The Kremlin's Shill: Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli

"What suffers in this story is democracy. Democracy and accountability suffer. So also does the free market because these players are not really interested in the chief mechanism of the free market, which would be competition. They are all about the interdependency between government and business, so the intertwining of state and private power. And they get government benefits to use to the advantage of the market."---Janine Wedel (RFE/RL, 8-16-10)

I think Virginia's Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli may be getting political contributions from his father's clients to attack the science of global warming. The elder Cuccinelli is a career lobbyist for the gas industry who has "European" clients.

Who are these clients? The elder Cuccinelli's public relations business reportedly contributed 96,000 to his son's campaign. Are these "European" clients buying the services of "our" Attorney General? I think that Virginia voters should find out what is going on here.

Based on my research, I think it is possible that these "European" clients may include Russian gas companies such as Gazprom or gas trading companies. I am concerned that these companies may formally be be paying Cuccinelli's father for "professional services" but in reality may be sponsoring the younger Cuccinelli's persecution of climate scientists. This sort of subversion is already happening in Europe. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (7-9-10) reports:

Moscow is skillfully advancing its interests in the West, not through intelligence but business, often supported by crafty industrial espionage, influence-buying, and under-the-table deal-making...In Western Europe, Moscow has operated by making lucrative arrangements with foreign energy companies that become de facto lobbyists for the Kremlin within their own countries.

I have written many times to Mr. W. Russell, Mr. Cuccinelli's deputy in the Virginia Attorney General's office, and have asked for transparency about these "European" clients; but the Attorney General's office does not answer my questions. If I have to speculate, that's because Attorney General Cuccinelli won't address my concerns. He is not transparent about his financial relationships with fossil fuel interests.

Attorney General Cuccinelli is supposed to uphold the law, but instead he panders disinformation about the stolen "Climategate" e-mails and abuses his powerful postion in an attempt to root around in Dr. Michael Mann's UVA's correspondance and sniff out conspiracies; but Attorney General Cuccinelli won't tell us whom he is serving. He spreads the conspiracy theory our most famous climate scientists are greedy liars, but I think there is considerable evidence that Cuccinelli is the greedy liar.

The "bum dope" Attorney General Cuccinelli is pedaling about the plots of our allegedly greedy, coniving climate scientists reminds me of the KGB's "bum dope" about how our Pentagon scientists made AIDS.

The KGB finally had to come clean about their conspiracy theory, and Izvestiya (3-19-92) famously reported:

[KGB chief Yevgeni Primakov] mentioned the well known articles printed a few years ago in our central newspapers about AIDS supposedly originating from secret Pentagon laboratories. According to Yevgeni Primakov, the articles exposing US scientists' 'crafty' plots were fabricated in KGB offices.

The KGB threw the scientists and journalists who pedalled this lie under the bus that day! The Soviet Academy of Sciences, led by the famous physicist Roald Sagdeev, had already distanced themselves from this lie. Even so, the KGB lie about how the Pentagon scientists created the AIDS virus continues to spread. Even President Obama's minister repeated this admitted KGB lie during the campaign. The CIA has published a study about the KGB's "Operation Infektion."

Still, we don't need a KGB admission or Wikileaks to tell us that Cuccinelli is spreading the Kremlin perspective. Cuccinelli tells us himself! In his suit against the EPA, Cuccinelli cites an RIA Novosti English-language version of a Russian newspaper article that calls British climate scientists dishonest. The original article was published in Kommersant, a Kremlin-friendly newspaper owned by the Gazprom mogul Alisher Usmanov, a sinister person whose education and career reek of the KGB. RIA Novosti is the Russian government's official press agency. Cuccinelli is so critical of U.S. Government agencies, but he uncritically accepts and publishes the disinformation pedaled by the mouthpieces of the Kremlin's agencies in his EPA suit.

The original Russian-language Kommersant article (on which the RIA Novosti English article Cuccinelli uses in his EPA suit is based) quotes Andrei Illarionov, a Russian economist and political operative who worked for Putin and for the late Victor Chernomyrdin, the head of the Soviet Ministry of gas and its post-Soviet reincarnation Gazprom.

Attorney General Cuccinelli has not appeared in Wikileaks, at least not so so far. In any case, the proof that the shameless Cuccinelli is spreading the Kremlin perspective is no secret: it's right there for the whole world to see in the footnotes of his suit against the EPA; but since it's right in the footnotes and not a secret, nobody looks! I think Attorney General Cuccinelli is just a stooge who collaborates with powerful Russian business interests. He uncritically cites official Russian sources in his EPA suit; he mischaracterizes stolen e-mails from the British Research Unit (CRU) to unfairly defame scientists in the "Climategate" scandal; and his father is a gas lobbyist with "European" clients.

Attorney General Cuccinelli is not promoting democracy or capitalism; he is promoting corruption---collusion with the Kremlin and Gazprom. He is supposed to work for our citizens, not the Kremlin rulers Kommersant answers to.

No professional journalist has investigated the Cuccinelli family's ties to the fossil fuel industry. No professional journalist has suggested that Cuccinelli's "evidence" in his EPA suit against climate scientists was published in RIA Novosti by way of Alisher Usmanov's Kommersant and might be Russian government/Gazprom propaganda, not climate science.

Journalists don't even ask Cuccinelli about these issues to get him on the record. They all seem to depend on e-mails stolen from scientists or cables stolen from the State Department for their news instead of doing their own research. Journalists don't even really know who is supplying Cuccinelli with scientists' stolen e-mails and Wikileaks with their stolen State Department cables. The arrested head of Wikileaks, Julian Assange even claims that he received "Climategate" e-mails and had "no choice" but to release them.

Hopefully, our law enforcement agencies are investigating the corruption of our politicians and businesses by powerful domestic and foreign fossil fuel interests. It's strange that the EPA doesn't tell Cuccinelli that their scientists don't put too much stock in kompromat about British scientists published in Alisher Usmanov's Kommersant.

A commenter claims I am making up a conspiracy theory. Cuccinelli has not characterized my research as a conspiracy theory. He has not said anything. If the commenter thinks this is a conspiracy theory, he should ask Attorney General Cuccinelli to go on the record about his financial ties with domestic and foreign fossil fuel interests. He should ask Mr. Cuccinelli why he thinks Alisher Usmanov's Kommersant and the economist Andrei Illarionov are reliable sources of scientific information about global warming. Although Andrei Illarionov supposedly had a "tiff" with Putin before he went to work for the Libertarian Cato Institute, Mr. Illarionov is quoted in Russia’s official press agency RIA Novosti on "the very day that EPA announced the Endangerment Finding," as Cuccinelli's brief observes with unintentional irony.

I have no crystal ball or cyber-criminals who will steal secrets for me, so I just have to present Mr. Cucccinelli with my own research and suspicions; and he should answer my questions because I voted for him, a mistake I won't make twice. So far, the Attorney General's office has not addressed my concerns. So far, the Attorney General has not characterized my research and suspicions a "conspiracy theory." Cuccinelli's office doesn't say anything. Only some commenter on my blog has said that.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has some good articles about corruption. The links are good, too. I am starting a list:

'Systemic Corruption' A Daunting Challenge In A Globalized Era (12-9-10)

Corruption, And Outrage About It, Is On The Rise (12-9-10)

The 'Shadow Elite,' WikiLeaks, And Living In A 'Dangerous Era' (8-16-10)

I'll be back...