September 14, 2015

So Politico's Marc Caputo publishes this "scoop" that is really no scoop at all. (Anyone who's ever heard Alan Grayson speak knows that he talks like this all the time.) This is a classic case of an oppo dump that required no real reporting on Politico's part -- and by the way, does any serious student of national security history doubt that the intelligence community routinely misinterprets, misses or even fabricates biased information?

Grayson’s mockery of the nation’s spymasters, the Obama administration and the generals who brief Congress was captured on an undercover video shot during a fundraiser in California, where the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate spoke to the Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, which gave him an award.

In the two minute, 43-second video snippet, the anti-war liberal swipes at the “administration” for pressing for “another dumb war” by giving Congress questionable evidence concerning Syria’s alleged use of chemical weapons in 2013. Grayson, without disclosing classified information, suggested the secret briefings Congress received had more pomp and circumstance than real evidence.

“When they started to give us the military briefings, the generals walk in with all that salad on their uniforms in front,” Grayson said, laughing, as he used military jargon to describe the medals and ribbons worn on a service member’s dress uniform. “You quickly realize that they literally don’t know what they’re talking about. The so-called intelligence community is the stupid community. They're the worst ones of all. I mean, these people pretend to know everything that they pretend to know. They don't know it at all.”

Grayson’s acerbic tone, captured last month and shared with POLITICO on condition of anonymity, isn’t limited to Syria. He once said the GOP’s health care plan was summed up in the phrase “die quickly.” He has compared the tea party to the KKK, has privately described fellow Democratic Senate candidate and Rep. Patrick Murphy as a piece of excrement and once described a reporter inquiring about his finances as “a shitting robot.”

The famously blunt and inflammatory Democrat has criticized the administration over Syria before, though his comments at the private fundraiser were sharper than usual.

His tussles with the intelligence community are well documented. Late last year, the Florida Bulldog investigative website reported that the GOP-led U.S. House Intelligence Committee denied Grayson access to 28 classified pages from a congressional report concerning Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks.

“Why was I denied? I have been instrumental in publicizing the Snowden revelations regarding pervasive domestic spying by the government and this is a petty means for the spying industrial complex to lash back,” Grayson, referencing National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, told the Florida Bulldog.

You can see their two-minute "scoop" video here.

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