My Article on the CIA and USAID Hit a Nerve with the USAID Crowd
A friend flagged a tweet posted by some guy who claims to be Chris Sampson. I have no idea who that is. According to Perplexity.ai, he is based in Kiev and working as a “journalist.” He posted a Xwet shortly after I posted my article yesterday on the relationship between the CIA and USAID with this image above. He was reacting to Randy Credico, who posted my article on X, and Mr. Sampson reacted by posting the image and the following text:
Dumbass, you don’t now Larry C Johnson like I do. He’s a ratsass liar. When I was going after Cheney for war crimes, he sang that song, then he turned racist “whitey tape”, antiAcorn liar, so fuck off with your pedestrian bullshit.
This is a fascinating fabrication. The letterhead is from the Special Activities Division (SAD), which is part of the Directorate of Operations aka DO. I never worked for SAD nor did I ever have access to SAD letterhead. As far as the content of what I allegedly wrote, I have never seen a CIA Christmas ornament based on a photo of the original headquarters. I do have a George Tenet, CIA Director, Christmas ornament. It is garish.
The signature on the note is a fabrication. Here is an image of part of my signature. Note the difference in how I write the “L” and Mr. Sampson’s rendition:
Whenever the Deep State wants to try to discredit me, they always dredge up the “whitey tape” as proof that I’m unreliable. That happened back in 2008. Here is what I wrote about that incident back in 2020:
I was an ardent supporter of Hillary in 2007 and 2008. I had previously briefed her in 2007 on the war in Iraq and found her, at least in a one-on-one setting, to be very intelligent and very well informed. But that was then. Her subsequent conduct as the Secretary of State, especially how she mishandled the Benghazi incident, ended any chance that I would ever support her for any role in which the lives of American military, diplomats or intelligence officers are on the line.
After that briefing, I found myself as an unofficial member of the Clinton for President team via my friendship with Sid Blumenthal. I had enormous respect for Sid and his wife. I thought they were good people. The only thing I now know for certain is that they are fiercely loyal to the Clintons.
As the contest between Hillary and Barack Obama heated up, Sid would call me from time to time with suggestions of articles I could write or pieces that could be run on my now defunct blog–NoQuarterUSa.net. I was more than happy to help. I believed then (and have been vindicated by the passage of time) that Barack Obama was just a pretty face with no significant experience and he would be a terrible President.
Then came the fateful phone call from Sid Blumenthal in late May 2008. He told me he had learned of a tape that was circulating in restricted circles that featured Michelle Obama using the derogatory phrase, “whitey.” Armed with that tidbit of gossip I turned to an old friend in the media community and he too confirmed he had heard the same thing (stupidly, I never considered the possibility that Sid was spreading this far and wide and that I was getting blowback).
When I mentioned the possible existence of this tape to a Republican friend of mine and former CIA colleague in California, I was shocked when he said, “I have a friend who has seen and heard the tape.” That was enough for me. Based on these two sources, I wrote the story up at NoQuarterUSA.net.
It went viral. But nothing surfaced. I became uneasy. So I went back to Sid and pressed him for more information. He in turn sent me to David Brock of Media Matters. (I had met Brock previously at the Blumenthal home watching election returns in 2006.) Brock told me that the information came from female friend who insisted she had seen and heard the slur by Michelle Obama.
The matter became more confused when the Obama campaign sent out an email to their campaign workers claiming that Michelle said “WHY DID HE” rather than the pejorative, “WHITEY.” That led me to believe there was substance to the Blumenthal/Brock rumor.
Ultimately the story died out. No tape surfaced, but I bore the blame as the “Whitey” guy. With the benefit of hindsight I now understand that I was an unwitting, but willing tool in a David Brock dirty trick. No such tape ever surfaced. I can only conclude that the desperation of the Clinton campaign to win was so extreme that they would stoop to use a racist meme to smear Obama.
I regret what I did in writing the story up. But it did not originate with me. It came from people closely tied to Hillary Clinton.
Sampson’s reaction to my article about USAID and the CIA, with an accompanying image of a note I allegedly wrote, is a creative piece of propaganda. Instead of addressing the substance of what I wrote, Sampson chose ad hominem as his response. But, I am flattered that a guy who appears to be getting paid out of USAID funds and, what I believe is part of the intelligence community information operation, felt compelled to debunk my article by dredging up an information op that was spawned by the Hillary Clinton campaign. He just proves my point, and I can only assume my article hit the USAID/CIA crowd where it hurts.