US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims
As the hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election grows, a key mystery is why U.S. intelligence would rely on “circumstantial evidence” when it has the capability for hard evidence, say U.S. intelligence veterans.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity | December 12, 2016
MEMORANDUM
Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless
A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else.
Monday’s Washington Post reports that Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined other senators in calling for a bipartisan investigation of suspected cyber-intrusion by Russia. Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.
In what follows, we draw on decades of senior-level experience – with emphasis on cyber-intelligence and security – to cut through uninformed, largely partisan fog. Far from hiding behind anonymity, we are proud to speak out with the hope of gaining an audience appropriate to what we merit – given our long labors in government and other areas of technology. And corny though it may sound these days, our ethos as intelligence professionals remains, simply, to tell it like it is – without fear or favor.
We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:
Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.
Hack: When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data.
All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient.
In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.
Awesome Technical Capabilities
Again, NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved. Thanks largely to the material released by Edward Snowden, we can provide a full picture of NSA’s extensive domestic data-collection network including Upstream programs like Fairview, Stormbrew and Blarney. These include at least 30 companies in the U.S. operating the fiber networks that carry the Public Switched Telephone Network as well as the World Wide Web. This gives NSA unparalleled access to data flowing within the U.S. and data going out to the rest of the world, as well as data transiting the U.S.
In other words, any data that is passed from the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) – or any other server in the U.S. – is collected by the NSA. These data transfers carry destination addresses in what are called packets, which enable the transfer to be traced and followed through the network.
Packets: Emails being passed across the World Wide Web are broken down into smaller segments called packets. These packets are passed into the network to be delivered to a recipient. This means the packets need to be reassembled at the receiving end.
To accomplish this, all the packets that form a message are assigned an identifying number that enables the receiving end to collect them for reassembly. Moreover, each packet carries the originator and ultimate receiver Internet protocol number (either IPV4 or IPV6) that enables the network to route data.
When email packets leave the U.S., the other “Five Eyes” countries (the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the seven or eight additional countries participating with the U.S. in bulk-collection of everything on the planet would also have a record of where those email packets went after leaving the U.S.
These collection resources are extensive; they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources.
The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.
The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like “our best guess” or “our opinion” or “our estimate” etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been “hacked” cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.
The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.
As for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)
Claims of Russia’s Involvement in Cyberattacks Groundless – Kremlin
Sputnik | 12.12.2016
MOSCOW – Accusations that Russia is involved in cyberattacks are unprofessional and groundless, and have nothing in common with reality, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday.
Last week, media reports emerged citing the US Central Intelligence Agency accusing Russia of interfering in the US elections in November to help Donald Trump, who won the vote, secure victory.
“Different media outlets publish such information with an enviable constancy. Many high-ranking officials in the United States and the United Kingdom make such statements with an enviable constancy. And, with an enviable constancy, neither of these groundless statements have ever been backed with any information, I’m not even talking about proof. So this all looks like a completely groundless, unprofessional, unqualified claim and accusation, which have nothing in common with reality,” Peskov told reporters.
Angela Merkel, desperate to stay in power, is now claiming Russian hackers are ready to attack Germany’s 2017 elections
By Alex Christoforou | The Duran | December 12, 2016
Remember when the Obama administration spied on German media as well as the German government, and specifically Angela Merkel.
The Duran remembers.
In 2015 CNN‘s Jake Tapper reported…
An investigation by the German parliament is raising questions on whether the Obama administration not only spied on journalists in that country, but also interfered in the exercise of the free press under the guise of U.S. national security.
That the NSA was spying on German officials is not new, though it continues to upset free press advocates and those with memories of repressive governments both Communist and Nazi. In 2013, the German magazine Der Spiegel, using information gleaned from files stolen and leaked by Edward Snowden, first reported that the NSA was intercepting German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cell phone communications.
On Thursday, WikiLeaks released more information, presumably from that surveillance, from a conversation between Merkel and her personal assistant in October 2011, saying the Chancellor “professed to be at a loss” between two courses of action to take in the Greek financial crisis. The WikiLeaks release also suggested that the NSA was spying on German ministers in addition to Merkel. The U.S. ambassador to Germany, John Emerson, was summoned to meet with the Chancellery chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, to discuss the news.
Less observed this week was news that the NSA was eavesdropping not only on Merkel, but also in some capacity on Germany’s free press, specifically Der Spiegel.
Merkel appears to have forgiven and forgotten the FACT that the US hacked and spied on Germany.
American “factual” hacking of Germany… no problem. Russian “imaginary” hacking of Germany… problem.
Following on Obama’s “Russian hacker” witch hunt, Germany is also sounding the alarm bells of Kremlin influenced hacking meant to weaken Germany and the European Union.
Reuters reports that Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has reported an increase in Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns “aimed at destabilising German society, and targeted cyber attacks against political parties.”
The German agency’s statement to Reuters seems to be perfectly timed with the CIA claim of Russian election hacking. Coincidence?
“We see aggressive and increased cyber spying and cyber operations that could potentially endanger German government officials, members of parliament and employees of democratic parties,” Hans-Georg Maassen, head of the BfV spy agency, said in statement.
Maassen, who raised similar concerns about Russian efforts to interfere in German elections last month, cited what he called increasing evidence about such efforts and said further cyber attacks were expected.
The agency said it had seen a wide variety of Russian propaganda tools and “enormous use of financial resources” to carry out “disinformation” campaigns aimed at the Russian-speaking community in Germany, political movements, parties and other decision makers.
The goal was to spread uncertainty, strengthen extremist groups and parties, complicate the work of the federal government and “weaken or destabilise the Federal Republic of Germany”.
The agency said it had seen a “striking increase” in spear-phishing attacks attributed to Russian hacking group APT 28, also known as “Fancy Bear” or Strontrium. It is the same group blamed for the hack of the U.S. Democratic National Committee this year and a cyber attack on the German parliament in 2015.
The attacks were directed against German parties and lawmakers and were carried out by government bodies posing as “hacktivists”, the agency said.
German officials have accused Moscow of trying to manipulate German media to fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis, weaken voter trust and breed dissent within the European Union so that it drops sanctions against Moscow.
But intelligence officials have stepped up their warnings in recent weeks, alarmed about the number of attacks.
Last month, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she could not rule out Russia interfering in Germany’s 2017 election through Internet attacks and misinformation campaigns.
*****
Russian officials have denied all accusations of manipulation and interference intended to weaken the European Union or to affect the U.S. presidential election.
For an economy in “tatters”, as Barack Obama famously noted, Russia sure has a lot of power in hacking election systems, and manipulating global media. Zerohedge adds…
Either Russian intelligence officials have suddenly become extremely efficient at disrupting national elections in the world’s largest democracies or the establishment leaders of those democracies have intentionally launched a coordinated, baseless witch hunt as a way to distract voters from their failed policies. We have our suspicions on which is more likely closer to the truth…
Like accusations made by Hillary and Obama in the U.S., German politicians, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, have asserted that Russian intelligence agents and media outlets have attempted to spread “fake news” in an effort to “fan popular angst over issues like the migrant crisis.” Of course, it can’t simply be that voters disagree with Merkel’s “open border” policies which have resulted in a massive influx of migrants that have been linked to increasing crime, terrorist attacks and sexual assaults on German citizens… that would just be silly and racist and xenophobic.
Democratic Losers and their Media Backers Seek a Scapegoat for Their Own Disaster
The fake campaign to blame ‘the Russians’
By Dave Lindorff | This Can’t Be Happening! | December 11, 2016
The New York Times and Washington Post, the nation’s two top national newspapers, have been breathlessly reporting of late, with little sign of any appropriate journalistic skepticism, on a purported massive and successful Russian conspiracy to throw the US election to their “favored” candidate, Donald Trump. But the Chicago Tribune has weighed in with a more measured piece, suggesting that while the CIA, a particularly secretive and politically driven organization, may be making that claim, the FBI is not convinced.
While even the Tribune sometimes ignores inserting the requisite “alleged” that should precede any reference to unproven claims that Russia is behind the hacking of the Democratic Party’s (and the Republican Party’s) email server, the paper does also note that Democrats in particular are “frustrated” by the “murky nature” of the FBI’s analysis, with outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), calling on FBI Director James Comey to resign.
The reason for the Democrats’ frustration is also made clear. As the Tribune reports:
With so much of the evidence about Russia’s alleged role in the election shrouded in secrecy because of strict classification rules, Democrats and Republicans in Washington who have access to the underlying intelligence say they have struggled to make their respective cases, leaving an already deeply divided public convinced that both sides are shading their conclusions to help the candidate they backed on Election Day.
The reality is that the CIA has presented no hard evidence that Russia is behind the hacking of the DNC’s or or Clinton’s private home server. The excuse is given that the Agency doesn’t want to disclose any of its sources, so the reader is left with the pathetic plea, from both the Agency and the White House: “Trust us.”
But why would anyone trust the CIA or the White House on anything? We’re talking about an agency and a Executive Branch that between them are known to have lied (during the GW Bush years) about anthrax labs in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, lied about what were aluminum tubes imported to make irrigation equipment being evidence of missile-building, lied about Iraq’s links to Al Qaeda, and (during the Obama years) lied about Syria’s government using Sarin gas on its own people in Damascus, lied about the details of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, lied about the role of a murderous CIA agent captured by Pakistani police while posing as a US consular employee, lied about the extent of National Security Agency Spying both at home and abroad, and lied about Russia invading Ukraine and shooting down a civilian Malaysian jumbo jet.
If one were to take a moment and think about what is being alleged here by Democrats — that a national presidential election was successfully subverted by the releasing of hacked emails showing major corruption and malfeasance by the Democratic Party leadership in undermining the fairness of the party’s presidential primary to benefit one candidate — Hillary Clinton — and to destroy the candidacy of her opponent Bernie Sanders — it should lead to one of two alternative conclusions.
Either the Russians did Americans a favor, by exposing the epic corruption of one of their two major parties and one of the candidates seeking to become president — something that a more independent and aggressive domestic media would have and should have done on their own, if not by hacking then by paying attention to, instead of ignoring and blacking out, what frustrated insiders like DNC Vice Chair Tulsi Gabbard, the Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who quit in disgust saying the DNC was undermining the primaries on behalf of Clinton’s campaign. Or alternatively, we’re being told that our 240-year-old democracy is so shriveled and weak that an outside government can easily undermine it and manipulate the outcome as if we were some corrupt and fragile banana republic.
Either conclusion is rather pathetic and depressing to contemplate.
Meanwhile, the media feeding frenzy over unsubstantiated claims over Russian subversion of our last election ignores the reality that this kind of thing is something the US has been doing abroad at least since the end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War. Not content to just undermine elections through dirty tricks, fake news and secret payments in Europe, Latin America, later in Eastern Europe and Russia, and in Asia, the US has also fomented countless coups to overthrow or attempt to overthrow existing elected governments, most recently in Honduras, Ukraine, Venezuela and Brazil, and so has no grounds to complain by claiming that the Russians were allegedly doing the same thing here.
On the other hand, if the Democratic Party leadership had kept its hand off the scale during the primaries, and had not made such heavy-handed efforts to get major news organizations like the Times, MSNBC, the Daily News, Post and others to help it undermine Bernie Sanders, Sanders would have won both the party’s nomination and the presidency, and probably the Congress also into the bargain, and we wouldn’t be looking at a looming Trump presidency and Republican Congress.
Not only that, but with a genuinely popular candidate running for president in both parties (like it or not Trump was wildly popular among a significant segment of the population), no Russian propaganda campaign would have had a prayer of impacting voter opinion or the results of the voting.
If indeed there really was a Russian effort to swing this recent election, it could only have succeeded in a situation where the electorate was disgusted by its choices and was voting negatively for a lesser evil. And that situation only could arise where the two major parties were so corrupted that they were trying desperately to keep genuinely popular candidates from winning the nomination.
In fact that is what happened. The Republican leadership tried mightily to keep Donald Trump, a loose cannon who has disavowed many basic and long-held Republican principles, such as backing US empire and Israel, supporting any and all trade agreements, and viewing Russia as an existential enemy, from winning their party’s nomination. They failed, but not for lack of trying. The Democratic leadership tried everything, too, to prevent insurgent self-described “socialist” candidate Sanders from winning the nomination, and thanks to underhanded manipulation of the primaries, corrupt meddling in media coverage of Sanders, an anti-democratic voting block of locked-in “super delegates,” committed to backing Clinton whatever the result of the primaries, and some crooked efforts to depress voting in key primary states including New York and California, they succeeded in throwing the nomination to Clinton. She of course was doomed, by their very ham-handed interference in the primaries, to go on to lose the general election.
That corrupt fiasco has left Democratic Party leadership hacks and their backers in the corporate media with nothing to do but find a scapegoat for their disastrous performance, hence the fake “Russia-did-it” claims.
It’s a sad commentary on the pathetic decline of democracy in the United States, but is also a clarion call for a rebirth of grassroots democratic resurgence.
If there’s a bright spot in the new situation, it’s that progressives, socialists, radicals and disaffected citizens of all kinds now should have a clear understanding of how corrupt the Democratic Party really is.
One of two things must happen. That party must be completely swept clean of the hacks, frauds, crooks, compromisers and charlatans who populate its leadership and who hold most of the elected posts remaining in Democratic hands in Congress. Alternatively, the Democratic Party must be abandoned as unsalvageable, with progressive forces, from labor organizations, advocates of the poor and elderly, environmental activists, human rights and peace groups, women’s rights and minority rights organizations, civil libertarians and others rallying both to create something new to replace it, and organizing in the street to resist the new Trump government.
Any new left party needs to abandon the fraudulent tactics of so-called “identity politics,” in which a basically pro-corporate Democratic Party has sought to appease and cajole support for its corporatist candidates and agenda by catering to individual issues of various groups leaning its way by default. Instead, the really big issues need to be tackled head on: expanding Social Security, making Medicare universal for everyone of all ages, restoring genuine progressive taxation on the wealthy, ending foreign wars, closing overseas bases and slashing the military, obeying international law (including treaties with sovereign Native American nations), making public college free to all, nationalizing support for primary and secondary education so that all communities have well-funded, quality public schools, declaring a national mobilization to quickly end reliance upon fossil fuels to combat climate change, and creating jobs for everyone through a massive public spending program on job training and infrastructure repair and modernization.
These and other ideas are things that most Americans can and would get behind, not simply efforts to pander to various specific interest groups.
Do this and the Russians — assuming they even have been trying to manipulate our elections — wouldn’t have a chance of influencing anyone.
Hudson Bay could be ice-free in winter within 5-10 years, says seal researcher
By Susan J Crockford | Polar Bear Science | December 7, 2016
Ringed seal biologist Steven Ferguson, in a statement to a reporter from the Winnipeg Free Press, made one of the boldest predictions I’ve ever heard:
“Hudson Bay could experience its first free winter within 5-10 years.”
You heard it here, folks. It appears Ferguson thinks Hudson Bay was never ice-free in winter even during the Eemian Interglacial, when the Bering Sea was ice-free in winter – something that has not come close happening in recent years (Polyak et al. 2010:1769).
Sounds like a bit of ill-advised grandstanding to me.
The Winnipeg Free Press reported Ferguson’s claim yesterday that ringed seal numbers in Hudson Bay declined by almost 80% the spring after the late freeze-up year of 2010, as part of a non-peer reviewed conference paper he gave (so no one can see the data he’s talking about).
However, polar bear surveys were done that summer and found no decline in numbers. The mark-recapture study (Lunn et al. 2016), you will recall, surveyed only about 1/2 of Western Hudson Bay territory so their estimate of about 800 bears was invalid for comparison to previous years. An aerial survey of the entire subpopulation the same year (Stapleton et al. 2014) found about 1030 bears – statistically, no change since the last estimate in 2004 (the IUCN PBSG uses 1030 as the official population size).
Southern Hudson Bay bears also showed no decline in numbers after 2010, as indicated by a survey undertaken in 2011 and 2012 (Obbard et al. 2015, 2016). The most recent Foxe Basin survey (Stapleton et al.2015) was done just before (summers of 2009 and 2010) the supposed decline of seals in the spring of 2011.
So, if Hudson Bay ringed seals suffered a “near-catastrophic” decline in numbers in the spring of 2011 after the late freeze-up in fall 2010, there must still have been plenty of seals left to feed the polar bears that depended on them for survival.
Apparently, ringed seal numbers rebounded after the spring decline of 2011 but Ferguson either failed to say to what levels or the reporter failed to mention it.
Well yes, I guess they did recover because how else could polar bears have come ashore this summer in such spectacularly good condition if seal numbers were still profoundly low?
For perspective, have a look at this previous post on Hudson Bay seals and the effect of variations in snow cover (for which Ferguson provided much of the data).
Quotes from the WFP article:
Ringed seal population in the Hudson Bay is declining.
A near-catastrophic plunge in the population of ringed seals in Hudson Bay is being blamed on melting sea ice caused by global warming, says a study led by a Manitoba researcher.
The population has been diminished by 75 per cent since aerial surveys started 20 years ago, according to data that will be presented to the ArcticNet conference of scientists in Winnipeg this week.
Lead researcher Steve Ferguson, a scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the University of Manitoba, said global warming is causing sea ice to disappear earlier in spring and form later in the fall, and there is less of it in Hudson Bay.
…
And in turn, the polar bear population will suffer because seals are the main component of their winter diet. The problem is compounded, as less sea ice means the bears have less area to hunt.
Hudson Bay could experience its first ice-free winter within five to 10 years, Ferguson said
“I don’t think polar bears and seals will be able to adapt. I think they’ll just die out in places like Hudson Bay. There’s little to stop the trend in loss of sea ice, even if we stop producing greenhouse gasses,” he said.
The study’s findings portend disaster for the Arctic generally.
“Hudson Bay is the early warning area of climate change because it is so far south,” Ferguson said. “We’re seeing the changes more dramatic in Hudson Bay, and it’s showing us how the rest of the Circumpolar Arctic will be impacted.”
Ferguson said while many people believe climate change is gradual, aerial surveys reveal mammals can disappear in huge numbers in a short period of time.
After a particularly warm 2010, the seal population plunged almost 80 per cent. Seal immune systems seemed to weaken, making them more susceptible to pathogens. Some of that loss has been recovered, he said.
Aerial surveys are not really “population surveys,” but are the most accurate available indicator, and they show a definite trend. They’re done each spring by counting seals on the ice.” [my bold]
References
Lunn, N.J., Servanty, S., Regehr, E.V., Converse, S.J., Richardson, E. and Stirling, I. 2016. Demography of an apex predator at the edge of its range – impacts of changing sea ice on polar bears in Hudson Bay. Ecological Applications, in press. DOI: 10.1890/15-1256
Obbard, M.E., Stapleton, S., Middel, K.R., Thibault, I., Brodeur, V. and Jutras, C. 2015. Estimating the abundance of the Southern Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation with aerial surveys. Polar Biology 38:1713-1725.
Obbard, M.E., Cattet, M.R.I., Howe, E.J., Middel, K.R., Newton, E.J., Kolenosky, G.B., Abraham, K.F. and Greenwood, C.J. 2016. Trends in body condition in polar bears (Ursus maritimus) from the Southern Hudson Bay subpopulation in relation to changes in sea ice. Arctic Science, in press. 10.1139/AS-2015-0027
Polyak, L., Alley, R.B., Andrews, J.T., Brigham-Grette, J., Cronin, T.M., Darby, D.A., Dyke, A.S., Fitzpatrick, J.J., Funder, S., Holland, M., Jennings, A.E., Miller, G.H., O’Regan, M., Savelle, J., Serreze, M., St. John, K., White, J.W.C. and Wolff, E. 2010. History of sea ice in the Arctic. Quaternary Science Reviews 29:1757-1778. http://bprc.osu.edu/geo/publications/polyak_etal_seaice_QSR_10.pdf
Stapleton S., Atkinson, S., Hedman, D., and Garshelis, D. 2014. Revisiting Western Hudson Bay: using aerial surveys to update polar bear abundance in a sentinel population. Biological Conservation 170:38-47. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320713004618#
Stapleton, S., Peacock, E., and Garshelis, D. 2015. Aerial surveys suggest long-term stability in the seasonally ice-free Foxe Basin (Nunavut) polar bear population. Marine Mammal Science 32(1):181-201.
THE CIA MOVES TO INVALIDATE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS BY BLAMING RUSSIAN HACKING
By The_Real_Fly | ZeroHedge | Dec 10, 2016
It’s happening. After careful analysis of all the media punditry and the ‘leaks’ coming out from the CIA, I can only conclude that there is a concerted effort taking place to invalidate the U.S. elections, in an effort to unseat Donald Trump. Last night the Washington Post reported a leak from inside the CIA, saying they had a report that showed evidence that Russia hacked the elections in order to elect Donald Trump. They’re being very specific about that point. Pay attention.
Source: Reuters
The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.
The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”
The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.
The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.
In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.
President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.
A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.
In response to the Washpo article, the Trump campaign issued the following statement.
“These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s representatives said in a statement attributed to the transition team. “The election ended a long time ago … It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”
Bob Baer, former CIA and current ‘Hunting Hitler’ shill, said in an interview today that if the evidence regarding Russia hacking the elections are true, then the only logical thing to do is to hold new elections.
‘If the evidence is there, I don’t see any other way than to vote again.’
Bear in mind, this is all in response to the Wikileaks revelations about the abject corruptness of both the DNC and the Hillary Clinton camp, via the Podesta emails. Instead of offering an explanation for their egregious actions, the elite cadre inside of the Clinton camp have instead gone on the offensive to blame the messenger. The media is running with this story with long strides, not only suggesting that Russia hacked the elections, but also saying Trump was — in fact — a ‘witting asset’ of Moscow. What’s next, an arrest order for Trump and his campaign staff for being covert Russian spies?
‘This nation was attacked by a cyber warfare operation.’
Whatever happened to the smug certainty that the elections wouldn’t be rigged? I suppose what Obama meant was they wouldn’t be rigged had Hillary won, yes?
Paul Joseph Watson offers some valuable insight, in regard to the naked hypocrisy of America’s ruling elite:
Russia interfered in the election! (no evidence).
LEFT FREAKS OUT.
Saudi Arabia provably bankrolled Clinton’s campaign
MEH
New Tempest Erupts over ‘Russian Hacking’… plus a suggestion for Donald Trump
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | December 10, 2016
The Obama administration has ordered a full intelligence review into alleged efforts by Russian hackers to influence the outcome of the presidential election, with the president, according to media reports, requesting that a report on the matter to be completed before he leaves office on January 20.
Deputy White House Press Secretary Eric Schultz says he wants “to be clear” that this is not in any way an effort to undermine Trump’s legitimacy to hold office, only that there is a need to look at possible “malicious activity” carried out by the Russians.
“I think this is going to be a deep dive,” Schultz said, taking pains to clarify that the investigation will examine not only putative Russian manipulation of the most recent election, but also alleged tampering of the elections of 2012 and 2008.
I have a suggestion for Donald Trump. He probably won’t heed it, but I will offer it anyway: that immediately upon assuming office, he order the Office of Management and Budget to investigate how much tax money was squandered by the Obama administration in nearly six years of efforts to overthrow the government in Syria. Maybe Trump could order a ‘deep dive’ and ask the OMB to have the report completed within his first 60 days in office.
Many people, naturally, would see such a call as a retaliation for the investigation now being ordered by Obama–and certainly the media would report it that way–but the results of an investigation of this sort would be at least as beneficial, and probably a whole lot more interesting, than anything that might be turned up about Russians hacking into the computer systems of two thoroughly corrupt political parties.
We could find out, for instance, how much the US spent training and equipping Nour al-Din al-Zenki, the “moderate rebel” group which beheaded a 12-year-old Syrian child on video last July.
Yes, it would be nice if Trump were to order such an investigation… but I’m not going to hold my breath. In any event, we seem to be entering a new phase of anti-Russian propaganda in the media. The call for the intelligence review was made by an Obama administration official on Friday–the same day the Washington Post, in a report based almost solely on anonymous, unnamed “officials,” published allegations about a “secret CIA assessment” whose conclusion is that Russia sought to throw the election to Trump.
“The CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter,” reports the Post.
Repeat: it wasn’t just a case of Russia trying to undermine faith in America’s wonderful, spectacular democracy where office is generally for sale to the highest bidder. No, it was Russia deliberately trying to put Trump into the White House, according to the Post–which is a short step away from accusing Trump of being a Russian agent.
There is also the claim that the Russians hacked into the files of both the Republican Party and the DNC, but that they (the Russians) deliberately sat on the material stolen from the Republicans, choosing instead only to release material embarrassing to the Democrats.
Could any of this be credible? Hard to say, but it seems the vote recount effort has fizzled out, and the new call for an investigation could be a “plan B” aimed either at getting Hillary in the White House or at least weakening Trump to the point where he will essentially be unable to govern or pursue his own independent foreign policy. That’s one way of looking at it anyway.
It also could be designed to create a schism within the Republican Party in the sense that many Republicans could end up finding themselves faced with the difficult choice of having to avow loyalty to their president or loyalty to America. As the Post puts it:
On the other hand, if Republicans downplay the issue, they risk giving a pass to an antagonistic foreign power whom significant majorities of Americans and members of Congress don’t trust and who, if the evidence is accurate, wields significant power to wage successful cyber warfare with the United States.
Two prominent Republicans in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and John McCain, have jumped on the bandwagon in support of a Senate probe into Russian hacking.
“I’m going after Russia in every way you can go after Russia,” said Graham. “I think they’re one of the most destabilizing influences on the world stage. I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay the price.”
It isn’t the US–a country that has been involved in one war or regime change after another for the last 25 years–that is “the most destabilizing influence on the world stage,” in Graham’s opinion; it is Russia.
Trump’s response has been to dismiss the allegations of Russian hacking, while also recalling lies of the past:
These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.
How all this will play out remains to be seen, but it looks like the political divisions in America are widening rather than narrowing…and it also looks like the propaganda war against Russia will continue to be used to the advantage of one side–beyond the November election and on into the new administration.
If the Russians thought sanity would prevail after the transition of power in January, they’re probably in for a disappointment.
BREAKING: The CIA Never Ever Lies
By David Swanson | War Is A Lie | December 10, 2016
At moments like these, when every good responsible and enlightened liberal is recognizing the need to destroy the world in order to save it, by getting World War III started with Russia before Trump can move in and damage anything, I believe it is important to remember a few facts that will strengthen our resolve:
The oligarch who owns the Washington Post has CIA contracts worth at least twice what he paid to buy the Washington Post, thus making the Washington Post the most reliable authority on the CIA we have ever, ever had.
When the CIA concludes things in secret that are reported to the Washington Post by anonymous sources the reliability of the conclusions is heightened exponentially.
Phrases like “individuals with connections to the Russian government” are simply shorthand for “Vladimir Putin” because the Washington Post has too much good taste to actually print that name.
Claims to know extremely difficult things to know, like the motivations of said individuals, are essentially fact, given what we know of the CIA’s near perfect record over the decades.
Getting this wrong, much less questioning something or asking to see any evidence, would endanger us all and threaten innocent children with having false statements made about them in a Russian accent.
The fact that the group of people producing our information is referred to as “the Intelligence Community” means it is intelligent and communal, while the fact that people within that community refused to go along with its claims or allow them to become a so-called national intelligence estimate means that there are traitors right in the heart of our holy warriors’ sanctuary.
If you doubt that the CIA is always, always right you need only focus your attention on the fact that there are Republicans questioning these claims, including Republicans who are terrible people, on top of which Donald Trump is a racist, sexist pig.
Good people are loyal Democrats, and when the Democrats did the thing that we now know was revealed by Putin in order to make Trump president (namely cheating its politically and morally superior candidate out of its nomination) that was done as a generous sacrifice for us and our children.
Claims made without public evidence have never turned out to be false or exaggerated in the slightest in the past, certainly not in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Vietnam, Nicaragua, or any other part of the earth.
When I looked into every past war and discovered that they were always preceded by lies, it was because I had secret psychic information that at some future date Vladimir would reward me. I should wait patiently for his payment and then report it to the CIA/Washington Post.
Israel defends fake Lebanon military buildup map as Hezbollah’s ‘war crime illustration’
RT | December 10, 2016
A “declassified” map of an alleged Hezbollah military buildup in southern Lebanon shared by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has been exposed by Twitter users as a fake, forcing the IDF to admit the picture was just a “visual illustration” of the militant group’s “war crimes.”
The map titled “Declassified map of Hezbollah’s military infrastructure in Lebanon” was posted on the official IDF Twitter account on Tuesday, highlighting 85 towns and villages in the southern part of the country.
Spots, showing civilian settlements were surrounded by numerous multicolored dots, labeled with names such as “weapon warehouse” or “rocket launcher” and other military facilities.
The tagline of the image said “Hezbollah’s hiding behind Lebanon’s civilians,” while the tweet’s caption was the simple and rather dramatic statement, “this is a war crime.”
Such a level of detail and awareness of alleged Hezbollah activities would be truly impressive, if the map had not turned out to be a fake. Some Twitter users pointed out that it was unlikely the image was a “declassified map,” since its history showed that it had been created using Google Maps via an IDF spokesperson account. The dots, marking the alleged “military buildup,” even featured a repetitive pattern.
IDF later said the map had been an “illustration,” and users simply misinterpreted it as a piece of declassified intelligence. The map’s title, tagline and caption were presumably “illustrative” too.
“The illustration reflects how Hezbollah has positioned its terrorist infrastructure within the civilian arena,” the spokesperson told The Times of Israel.
The map, despite its ”illustrative” nature, has been shown to almost every foreign diplomat visiting Israel, to demonstrate that while Hezbollah participates in the Syrian civil war, it continues preparations for conflict with Israel and hides among civilians located near the border, according to a Channel 2 report.
Israel has attacked targets allegedly linked to Hezbollah in neighboring countries, mainly in Syria. The most recent incident of this kind reportedly happened on Wednesday, when Israeli rockets hit the Mezzeh military airport near Damascus.
Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman commented on the issue at a meeting with European Union envoys in Israel Wednesday.
“We are first and foremost making efforts to maintain the security of our citizens and protect our sovereignty, and trying to prevent the smuggling of sophisticated weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah,” Lieberman said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in April also admitted multiple strikes on targets in Syria in order to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining “game-changing” weaponry.
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The 52 Major Jewish American Organizations and Israel Celebrate Passover with the Slaughter of 25 Muslim, Christian and Secular Palestinians
By James Petras • Unz Review • April 8, 2018
Introduction
As of April 7, nearly three thousand unarmed Christian, Muslim and secular Palestinians have been wounded, over three dozen are in critical condition and at least twenty-five unarmed protestors, including children have been assassinated by hundreds of Israeli snipers and heavily armed troops shooting tank shells into crowds of civilians protesting their decades of incarceration by the racist Israeli state.
The Israeli government praised the ‘restraint and morality’ of the IDF, as did the fifty-two Major Jewish American Organizations (MJAO) who largely control the US Congress. These grotesque massacres began during the Christian Holy Week on Good Friday and Easter, coinciding with the Jewish Passover. The self-righteous officials of the MJAO and their relatives and friends broke matzos at joyful Seders as the blood of Palestinians soaked into ground at the fence containing the largest open-air prison camp in history, Gaza.
While tribal loyalties bonded the Israeli and Jewish American leaders, the politicians of the Western oligarchic electoral regimes refrained from criticizing the shocking display of brute force and even defended Israel’s cold blood mass killings of Palestinian civilians in their Gaza prison.
This paper will discuss and analyze the reasons for Israel’s willing Western accomplices and the centrality of its fifth column in the United States. … continue
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- New Study Documents A 20-Year Pause In Arctic Sea Ice Decline – Driven By Internal Variability
- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
- Televised! Leading German Political Candidate Tells Schoolchildren CO2 Makes Sun Hotter!
- New Study: A Century Warming Of 1.1°C Is ‘Commonplace’ And ‘Not Unusual’ During This Interglacial
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