"Notes" for THE LUBYANKAN CANDIDATE, Motivation for Don Jr. E-Mail Leak

Memo

THE LUBYANKAN CANDIDATE

A SiliconCorp/MouseFilm Co-Production

From: Script Analyst Division

To: Suit #435

Date: 17 July 2017  3 August 2017

Subject: Your memo on our Notes on script draft 12

      re: Motivating Leaking of Trump Jr.'s e-mails on meeting with Russian agents OR
           "Payback is a Mother*cker"

Solly, Sweetheart!

We've suggested conflating several Intelligence big-wigs into a composite character we're calling Alan Foster and picturing, say, Willem Dafoe for the role. For the small-scale version of the film, he could be in one location: a spartan, windowless office through whose door we get glimpses of a 21st-c., high-tech version of a bureaucracy out of Kafka. 

We've recommended cutting much of the dialog on Foster's motivation and replacing it with visuals in the office and with a repeated — repeated within reason — intercut with historical footage. 

Visuals: On Foster's desk is a photo of him in combat gear as a young man in Vietnam; depending on what rank we want him at that time we have either on his helmet or the helmet of someone else visible the slogan "Payback is a motherfucker." Posted on his office walls, increasing as the film goes on, are printouts of news stories of Donald Trump Sr. dissing the Intelligence services. 

Intercut in LUBYANKAN CANDIDATE we'd like historical footage of Trump at the CIA, before their commemorative wall with the words clearly visible, "In Honor of Those Members of the Central Intelligence Agency Who Gave Their Lives in the Service of Their Country." Audio here would make it clear that Trump is winging the speech and digressing to gripe about media coverage of his inauguration. No big chunks, but sound-bite by sound-bite selections from such as this:

And the reason you’re my first stop is that, as you know, I have a running war with the media.  They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.  (Laughter and applause.)  And they sort of made it sound like I had a feud with the intelligence community.  And I just want to let you know, the reason you’re the number-one stop is exactly the opposite -- exactly.  And they understand that, too. 

We did a thing yesterday at the speech.  Did everybody like the speech?  (Applause.)  I’ve been given good reviews.  But we had a massive field of people.  You saw them.  Packed.  I get up this morning, I turn on one of the networks, and they show an empty field.  I say, wait a minute, I made a speech.  I looked out, the field was -- it looked like a million, million and a half people.  They showed a field where there were practically nobody standing there.  And they said, Donald Trump did not draw well.  I said, it was almost raining, the rain should have scared them away, but God looked down and he said, we’re not going to let it rain on your speech. 

In fact, when I first started, I said, oh, no.  The first line, I got hit by a couple of drops.  And I said, oh, this is too bad, but we’ll go right through it.  But the truth is that it stopped immediately.  It was amazing.  And then it became really sunny.  And then I walked off and it poured right after I left.  It poured.  But, you know, we have something that’s amazing because we had -- it looked -- honestly, it looked like a million and a half people.  Whatever it was, it was.  But it went all the way back to the Washington Monument.  And I turn on -- and by mistake I get this network, and it showed an empty field.  And it said we drew 250,000 people.  Now, that’s not bad, but it’s a lie.  We had 250,000 people literally around -- you know, in the little bowl that we constructed.  That was 250,000 people.  The rest of the 20-block area, all the way back to the Washington Monument, was packed.  So we caught them, and we caught them in a beauty.  And I think they’re going to pay a big price. 

Some of the sound-bites could be coming through a speaker in Foster's office, with him listening very carefully while doing other work. He shows very little emotion, but is getting increasingly pissed off. 

So: When Foster finally passes along the e-mail intercepts to be leaked to the press (New York Times as it turned out historically), there's no problem whatever with his motivation and no need for extended dialog. This guy is of the school, "Don't get mad, get even," and he's going to be infuriated by Trump's being oblivious not only to his immediate audience but to their dead, commemorated behind him.

It's "Show, don't tell," and we stand by our recommendation to cut the invented dialog here to a minimum and let the visuals and Trump's own words do the work.

I hope this will answer the concerns of The Powers That Be. We in my Division are all very excited about THE LUBYANKAN CANDIDATE and thrilled to be working with so fine an operation (and if you can get Dafoe for a small but crucial role, we'll be ecstatic).

==================================

Addendum: We're working in Trump's Tweet on Trans-sexuals in the military — leading from the rear by Twitter! — and the release of the transcripts of conversations with Mexican and Australian leaders. I'm thinking a darkly comic montage of action/reaction, with the Trump character totally oblivious of how much he's pissing off the intelligence services and military brass with his casual contempt.

        

Coming Soon (Long Before Moose and Squirrel Catch On)

Production Memorandum

The Lubyankan Candidate

From: XXXXXX (deleted), CEO XXXXX (withheld)

To: Boris Badenov, Associate Producer

Date: XXXXXXX (redacted)

Subject: XXXXXX (classified)

         cc: Natasha Fatale, Extra-Special Thanks

Boris, sweetheart!

First the good news:

         (1) We are this close to getting Ed Norton attached to play the older Jared Kushner, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt very interested as well and closer in age. (Eddie Redmayne is still our first choice, but he's really booked up. Oh — and that "private" URL you got from your FSB buddies? It's for "Twinks on PervHub" and very, very public. Last laugh: We got a body double there in case we do the Christopher Steele-MI6/Trump-in-Moscow-Dossier sequence for the R-rated art-house cut.)

         (2) Soros is out, and the New Money not only acquiesces to but insists on alternate endings, depending on how any coup attempt turns out. If Trump comes out on top, the Final Reveal has him heroically right about the Obama/Deep-State conspiracy.

Responding to your Note on plausibility — It's simple: from 2015 on, DT — Joey Levitt can get us John Lithgow to play him — fears Obama and the Deep State have him surveilled and that they will stop at nothing to prevent rapprochement with Mother Russia and the promise of combined Russian-US action in West Asia, bringing peace to the conflicts among Sunni, Shia, Israelis, Palestinians, etc. and guaranteeing favored Gazprom access to regional oil and natural gas, and American control of silica. (The area isn't called "The Sandbox" for nothing!) And the noble Wahhabists and their Saudi supporters will be added to Vlad P's Orthodox — and Bibi's as well — in alliance with The Donald's true Christians in a planet-girdling swath of faith and God-ordained class privilege.

Of course our hero Jared wants secure communications to the Kremlin and Lubyanka and his biz partners in both Petersbergs. He has to do an end run around the commie-pinko-faggots in the Western security services who will do anything to put the "liberal" into "liberal democracy" and thwart the sovereign People whose truly democratic will is embodied in strong rulers like Putin and Trump.

Or that's how it goes if it looks like Trump is winning. In the alternative ending, Kushner is a traitorous mad dog justly put down by the patriotic forces of NSA, MI-6, BND, DGSE, RCMP, and other agencies of the permanent government.

So, Boris baby: keep talking with Fearless Leader and be sure we'll have facilities from Mosfilm and can shoot in total privacy in Bashkortostan or some other godforsaken place in otherwise Holy Mother Russia.

Why NSA, FBI, and Other Folk Will Continue Spying on Americans

            I'm writing this blog post shortly after a Federal court has ruled illegal — illegal, not specifically unConstitutional — "The unprecedented and unwarranted bulk collection of the entire U.S. population's phone records by the government" of the United States, and not long before the US Congress debates extending key provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act beyond their expiration date of 1 June 2015.

            Moving into a major election year, the Congress is not going to cut back significantly on surveillance of Americans nor are they — or any other moderate-to-highly visible group of politicians — going to cut back significantly in years without major elections. The surveillance of Americans will continue, along with anyone else heavily using electronic communications for two basic reasons.

            First, because large-scale bulk collection of data can be done and is routinely done by various political States and a hell of a lot more by "Non-Governmental Organizations" in a broad sense of the term: including commercial operations. American and others spill our guts to the companies, so the data are out there; and being out there, that data will be collected, sifted, analyzed, shared, sold, and used: by commercial operations and by security operations.

            Second, because no politician with ambitions, and only a vanishingly small number of politicians of any sort would be dumb enough to be totally honest on the subject on record.

            Let me repeat a thought experiment. Question to the President of the United States, or would-be President: "Sir (or Ma'am), given that the President's main duty is to protect the American people, will you do everything possible to prevent an attack on US citizens?" Answer from the President (or candidate):

          I'm not going to ad lib some bullshit clichés here, and you won't get a good sound bite; so I've e-mailed my text to your smart phones but will read it for the record.

          First off, Thomas Hobbes in the 17^th c. said that the first duty of any Sovereign was to protect his, her, or its subjects, and that's true enough; but Hobbes, at one time notoriously, followed that premise about protecting subjects to a logical conclusion that so long as the Sovereign provided protection, he, she, or it had to be obeyed absolutely; and Hobbes pushed his argument to recommend what we'd call totalitarian government.

                   The first duty of the President of the United States is "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States": my first job is defending America, and performing that job can cost the lives of some Americans or, at times, a lot of Americans. The first job of the President includes preserving the US Bill of Rights, and those rights can endanger Americans.

          Most Americans most of the time would be safer in a police state. That we don't have a police state protects racial and ethnic minorities and people with unpopular opinions, but the net effect, even among minorities, is a loss of lives of people who'd survive better under an authoritarian of even totalitarian regime. That "tree of liberty," as Mr. Jefferson said, "must be refreshed from time to time" with blood, but not just "the blood of patriots and tyrants" but also of average, innocent folk who'd be not be killed — or wounded or maimed — if America were as rigorously policed as Germany under the Third Reich: but, in a non-racist way, with equal opportunities for all trouble-makers to be neutralized.

          So, my duty is to protect Americans, but limited by — as the truism has it — limited by balancing safety with liberty.

         And balancing safety and liberty with concerns beyond liberty.          So: Will I do "everything possible to prevent an attack"? No, I will not.          What is possible to be done pretty obviously includes things that have been done. What has been done has been very well documented by chroniclers and historians, and in our time by courageous people working for groups like Amnesty international.

          There has been at least one regime that has tortured children in front of their parents to break the parents and get them to cooperate in suppressing antigovernment activity — or minimally to terrorize the parents and population. Will I order the torture of even one child to prevent an attack that might save many Americans? No, I will not. I will leave it as an absolute prohibition, literally absolute: no torturing of children, not even if doing such evil might — always might — do good.          Great powers including the United Kingdom and the United States have bombed cities to flaming rubble to pursue war aims. The US invaded Iraq on the possibility it might become a threat. Would I order a military nuclear attack on a foreign city to preempt a terrorist attack on a US city? I would not. It's bloody arithmetic, but violating the taboo against nuclear weapons and killing hundreds of thousands of foreigners wouldn't be justified even if it saved the lives of three or four or five thousand Americans.

          Get the point?

          Toughen up, people. If you're going to be free, you and your children are going to have to take risks. If we as a country are to behave morally, some of us who might've lived long, healthy lives will end up dead or wounded or maimed.

            So, I'll protect your butts but also your freedom and that of your descendants. I'll do what I can to keep you safe, but I will also "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States" and try to keep us, as a people, decent human beings.

          If you don't like it,
                   impeach me. OR

                   don't vote for me as President. OR

                   vote against me for re-election.
 

            Now, what are the odds on such a speech getting made, or, if made, the speaker's having a career in US politics?

            So long as politicians can't say, "Hell, no! I won't do everything possible to protect you," they're going to have to do such relatively innocuous "things" as spy on us.

No Immunity for Those Who Torture (a Quick Note)

The logic is really quite simple.

      If the threat to the American people (or whomever) is sufficiently great to justify my torturing someone, it should be sufficiently great that I'd be willing to die or go to prison to meet that threat.

      If I am not willing to face a death penalty — or far more probably some government agent isn't willing even to do serious jail time — then the situation isn't serious enough to warrant torture.

In any event, torture should be treated as a crime as serious as murder, and punished as severely. If there are mitigating circumstances, such as actually finding the ticking hydrogen bomb (so to speak) and saving Dallas from annihilation, let the relevant Executive commute the sentence after a few years of imprisonment, and perhaps give the criminal a medal.

If torture is not treated as a major felony, it can become routine, and far too often, it does.


If patriotic cops and CIA agents are unwilling to risk execution or even just a few years of hard time to prevent some disaster, they don't find the threat existential — and they're probably correct.