Among the American swamp monsters hired by Canberra is the Obama administration’s spy chief, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the U.S. empire.
James Clapper, former director of national intelligence, in 2012. (Kit Fox/Medill/Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
Listen to a reading of this article by Tim Foley.
Australia has been paying insiders of the U.S. war machine for consultation on how to run the nation’s military, a massive conflict of interest given that Washington has been grooming Australia for a role in its war agendas against China.
In its article “Retired U.S. admirals charging Australian taxpayers thousands of dollars per day as defence consultants,” the ABC reports that, according to documents the Pentagon provided Congress last month, “dozens of retired U.S. military figures have been granted approval to work for Australia since 2012.”
For those who don’t speak imperialist, “retired U.S. military figure” generally means someone who used to be paid by the U.S. government to advance the interests of the U.S. empire, and is now paid by corporations and/or foreign governments to advance the interests of the U.S. empire.
These corrupt warmongers rotate in and out of the revolving door of the D.C. swamp, from government to war-industry jobs to punditry gigs to influential think tanks and then back again into government, advancing the interests of the U.S. empire the entire time and growing wealthy in the process.
This dynamic allows a permanent constellation of reliable empire managers to continually exert influence around the world in support of the U.S. empire, regardless of who gets voted into or out of office in the performative display of electoral politics. It’s a big part of why U.S. foreign policy remains the same regardless of who’s officially running the elected government in Washington, and it’s a big part of why the media and arms industry which support the U.S. war machine keep playing the same tune as well.
“Former US director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who resigned after Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, was then paid to work for Australia’s new Office of National Intelligence” https://t.co/gx0LptU5zR
— Andrew Greene (@AndrewBGreene) April 26, 2023
Among the American swamp monsters Australia paid for consulting work is the Obama administration’s spy chief James Clapper, who has an established track record of lying and manipulating to advance the interests of the U.S. empire:
- In 2013 Clapper committed perjury by telling the U.S. Senate under oath that the NSA does not knowingly collect data on millions of Americans, only to have that lie exposed by the Edward Snowden leaks a few months later.
- In 2016 Clapper played a foundational role in fomenting public hysteria about Russia with the flimsy ODNI report on alleged Russian election interference, which remains riddled with massive plot holes. He would later go on to repeatedly voice the opinion that Russians are “almost genetically driven” toward nefarious and subversive behavior.
- In 2020 Clapper signed the infamous and now fully discredited letter from former intelligence insiders saying the Hunter Biden laptop story was likely a Russian disinfo op, falsely telling CNN that the story was “textbook Soviet Russian tradecraft at work” and that the emails on the laptop had “no metadata” on them.
Vice Adm. William Hilarides speaking at a naval event in 2016. (U.S. Navy/ Jessica Bidwell)
Also among the American military consultants paid by Australia is a man we just discussed the other day, William Hilarides, who will be telling Australia how to reconfigure its navy because apparently no Australians are available for that job. We now know that according to the released Pentagon documents Canberra has already paid Hilarides almost $2.5 million since 2016 for his consulting work.
This information was originally reported by The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock and Nate Jones, who last year also broke the remarkable story that a former U.S. navy admiral named Stephen Johnson had actually served as Australia’s deputy navy secretary, a position which needless to say is not normally open to foreigners.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles addresses the media with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and Japanese Defense Minister Yasukaza Hamada, on right, at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, Camp Smith, Hawaii, Oct. 1, 2022. (DoD/ Chad J. McNeeley)
This is just one of the many ways that Australia is being interwoven into the U.S. war machine, from the 2023 Defence Strategic Review which further enshrines Australia’s position as a U.S. military asset, to Australian Secretary of Defence Richard Marles saying that the Defence Force is moving “beyond interoperability to interchangeability” with the U.S. military and being suspiciously secretive about who his golfing buddies were in his last trip to the U.S., to Australian officials angrily dismissing attempts to find out if the U.S. has been bringing nuclear weapons into Australia, to the Australian media pounding Australian consciousness with anti-China hysteria to such an extent that hate crimes are now being perpetrated against Asian Australians.
A shocking and vile attack of racism on Anzac Day has been caught on camera, with a man filmed yelling and attacking a group of people fishing off a Newstead dock on the Brisbane River overnight.#9News | WATCH LIVE at 6pm for the exclusive interview with the victims. pic.twitter.com/0561r0xMNW
— 9News Queensland (@9NewsQueensland) April 26, 2023
I’ve always wondered what it would be like to witness the information environment of Washington’s next military proxy from the inside — what it would be like to be a Ukrainian with an ear to the ground during the lead-up to the 2014 coup or whatever. Well, now I know. Now all Australians with an ear to the ground know.
I’ve been generally dismissive of Australian affairs throughout most of my commentary career despite living here, since my focus is on resisting the disasters that threaten humanity as a whole. Australia has always seemed like a fairly irrelevant player on the world stage because of its impotent subservience to Washington. But it’s becoming clear it is exactly because of Australia’s blind subservience to Washington that Australia is worth paying attention to, since that relationship may well end up giving the nation a front-row seat to World War Three.
Australians are going to have to wake up to what’s being done and the abominable agendas the nation is being exploited to advance. Australians are being groomed for a military confrontation of unimaginable horror, one which absolutely does not need to take place, all in the name of something as trivial as securing U.S. planetary hegemony. Australians have got to start saying no to this, starting right now.
Caitlin Johnstone’s work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following her on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud, YouTube, or throwing some money into her tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy her books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff she publishes is to subscribe to the mailing list at her website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything she publishes. For more info on who she is, where she stands and what she’s trying to do with her platform, click here. All works are co-authored with her American husband Tim Foley.
This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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