In 1969, Laurence Peter introduced the “Peter Principle” to the world: in any hierarchy, people rise to the level of their incompetence. This principle certainly applies–in spades–to government bureaucracies, but as two stories that came out yesterday demonstrate, there is another, far more malign principle at work. Call it the Pirrong Principle: in a government bureaucracy, people are promoted to the level of their iniquity.
The first demonstration is, of course, the DOJ IG report on the Page FISA warrants. Although the hierarchy of the FBI and DOJ that was responsible–particularly the execrable (words fail) psychopath (and I mean that literally) James Comey–has seized upon a clip from the report to claim vindication, the report as a whole is a damning indictment of the gross iniquity of those who infested the FBI and DOJ hierarchy.
The fig leaf that IG Horowitz gave to Comey, McCabe, et al was his statement that he found “no testimonial or documentary evidence of political bias.” But at the same time, he could find no defensible explanation for the serial abuse of the FISA process, abuse that was used to surveil–i.e., spy on–the Trump campaign.
Thus, the circumstantial evidence for bias is overwhelming. For what else could explain the repeated and deliberate lying by commission and omission by Comey et al to obtain the warrants on Page and thereby obtain access into the communications of the Trump campaign?
I would also like to know what possible defense there could be for lying to a court. Isn’t this a violation of multiple statutes? This is far worse than some procedural violations, as Horowitz suggests. This is serial, intentional misconduct to deceive a court in order to obtain a writ to trample the rights of an innocent man, Carter Page, not to mention to intervene in the political process. This last was an act of “interference in an election” that makes anything the Russians did pale into utter insignificance.
The IG report also demonstrates that the Steele Dossier was a tissue of fantasies, fabrications, and gossip that even Steele’s unnamed “sub-sources” called bullshit on when questioned by the IG. It also demonstrates that this tissue of fantasies, fabrications, and gossip was the centerpiece of the Page FISA warrant applications. This completely vindicates Devin Nunes, who said the same in 2018, thereby unleashing a cascade of calumny that continues to the present. It also gilds the lily by showing that Adam Schiff is a lying sack of crap. Which we already knew, and receive demonstration of daily.
But here’s the thing. We already knew all of this. Here’s what I wrote in September, 2018:
Failing to detail Page’s full involvement with the prosecution and conviction of the Russian agents was therefore another crucial omission from the FISA warrant application. Given this information, Page’s plausibility as a Russian agent would have been zero.
Second, Sperry doesn’t remind us that after failing in its first try to get a FISA warrant on Page, a dossier report miraculously appears which contains the account of a meeting in which Sechin supposedly offered Trump, via Page, a stake in Rosneft. Presented with the new “information” of Page’s deep ties with the Russians, et voila!, the court issues the warrant.
This makes it highly likely–certain, in my view–that Steele was a short order cook serving up made-to-order material intended to advance the anti-Trump campaign. His–and the FBI’s/DOJ’s.
The FBI’s cynicism here is off the charts, and appalling. Carter Page helps them out in an investigation of Russian spies. But Peter Strzok and his fellow badged gangsters saw that Page was now useful in their attempt to sabotage Trump, so they viciously twisted his previous cooperation with them into evidence of connivance with Russian intelligence by leaving out the crucial details of his cooperation, the Russian views of him, and the likely Russian knowledge of him.
Moral of the story? Support your local sheriff, perhaps, but the FBI–you’d be a complete fool to do so, because they will F*** you sideways when it is in their interest to do so. Page is the poster boy for “no good deed goes unpunished.”
Carter Page should have a massive civil rights case against the US government, and the individuals who lied and conspired to deprive him of his 4th Amendment right against unlawful search and seizure–Strzok, McCabe, Comey, Yates, and others.
Nota bene the date–almost 2 months before the 2018 midterm elections. We knew the gravamen of the FBI’s conduct at that time (and earlier) but the slow-walk in the DOJ allowed the lies to flourish without official contradiction until well after the election. The same happened with regards to the Mueller Report: Mueller and his malign minions knew early in their investigation in 2017 that every word of the Russian collusion story was false, including “and” and “the.”
The ongoing impeachment fiasco is the direct result of the 2018 elections. How would those have been different had the Mueller and Horowitz revelations been made prior to them? How is the unconscionable dilatoriness of the iniquitous bureaucracy not grotesque election interference?
The second demonstration of the Pirrong Principle is the revelation (in the WaPo) of documents indicating that those responsible for running the war in Afghanistan (which, like Napoleon’s misadventure in Spain, has been a bleeding ulcer for years) have been lying about its progress and prospect for going on two decades.
Pace MacArthur, lying is a substitute for victory. At least in the minds of iniquitous bureaucrats.
Like Vietnam, Afghanistan illustrates that long, indecisive guerrilla conflicts corrode and corrupt even the most reputable American government institution–the military. The reason that revelation of this corrosion and corruption have taken so much longer to be revealed in Afghanistan is due to the smaller body count, the initial success in defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in 2001-2002, and the isolation of the battlespace which sharply limited independent observation and disclosure of the true state of affairs.
It is sickly ironic that the same elements who are responsible for years of stalemate and lies to cover it up have fought Trump tooth and nail in his (typically spasmodic and unfocused) attempts to wind down American participation. This is of a piece with the Ukraine fiasco, where the “interagency” that reigned over a chronically failed policy have waged their own war against Trump. Ditto Syria.
If the bureaucracy was only as good at waging guerrilla wars in the back of buggery as it is in the halls of DC, American would never lose a war.
Yes, I think the Pirrong Principle is as valid, or more so than the Peter Principle. We see demonstrations of it daily.
But other than alliteration and the allusion to the also alliterative Peter Principle, it’s not correct that I make the principle epynomous. It should really be named the Hayek Principle, in deference to Hayek’s chapter in Road to Serfdom titled: “Why the Worst Get On Top.”
We see his principle in action daily. But on few days do we see it demonstrated more forcefully than we did yesterday.
