How a twenty-year-old movie foretold the Mueller witch hunt
Twenty years ago, Will Smith starred in a terrific film called Enemy of the State. It seemed a work of fiction at the time. It was riveting for its portrayal of the government's abuse of every hi-tech tool at the ready to surveil and destroy a man's life. Those tools seemed make-believe in 1998. How naïve we film-goers were.
In the movie, a man tasked with monitoring the habits of Canadian geese inadvertently catches a murder on film with hidden cameras in a park. The victim, a Republican senator, has steadfastly refused to vote for the Telecommunications, Security and Privacy Act that would permit the government to do what it most certainly does do today. The senator's refusal is unacceptable to the murderers who are agents of the NSA. The government is bound and determined to develop the legal authority to surveil Americans, no matter the cost or the constitutional violations.
Who knew twenty years ago that much of the background of the film would come to pass? That is when it all began. Or maybe it all began years before 1998.
When the bird man views the tape, he realizes that what he has is valuable and shocking. By then, the NSA has already identified and located him and tapped his phones, and a group of NSA operatives are dispensed to get the tape by any means necessary. Bird man realizes that his life is in danger and runs. He meets Will Smith, an old acquaintance, and drops the tape into the shopping bag he is carrying, then gets hit by a car and is killed. Smith's character, Robert Dean, has no idea that the tape is in his bag. Dean is identified as a momentary contact with the dead man, so he will be the NSA's next victim. Agents set out to destroy his life as surely as Mueller set out to successfully destroy Michael Flynn's life, and Manafort's, and Cohen's. These real-life parallels will destroy anyone they need to if it leads to the destruction of Donald Trump's presidency. That is who they are. That is what they do. See Sidney Powell's book, Licensed to Lie.
The secondary story has to do with the New York mob. Smith's character defends persons who get mixed up with the local mafia. Once the NSA learns this, its agents decide to use it to ruin him. They kill an old girlfriend with whom he still does business. They rob, vandalize, and bug his home and set him up as a criminal. He loses his job; his credit; and, for a time, his wife. They stalk him, track him in order to hear every word he speaks and know where he is at every moment. Writer David Marconi wove a terrific tale of intrigue; he was prescient beyond his wildest imagination. What he wrote is being played out in real life in 2018.
John Voight plays the NSA man, Reynolds, a sideways precursor to Mueller. He orders his thugs to investigate every aspect of Smith's character in order to find the tape and destroy it. The fact that Dean is innocent of any and all crimes, has a wife and son, means nothing to them, just as Mueller and his team of hired guns care nothing about the lives they are ruining.
These are evil people – Mueller, Rosenstein, and their cabal of villains. They have shredded the Constitution, violated every legal precedent. Their mission is clear: destroy Trump by any means necessary.
This week, we learned that Bruce Ohr, who met seventy times with Christopher Steele after he was officially fired as an FBI asset, has never been interviewed by Mueller. Ohr's wife likely wrote the infamous dossier meant to ruin Trump. Neither have the other players in the coup attempt been interviewed by Mueller. In Mueller's world, they are the good guys. We have learned that China had in-time access to Hillary's private server for four years. China knew every move the U.S. was making while she was secretary of state. Our FBI and DOJ knew it and did nothing. They were all busy enriching themselves, selling access, selling secrets.
Back to the film, enter the character played by Gene Hackman, "Brill." He is a tech head, ex-NSA, and he is steps ahead of the nasty bunch who runs it. He knows how it all works. Smith's character enlists his help, and the tables turn a bit.
Do we, Americans who love this country and the Constitution, have a Brill? Are there good guys working on the side of what is legal and true? Don't know. Jeff Sessions is being maligned for doing nothing, but if that were true, wouldn't Trump fire him? Is Huber in Utah on the case? Hard to say. One thing is clear: there are no leaks from that clique.
Do we dare hope they are on the case of all the participants of the destroy-Trump mob? Who knows? Are any of the Clinton campaign and Foundation crooks ever going to be charged for all the serious crimes they have committed? Will Strozk, Page, McCabe, Brennan, Comey, etc. ever be held responsible for their plan to subvert an election?
Let's hope there is a "Brill" on our team, someone, or a group of someones, who will discover and reveal the truth, people who truly love the country and are not motivated by rage that an outsider won the presidency. There had better be, or this country is over.
Watch the film. It will remind you how lethal government abuse of power can be and is. And it has one of the cleverest, most satisfying conclusions ever. May the conclusion of the Mueller probe of the Obama-Brennan-HRC-conceived hoax be as gratifying.