Blazingcatfur

Why Western intel agencies help Putin and Xi keep their darkest secrets.

Scientists who, in 1978, quickly concluded the previous year’s global flu pandemic originated in a lab leak in China or Russia chose not to advertise their findings. Their overriding priority: protect diplomatic relations with Russia and China.

“A laboratory release was the most likely origin,” wrote clinical pathologist Martin Furmanski in a 2014 revisitation of the incident, “but they were content not to publicize this.”

As Elon Musk pursues his “draining the swamp” in Washington, D.C., his plan to reduce the size of the US federal government may have a number of unintended consequences.

To be sure, few people might disagree with ending payments to millions of people who continue drawing their Social Security benefits years after having died and been buried.

Even fewer might approve of channeling millions of dollars in aid to NGOs in such emerging economic giants like India and Indonesia, not to mention sinkholes such as Afghanistan or active anti-American states like South Africa.

History records this of the famous Nixon Watergate scandal.

In the summer of 1972, as an American presidential election featuring incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon and Democrat Senator George McGovern swirled, two young, green Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein by name, learned of a break-in at Washington’s Watergate Hotel and office complex. A break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee.