Thread by @charlie_savage

I read @AndrewCMcCarthy’s nearly 3000 word take (just part 1 of 3!) on the Clinesmith plea. I agree with some of it, but think he is also serving up to readers of NR a distorted picture about certain empirical things. /1 nationalreview.com/2020/08/clines…

As a preliminary matter, tho, I note that McCarthy accurately describes Clinesmith as “a junior officer – support personnel.” Some pro-Trump voices get mad when Clinesmith is described as a lower-level FBI lawyer, so I wonder if they will give him flak for that. /2

In 2008-13 Page was an “operational contact” for CIA, meaning it could contact him & talk to him about his work w/ Russians but not assign him tasks. McCarthy twists this, calling Page a “CIA operative” the agency somehow “authorized for ‘operational contact’ w/ Russians.” /3

McCarthy elevates the relative importance of the suspicions about Page, calling them the "linchpin” of the entire Trump-Russia investigation. They were just one of many strings the F.B.I. was tugging on simultaneously, alongside Manafort, Flynn, Trump Tower, etc. /4

McCarthy portrays Page’s past w/ CIA as meaning the theory he was helping Russia “was untenable” from get-go. Doesn’t mention that CIA dropped him after a GRU recruitment effort in 2013 nor that GOP-controlled SSCI said counterintelligence concerns about Page were justified. /end

.@AndrewCMcCarthy has posted another 2500 words on Clinesmith. He continues to mislead @NRO readers (if there is any real-world audience for what’s on track to be 8000 words on this by the 3rd part) about Page's 2008-13 status with the CIA. /6
nationalreview.com/2020/08/clines…

McCarthy keeps twisting the meaning of the CIA term “operational contact,” portraying Page as a CIA “operative” whom the CIA “authorized” to have “operational contact” with Russians & “tasked” him to do so & report back. Is he is feigning ignorance himself or just confused? /7

In the real world, an “operational contact” is an American the *CIA* is authorized to contact but forbidden from tasking for any operational use. Today McCarthy even cites the IG report that makes that explicit, tho he steers his readers away from the page with the definition. /8

Why skew this, while omitting why the CIA abandoned Page in '13 & the GOP-run SSCI's deeming the FBI's suspicions about Page as "justified?" Distorting who Page was enables him to use Clinesmith's crazy June 2017 act to smear the entire FBI team for treating Page as suspicious./9

Anyway, the plausible part of his verbose analysis fits into a tweet: Clinesmith likely recognized in June 2017 that the FBI was facing a bad footnote belatedly disclosing a fact it should have included in previous applications, too, and was trying to paper over the problem. /end

I appreciate that @AndrewCMcCarthy has conceded error in exaggerating Page's status into a kind of spy for the US by saying the CIA tasked him to talk to Russians and report back when it actually was forbidden from tasking him to do anything, but... /1
nationalreview.com/corner/respond…

he bizarrely digs in on error of calling Page an "operative" authorized by CIA to have "operational contact" with Russia, despite now acknowledging the IG footnote that makes clear the term means only that CIA was authorized to contact Page but not make operational use of him. /2

He cites p 3 of the information, where the term appears without any def; skipping where p 2 said Page was an operational contact *for the CIA.* Even if he was confused in good faith, having now acknowledged the actual definition, he should correct both pieces on this, too. /end

No quarrel with @AndrewCMcCarthy's part 3 on Clinesmith, which doesn't mention "operational contact" and avoids his earlier broader insinuations. It basically rehashes Horowitz's narrative. McCarthy's take on what was specifically going on is plausible.
nationalreview.com/2020/08/kevin-…