Title : Biden, Burisma and a surprising CIA connection
link : Biden, Burisma and a surprising CIA connection
Biden, Burisma and a surprising CIA connection
This opinion piece by David Ignatius has aroused right-wing fury because it contradicts the absurd recent story about Rudy's magic computer, published in the New York Post. I disagree with Ignatius on a key point:
What’s clear, beyond the false scandal-mongering, has been evident for years: Hunter Biden made a mistake getting involved with a dubious company like Burisma.It's not popular to say that Hunter did nothing wrong, but I'll say it anyways.
The American right keeps linking the words "Burisma" and "corruption" in order to convey the impression that we are dealing with a hellishly evil company. If you spend time on the right-wing websites, Burisma is a corporate inferno where executives kill toddlers while quaffing adrenochrome and shouting "Hail Satan!"
It may be more accurate to say that Burisma was the victim of corruption.
In those days, corruption was indeed rampant. Millions of dollars flowed out of the company's coffers and into foreign bank accounts.
The revolution of 2014 attempted to rid Ukraine of Russian influence. Reform was in the air. Zlochevsky -- under investigation since 2012 -- was accused of "illegal self-enrichment;" he had to flee.
A new crew took over Burisma.
Here's an interesting fact which few discuss: This Ukrainian energy firm is now largely under American control. The chairman of the board is an American named Alan Apter, who joined Burisma "after a 27-year career in investment banking; including management positions at Merrill Lynch, Renaissance Capital, Troika Dialog and Morgan Stanley." That's pretty much all I know about him at the moment.
In 2017, an even more intriguing fellow became one of Burisma's directors: Former high-ranking CIA officer Joseph Cofer Black. At one point, he headed up Dubya's counterterrorism efforts. "Previously Black served in the Directorate of Operations at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Director of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center (CTC)." In the '90s, he was CIA station chief for Khartoum (doesn't that sound exotic?) and had helped to capture Carlos the Jackal. Black led the anti-Bin Laden unit before 9/11. In fact, his unit had surveilled the hijackers and...
...oh, hell. A whole book could be written about this guy. He's very spooky. I'm surprised that the QAnon contingent hasn't yet made him the center of, like, 20,000 different conspiracy theories. (Is his surname Black or Cofer Black? Sources differ.)
His resume includes these interesting items:
In February of 2005, Cofer Black took a vice-president position at the private military corporation, Blackwater USA.Blackwater? So he was in tight with Eric fucking Prince? Are they still buddies, or did they have a row? Was Hunter Biden working (however briefly) for a Prince associate?
In February of 2007, Black merged his own company, The Black Group with two others to form Total Intelligence Solutions, LLC, an commercial-inltelligence company which services are meant to "bring CIA-style intelligence services to Fortune 500" companies.
We should also point out that, during his CIA career, Black occasionally displayed an attitude toward the Russians which was, shall we say, not congenial. This attitude would place him at odds with Prince, who seems to have grown quite fond of Putin's Russia -- in fact, he is now basically working for the Russian military. In saner times, that relationship would have been considered treasonous.
(It's fair to say that Putin's power-play in the United States has transformed a number of one-time allies into opponents. Just look at the marriage between George and Kellyanne Conway.)
Although Joseph Cofer Black has been in the public sector since 2005, many believe that a high-level CIA guy never really leaves the Agency. I won't go that far. One must be circumspect these days, because one does not want to say anything that might send the QAnoners into quivering fits of conspiragasm. I will simply say that we should keep an eye out for any information concerning a possible relationship between Burisma and CIA.
Black was the national security adviser to Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign. There is a vague rumor in rightwingerland that Black had something to do with Romney's impeachment vote against Trump. I doubt it.
This much can be said with some certainty: In 2014 (before Black was on board), Burisma had a lot of natural gas to sell, and new markets beckoned. So it made sense for the company to try to burnish its image. Hunter Biden was a lawyer with Boies Schiller Flexner, a very fancy-schmancy law firm. (They represented the Gore campaign during the 2000 recount.) Even if Hunter Biden's last name were not famous, he was a very reasonable hire for a big energy concern looking to recover its reputation and expand operations.
For a brief period, Hunter Biden and Joseph Cofer Black were both listed as Directors of Burisma. Here's an archived image from the company's website:
Three Americans and one Pole. In charge of a Ukrainian energy firm. Interesting.
Kwaśniewski was President of Poland from 1995 to 2005. (He also belonged to the Bilderberg group -- a fact which, not so long ago,would have been ignited half-a-dozen conspiracy theories.) Right now, I would like to point out his wary and hostile attitude toward Putin's grand schemes, as noted in this interview.
Also see this piece in the Irish Times:
Mr Kwasniewski said he was “pessimistic” regarding the situation and claimed Mr Putin would seek to destabilise Ukraine to cultivate a “special relationship” with the eastern European state. “Russia, and especially President Putin, wants to have, not only part of Ukraine, but the entire country in the zone of his influence,” said Mr Kwasniewski. “His dream, his strategy is to have Ukraine as part of a newly formed Eurasian union and, for that, he is prepared to do absolutely anything.
“The destabilisation of Ukraine is a key element of that strategy. The Russian expectation is that Ukrainians, totally frustrated, will abandon the experiment with Europe and the West, and turn to Moscow to create a special relationship with Russia. My forecast is pessimistic – we have in front of us a very long and very dramatic crisis.”
Burisma, it seems, has become a western bulwark in a country that once was part of the USSR. No wonder Putin seeks to besmirch this company.
Last year, there was a concerted effort by the Russians, the Trump administration and the right-wing media to convey the impression that Hunter got some sort of bribe from Zlochevsky. Not true. Unfortunately, a smear of this sort leaves a reek even after it has been well and truly debunked. So let's be clear: The Kingpin (I do hope that this nickname catches on!) was well out of the picture before Hunter entered the picture.
The right also keeps claiming that Joe Biden engineered the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because he (Shokin) was investigating Burisma, Hunter's employer. Not true. As many journalists have pointed out, Shokin was a corrupt bastard who refused to investigate other corrupt bastards, like Zlochevsky. Everyone in the international community knew this; they all wanted Shokin gone.
We've been living with this "Burisma/Biden" smear story for more than a year now, and I still cannot understand just what it is that Hunter Biden supposedly did wrong. Even the liberal media keeps repeating the line that he should never have accepted a paycheck from the company. I keep asking: Why the hell not?
If that company has in incurable case of cooties, then why doesn't anyone denounce Apter or Black? Or the former President of Poland? Seems odd.
That said: Yeah, I'll admit that the CIA link is intriguing. Right now, I have no idea what it all means in the larger scheme of things.
More about that NY Post story. From the afore-linked WP opinion piece:
An Eastern European expert in digital forensics who has examined some of the Ukrainian documents leaked to the New York Post told me he found anomalies — such as American-style capitalization of the names of ministries — that suggest fakery.
What interests me is the suggestion that the fraud was perpetrated by an American. Heretofore, most writers looking into this story have suggested that the Russians were behind this operation.
Recall our previous post, which discussed a neo-Nazi who filled a pro-Trump message board with detailed forecasts of the NY Post story. There is an enemy within.
The WP piece goes on to tell a surprisingly personal account of Hunter's decision to join Burisma. Again, I don't see how one can argue that he did something wrong. And if he did do something wrong, why doesn't our media offer similar criticisms of Apter, Black and Kwaśniewski?
While researching this post, I've become persuaded that there is something strange -- as in spooky -- about Burisma. I've seen no evidence that the company is, in its present form, corrupt. But there's an aspect of this tale that has not yet been revealed.
Incidentally, the left has criticized Joe Biden for being overly friendly to CIA. Example.
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