#langley

Trump Declares War on His Own Spies After Discovering the CIA Gave His Briefing a "Deep Tissue," Demands Full Refund By The London Prat's Man in Washington — Filing From a Bar Near the White House With a Suspiciously Good View WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has accused his own intelligence services of "deliberately massaging" his daily briefing, which is either the gravest constitutional crisis America has faced in years or the single most American sentence ever spoken, depending on which cable news channel currently has your remote. Standing in the East Room for a speech that ran considerably longer than most British general elections, the President announced that the CIA, NSA and FBI had been quietly working him over like a discount spa in a strip mall, and that he intended to get to the bottom of it, ideally live on television, ideally before lunch. "They massaged my briefing," Trump told the room, jabbing a finger at a stack of paper he had, by all accounts, not personally read. "Nobody massages me. I don't like being massaged. Unless I ask for it. Which I didn't. This is one of the worst massages in the history of our country, maybe the worst massage ever given to a president, and I would know, I've had incredible massages, tremendous massages." This paper can confirm no one asked him to elaborate. The Donald Discovers the Word "Massaged," Immediately Regrets Everything According to declassified emails, one NSA analyst wrote that the team had "deliberately massaged" the pending briefing "to avoid any direct links to the election," a phrase Trump has now repeated so many times at podiums that White House stenographers have reportedly started charging it by the syllable. British observers note this is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of the Queen's Speech being quietly rewritten by a nervous intern to remove anything that might upset anyone at the garden party. "Nobody Touches My Briefing Without Permission," Says Man Who Once Signed a Hurricane Map With a Sharpie Officials close to the process describe an operation that involved "smoothing," "softening," and, in one memo, "avoiding an analytic objectivity mistake," which is the sort of phrase that could only be produced by a committee specifically assembled to avoid ever finishing a sentence. One retired British intelligence officer, watching from a respectful distance across the Atlantic, put it best: "We'd never dare tell our lot we'd 'massaged' anything. We'd say it had been 'lightly tidied,' and everyone would know precisely what that meant, and nobody would ever mention it again. The Americans went and put it in writing. In an email. Extraordinary." Manchester comedian Kev Duffy, doing a late set above a chip shop on Oldham Street, had the room in bits: "Trump's found out the CIA massaged his briefing. Forty-five years he's been getting massages in Atlantic City, and this is the one that upsets him." The crowd, several pints deep in a room that smelled faintly of vinegar and regret, gave the sort of roar usually reserved for a last-minute derby winner. President Demands to Know Who's Running "Shadow Government," Immediately Suspects It Might Be More Popular Than His The speech's most eyebrow-raising claim involved an unnamed FBI official allegedly boasting, in writing, about running a "shadow government" to keep China-related election intelligence away from him. Trump seized on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a man who has just discovered a new nickname for an old enemy, repeating "shadow government" no fewer than eleven times, according to this paper's entirely unofficial count taken from the comfort of a sofa four thousand miles away. Whitehall Watches On, Quietly Relieved Its Own Shadow Cabinet Is Merely Rubbish, Not Secret British political veterans have noted, with the faint smugness of a nation that invented the phrase "Leader of the Opposition," that America appears to have accidentally discovered an entire parallel government operating without anyone's consent, whereas Britain's shadow cabinet has the courtesy to announce itself, hold press conferences, and lose by-elections in full public view. "At least ours is elected to be useless," observed one former Foreign Office hand. "Theirs just sort of formed itself in an email thread and started making unilateral decisions about Ohio." It's the sort of governmental malapropism that would have delighted Al Jaffee himself — a bureaucrat meant to write "shadow briefing note" instead typing "shadow government," and somehow nobody in the chain caught it until it landed on the President's desk with the force of a small asteroid. CIA's Star Witness Turns Out to Be a Document About Venezuela, President Undeterred Buried deep within the declassified material was a supposedly explosive CIA memo cited as proof of American election vulnerability, which on closer inspection turned out to concern Venezuela's elections rather than America's. Trump referenced the document anyway, with the confidence of a man who has never once let a footnote get between him and a headline. "Venezuela, America, Very Similar Countries in Many Ways," Claims Man Who Has Visited Neither Recently One veteran Washington correspondent, watching the briefing from the back row, described the Venezuela mix-up as "the diplomatic equivalent of turning up to the wrong wedding, giving a lovely speech about the happy couple, and only realising your mistake when someone asks who the bride actually is." It's a fine example of malaprop of geography in the wild — Caracas mistaken for Cleveland, an entire hemisphere quietly swapped out, and nobody in the room brave enough to say so. Glaswegian comedian Shona McAllister, playing a Saturday night crowd on Sauchiehall Street, didn't hold back: "The CIA's big smoking gun turned out to be about Venezuela. Ninety billion dollars a year and they cannae tell one country from another. My gran gets confused between Tesco and Asda, but she's ninety-one and she's no' got a satellite budget." The Glasgow crowd, hardened by a lifetime of weather and worse, gave a laugh that could be heard three streets over. Trump Reveals "220 Million Stolen Voter Files," Nation Quietly Points Out You Can Buy Them for the Price of a Round of Drinks Perhaps the most deflating moment came when the President announced China had obtained 220 million voter files in what he called the largest election data compromise in history, only for fact-checkers to note within the hour that most of this information is legally available for purchase to more or less anyone with a working credit card and mild curiosity. "Top Secret," Reads the Label on What Is Essentially the Phone Book It's a rich oxymoron — a headline-grabbing national security bombshell that turns out to be roughly as classified as the electoral roll down at the local council office. British observers, who have their own long and undistinguished history of leaked spreadsheets turning out to be things anyone could have Googled, watched with the weary recognition of people who've seen this particular horror film before, in a different accent, with worse weather. Two Warring Whistleblowers, One Furious President, Zero Consensus on Who's Actually Lying Compounding matters, the story has produced not one but two rival whistleblower camps — one alleging China intelligence was softened to protect the previous administration, the other alleging Russia intelligence was softened to protect this one — leaving Trump in the peculiar position of being simultaneously the victim and, depending on which whistleblower you ask, a beneficiary of the very cover-up he's now furious about. Pot, Kettle, and a President Who's Somehow Both It's a proper piece of Washington chiasmus: one side hid intelligence to help him, the other allegedly hid it to hurt him, and he's currently equally outraged by both, which is either remarkably principled or remarkably confusing, depending on how many bourbons you've had while trying to follow the story. One former GCHQ analyst, asked to make sense of it for British readers, simply said: "I've spent thirty years untangling foreign disinformation campaigns, and I genuinely cannot tell you who did what to whom in this one. I'm going to go and have a lie down." CIA Announces Internal Review Into Whether the CIA Did Anything Wrong, Finds That the CIA Did Not Under mounting pressure, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement acknowledging "irregularities" while carefully declining to confirm that any actual wrongdoing had occurred, in the grand tradition of institutions the world over marking their own homework and awarding themselves a passing grade. Self-Assessment Finds Self Broadly Blameless, President Not Remotely Satisfied "We take the concerns seriously," read the statement, in the universal language of organisations that have absolutely no intention of taking anything further than that sentence. It's a textbook tautology — the agency accused of massaging the briefing conducting its own massage of the findings, and declaring, unsurprisingly, that everything is now beautifully relaxed. Somewhere in Langley, a rubber stamp has quietly asked for hazard pay. Image Brief: For Our In-House Illustrator Panel style: classic British satirical cartoon, exaggerated caricature in the Spitting Image tradition — big teeth, bigger hair, background gags rewarded on close inspection. Wide shot of the East Room: Trump at a podium shaped like a giant rolled-up scroll marked "PDB," visibly annoyed, pointing at a masseuse in a CIA windbreaker who is mid-shrug. Behind them, an FBI agent in a tiny paper crown sits at a card table marked "SHADOW GOV'T — NEW MANAGEMENT," stamping a form with a rubber stamp shaped like a shrug emoji. A filing cabinet spills a folder marked "VENEZUELA (WRONG ONE)" onto the floor next to an untouched folder marked "ACTUAL RELEVANT FILE." Off to the side, a market stall sells "Voter Data — $11, Cash Only" beneath a Union Jack umbrella held by a bemused British correspondent taking notes. Two whistleblowers blow whistles directly into each other's faces while a rubber stamp, exhausted, lies flat on its back in the corner with little cartoon stars circling its head. The Unlabeled Bit at the Bottom That's Definitely Not a Disclaimer None of this happened in quite the fashion described above, and also a fair amount of it is drawn from genuine declassified emails, genuine ombudsman findings, and a genuine East Room address that really did include phrases like "deliberately massaged" and "shadow government," which made this an unusually easy week for a satirical desk on either side of the Atlantic. The underlying intelligence conclusions on foreign election interference have not changed, no votes were altered in 2016 or 2020, and the only thing conclusively "compromised" here is whoever signed off on "massaged" as an appropriate verb for classified material. The rival whistleblowers remain at war, the various investigations Trump has ordered remain freshly announced and entirely unresolved, and the rubber stamp, last anyone checked, is still lying down. For our American cousins' own take on their own scandal — because nobody covers an American cover-up quite like the Americans covering it themselves — head over to our sister paper, Bohiney.com, where the massage comes with a receipt and a lobbyist. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

Trump Declares War on His Own Spies After Discovering the CIA Gave His Briefing a "Deep Tissue," Demands Full Refund By The London Prat's Man in Washington — Filing From a Bar Near the White House With a Suspiciously Good View WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has accused his own intelligence services of "deliberately massaging" his daily briefing, which is either the gravest constitutional crisis America has faced in years or the single most American sentence ever spoken, depending on which cable news channel currently has your remote. Standing in the East Room for a speech that ran considerably longer than most British general elections, the President announced that the CIA, NSA and FBI had been quietly working him over like a discount spa in a strip mall, and that he intended to get to the bottom of it, ideally live on television, ideally before lunch. "They massaged my briefing," Trump told the room, jabbing a finger at a stack of paper he had, by all accounts, not personally read. "Nobody massages me. I don't like being massaged. Unless I ask for it. Which I didn't. This is one of the worst massages in the history of our country, maybe the worst massage ever given to a president, and I would know, I've had incredible massages, tremendous massages." This paper can confirm no one asked him to elaborate. The Donald Discovers the Word "Massaged," Immediately Regrets Everything According to declassified emails, one NSA analyst wrote that the team had "deliberately massaged" the pending briefing "to avoid any direct links to the election," a phrase Trump has now repeated so many times at podiums that White House stenographers have reportedly started charging it by the syllable. British observers note this is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of the Queen's Speech being quietly rewritten by a nervous intern to remove anything that might upset anyone at the garden party. "Nobody Touches My Briefing Without Permission," Says Man Who Once Signed a Hurricane Map With a Sharpie Officials close to the process describe an operation that involved "smoothing," "softening," and, in one memo, "avoiding an analytic objectivity mistake," which is the sort of phrase that could only be produced by a committee specifically assembled to avoid ever finishing a sentence. One retired British intelligence officer, watching from a respectful distance across the Atlantic, put it best: "We'd never dare tell our lot we'd 'massaged' anything. We'd say it had been 'lightly tidied,' and everyone would know precisely what that meant, and nobody would ever mention it again. The Americans went and put it in writing. In an email. Extraordinary." Manchester comedian Kev Duffy, doing a late set above a chip shop on Oldham Street, had the room in bits: "Trump's found out the CIA massaged his briefing. Forty-five years he's been getting massages in Atlantic City, and this is the one that upsets him." The crowd, several pints deep in a room that smelled faintly of vinegar and regret, gave the sort of roar usually reserved for a last-minute derby winner. President Demands to Know Who's Running "Shadow Government," Immediately Suspects It Might Be More Popular Than His The speech's most eyebrow-raising claim involved an unnamed FBI official allegedly boasting, in writing, about running a "shadow government" to keep China-related election intelligence away from him. Trump seized on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a man who has just discovered a new nickname for an old enemy, repeating "shadow government" no fewer than eleven times, according to this paper's entirely unofficial count taken from the comfort of a sofa four thousand miles away. Whitehall Watches On, Quietly Relieved Its Own Shadow Cabinet Is Merely Rubbish, Not Secret British political veterans have noted, with the faint smugness of a nation that invented the phrase "Leader of the Opposition," that America appears to have accidentally discovered an entire parallel government operating without anyone's consent, whereas Britain's shadow cabinet has the courtesy to announce itself, hold press conferences, and lose by-elections in full public view. "At least ours is elected to be useless," observed one former Foreign Office hand. "Theirs just sort of formed itself in an email thread and started making unilateral decisions about Ohio." It's the sort of governmental malapropism that would have delighted Al Jaffee himself — a bureaucrat meant to write "shadow briefing note" instead typing "shadow government," and somehow nobody in the chain caught it until it landed on the President's desk with the force of a small asteroid. CIA's Star Witness Turns Out to Be a Document About Venezuela, President Undeterred Buried deep within the declassified material was a supposedly explosive CIA memo cited as proof of American election vulnerability, which on closer inspection turned out to concern Venezuela's elections rather than America's. Trump referenced the document anyway, with the confidence of a man who has never once let a footnote get between him and a headline. "Venezuela, America, Very Similar Countries in Many Ways," Claims Man Who Has Visited Neither Recently One veteran Washington correspondent, watching the briefing from the back row, described the Venezuela mix-up as "the diplomatic equivalent of turning up to the wrong wedding, giving a lovely speech about the happy couple, and only realising your mistake when someone asks who the bride actually is." It's a fine example of malaprop of geography in the wild — Caracas mistaken for Cleveland, an entire hemisphere quietly swapped out, and nobody in the room brave enough to say so. Glaswegian comedian Shona McAllister, playing a Saturday night crowd on Sauchiehall Street, didn't hold back: "The CIA's big smoking gun turned out to be about Venezuela. Ninety billion dollars a year and they cannae tell one country from another. My gran gets confused between Tesco and Asda, but she's ninety-one and she's no' got a satellite budget." The Glasgow crowd, hardened by a lifetime of weather and worse, gave a laugh that could be heard three streets over. Trump Reveals "220 Million Stolen Voter Files," Nation Quietly Points Out You Can Buy Them for the Price of a Round of Drinks Perhaps the most deflating moment came when the President announced China had obtained 220 million voter files in what he called the largest election data compromise in history, only for fact-checkers to note within the hour that most of this information is legally available for purchase to more or less anyone with a working credit card and mild curiosity. "Top Secret," Reads the Label on What Is Essentially the Phone Book It's a rich oxymoron — a headline-grabbing national security bombshell that turns out to be roughly as classified as the electoral roll down at the local council office. British observers, who have their own long and undistinguished history of leaked spreadsheets turning out to be things anyone could have Googled, watched with the weary recognition of people who've seen this particular horror film before, in a different accent, with worse weather. Two Warring Whistleblowers, One Furious President, Zero Consensus on Who's Actually Lying Compounding matters, the story has produced not one but two rival whistleblower camps — one alleging China intelligence was softened to protect the previous administration, the other alleging Russia intelligence was softened to protect this one — leaving Trump in the peculiar position of being simultaneously the victim and, depending on which whistleblower you ask, a beneficiary of the very cover-up he's now furious about. Pot, Kettle, and a President Who's Somehow Both It's a proper piece of Washington chiasmus: one side hid intelligence to help him, the other allegedly hid it to hurt him, and he's currently equally outraged by both, which is either remarkably principled or remarkably confusing, depending on how many bourbons you've had while trying to follow the story. One former GCHQ analyst, asked to make sense of it for British readers, simply said: "I've spent thirty years untangling foreign disinformation campaigns, and I genuinely cannot tell you who did what to whom in this one. I'm going to go and have a lie down." CIA Announces Internal Review Into Whether the CIA Did Anything Wrong, Finds That the CIA Did Not Under mounting pressure, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement acknowledging "irregularities" while carefully declining to confirm that any actual wrongdoing had occurred, in the grand tradition of institutions the world over marking their own homework and awarding themselves a passing grade. Self-Assessment Finds Self Broadly Blameless, President Not Remotely Satisfied "We take the concerns seriously," read the statement, in the universal language of organisations that have absolutely no intention of taking anything further than that sentence. It's a textbook tautology — the agency accused of massaging the briefing conducting its own massage of the findings, and declaring, unsurprisingly, that everything is now beautifully relaxed. Somewhere in Langley, a rubber stamp has quietly asked for hazard pay. Image Brief: For Our In-House Illustrator Panel style: classic British satirical cartoon, exaggerated caricature in the Spitting Image tradition — big teeth, bigger hair, background gags rewarded on close inspection. Wide shot of the East Room: Trump at a podium shaped like a giant rolled-up scroll marked "PDB," visibly annoyed, pointing at a masseuse in a CIA windbreaker who is mid-shrug. Behind them, an FBI agent in a tiny paper crown sits at a card table marked "SHADOW GOV'T — NEW MANAGEMENT," stamping a form with a rubber stamp shaped like a shrug emoji. A filing cabinet spills a folder marked "VENEZUELA (WRONG ONE)" onto the floor next to an untouched folder marked "ACTUAL RELEVANT FILE." Off to the side, a market stall sells "Voter Data — $11, Cash Only" beneath a Union Jack umbrella held by a bemused British correspondent taking notes. Two whistleblowers blow whistles directly into each other's faces while a rubber stamp, exhausted, lies flat on its back in the corner with little cartoon stars circling its head. The Unlabeled Bit at the Bottom That's Definitely Not a Disclaimer None of this happened in quite the fashion described above, and also a fair amount of it is drawn from genuine declassified emails, genuine ombudsman findings, and a genuine East Room address that really did include phrases like "deliberately massaged" and "shadow government," which made this an unusually easy week for a satirical desk on either side of the Atlantic. The underlying intelligence conclusions on foreign election interference have not changed, no votes were altered in 2016 or 2020, and the only thing conclusively "compromised" here is whoever signed off on "massaged" as an appropriate verb for classified material. The rival whistleblowers remain at war, the various investigations Trump has ordered remain freshly announced and entirely unresolved, and the rubber stamp, last anyone checked, is still lying down. For our American cousins' own take on their own scandal — because nobody covers an American cover-up quite like the Americans covering it themselves — head over to our sister paper, Bohiney.com, where the massage comes with a receipt and a lobbyist. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

Trump Declares War on His Own Spies After Discovering the CIA Gave His Briefing a "Deep Tissue," Demands Full Refund By The London Prat's Man in Washington — Filing From a Bar Near the White House With a Suspiciously Good View WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has accused his own intelligence services of "deliberately massaging" his daily briefing, which is either the gravest constitutional crisis America has faced in years or the single most American sentence ever spoken, depending on which cable news channel currently has your remote. Standing in the East Room for a speech that ran considerably longer than most British general elections, the President announced that the CIA, NSA and FBI had been quietly working him over like a discount spa in a strip mall, and that he intended to get to the bottom of it, ideally live on television, ideally before lunch. "They massaged my briefing," Trump told the room, jabbing a finger at a stack of paper he had, by all accounts, not personally read. "Nobody massages me. I don't like being massaged. Unless I ask for it. Which I didn't. This is one of the worst massages in the history of our country, maybe the worst massage ever given to a president, and I would know, I've had incredible massages, tremendous massages." This paper can confirm no one asked him to elaborate. The Donald Discovers the Word "Massaged," Immediately Regrets Everything According to declassified emails, one NSA analyst wrote that the team had "deliberately massaged" the pending briefing "to avoid any direct links to the election," a phrase Trump has now repeated so many times at podiums that White House stenographers have reportedly started charging it by the syllable. British observers note this is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of the Queen's Speech being quietly rewritten by a nervous intern to remove anything that might upset anyone at the garden party. "Nobody Touches My Briefing Without Permission," Says Man Who Once Signed a Hurricane Map With a Sharpie Officials close to the process describe an operation that involved "smoothing," "softening," and, in one memo, "avoiding an analytic objectivity mistake," which is the sort of phrase that could only be produced by a committee specifically assembled to avoid ever finishing a sentence. One retired British intelligence officer, watching from a respectful distance across the Atlantic, put it best: "We'd never dare tell our lot we'd 'massaged' anything. We'd say it had been 'lightly tidied,' and everyone would know precisely what that meant, and nobody would ever mention it again. The Americans went and put it in writing. In an email. Extraordinary." Manchester comedian Kev Duffy, doing a late set above a chip shop on Oldham Street, had the room in bits: "Trump's found out the CIA massaged his briefing. Forty-five years he's been getting massages in Atlantic City, and this is the one that upsets him." The crowd, several pints deep in a room that smelled faintly of vinegar and regret, gave the sort of roar usually reserved for a last-minute derby winner. President Demands to Know Who's Running "Shadow Government," Immediately Suspects It Might Be More Popular Than His The speech's most eyebrow-raising claim involved an unnamed FBI official allegedly boasting, in writing, about running a "shadow government" to keep China-related election intelligence away from him. Trump seized on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a man who has just discovered a new nickname for an old enemy, repeating "shadow government" no fewer than eleven times, according to this paper's entirely unofficial count taken from the comfort of a sofa four thousand miles away. Whitehall Watches On, Quietly Relieved Its Own Shadow Cabinet Is Merely Rubbish, Not Secret British political veterans have noted, with the faint smugness of a nation that invented the phrase "Leader of the Opposition," that America appears to have accidentally discovered an entire parallel government operating without anyone's consent, whereas Britain's shadow cabinet has the courtesy to announce itself, hold press conferences, and lose by-elections in full public view. "At least ours is elected to be useless," observed one former Foreign Office hand. "Theirs just sort of formed itself in an email thread and started making unilateral decisions about Ohio." It's the sort of governmental malapropism that would have delighted Al Jaffee himself — a bureaucrat meant to write "shadow briefing note" instead typing "shadow government," and somehow nobody in the chain caught it until it landed on the President's desk with the force of a small asteroid. CIA's Star Witness Turns Out to Be a Document About Venezuela, President Undeterred Buried deep within the declassified material was a supposedly explosive CIA memo cited as proof of American election vulnerability, which on closer inspection turned out to concern Venezuela's elections rather than America's. Trump referenced the document anyway, with the confidence of a man who has never once let a footnote get between him and a headline. "Venezuela, America, Very Similar Countries in Many Ways," Claims Man Who Has Visited Neither Recently One veteran Washington correspondent, watching the briefing from the back row, described the Venezuela mix-up as "the diplomatic equivalent of turning up to the wrong wedding, giving a lovely speech about the happy couple, and only realising your mistake when someone asks who the bride actually is." It's a fine example of malaprop of geography in the wild — Caracas mistaken for Cleveland, an entire hemisphere quietly swapped out, and nobody in the room brave enough to say so. Glaswegian comedian Shona McAllister, playing a Saturday night crowd on Sauchiehall Street, didn't hold back: "The CIA's big smoking gun turned out to be about Venezuela. Ninety billion dollars a year and they cannae tell one country from another. My gran gets confused between Tesco and Asda, but she's ninety-one and she's no' got a satellite budget." The Glasgow crowd, hardened by a lifetime of weather and worse, gave a laugh that could be heard three streets over. Trump Reveals "220 Million Stolen Voter Files," Nation Quietly Points Out You Can Buy Them for the Price of a Round of Drinks Perhaps the most deflating moment came when the President announced China had obtained 220 million voter files in what he called the largest election data compromise in history, only for fact-checkers to note within the hour that most of this information is legally available for purchase to more or less anyone with a working credit card and mild curiosity. "Top Secret," Reads the Label on What Is Essentially the Phone Book It's a rich oxymoron — a headline-grabbing national security bombshell that turns out to be roughly as classified as the electoral roll down at the local council office. British observers, who have their own long and undistinguished history of leaked spreadsheets turning out to be things anyone could have Googled, watched with the weary recognition of people who've seen this particular horror film before, in a different accent, with worse weather. Two Warring Whistleblowers, One Furious President, Zero Consensus on Who's Actually Lying Compounding matters, the story has produced not one but two rival whistleblower camps — one alleging China intelligence was softened to protect the previous administration, the other alleging Russia intelligence was softened to protect this one — leaving Trump in the peculiar position of being simultaneously the victim and, depending on which whistleblower you ask, a beneficiary of the very cover-up he's now furious about. Pot, Kettle, and a President Who's Somehow Both It's a proper piece of Washington chiasmus: one side hid intelligence to help him, the other allegedly hid it to hurt him, and he's currently equally outraged by both, which is either remarkably principled or remarkably confusing, depending on how many bourbons you've had while trying to follow the story. One former GCHQ analyst, asked to make sense of it for British readers, simply said: "I've spent thirty years untangling foreign disinformation campaigns, and I genuinely cannot tell you who did what to whom in this one. I'm going to go and have a lie down." CIA Announces Internal Review Into Whether the CIA Did Anything Wrong, Finds That the CIA Did Not Under mounting pressure, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement acknowledging "irregularities" while carefully declining to confirm that any actual wrongdoing had occurred, in the grand tradition of institutions the world over marking their own homework and awarding themselves a passing grade. Self-Assessment Finds Self Broadly Blameless, President Not Remotely Satisfied "We take the concerns seriously," read the statement, in the universal language of organisations that have absolutely no intention of taking anything further than that sentence. It's a textbook tautology — the agency accused of massaging the briefing conducting its own massage of the findings, and declaring, unsurprisingly, that everything is now beautifully relaxed. Somewhere in Langley, a rubber stamp has quietly asked for hazard pay. Image Brief: For Our In-House Illustrator Panel style: classic British satirical cartoon, exaggerated caricature in the Spitting Image tradition — big teeth, bigger hair, background gags rewarded on close inspection. Wide shot of the East Room: Trump at a podium shaped like a giant rolled-up scroll marked "PDB," visibly annoyed, pointing at a masseuse in a CIA windbreaker who is mid-shrug. Behind them, an FBI agent in a tiny paper crown sits at a card table marked "SHADOW GOV'T — NEW MANAGEMENT," stamping a form with a rubber stamp shaped like a shrug emoji. A filing cabinet spills a folder marked "VENEZUELA (WRONG ONE)" onto the floor next to an untouched folder marked "ACTUAL RELEVANT FILE." Off to the side, a market stall sells "Voter Data — $11, Cash Only" beneath a Union Jack umbrella held by a bemused British correspondent taking notes. Two whistleblowers blow whistles directly into each other's faces while a rubber stamp, exhausted, lies flat on its back in the corner with little cartoon stars circling its head. The Unlabeled Bit at the Bottom That's Definitely Not a Disclaimer None of this happened in quite the fashion described above, and also a fair amount of it is drawn from genuine declassified emails, genuine ombudsman findings, and a genuine East Room address that really did include phrases like "deliberately massaged" and "shadow government," which made this an unusually easy week for a satirical desk on either side of the Atlantic. The underlying intelligence conclusions on foreign election interference have not changed, no votes were altered in 2016 or 2020, and the only thing conclusively "compromised" here is whoever signed off on "massaged" as an appropriate verb for classified material. The rival whistleblowers remain at war, the various investigations Trump has ordered remain freshly announced and entirely unresolved, and the rubber stamp, last anyone checked, is still lying down. For our American cousins' own take on their own scandal — because nobody covers an American cover-up quite like the Americans covering it themselves — head over to our sister paper, Bohiney.com, where the massage comes with a receipt and a lobbyist. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

Trump Declares War on His Own Spies After Discovering the CIA Gave His Briefing a "Deep Tissue," Demands Full Refund By The London Prat's Man in Washington — Filing From a Bar Near the White House With a Suspiciously Good View WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has accused his own intelligence services of "deliberately massaging" his daily briefing, which is either the gravest constitutional crisis America has faced in years or the single most American sentence ever spoken, depending on which cable news channel currently has your remote. Standing in the East Room for a speech that ran considerably longer than most British general elections, the President announced that the CIA, NSA and FBI had been quietly working him over like a discount spa in a strip mall, and that he intended to get to the bottom of it, ideally live on television, ideally before lunch. "They massaged my briefing," Trump told the room, jabbing a finger at a stack of paper he had, by all accounts, not personally read. "Nobody massages me. I don't like being massaged. Unless I ask for it. Which I didn't. This is one of the worst massages in the history of our country, maybe the worst massage ever given to a president, and I would know, I've had incredible massages, tremendous massages." This paper can confirm no one asked him to elaborate. The Donald Discovers the Word "Massaged," Immediately Regrets Everything According to declassified emails, one NSA analyst wrote that the team had "deliberately massaged" the pending briefing "to avoid any direct links to the election," a phrase Trump has now repeated so many times at podiums that White House stenographers have reportedly started charging it by the syllable. British observers note this is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of the Queen's Speech being quietly rewritten by a nervous intern to remove anything that might upset anyone at the garden party. "Nobody Touches My Briefing Without Permission," Says Man Who Once Signed a Hurricane Map With a Sharpie Officials close to the process describe an operation that involved "smoothing," "softening," and, in one memo, "avoiding an analytic objectivity mistake," which is the sort of phrase that could only be produced by a committee specifically assembled to avoid ever finishing a sentence. One retired British intelligence officer, watching from a respectful distance across the Atlantic, put it best: "We'd never dare tell our lot we'd 'massaged' anything. We'd say it had been 'lightly tidied,' and everyone would know precisely what that meant, and nobody would ever mention it again. The Americans went and put it in writing. In an email. Extraordinary." Manchester comedian Kev Duffy, doing a late set above a chip shop on Oldham Street, had the room in bits: "Trump's found out the CIA massaged his briefing. Forty-five years he's been getting massages in Atlantic City, and this is the one that upsets him." The crowd, several pints deep in a room that smelled faintly of vinegar and regret, gave the sort of roar usually reserved for a last-minute derby winner. President Demands to Know Who's Running "Shadow Government," Immediately Suspects It Might Be More Popular Than His The speech's most eyebrow-raising claim involved an unnamed FBI official allegedly boasting, in writing, about running a "shadow government" to keep China-related election intelligence away from him. Trump seized on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a man who has just discovered a new nickname for an old enemy, repeating "shadow government" no fewer than eleven times, according to this paper's entirely unofficial count taken from the comfort of a sofa four thousand miles away. Whitehall Watches On, Quietly Relieved Its Own Shadow Cabinet Is Merely Rubbish, Not Secret British political veterans have noted, with the faint smugness of a nation that invented the phrase "Leader of the Opposition," that America appears to have accidentally discovered an entire parallel government operating without anyone's consent, whereas Britain's shadow cabinet has the courtesy to announce itself, hold press conferences, and lose by-elections in full public view. "At least ours is elected to be useless," observed one former Foreign Office hand. "Theirs just sort of formed itself in an email thread and started making unilateral decisions about Ohio." It's the sort of governmental malapropism that would have delighted Al Jaffee himself — a bureaucrat meant to write "shadow briefing note" instead typing "shadow government," and somehow nobody in the chain caught it until it landed on the President's desk with the force of a small asteroid. CIA's Star Witness Turns Out to Be a Document About Venezuela, President Undeterred Buried deep within the declassified material was a supposedly explosive CIA memo cited as proof of American election vulnerability, which on closer inspection turned out to concern Venezuela's elections rather than America's. Trump referenced the document anyway, with the confidence of a man who has never once let a footnote get between him and a headline. "Venezuela, America, Very Similar Countries in Many Ways," Claims Man Who Has Visited Neither Recently One veteran Washington correspondent, watching the briefing from the back row, described the Venezuela mix-up as "the diplomatic equivalent of turning up to the wrong wedding, giving a lovely speech about the happy couple, and only realising your mistake when someone asks who the bride actually is." It's a fine example of malaprop of geography in the wild — Caracas mistaken for Cleveland, an entire hemisphere quietly swapped out, and nobody in the room brave enough to say so. Glaswegian comedian Shona McAllister, playing a Saturday night crowd on Sauchiehall Street, didn't hold back: "The CIA's big smoking gun turned out to be about Venezuela. Ninety billion dollars a year and they cannae tell one country from another. My gran gets confused between Tesco and Asda, but she's ninety-one and she's no' got a satellite budget." The Glasgow crowd, hardened by a lifetime of weather and worse, gave a laugh that could be heard three streets over. Trump Reveals "220 Million Stolen Voter Files," Nation Quietly Points Out You Can Buy Them for the Price of a Round of Drinks Perhaps the most deflating moment came when the President announced China had obtained 220 million voter files in what he called the largest election data compromise in history, only for fact-checkers to note within the hour that most of this information is legally available for purchase to more or less anyone with a working credit card and mild curiosity. "Top Secret," Reads the Label on What Is Essentially the Phone Book It's a rich oxymoron — a headline-grabbing national security bombshell that turns out to be roughly as classified as the electoral roll down at the local council office. British observers, who have their own long and undistinguished history of leaked spreadsheets turning out to be things anyone could have Googled, watched with the weary recognition of people who've seen this particular horror film before, in a different accent, with worse weather. Two Warring Whistleblowers, One Furious President, Zero Consensus on Who's Actually Lying Compounding matters, the story has produced not one but two rival whistleblower camps — one alleging China intelligence was softened to protect the previous administration, the other alleging Russia intelligence was softened to protect this one — leaving Trump in the peculiar position of being simultaneously the victim and, depending on which whistleblower you ask, a beneficiary of the very cover-up he's now furious about. Pot, Kettle, and a President Who's Somehow Both It's a proper piece of Washington chiasmus: one side hid intelligence to help him, the other allegedly hid it to hurt him, and he's currently equally outraged by both, which is either remarkably principled or remarkably confusing, depending on how many bourbons you've had while trying to follow the story. One former GCHQ analyst, asked to make sense of it for British readers, simply said: "I've spent thirty years untangling foreign disinformation campaigns, and I genuinely cannot tell you who did what to whom in this one. I'm going to go and have a lie down." CIA Announces Internal Review Into Whether the CIA Did Anything Wrong, Finds That the CIA Did Not Under mounting pressure, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement acknowledging "irregularities" while carefully declining to confirm that any actual wrongdoing had occurred, in the grand tradition of institutions the world over marking their own homework and awarding themselves a passing grade. Self-Assessment Finds Self Broadly Blameless, President Not Remotely Satisfied "We take the concerns seriously," read the statement, in the universal language of organisations that have absolutely no intention of taking anything further than that sentence. It's a textbook tautology — the agency accused of massaging the briefing conducting its own massage of the findings, and declaring, unsurprisingly, that everything is now beautifully relaxed. Somewhere in Langley, a rubber stamp has quietly asked for hazard pay. Image Brief: For Our In-House Illustrator Panel style: classic British satirical cartoon, exaggerated caricature in the Spitting Image tradition — big teeth, bigger hair, background gags rewarded on close inspection. Wide shot of the East Room: Trump at a podium shaped like a giant rolled-up scroll marked "PDB," visibly annoyed, pointing at a masseuse in a CIA windbreaker who is mid-shrug. Behind them, an FBI agent in a tiny paper crown sits at a card table marked "SHADOW GOV'T — NEW MANAGEMENT," stamping a form with a rubber stamp shaped like a shrug emoji. A filing cabinet spills a folder marked "VENEZUELA (WRONG ONE)" onto the floor next to an untouched folder marked "ACTUAL RELEVANT FILE." Off to the side, a market stall sells "Voter Data — $11, Cash Only" beneath a Union Jack umbrella held by a bemused British correspondent taking notes. Two whistleblowers blow whistles directly into each other's faces while a rubber stamp, exhausted, lies flat on its back in the corner with little cartoon stars circling its head. The Unlabeled Bit at the Bottom That's Definitely Not a Disclaimer None of this happened in quite the fashion described above, and also a fair amount of it is drawn from genuine declassified emails, genuine ombudsman findings, and a genuine East Room address that really did include phrases like "deliberately massaged" and "shadow government," which made this an unusually easy week for a satirical desk on either side of the Atlantic. The underlying intelligence conclusions on foreign election interference have not changed, no votes were altered in 2016 or 2020, and the only thing conclusively "compromised" here is whoever signed off on "massaged" as an appropriate verb for classified material. The rival whistleblowers remain at war, the various investigations Trump has ordered remain freshly announced and entirely unresolved, and the rubber stamp, last anyone checked, is still lying down. For our American cousins' own take on their own scandal — because nobody covers an American cover-up quite like the Americans covering it themselves — head over to our sister paper, Bohiney.com, where the massage comes with a receipt and a lobbyist. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

Trump Declares War on His Own Spies After Discovering the CIA Gave His Briefing a "Deep Tissue," Demands Full Refund By The London Prat's Man in Washington — Filing From a Bar Near the White House With a Suspiciously Good View WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has accused his own intelligence services of "deliberately massaging" his daily briefing, which is either the gravest constitutional crisis America has faced in years or the single most American sentence ever spoken, depending on which cable news channel currently has your remote. Standing in the East Room for a speech that ran considerably longer than most British general elections, the President announced that the CIA, NSA and FBI had been quietly working him over like a discount spa in a strip mall, and that he intended to get to the bottom of it, ideally live on television, ideally before lunch. "They massaged my briefing," Trump told the room, jabbing a finger at a stack of paper he had, by all accounts, not personally read. "Nobody massages me. I don't like being massaged. Unless I ask for it. Which I didn't. This is one of the worst massages in the history of our country, maybe the worst massage ever given to a president, and I would know, I've had incredible massages, tremendous massages." This paper can confirm no one asked him to elaborate. The Donald Discovers the Word "Massaged," Immediately Regrets Everything According to declassified emails, one NSA analyst wrote that the team had "deliberately massaged" the pending briefing "to avoid any direct links to the election," a phrase Trump has now repeated so many times at podiums that White House stenographers have reportedly started charging it by the syllable. British observers note this is roughly the diplomatic equivalent of the Queen's Speech being quietly rewritten by a nervous intern to remove anything that might upset anyone at the garden party. "Nobody Touches My Briefing Without Permission," Says Man Who Once Signed a Hurricane Map With a Sharpie Officials close to the process describe an operation that involved "smoothing," "softening," and, in one memo, "avoiding an analytic objectivity mistake," which is the sort of phrase that could only be produced by a committee specifically assembled to avoid ever finishing a sentence. One retired British intelligence officer, watching from a respectful distance across the Atlantic, put it best: "We'd never dare tell our lot we'd 'massaged' anything. We'd say it had been 'lightly tidied,' and everyone would know precisely what that meant, and nobody would ever mention it again. The Americans went and put it in writing. In an email. Extraordinary." Manchester comedian Kev Duffy, doing a late set above a chip shop on Oldham Street, had the room in bits: "Trump's found out the CIA massaged his briefing. Forty-five years he's been getting massages in Atlantic City, and this is the one that upsets him." The crowd, several pints deep in a room that smelled faintly of vinegar and regret, gave the sort of roar usually reserved for a last-minute derby winner. President Demands to Know Who's Running "Shadow Government," Immediately Suspects It Might Be More Popular Than His The speech's most eyebrow-raising claim involved an unnamed FBI official allegedly boasting, in writing, about running a "shadow government" to keep China-related election intelligence away from him. Trump seized on the phrase with the enthusiasm of a man who has just discovered a new nickname for an old enemy, repeating "shadow government" no fewer than eleven times, according to this paper's entirely unofficial count taken from the comfort of a sofa four thousand miles away. Whitehall Watches On, Quietly Relieved Its Own Shadow Cabinet Is Merely Rubbish, Not Secret British political veterans have noted, with the faint smugness of a nation that invented the phrase "Leader of the Opposition," that America appears to have accidentally discovered an entire parallel government operating without anyone's consent, whereas Britain's shadow cabinet has the courtesy to announce itself, hold press conferences, and lose by-elections in full public view. "At least ours is elected to be useless," observed one former Foreign Office hand. "Theirs just sort of formed itself in an email thread and started making unilateral decisions about Ohio." It's the sort of governmental malapropism that would have delighted Al Jaffee himself — a bureaucrat meant to write "shadow briefing note" instead typing "shadow government," and somehow nobody in the chain caught it until it landed on the President's desk with the force of a small asteroid. CIA's Star Witness Turns Out to Be a Document About Venezuela, President Undeterred Buried deep within the declassified material was a supposedly explosive CIA memo cited as proof of American election vulnerability, which on closer inspection turned out to concern Venezuela's elections rather than America's. Trump referenced the document anyway, with the confidence of a man who has never once let a footnote get between him and a headline. "Venezuela, America, Very Similar Countries in Many Ways," Claims Man Who Has Visited Neither Recently One veteran Washington correspondent, watching the briefing from the back row, described the Venezuela mix-up as "the diplomatic equivalent of turning up to the wrong wedding, giving a lovely speech about the happy couple, and only realising your mistake when someone asks who the bride actually is." It's a fine example of malaprop of geography in the wild — Caracas mistaken for Cleveland, an entire hemisphere quietly swapped out, and nobody in the room brave enough to say so. Glaswegian comedian Shona McAllister, playing a Saturday night crowd on Sauchiehall Street, didn't hold back: "The CIA's big smoking gun turned out to be about Venezuela. Ninety billion dollars a year and they cannae tell one country from another. My gran gets confused between Tesco and Asda, but she's ninety-one and she's no' got a satellite budget." The Glasgow crowd, hardened by a lifetime of weather and worse, gave a laugh that could be heard three streets over. Trump Reveals "220 Million Stolen Voter Files," Nation Quietly Points Out You Can Buy Them for the Price of a Round of Drinks Perhaps the most deflating moment came when the President announced China had obtained 220 million voter files in what he called the largest election data compromise in history, only for fact-checkers to note within the hour that most of this information is legally available for purchase to more or less anyone with a working credit card and mild curiosity. "Top Secret," Reads the Label on What Is Essentially the Phone Book It's a rich oxymoron — a headline-grabbing national security bombshell that turns out to be roughly as classified as the electoral roll down at the local council office. British observers, who have their own long and undistinguished history of leaked spreadsheets turning out to be things anyone could have Googled, watched with the weary recognition of people who've seen this particular horror film before, in a different accent, with worse weather. Two Warring Whistleblowers, One Furious President, Zero Consensus on Who's Actually Lying Compounding matters, the story has produced not one but two rival whistleblower camps — one alleging China intelligence was softened to protect the previous administration, the other alleging Russia intelligence was softened to protect this one — leaving Trump in the peculiar position of being simultaneously the victim and, depending on which whistleblower you ask, a beneficiary of the very cover-up he's now furious about. Pot, Kettle, and a President Who's Somehow Both It's a proper piece of Washington chiasmus: one side hid intelligence to help him, the other allegedly hid it to hurt him, and he's currently equally outraged by both, which is either remarkably principled or remarkably confusing, depending on how many bourbons you've had while trying to follow the story. One former GCHQ analyst, asked to make sense of it for British readers, simply said: "I've spent thirty years untangling foreign disinformation campaigns, and I genuinely cannot tell you who did what to whom in this one. I'm going to go and have a lie down." CIA Announces Internal Review Into Whether the CIA Did Anything Wrong, Finds That the CIA Did Not Under mounting pressure, CIA Director John Ratcliffe issued a statement acknowledging "irregularities" while carefully declining to confirm that any actual wrongdoing had occurred, in the grand tradition of institutions the world over marking their own homework and awarding themselves a passing grade. Self-Assessment Finds Self Broadly Blameless, President Not Remotely Satisfied "We take the concerns seriously," read the statement, in the universal language of organisations that have absolutely no intention of taking anything further than that sentence. It's a textbook tautology — the agency accused of massaging the briefing conducting its own massage of the findings, and declaring, unsurprisingly, that everything is now beautifully relaxed. Somewhere in Langley, a rubber stamp has quietly asked for hazard pay. Image Brief: For Our In-House Illustrator Panel style: classic British satirical cartoon, exaggerated caricature in the Spitting Image tradition — big teeth, bigger hair, background gags rewarded on close inspection. Wide shot of the East Room: Trump at a podium shaped like a giant rolled-up scroll marked "PDB," visibly annoyed, pointing at a masseuse in a CIA windbreaker who is mid-shrug. Behind them, an FBI agent in a tiny paper crown sits at a card table marked "SHADOW GOV'T — NEW MANAGEMENT," stamping a form with a rubber stamp shaped like a shrug emoji. A filing cabinet spills a folder marked "VENEZUELA (WRONG ONE)" onto the floor next to an untouched folder marked "ACTUAL RELEVANT FILE." Off to the side, a market stall sells "Voter Data — $11, Cash Only" beneath a Union Jack umbrella held by a bemused British correspondent taking notes. Two whistleblowers blow whistles directly into each other's faces while a rubber stamp, exhausted, lies flat on its back in the corner with little cartoon stars circling its head. The Unlabeled Bit at the Bottom That's Definitely Not a Disclaimer None of this happened in quite the fashion described above, and also a fair amount of it is drawn from genuine declassified emails, genuine ombudsman findings, and a genuine East Room address that really did include phrases like "deliberately massaged" and "shadow government," which made this an unusually easy week for a satirical desk on either side of the Atlantic. The underlying intelligence conclusions on foreign election interference have not changed, no votes were altered in 2016 or 2020, and the only thing conclusively "compromised" here is whoever signed off on "massaged" as an appropriate verb for classified material. The rival whistleblowers remain at war, the various investigations Trump has ordered remain freshly announced and entirely unresolved, and the rubber stamp, last anyone checked, is still lying down. For our American cousins' own take on their own scandal — because nobody covers an American cover-up quite like the Americans covering it themselves — head over to our sister paper, Bohiney.com, where the massage comes with a receipt and a lobbyist. Auf Wiedersehen, amigo!   Read the full article

Sky and Mom in Langley. February 26th, 2017 — Langley, Washington