What Was Russiagate All About?

As Monk would say, here's what happened.  (Disclaimer:  Only the intelligence community knows what really happened, and they're not saying, or at least not giving the whole story.)

Why was a special counsel appointed to investigate allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia?  And why were these baseless allegations taken so seriously by the mainstream press and Democratic politicians?  Why did the press, as well as Mueller himself, fail to acknowledge that the whole story was fabricated?

My view is that:

1. The intelligence community, and especially the neo-conservatives aligned with Israel against Russia, are actively fighting against Russia. 
2. Part of the standard operating procedure in this new Cold War is to proactively thwart Russian attempts to co-opt U.S. politicians.  The intelligence community did just this with regard to Trump-Russia.*
3. The Clinton wing of the Democratic party sides with the neo-conservatives in the intelligence community in this new Cold War.
4. The Clinton campaign had a lot of money to spend in the election and, naturally, spent some of it on opposition research.
5. Opposition research money was spent with like-minded intelligence types, employing anti-Russian propaganda.
6. Clinton and the Democrats were huge favorites to win (re)election in 2016.
7. Intelligence types such as Christopher Steele were glad to take Clinton's money in exchange for dubious reports tying Trump to Putin.  This would hurt Putin and Trump, and they would never be called to account after Clinton won the election and the narrative moved on.
8. Honest intelligence employees, with genuine concerns about Trump's fitness for the presidency, learned of the stories connecting Trump and Putin.  These employees followed through to investigate the collusion stories emanating from the proactive anti-collusion forays and the paid opposition research.
9. Shockingly, Trump won the 2016 election.
10. The Trump-Putin collusion stories had enough momentum by the time of the election that the narrative could not be easily shut down following the election.
11. Clinton Democrats, with their dislike of Russia and Trump, angrily latched onto the narrative as an excuse for their failure.
12. Centrist Republicans, with their dislike of Russia and Trump, tolerated the narrative as an opportunity to advance their hawkish foreign policy and return to the political status quo.
13. Trump fanned the flames with his inflammatory and careless style.
14. The false intelligence underlying the central investigation dribbled out over the course of several years.  Intelligence operations are by nature secretive and at times duplicitous.  Thus, it was not immediately obvious that the underlying accusations were bogus.
15. Some intelligence figures, mainly British, continued to push the false narrative given their primary objective of demonizing Russia and their complicity in the deception.
16. Some media figures continued to swallow bogus intelligence "leaks" demonizing Russia and Trump.
17. Mueller, Barr, Pelosi, and others in positions of responsibility are caught between a rock and a hard place.  It can be political suicide to fight the intelligence community.   On the other hand, the collusion allegations are unsupported.  Thus, we have a lack of leadership and clarity regarding Russiagate -- a vacuum of honesty and accountability.

In sum, this started as a proactive intelligence operation, bordering on entrapment, to thwart any Russian attempts to co-opt Trump.*  This was amplified by paid opposition "research" conducted by people loosely associated with the intelligence community (e.g. former MI-6 officer Christopher Steele).  The operation spun out of control as the FBI took the matter seriously while politicians and the media followed suit.   The fire couldn't easily be extinguished and ran its course over several years, dominating the media and national discourse,  The end result is deeply unsatisfying to all concerned.

The Clinton Democrats didn't intentionally frame Trump.  But neither did they back down when their opposition research spun out of control.  The intelligence community didn't drive Trump from the presidency, but they didn't set the record straight regarding their framing of Trump-Putin.  The mainstream media hopped on board the collusion train, naively or corruptly accepting selected intelligence "leaks" as fact, whipping up Democratic hysteria and furthering the country's descent into chaos.  This was driven by the profit motive, Democratic tribalism, and anti-populist (anti-Trump and, to a lesser extent, anti-Sanders) sentiment.

* In thinking this over, it occurs to me that this may have been more paid opposition research than a legitimate operation to thwart Russian attempts to co-opt Trump.  The attempts to entrap Trump campaign team members were half-hearted / half-baked.  They weren't designed to get the legal goods on anybody, but rather to provide a pretext for opposition research (paid for by Republican Trump foes initially, and then by the Clinton team) showing Trump to be compromised.  This is exactly what happened.

If Hillary had won, then no one would have noticed and it would have been a nice little payday for the retired British spies and their comrades.  Instead, Trump won and the FBI took the opposition research seriously.  The whole thing snowballed into theater of the absurd.

For another perspective, here's a column by Stephen Cohen discussing the issue of how and why the Trump investigation by U.S. intelligence agencies started: https://www.thenation.com/article/what-we-still-do-not-know-about-russiagate/

UPDATE 11/14/2019:  Larry Johnson reports that Brennan oversaw the creation of a Trump Task Force in early 2016.  This seems likely as the entrapment of Trump must have required some coordination.  Also, the timing seems right.  Perhaps, the Task Force lost control of the narrative after extensive leaking to the media, and couldn't shut it down after Trump won.  The behavior of Brennan, taking a job as an MSNBC analyst after the election, doesn't add up however.  If he knew Trump was framed, I'd think he would have tried to calm people down rather than continue to stir up Russiagate.  Perhaps Brennan was out of the inner loop.  As Johnson says: "In light of what we have learned about the alleged CIA whistleblower, Eric Ciaramella, there should be a serious investigation to determine if he was a part of this Task Force or, at minimum, reporting to them."

This article reports that "Task Force Trump was kept secret within the Agency itself because the CIA is not supposed to spy on Americans. Its staff was pulled together by invitation-only. Specific case officers (i.e., men and women who recruit and handle spies overseas), analysts and administrative personnel were recruited, presumably based on their political reliability."  This fits with my hypothesis that the FBI was caught off guard and actually took the Task Force "findings" (opposition research on Trump) seriously.

The UNZ/Philip Giraldi article referenced above says, somewhat contradictingly, that Comey and FBI were also involved. Perhaps the details were not widely known outside of inner loop at CIA?

UPDATE 11/16/2019:  Aaron Mate goes deeper into the origins of Russiagate at RealClearInvestigations.  Mate and others (see 11/14 updates above) put CIA Director Brennan at the center of the framing of Trump in 2016.  My take is the Brennan really believed all this and got taken by some tall tales.  He then tried, successfully, to get the other intelligence agencies, the mainstream media, and the Democrats on board.

"Think our sisters have begun leaking like mad," Peter Strzok, the lead FBI agent on the Russia probe, texted his colleague Lisa Page on Dec. 15. "Scorned and worried and political, they're kicking into overdrive." In an April 2017 email to colleagues, Strzok worried the CIA was deceiving both the bureau and the public. "I'm beginning to think the agency got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us," he wrote. "Might explain all these weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as a source of some of the leaks." ...

Since stepping down from the CIA in January 2017, Brennan's incendiary rhetoric has fanned the flames. From MSNBC to the New York Times to Twitter, Brennan has denounced Trump as "treasonous," "in the pocket of Putin," and dismissed the president's now substantiated "claims of no collusion," as "hogwash." In the final weeks of the Mueller probe, Brennan boldly predicted a wave of indictments against Trump's inner circle for a Russia conspiracy. When Mueller completed his probe with no such indictments, Brennan changed his tone: "I don’t know if I received bad information, but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was," he told MSNBC.

One of Trump’s first high-profile supporters, Flynn was also the subject of the first news articles – starting in February of 2016 – portraying members of the Trump campaign as overly sympathetic to Russia. In February 2017, “nine current and former officials” from multiple agencies leaked about him to the Washington Post over his contacts with the Russian ambassador -- an article that helped the Post win a Pulitzer Prize with the New York Times. The episode also brought Flynn much grief, including a widely questioned “process crime” conviction for lying to the FBI, which he is now trying to reverse. Meanwhile, a CIA “whistleblower” hired and placed in the White House by Brennan has provided the impetus for the current Democrat-led impeachment effort against President Trump. 

The Barr-Durham probe is set to determine, among other things, whether Brennan’s actions and faulty information amounted to incompetence or something considerably worse.

UPDATE 11/20/2019:  The course of events seems to be coming into focus.  Brennan and company were suspicious of Trump's reliability with regard to the new Cold War, and generally did not think he would a suitable president.  They created a task force to test Trump and his team, overlapping with and possibly cooperating with Fusion GPS who were conducting opposition research paid for by both Republican and Democratic political opponents of Trump.  The various attempts to see if the Trump team could be easily lured into cooperation with "the enemy" did not produce any solid evidence of treasonous behavior.  Generally, the Trump threat wasn't serious as he was expected to lose in a landslide to Hillary Clinton.   However, the leaking of Democratic emails showing bias in favor of Clinton along with information the CIA received from a source close to Putin caused Brennan to keep the operation alive in spirit.  This would threaten Trump and Russia and increase the likelihood of success in the Cold War, while raising domestic vigilance against the enemy.  Thus, the Russiagate narrative was continued throughout the 2016 election campaign, spinning somewhat out of control with leaks to the media, leaks to Congress, and leaks among the various intelligence agencies.  Specifically, the FBI came to play a higher profile role with some of the personnel not being aware of the deceptive nature of the Brennan Task Force and Fusion GPS operations.  When Trump won, Brennan decided to stay on the offensive as he thought he had enough evidence to carry the day, whereas the alternative of recognizing the degree of involvement by the CIA in the presidential campaign would be suicidal.  The foreign policy establishment rallied behind Brennan, supported by the Democrats.   Russia was the enemy of the foreign policy establishment, and Trump was the enemy of the Democrats.  #Russiagate was thus an alliance of convenience with considerable momentum.  Unfortunately, a huge percentage of the American populace, including the media, became convinced of the truth of the baseless accusations against Trump and Russia.  What started as an insurance policy against something that could happen (Trump - Russia collusion), metastasized into an extended movement to convince the American people that it did happen.  The false charges are broadly and deeply held to be true.

This seems to be part of a pattern with our military-intelligence services.  Their job is to protect us from foreign enemies.  So they err on the side of caution, often addressing potential threats which then become overestimated and misrepresented as actual threats.  The pressure to conform is tremendous as can be seen in Hillary Clinton's charge that Tulsi Gabbard and Jill Stein are "Russian assets".  The 2003 Iraq War and Russiagate fit this mold. 

APRIL 2020 UPDATE ON THIS APPEARS AS NEW POST: Russiagate Origins Revisited