America's New Cold War is run by the Office Co-workers from Hell

The first and irredeemable mistake is asking the co-worker, 'How was your weekend?' Soon one is enduring daily accounts of the co-worker's complicated personal life. The second mistake is pretending interest. The third mistake -- made only by the naive -- is offering the co-worker advice. 

According to a description by Philip Giraldi I don't think Browder would dispute, William Browder is a "hedge fund operator who made his fortune in the corrupt 1990s world of Russian commodities trading."

That one sentence should explain everything about William Browder that a person who doesn't want to be driven crazy by complicated people would want to know about him. 

But then comes the hook. Giraldi continues:

Browder is also symptomatic of why the United States government is so poorly informed about international developments as he is the source of much of the Congressional “expert testimony” contributing to the current impasse [between Russia and the United States]. He has somehow emerged as a trusted source in spite of the fact that he has self-interest in cultivating a certain outcome. Also ignored is his renunciation of American citizenship in 1998, reportedly to avoid taxes. He is now a British citizen.

Well of course any American would be interested in learning how a British hedge fund operator became a trusted source for U.S. congressional committees engaged with U.S. defense policy.

That's how I ended up at the Business Insider reading these sentences:

A fierce but muted battle erupted last year between Bill Browder, a banker turned human-rights activist, and Fusion GPS, the opposition-research firm that produced the explosive, unverified dossier that detailed President Donald Trump's alleged ties to — and escapades in — Russia.

That battle escalated on Tuesday when the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unilaterally released the transcript of an interview the committee conducted last August with Glenn Simpson, a Fusion cofounder.

In the interview, Simpson said his work for the American law firm BakerHostetler — which was representing Prevezon, a Russian holding company the US government accused of laundering money into New York City real estate — was focused "on trying to get William Browder to testify under oath about his role in this case and his activities in Russia."

As to how Mr Browder went from hedge fund operator to banker and human rights activist is a complicated story from what I've been able to gather. Just as the Fusion GPS story is complicated. 

Indeed, the more I delve into the story of the New Cold War, the more I come across complicated people with very complicated motives and associations.

However, I have yet to find one account in which any of these complicated people jockeying for influence in the U.S. government held a gun to the head of a Member of Congress. That simple fact towers above every tale of America's New Cold War and its parade of complicated people engaged in complicated maneuvers. Every single congressional committee engaged with U.S. defense matters is entangled with people who are too damn complicated for America's good.     

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