastructure.
Exactly.
We're the richest country on Earth, and our airports are falling apart.
You get on Amtrak, you go 40 miles an hour.
We should have the best infrastructure on Earth, and we don't.
And why?
It's all being siphoned off.
For eternal war.
And the only way to be on a permanent war footing is to have permanent enemies.
And when you don't have them, you've got to make them up.
In the case of Russia, it's totally made up.
And, you know, as I mentioned in the book, Putin was the first world leader to call George W. Bush after 9-11 and express his condolences for the loss of life during 9-11, to offer help after 9-11.
And he did offer and give help.
After 9-11, our operations in Afghanistan.
This is someone we can work with.
This is not an enemy.
Well, I'm hoping that that's going to be the case moving forward, because we had Donald Trump, all the different things that he said before this Russian narrative began.
I think part of that was not only to cover up their crimes, not only to try to bog him down and make sure he didn't get anything, perhaps even get a process crime on him that they could impeach him on.
But I think that they just wanted to keep this Cold War going.
And hopefully we'll be able to transcend that.
And I believe, and I'm still hopeful, that Donald Trump is going to go back to what he campaigned on and say, hey, we don't have to have a war with Russia.
We can pull back from this needless Cold War that is being pushed on us for political purposes, for the purposes of the military-industrial complex.
But we'll have to wait and see.
Thank you so much, Mr. Kowalik.
It's a great book, The Plot to Scapegoat Russia.
Now is the time to educate yourself about what's going on in the world, not to take the word of the mainstream media.
They're already starting to have that narrative collapse on them.
It's only going to get worse.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Great book.
Really enjoyed it.
Thank you.
Really appreciate it.
Happy to be here.
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