Roy Exum: The Whistleblower

  • Thursday, November 14, 2019
  • Roy Exum

For a guy that endured the evolution of personal computers, I’ve never forgotten one of the earliest truths: “GIGO -- Garbage In, Garbage out.” As a newspaper reporter who started with Royal portable typewriters, then went to “telecopiers,” and then “Telerams,” and then Radio Shack’s first really portable computer and on down the line, I still marvel at mankind’s genius. When I started, type was cast in hot lead alloy out of one of Mr. Mergenthaler’s Linotype machines, which revolutionized the printing industry in the late 1800s. Flash forward to the early 1970s. The typographical union, that held America’s newspapers in a tight-fisted ransom, picked Chattanooga to wage war on a different kind of progress.

We knew the international union had picked us to set an example and I remember driving to Lovell Field at 4 o’clock in the morning, boarding a private plane, and flying to a secret site in West Virginia – of all places – where we met a small group of publishers from around the country who also sought secrecy. There, with some IBM geniuses and a bunch of high octane others, we saw a piece of the same teletape a Linotype machine used spit out 128 lines of type a minute. It was a totally new process called “cold type,” and flying back that night I knew the publishing world would never be the same.

Suffice it to say the union struck us a couple of months later, certain we would be helpless, and in the space of one memorable morning, three things immediately took place. The Chattanooga Times in almost a sadistic way double-crossed their pledge to stand with us, the glaring union demanded a far-saltier and now obscenely unfair contract, and at 11:36 a.m. we handed every striking “former employee” outside our building a freshly printed 36-page newspaper. I also know we had a bundle of those first newspapers delivered to the Times’ executives and, you are right, no accompanying note needed to be included.

I tell the story because an equally insidious cancer akin to the typographical union’s short-lived lust – but far more lethal -- has permeated the newspaper industry. It has destroyed the trust that I always have revered for the printed word. I grew up in a time in my early years when newspapers thrived on truth, honesty, integrity and ‘the common good.’ Today I have no newspaper that I can name, again after a lifetime of watching, that I trust. I am a constant reader of a variety of websites and at the end of my every-day habit of “morning readings,” I’ll take three or four versions of what interests me, read the highlights of each, and then decide for myself what I think is true and what I think is not.

There are some of the most magnificent journalists in the world available within seconds on the Internet but for many they have allowed their personal beliefs, their stilted thinking, and their jaded values, combine with America’s new wave of out-and-out hatred to dictate their words. You cannot find one – not one among those who still champion the truth – who will not admit what “the media” has done, collectively, to defame, destroy, and ruin Donald Trump is right. It is so without precedent it is unworldly. By assailing Trump at every turn, the journalists themselves have become equally loathsome. Some have gone to such extremes they can no longer tell a joke that’s funny.

I have many friends who are haters. Be it Trump or Bob Corker or Joe Biden or Andy Berke or Governor Bill Lee or Volkswagen’s $800 million project, they hate whatever they can find. I get their whines every day. I’ve long since grown immune to “The Legion of the Miserable,” instead mourning only the undisputed life truth that acid will eat its container. I couldn’t live with some of the hatred I see and, because there are several species of the nauseating beast, politics seems to attract and include the most despicable vermin that – what? -- our miserable media promptly lofts as our new champions. Look at the jerks who have been discovered but only after near sainthood. I have never seen such in my life.

It is my very solid and very sure belief the impeachment proceedings now underway for President Trump are very wrong. Yes, he’s disappointed me by his crass actions and his less-than-noble mannerisms but he has also accomplished some great things that cannot be disputed but by fools. Don’t like him? Pick a new horse. Vote. It’s the only way that will work. Don’t hate anything when you can nurture the love and the thrill of being part of change, being bigger than smaller.

In candor, I pay scant attention to national politics. Mueller might as well have a supporting lead in an off-Broadway play for all I care. We’ve got a woman running on the Democrat presidential ticket who once thought she was an Indian. I can go all the way down the list and Bernie – who is yelling the super rich ought to give their money away – has no concept of charity in any form. Go ahead, study what he’s done and who he’s helped and the stones of greatness he’s paved thus far in his existence on earth and I will make this iron-clad guarantee – his like on this earth will break your heart.

Now, here’s what just ignited my fuse. There is a website called The American Spectator. Look it up on Wikipedia and you’ll read: “The American Spectator is a conservative American website (and formerly monthly magazine) covering news and politics, edited by Emmett Tyrrell and published by the non-profit American Spectator Foundation. From 1967 until the late 1980s, the magazine featured the writings of authors such as Thomas Sowell, Tom Wolfe, P.J. O'Rourke, George F. Will, Malcolm Gladwell, Patrick J. Buchanan and Malcolm Muggeridge” – all people whose writings I have and continue to enjoy.

Earlier this week I was sent an email from a person I admire (key point).

* * *

THREE ARTICLES FROM THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

The email I was sent said this: “Here are three linked articles from The American Spectator concerning identity and background of the “Whistleblower.” The dates are Oct. 31, Nov. 1, and Nov. 9 ... they appear and are out of order. Once you read the articles, I encourage you to give them maximum exposure before (this week’s) start of the Democratic version of the Middle Ages’ Spanish Inquisition to overthrow America’s elected President. If a majority of Americans get to read about how the whistleblower complaint began and was abetted by the very people who are running this investigation, they may well decide to throw out the bums who started this.”

Fair enough. Since the daily circus in Washington, with its collections of those who I consider crazy of every stripe, I must tell you that at first, I skimmed it over and decided it wasn’t worth my while. Sometime later, I returned to the email and the three articles and this time I read about how insufferably sleazy I personally believe that our nation’s capital has become.

I must tell you I will not follow the impeachment proceedings, paying no attention until I detect a need, but I do believe our society – the jaundiced media, the crumbling Republican and Democratic leaders who neither has the direction of a Tue North, and the fact that “the empty drums bang the loudest” – should garner our pledge to make the right decisions, pray even more earnestly for wisdom, and vote in every election possible.

Here's what I hope you’ll find is some interesting reading:

* * *

“BLOWING THE WHISTLE ON THE WHISTLEBLOWER” – NOV. 1, 2019

(A ruling-class prodigy has made his mark spying on Americans for the CIA and Adam Schiff.)

[NOTE: This article appeared on the website americanspectator.com on Nov. 1, 2019 under the byline of Daniel J. Flynn]

Paul Sperry of RealClearInvestigations wrote the name Eric Ciaramella on Wednesday. Not since a chained, old man uttered “Jehovah” in Life of Brian have so many people reacted with such hostility to hearing a name said.

Discovering that Eric Ciaramella tattled on the president does not rank with learning that Webster shot J. R. or finding D. B. Cooper in Al Capone’s vault. America merely lacked a name. We knew the type.

Ciaramella graduated from a high school that costs $30,000 a year to attend, received his undergraduate degree from Yale, and obtained a master’s from Harvard. A few years after graduation from that tony private high school, the youngster estimated to its alumni magazine of trips to 28 different countries (he admits he lost count).

When others provide you with the best education and pricey junkets to obscure parts of the globe, not getting the president you asked for might come as a terrible blow. So Ciaramella sought to rectify this injustice by anonymously peddling secondhand gossip — false in large part — designed to instigate another round of impeachment discussions. He did so by first going to Congressman Adam Schiff. When you seek to report a federal crime, go to the FBI. When you seek to gin up political trouble, go to Adam Schiff.

This came as the latest instance of the 33-year-old CIA employee using his government position for partisan, political ends.

Ciaramella absconded from the National Security Council after widespread suspicion arose that he leaked information for the purpose of damaging the president he ostensibly served. At that time, Mike Cernovich wrote in an article that Medium.com later removed that “Ciaramella helped draft Susan Rice’s anti-Trump talking points before the Inauguration.” Cernovich described him as “the main force pushing Trump-Russia conspiracy theories.”

Paul Sperry notes that Ciaramella circumvented his chain of command in telling another agency of a meeting between Trump and Russians in the Oval Office a day after James Comey’s firing. This email, referenced in the Mueller report, effectively launched a “Putin fired Comey” narrative depicting the president of the United States as a marionette controlled by the Kremlin.

“And Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Sperry reports, “inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. ‘He knows her. He had her in the White House,’ said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.”

Politico detailed the collusion between Ciaramella’s DNC operative pal and Ukraine in a lengthy report by Kenneth Vogel, now with the New York Times, and David Stern, who resides in Kiev. “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office,” they write. “They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.”

Why did John Brennan assign Ciaramella to the National Security Council? What role, if any, did Ciaramella take in this particular collusion involving Chalupa and a foreign government to influence the outcome of a U.S. presidential election? Why did Sen. Rand Paul describe Ciaramella as Vice President Joe Biden’s point man on Ukraine?

The lawyers representing Ciaramella describe him as an “apolitical, civil servant,” insisting “the identity of the whistleblower is irrelevant.” This is a lie. The whistleblower’s identity matters precisely because his past partisan behavior, unbecoming of a civil servant, grabbed the attention of journalists and coaxed the White House to force him out — all several years before Paul Sperry identified him as the “whistleblower.”

“Disclosure of the name of any person who may be suspected to be the whistleblower places that individual and their family in great physical danger,” his lawyers maintain. “Any physical harm the individual and/or their family suffers as a result of disclosure means that the individuals and publications reporting such names will be personally liable for that harm.”

Liable for the harm to the leaker or for the harm to the impeachment scheme he advances?

The CIA, which placed not a single human intelligence source on the ground prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, managed to infiltrate the White House. To make America great again the CIA needs to understand its job as spying on America’s enemies and not Americans.

Call this a coup d’état. Call it a putsch. Call him Eric Ciaramella. Just don’t call him “apolitical” without an accompanying laugh track.

* * *

“THE RADICALIZING OF ERIC CIARA” – NOV. 9, 2019

(It starts at Yale and a professor of Arabic who romanticizes terrorism.)

[NOTE: This article appeared on the website americanspectator.com on Nov. 9, 2019 under the byline of Anne Hendershott]

While the lawyers representing Eric Ciaramella, the alleged “whistleblower” in the Trump impeachment fiasco, describe him as having spent his entire career in “apolitical civil servant positions,” the truth is that Eric Ciaramella has been involved in radical political behavior throughout his life — including his years at Yale.

In fact, long before he was digging up dirt with the DNC’s Alexandra Chalupa about President Trump’s mythical collusion with Russia, Ciaramella was involved in leading a protest over what he believed was the poor treatment of Bassam Frangieh, a radical professor of Arabic Studies at Yale. On April 15, 2005, then first-year Yale student Ciaramella dressed in all white to lead a contingent of ten similarly dressed first-year Yale Arabic students to the offices of the Provost and the President of the university to demand that the university provide an incentive to encourage Frangieh to stay at Yale. The students were unhappy because Frangieh had decided earlier in the school year to accept a tenure-track position at the University of Delaware.

Ciaramella helped to organize a campus-wide letter-writing campaign on behalf of Frangieh which “identified flaws in the administration’s policies regarding language instructors at Yale.” According to the Yale Daily News, Bassam Frangieh was looking for an opportunity to teach more of the classes that he would like to teach, according to one of the protesters: “His specialty is Arabic language and literature, and he wanted to teach some classes on style and poetry.” A week after the protest, Yale’s administration announced that they had “upped the ante with an offer competitive enough to keep one of its star language instructors from leaving Yale.

It is likely that Bassam Frangieh wanted to use literature to be able to shape Yale’s undergraduates’ views on what he called the “heroic Arabic poet-martyrs” battling against the unjust occupation in Palestine. In 2000, Frangieh published a chapter romanticizing terrorism in a book entitled Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic Literature. Ciaramella’s favorite Yale Arabic professor praised the heroism of Abd al Rahim Mahmud, the “first Arab poet-martyr.”

Mahmud, who is often used to inspire terrorism and suicide bombings among Arab youth, was described by Frangieh as “carrying his soul in the palm of his hand,” as he “threw himself into the cavern of death.” Romanticizing his terrorism, Frangieh recalls Mahmud’s “premature death at age 35, fighting a battle in an attempt to keep Palestine free from foreign occupation, [which]brought dignity to the hearts of his people. Through his death he eliminated the gap between words and action… he shall remain a symbol of heroism and pride for his people.” (p. 222)

In 2007, Bassam Frangieh signed an Arabic language petition, “Not in Our Name,” which encouraged signatories to “stand together to thwart the Zionist-Crusader conspiracy.” Denouncing U.S. Iraq policy as a “barbaric onslaught of cowboy masters, world Zionist leaders and their local agents, Frangieh claims that the only reason for the invasion of Iraq was the Zionist plan.” A long-time supporter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement against Israel — designed to “challenge international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism” — Frangieh was recruited to an even more prestigious post at Claremont McKenna College in 2007 where he is currently head of the Arabic Department for the five Claremont Colleges.

Eric Ciaramella was radicalized at Yale by professors like Bassam Frangieh. He was quickly recognized as a fellow traveler and became an insider in the Obama administration. Unfortunately, he continued that through the first two years of the Trump administration. In October 2016, Ciaramella was the guest of Vice President Joe Biden at a lunch to honor the prime minister of Italy. But, in July 2017, as members of the Trump administration began to suspect that Ciaramella, by then a career CIA analyst and Ukraine director on the National Security Council, was responsible for “high level leaks,” he was removed from his post.

Journalist Mike Cernovich exposed Ciaramella back in 2017 in an article claiming that Ciaramella wanted to “sabotage” President Donald Trump. Cernovich was documenting meetings and lunches that Ciaramella was having with high ranking officials at the DNC — including Alexandra Chalupa, and the NSA. And, although ForeignPolicy.com and others attempted to disparage Cernovich as an “alt-right blogger” and one of “Trump’s Trolls,” it seems that Cernovich was right all along.

What is most puzzling is how someone so young and so inexperienced, like Ciaramella — whose history of radical politics is well-documented — could have gotten so close to powerful people in the Obama administration, people like Susan Rice, Vice President Biden, and the highest echelons of the National Security Council. Worse, how is it that the Trump administration is still stuck with people like this?

* * *

“MAY I INTRODUCE YOU TO THE YOUNG MAN BELIEVED TO BE THE WHISTLEBLOWER?” – OCT. 31, 2019

(Pssst: He Also Tried To Interfere In 2016 Election)

[NOTE: This article appeared on the website americanspectator.com on Oct. 31, 2019 under the byline of Elizabeth Vaugh]

by Elizabeth Vaughn

Real Clear Investigation’s (RCI) Paul Sperry has revealed the name of the young man he believes is the Ukraine “whistleblower.” If true, and Sperry makes an extremely compelling case, I suppose he is no longer a whistleblower. A better description might be “person of interest.”

Apparently, all of Washington has known his name for quite some time. I first heard his name as one of three possibilities a couple of weeks ago. And last weekend, an OANN report revealed his identity. His name is Eric Ciaramella (pronounced char-a-MEL-ah). He is a 33-year-old CIA analyst who once worked for (drumroll please) … former CIA Director John Brennan.

Sperry wrote a detailed piece about Ciaramella ( … and here are excerpts from Sperry’s report):

* -- Ciaramella is a registered Democrat held over from the Obama White House, previously worked with former Vice President Joe Biden and former CIA Director John Brennan, a vocal critic of Trump who helped initiate the Russia “collusion” investigation of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

* -- Ciaramella left his National Security Council posting in the White House’s West Wing in mid-2017 amid concerns about negative leaks to the media. He has since returned to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

* -- “He was accused of working against Trump and leaking against Trump,” said a former NSC official.

* -- Earlier this year, Schiff recruited two of Ciaramella’s closest allies at the NSC — both whom were also Obama holdovers — to join his committee staff. He hired one, Sean Misko, in August — the same month the whistleblower complaint was filed.

* -- A CIA officer specializing in Russia and Ukraine, Ciaramella was detailed over to the National Security Council from the agency in the summer of 2015, working under Susan Rice, President Obama’s National Security adviser. He also worked closely with the former Vice President.

* -- Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama’s “point man” for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan … He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.

* -- Federal records show that Biden’s office invited Ciaramella to an October 2016 state luncheon the vice president hosted for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Other guests included Brennan, as well as then-FBI Director James Comey and then-National Intelligence Director James Clapper … Several U.S. officials told RCI that the invitation that was extended to Ciaramella, a relatively low-level GS-13 federal employee, was unusual and signaled he was politically connected inside the Obama White House.

* -- “He was moved over to the front office” to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.” … The official added that it soon became clear among NSC staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president’s foreign policies. “My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” he said. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”

* -- Ciaramella worked with a Democratic National Committee operative who dug up dirt on the Trump campaign during the 2016 election, inviting her into the White House for meetings, former White House colleagues said. The operative, Alexandra Chalupa, a Ukrainian-American who supported Hillary Clinton, led an effort to link the Republican campaign to the Russian government. “He knows her. He had her in the White House,” said one former co-worker, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.

The Washington Examiner’s Steven Nelson contacted Ciaramella’s attorney’s office on Wednesday after Sperry’s report was published. Their spokesperson refused to confirm or deny if Ciaramella was the whistleblower.

This is the individual about whom Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson wrote had “some indicia of an arguable political bias … in favor of a rival political candidate.”

I wonder how Democrats will spin this?

* * *

More importantly, how should you and I spin it in our hearts? That’s my sole reason for sharing it.

royexum@aol.com

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