Kester Ratcliff’s International Assadist Directory Is His “Contribution to the War Effort”
By Sara Abed | American Herald Tribune | August 31, 2018
After more than seven years of war, which have brought death and destruction, pain and suffering, and every form of terrorism imaginable to the Syrian people, the war is finally entering its final stage. The much-anticipated battle of Idlib will commence soon. The plan to liberate every inch of Syria, which has been stated numerous times by President Bashar Al Assad, is underway.
RT states, “Syrian forces are gearing up to take the last terrorist stronghold. The US is boosting its military presence, and Russia is warning of a false-flag chemical attack. RT looks at the alignment of forces ahead of the battle for Idlib. American warships, cruise missile delivery systems, strategic bombers and other hardware have arrived in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf earlier this week. Washington is denying that any buildup is taking place, but Moscow says the assets are being gathered for a massive strike against the Syrian government.”
The Syrian people have been through unimaginable circumstances, brought on by a western manufactured insurrection, both on the ground and in the media. One would think, that bringing this war to an end, and allowing Syrians to rebuild their lives, would be an objective shared by all humanitarians and activists, but unfortunately, that is far from the case.
Propagandists who pose as humanitarians and activists, while ironically supporting terrorist aligned militant groups, have once again amplified their coordinated media efforts to spread misinformation ahead of the final big battle in Syria.
Timing is crucial
Journalist and book author Brandon Turbeville writes, “As mainstream media doubles down in its coordinated propaganda against the Syrian government and in support of direct Western military intervention, the alternative media has been going up against unprecedented censorship on the part of the social media and Internet corporate giants at the same time. For that reason, it is becoming harder and harder to find accurate sources of information regarding Syria as well as all other topics in a general Internet search. While readers of the alt media before Google’s purge and censorfest took place have largely remained, the amount of people being exposed to new information and an alternative to government and corporate propaganda has been drastically reduced.”
“Late last week, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said that the White Helmets group plans to film videos for Middle Eastern and English-language media outlets after staging a false-flag chemical weapons attack in Syria in order to further destabilize the war-torn country.” Sputnik News
In order to stay one step ahead of the game, Sputnik goes on to say, “Damascus has handed documents to the UN, to prove that al-Nusra Front* terrorists plan to conduct a chemical weapons attack in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib and point the finger at the country’s government, according to Syria’s UN envoy Bashar Jaafari.”
International Assadist Directory
Kester Ratcliff a “Former Project Researcher at University of Bristol” who studies “Top Programme Evolutionary Biology MSc at RUG Groningen” and has previously studied “Animal Behaviour and Welfare Science at University of Bristol”, according to his Facebook page, has created what he calls a “references directory on 151 public figures who have expressed support and/or whitewashed the Assad regime, with examples and references.” He stated, “The purpose of this list is to facilitate finding the references to see and to show people who genuinely don’t know what is true and who to trust about Syria why the people on this list should not be trusted as sources.” Let’s take a moment to digest that last quite bold sentence. The people he cherry picked for his directory should not be trusted according to Ratcliff.
Who is Kester Ratcliff?
Ratcliff dedicated a substantial amount of time and effort to smearing Vanessa Beeley who has extensive experience working on-the-ground in Syria. In his directory he states “It is my honest opinion that she is manifestly an agent of the Assad regime, that she should be added to the lists of sanctioned persons under the UK and the EU sanctions on Syria, and that she should be arrested if she enters the UK or any EU Member State’s territorial jurisdiction and charged with direct and publicly broadcast incitement of the crime against humanity of widespread and systematic attacks on humanitarian workers in an armed conflict zone, under Article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. She responded to Ratcliff’s tweet, with the question on everyone’s mind “Who are you?”
In 1978, a popular English rock band by the name of “The Who” released a song titled Who Are You? One of the lines is, “I remember throwing punches around and preaching from my chair”. What oddly perfect description of Ratcliff, who makes accusations against people he has never met, talked to, or even interacted with, all from the comfort of his chair.
Others on social media asked questions such as what expertise does Ratcliff bring to the table? How qualified is he to tell a broad audience who is trustworthy and who is not when it comes to the Syrian conflict? I am paraphrasing but the point is the same.
One might imagine, that this self-proclaimed “political thinker” (per his Medium bio) must have a background that qualifies him to give an opinion on journalists, political commentators, and other public figures who have contributed written or oral material during the course of over seven years of a western manufactured insurrection in Syria.
However, the questions certainly outnumber the answers in this case. What we can gather is that Ratcliff has never stepped foot in Syria, and relies on second-hand information, such as that from refugees whom he met and coached during his time in Greece.
The ever-evolving man of many interests
Ratcliff gives us more insight into who he is in the few articles he has written and published on various sites. In an essay published by Medium titled “Suffering and the Construction of Authority” Ratcliff wrote about his mother “I had a mentally ill and abusive mother, grew up as effectively her sole carer. During my teenage years, the most fundamental issue we fought about and the most frequently was that she demanded I should ‘respect her authority’ merely because of her conventional position as my parent, which I could not do because she was actually completely untrustworthy, unreliable and, literally, insane, and in fact I had to practically care for her like a parent would, when I was a child. Practically our roles were reversed, but she insisted on the ‘authority’ conventionally attached to her position. Needless to say, I absolutely refused.”
Ratcliff goes on to say, “That developmental experience made me extra sensitive, vigilant and radically opposed to all forms of authoritarianism in every area of human life. ‘Authoritarianism’ is the idea of ‘authority’ existing for its own sake, inherently possessing its authority, in an alienated way, rather than it being a characteristic of a relationship, in which authority is given and received (inter-subjectively) for certain mutually beneficial purposes.”
You can read more about his views on authority in his essay on Medium where his bio reads: EvoBio MSc student at RUG in Groningen, refugee solidarity volunteer, activist, political thinker.
Ratcliff shares with us the next chapter of his life in the same essay, “At 18, I ‘ran away’ to a Buddhist monastery, in North East Thailand, spent three and half years in Thailand, in monasteries of the Ajahn Chah lineage, and three years in branch monasteries in Australia. Thai Theravada Forest Tradition has its own problems with traditionalist authoritarianism and inter-cultural clashes. There are deep internal conflicts in the international monastic ‘community’ about Thai traditionalism, individualist autocratic authority of abbots, Thai collectivist authoritarianism, the forest tradition’s claims to radical scriptural orthopraxy, then exposed to European traditions of textual and historical criticism, and the trigger issue for an almost-schism in the midst of these underlying issues was the revival of full ordination for nuns. I very much sided with the radically scripturally orthopraxic side of that conflict, essentially because I could not trust a person then, so the scriptural advice “we take refuge in the Dhamma (the Buddha’s teaching), not in a person” (MN108/ MA 145) was important to me. I studied intensely too: communal monastic legal history (I also taught monastic law for a while), sociology of early Buddhism, and observed and introspected on authority.”
He wrote about his Buddhist monk experience for Buddha Channel in an article titled Kester Ratcliff —” Monastic lineages and the Vinaya: Which is Buddhist?” ”I used to be a monk for six and half years in the Thai Forest Tradition, my name then was Bhikkhu Santi. As well as a lot of meditation, in those six years I also did a lot of study and particularly Vinaya, and especially the two main neglected areas -the Bhikkhuni Vinaya and the communal legal procedures (adhikarana-samatha-dhammas).
Ratcliff shares an interestingly similar perspective about the abbots, as that of his mother in the same article.
*(Kester Ratcliff’s Monastic passport Source: Facebook page)
“However, I found the abbots I was expected to trust untrustable -firstly, because they demanded it too much -if somebody is truly trustworthy, they don’t need to say “you should respect me” or anything of that sort, they would be confident that they are trustworthy enough to just be themselves quietly; like getting a toddler to come in for a hug, you have kneel down, open your arms, and wait for the kid to run into your arms; grabbing or shouting don’t work.”
Ratcliff writes about his experience as a monk and how his journey led him to join the Quakers in an article on his website titled “Mulesika -Seeking the Roots”. “Personally my journey has led me to join the Quakers, last year, now that I’m a layman in a family-oriented life. I no longer call myself a Buddhist, and I can use conventional regional religious terminology like ‘God’ quite comfortably (with a massive footnote explaining that I don’t mean anything supernatural or having sabhava). I find I fit much better in the Quaker community, and one of the most obvious differences for me from my experience of the TFT is that the Quaker ‘institution’ treats people as full adults (maybe even a bit too much, because we mostly seem to attract people in their 40s onwards!), but I needed a change and it’s the furthest opposite extreme if you have religious allergy to hierarchicalism and enforced prolongation of adolescent-type dependence.”
Working with Refugees
-Ratcliff wrote an article titled Systemic legal issues for refugees in Europe and affected by Europe globally in which he states this is “A list of in-depth sources with connecting notes about the major systemic legal problems confronting refugees as they try to reach a place of safety. The major issues are in order of encounter from a refugee’s point of view.”
-On Ratcliff’s Facebook profile it states that he manages a group called Visas for Asylum or Safe Passage to EU.
-Ratcliff writes about his work with HIAS on his blog Silence of Eternity:
“HIAS is a refugee legal aid NGO from America, with operations in 14 countries and an implementing partner for the USA resettlement programme through UNHCR. It’s a Jewish organisation, founded in 1881 in the USA, originally was for Jews escaping persecution in Europe, but now serves any human person in the same sort of situation – http://www.hias.org/
Specifically what I plan to do in Chios next week and the week after:
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Help physically set up the information tent – I’m not sure whether to take my power tools as well as my legal textbooks, but I have both here;
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Try to set up a psychosocially safe, private and dignified environment in which to ask people to recall what happened to make them flee their homes and countries;
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Discuss with them through the Guide I’ve prepared on how to prepare for asylum interviews, clarify their answers with them, and write down their statements ready for them to take in with them to their interviews (this should assist both the refugees and EASO/ the Greek Asylum Service, making the process both fairer and more efficient for everyone).
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If there’s enough time, practice mock interviews with people.
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Connect people whose cases I can’t deal with as a non-lawyer to the network of pro bono refugee legal aid lawyers I’m in contact with now, across NGOs.
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Get a more detailed realistic sense of what’s needed and what works, to feed into the design of the HIAS Greece legal aid programme.”
-Ratcliff wrote a comment in response to an article written by the Sun titled “SYRIA CRIME WAVE: Hundreds of Syrians in UK arrested over string of offences including rape and child abuse, in which he stated “… I have reported it to IPSO as unfactual and discriminatory and to my local police force as a crime under S.23 of the Public Order Act 1986 for publication and distribution of material with intent or likely to stir up racial hatred, and written to my MP to ask her to write to the CPS asking them to seriously consider prosecuting you this time. I believe the journalists and their editors responsible for this publication, as well as the directors ultimately responsible for everything that happens in the whole company, should be convicted for incitement to racial or religious hatred, sentenced to the maximum term of 7 years imprisonment, and all of them should be banned from ever holding the directorship of any company ever again.”
The sole purpose of sharing this article and Ratcliff’s comment is to show that his calls for people to be convicted and imprisoned are nothing new.
In response to an article titled “Spiritual influence” and elections Ratcliff wrote “… the duty to vote and participate in social democracy is a serious public duty which also ought to be considered a religious obligation.”
Ratcliff is in his final-year as an undergrad student of Animal Behaviour & Welfare Science at Bristol University in the Veterinary Sciences School. His current dissertation project revolves around modelling how parasites influence the collective movement patterns that emerge in sheep flocks, using comparative evidence from research in fish.
This brief history based on public information that Ratcliff has generously offered via multiple media platforms might give us some insight about him, but leaves us with more questions than answers. Why has a relatively unknown individual in the Syrian conflict, taken on this task of quietly collecting information on 151 people, and placing a target on each and every one of their backs?
Hi Kester. I’m doing some research into the motives of war propagandists and war narrative protectors. Were you asked to create this list, or did you do so in the hopes of generating a paid opportunity, possibly by attracting attention from organisations like Atlantic Council?
— Angelis Dania (@NeotipPro) August 29, 2018
Ratcliff’s “contribution” to the Syrian war effort
Ratcliff states on a Facebook post that this is his “contribution to the war”. That’s an important point to take note of. Ratcliff is feeling the euphoric effects of overnight fame, but has also made it clear that he does not want people to focus on him as a person or his typos or his lack of credentials. No, it would be best to just blindly accept everything he has stated, without giving it much thought.
Ratcliff knew that this directory would cause a storm of backlash based on some of his facebook posts.
Ratcliff had the help of a retired lawyer friend, and two journalists that helped check his “monster article”, in addition he checked it himself a “bazillion” times and remarkably still managed to misspell a number of names and get many facts wrong.
Ratcliff doesn’t want this to be about him, he says “It’s not really about me”.
Filled to the Brim with Errors, Misspellings, and Inaccuracies
Ratcliff takes a lot of pride in his directory. On Facebook, he stated, “I have checked it very carefully, and endeavored to be fair. Despite hating them, I will not remove anyone or change what I have said about them, in spite of any amount of harassment, so don’t even bother trying, but if there is any real factual inaccuracy I will of course immediately correct it.”
Notice how much emotion he expresses towards those he has chosen to blacklist. He doesn’t merely disapprove of their viewpoints, but he hates them as individuals. Emotions can certainly cloud a person’s judgment, and by the looks of it, Ratcliff has no reservations sharing his feelings publicly about individuals whom he has never met or interacted with for the most part. The hate he mentions must have developed during the time that he was lurking in the background, watching and taking notes of who should make his list of untrustworthy sources, as he refers to them.
Ratcliff wrote in a public Facebook post on his page about the typos.
For someone who claims to have checked his directory “very carefully,” it sure was filled to the brim with inaccuracies, and even people’s names were misspelled. Their very identity was wrong. If Ratcliff doesn’t care much for spelling people’s names correctly what else has he not given much thought to in his directory?
Medium email and article suspension
Medium has served as a platform for a number of Ratcliff’s essays and incoherent drivel.
Here are just two examples of Ratcliff’s literary balderdash:
–Example of OSINT on 21stcenturywire Vanessa Beeley’s latest Assadist propaganda against the White Helmets – which Ratcliff states is “an incomplete draft from 22 June 2017. I’m publishing it now just in order to send it to another researcher.” He also states “One of Vanessa Beeley’s useful idiots challenged me to “prove it” — obviously they won’t read this or think about it or stop repeating lies, because they don’t believe in objective factual truth, but for the record, here is some proof”.
–Definition and discussion of the meaning and importance of ‘Bullshit’. He states “I wrote this long definition and discussion of ‘bullshit’ to enable me to write a much shorter and simpler paragraph defining it in a major article later.”
His latest contribution has since been suspended by Medium. Their reasons for suspension can be seen in the following tweet.
The “Assadist” list of @KesterRatcliff has been removed from Medium for the reasons as below 👇🏻
Now, if any harm happens to me due to this inciting article, I’ll held Kester full responsibility cos I consider it a green light to Islamist cells in Europe to target these names pic.twitter.com/qDaH3Cf2cI— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) August 29, 2018
The Assadist slur vs. Pro-Assad
According to Merriam Webster the definition of a sadist is one characterized by sadism: a person who takes pleasure in inflicting pain, punishment, or humiliation on others. Sadism is defined as the derivation of sexual gratification from the infliction of physical pain or humiliation on another person.
This clarifies why some choose to use the slur Assadist rather than simply saying Pro-Assad when insulting those who have committed one or more of the following “crimes”:
1. questioning the official narrative
2. doubting the truthfulness of mainstream media
3. speaking up against foreign intervention, imperialism, and terrorism
4. and lastly the most contentious of all according to characters such as Ratcliff… wait for it… actually supporting the elected president of Syria! President Bashar Al Assad ::horrifying gasp::
If these reasons truly qualify one to be called an Assadist then Ratcliff should have included the millions of people around the world who support the legitimate president of Syria Dr. Bashar Al Assad.
Of course using the term Assadist is not original or creative on Ratcliff’s part, nor is he the first to create such a ridiculous list, which could also have dangerous ramifications for those on it. Others have tread these murky waters before Ratcliff, just google Assadist and you’ll see a selection of unimpressive ramblings.
– Louis Proyect wrote about Assadists on his blog The Unrepentant Marxist. In one of his entries titled Young Assadist Academics Nursing their Wounds he stated the following “One of the most depressing things about the six years of war in Syria, besides the obvious destruction of life and property, is the trail of intellectual damage left behind by investigative journalists, leftist leaders, and academics who bend the truth or outright lie in order to defend the mafia state. History will certainly remember people such as Seymour Hersh, Theodore Postol, and Tariq Ali as being ethically and intellectually challenged no matter how virtuous they were in the past.”
One can’t help but wonder if Ratcliff could be Proyect’s protégé? Either way, whether he is or not, doesn’t matter much, but it is interesting to see the similarities between the two, especially their love of using the same slurs and list-making passion.
What a useful tool their contributions must be to terrorist aligned opposition groups who are seeking to shut down dissenters especially during this last phase of a war… which they have clearly lost.
Media Responses to Ratcliff’s Directory
Ratcliff has been sharing articles written in response to his directory on his social media accounts with uber-enthusiasm. Overnight fame can be exhilarating and Ratcliff is enjoying every millisecond of his five minutes of fame.
Ratcliff’s greatest accomplishment thus far, could very well be getting the attention of RT which resulted in not one, but three articles being published in a span of two days, in response to his Assadist directory.
– August 27th: Chomsky, Hersh and… Boris Johnson? Twitter pundits ponder odd ‘Assadist’ blacklist “An obscure blog post, that accuses journalists and intellectuals of inciting “crimes against humanity” for their views on Syria, has received glowing reviews from verified Twitter pundits, despite its factually dubious claims. Featured on an unfrequented Medium blog, the “International Assadists References Directory” lists 151 people and organizations who have allegedly “expressed support and/or whitewashed the Assad regime.” The eclectic compilation of “Assadists” features individuals and groups of all political stripes and backgrounds, from the Greek nationalist political party Golden Dawn to Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters. Notable journalists such as Seymour Hersh, John Pilger, Peter Hitchens, Glenn Greenwald and Patrick Cockburn are also listed as reckless Assad apologists.”
– August 28th: Don’t tell him, Pike! The laughable (yet sinister) list of ‘International Assadists’
Neil Clark wrote “A newly-compiled directory of 151 ‘International Assadists’ is both hilarious – for all the mistakes in it, but disturbing too, as it represents a McCarthyite attempt to police the debate on Syria.”
He goes on to say “By Ratcliff’s own admission you don’t even have to be ‘pro-Assad’ to be included in his ‘International Assadists Reference Directory’. His definition of ‘Assadist’ is incredibly wide – so wide in fact that it even includes those who have supported air strikes on Syrian government targets. Here he quotes Ratcliff as having written “All pro-Assad people are Assadists (they repeat Assadist propaganda claims), but not all Assadists are in their own view pro-Assad,” he explains in the introduction. In other words, if you repeat anything on Syria that he regards as an “Assadist propaganda claim”, you’re an Assadist. Even if you make it clear you strongly oppose the Syrian president – and support bombing Syrian airfields, like former UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who is listed.”
– August 28th ‘Assadist list’ nothing more than McCarthyism paired with ‘hoodwink’ science George Galloway wrote “Yet I have made the Assadist List, compiled by a student scribbler, a Kester Ratcliff, whose name needn’t detain us for long. He is his masters’ voice and his masters are whom we should focus on.”
Responses from some of the “Assadists” in Ratcliff’s directory
You mean the regurgitation of already written, unoriginal, logical fallacy and patent lies based smears prior? Yes, seems Kester is looking for an opening with NATO’s Atlantic Council or #Bellingcrap.
— Eva Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) August 27, 2018
Even aside from the partisan slander and ludicrous allegations, there are many blatant errors/lies in this blacklist (eg, it falsely claims journalists are working for media outlets they in fact don’t work for).@Brian_Whit should be ashamed for endorsing this malicious garbage.
— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) August 24, 2018
It seems that @KesterRatcliff who claims to be a “human rights activist” is not only a horrible blogger but could be mentally unstable and possibly dangerous person. pic.twitter.com/VcNaDOvJzn
— Kevork Almassian (@KevorkAlmassian) August 30, 2018
The deranged author of this shabby and slanderous McCarthyite blacklist has expressed his desire for the criminal prosecution of most on it for their speech and journalism. He names @VanessaBeeley as one person he’d especially like to throw in jail. https://t.co/is3s9Psq1v https://t.co/7ctZqR8Q4g
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 27, 2018
Alt Media List of Sources
If poppycock isn’t your literary preference, and you have an appetite for truthful, honest reporting and journalism, might I suggest you read the following refreshing list of sources that have covered the war in Syria in many different capacities.
Brandon Turbeville is an exceptional journalist and accomplished author of seven books. Turbeville has first-hand experience from visiting Syria which only adds to the verity of his articles. Turbeville has published 1000’s of articles on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. He has created an incredibly useful directory that should be read and shared by those who value the truth: You Want A Real List? Directory Of Accurate Alt Media Sources On Syria. Turbeville wrote “… with disturbed “researchers” and various shadowy organizations creating silly lists of “Assadists” “Fake News,” and “Russian propaganda,” I thought it might be useful to create a list of my own, containing a number of the same names, in order to provide a list of researchers, journalists, and activists who have been working to expose the true agenda behind what is happening in Syria today in hopes that my readers will also find their work and find access to additional sources of information which certainly will not be available in the mainstream press. This, of course, is in addition to my own work.”
To conclude on a positive note, the reality on the ground shows that the foreign-backed militants have failed miserably in their pursuit of unseating President Assad and completely leveling the jasmine-scented country.
The will of the Syrian people has proven to be stronger than bombs and propaganda. In a last-ditch effort to shift the outcome of this war, misguided mouthpieces and paid propagandists alike will make a lot of noise, but that’s really all it is.
Their futile attempts at prolonging the war by demonizing people they disagree with is nothing more than a distraction. Ultimately their actions cannot and will not disturb the unrivaled unity of the majority of the Syrian people.
“Kester Ratcliff” – these are the people us Syrians, living in #Syria, despise the most. Self-righteous, self-proclaimed “Human Rights Activists”, that create character-assassination hit lists like this to defame and discredit anyone that speaks out against regime-change wars. https://t.co/U7uOV7JLaU
— Hannibal Khoury (@The_Cyrenian) August 25, 2018
Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. Her articles can be read at the Rabbit Hole.
The Story of the Defected Restaurant Workers: Time to Stop Lying?
By Konstantin Asmolov – New Eastern Outlook – 03.09.2018
Among several high-profile stories which the author is closely monitoring is the so-called “case of the defected restaurant workers”. Readers may recall that on April 7, 2016, a manager and twelve waitresses of the North Korean restaurant Ryugyong in Ningbo (a city in China’s north-eastern province of Zhejiang) fled to South Korea for official reasons of “choosing freedom”. The story seemed strange enough from the outset. Suspicions soon arose that their escape was planned by the National Intelligence Service. Pyongyang has demanded the return of its citizens which even resulted in this issue being raised at high-level inter-Korean talks.
In May 2018, South Korean cable TV channel JTBC reported that restaurant manager Heo Gang-il scared the waitresses into joining him and fled to South Korea on the instructions of the National Intelligence Service. The manager admitted that he initially planned to escape alone, but following South Korean Intelligence Service threats, inclined other employees to escape with him. In exchange for such cooperation, he was promised South Korean citizenship and a restaurant in South-East Asia which he and other escapees would manage.
On May 30, at the UN office in Geneva, the representative of North Korea called on human rights bodies to investigate the circumstances of the escape. But the biggest blow to South Korea was delivered on July 10 at a press conference in Seoul given by UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea Tomás Ojea Quintana. The latter met with several former employees of the restaurant and announced that not all of them fled from China to South Korea of their own free will. Therefore, individual preferences regarding their future place of residence must be taken into account. Moreover, if the abduction is confirmed as such, it must be considered a crime.
The statement made by UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in North Korea caused great resonance. On July 11, the Ministry of Unification of South Korea immediately stated that the North Korean citizens fled to the South voluntarily. At the same time, the Ministry representative refused to disclose details for fear of jeopardizing the safety of refugee families in North Korea.
North Korea’s reaction was immediate. In a comment published on July 20 on the North Korean propaganda website Uriminzokkiri, it was stated that if the case of the restaurant employees is not resolved, it may not only create problems for conducting reunions between divided South and North Korean families, but will also jeopardize inter-Korean relations. The current situation, it reported, will be considered an indicator of South Korea’s sincerity in improving its relations with the North. A similar theme may be heard in materials published by the North Korean official newspaper Rodong Sinmun. However, Pyongyang finally decided not to interfere and go through with the reunion of families as scheduled.
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Unification confirmed that the employees of the North Korean restaurant in China were not under any pressure and their decision to flee to the South of the Korean Peninsula was voluntary. As was stated by its representative on July 30, the position of the South Korean government on the issue remains unchanged. The Ministry of Unification is currently cooperating with the National Human Rights Commission which had begun an audit on the matter.
However, things were again ruined by restaurant manager Heo Gang-il who on August 4, 2018 gave an interview to the New York Times. This time, his story was enriched with a greater number of details. It turns out that the driving force behind his escape was a Chinese-Korean customer who threatened to inform the North Korean authorities of Heo’s regular meetings with the South Korean Intelligence Service. When Heo asked South Korean Intelligence to transport him to South Korea, he was contacted by an agent on April 3 who instructed him to flee with all 19 waitresses within 48 hours. When Heo refused, the agent threatened to inform North Korean authorities of his attempted escape, but on the other hand promised to pay him millions of dollars if he went through with the plan.
Finally, Heo bought 20 plane tickets to Kuala Lumpur, and on April 5 told the waitresses that they are going to move to a different work location. Shortly before the group left the restaurant to go to the airport, five waitresses noticed something was wrong and escaped. The Chinese restaurant owner also got involved: he chased after the group in his car and rammed a taxi transporting two of the waitresses. The others continued their escape without them.
When the waitresses finally found out that they were going to the South Korean Embassy in Malaysia, they broke down in tears. Nevertheless, Heo convinced them to continue their journey to South Korea, saying that things had gone too far as they were, and if they returned to North Korea, everyone would be executed. Just before boarding the plane to Kuala Lumpur, Heo called a South Korean Intelligence Officer and heard cries of enthusiasm and applause at the other end of the line. Heo was proclaimed a hero and promised that the escape would not be covered by the media, “so as not to endanger the families of those who fled”. But the very next day, the news regarding those who “chose freedom” were trumpeted everywhere. Neither did he get the promised millions of dollars. Heo is currently forced to work in minimarkets and as a delivery service truck driver.
Of course, the attention the story provoked is closely related to the political situation. The “restaurant worker scandal” is intended to cover up the previous “comment scandal”. As regards the “military conspiracy case”, “there were reasonable suspicions” that the escape was organized by representatives of military, rather than “civilian” intelligence. Of course, the self-incrimination of the manager in his interview to U.S. media will be a hard fact to battle for South Korean authorities as they continue declaring that “everyone had fled voluntarily”.
Konstantin Asmolov, PhD in History, Leading Research Fellow at the Center for Korean Studies of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Evo Morales: US is The Real Global Threat, Not Venezuela
teleSUR | September 1, 2018
Bolivian President Evo Morales said Friday, on Twitter, that “the U.S. is the real threat to humankind,” responding to Senator Marco Rubio’s talk of using the U.S. Armed Forces against the Venezuelan Government as it “has become a threat for the region and even for the United States.”
Morales said “Senator Marco Rubio, warns of using the Empire’s army against the people of Venezuela because he assumes a “threat” against the security of the U.S.” The Bolivian president remarked that is the U.S. is the real threat to the world’s people, citing “its history of interventionism and military coups d’état in the world.”
The Florida Republican senator made the comments after meeting with national security advisor for the Donald Trump Administration, John Bolton, at the White House Wednesday.
“I believe that the United States Armed Forces are only used in case of a threat to national security. I think there is an argument, very strong, that can be used at this moment that Venezuela has become a threat to the region and even to the United States.”
Earlier this year, in February, Rubio made a similar statement, encouraging the Venezuelan Army to overthrow the Nicolas Maduro-led Bolivarian government.
“The world would support the Armed Forces in #Venezuela if they decide to protect the people & restore democracy by removing a dictator,” Rubio said, in a tweet, on Feb. 9.
On Saturday, Jun. 16, Bolivian President Evo Morales forcefully stated that Latin America “is no longer the United States’ backyard,” while denouncing the United States’ attempt to convince its South American allies to help orchestrate a military intervention or coup in Venezuela.
Iran dismisses claims on sending ballistic missiles to Iraq
Mehr News Agency | September 1, 2018
TEHRAN – Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman has dismissed as ‘unfounded’ and ‘absurd’ some earlier report by Reuters claiming that Iran has supplied some Shia groups in Iraq with missiles.
In a Saturday statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Ghasemi dismissed as unfounded and ridiculous what has been reported by certain news outlets and media claiming that Iran has sent missiles to Iraq.
In reaction to a report that has just been released by Reuters claiming Iran has given ballistic missiles to some Shia groups in Iraq and is developing the capacity to build more there, Ghasemi said that such claims are aimed at sowing fear among regional countries in line with their policy of demonizing Iran.
The spokesman of Iran’s Foreign Ministry noted that such unfounded claims are merely aimed at affecting Iran’s foreign relations, especially with its neighbors.
‘Deceptive’: NYT Botches Story on Suspended Korean War Games
Sputnik – 01.09.2018
The New York Times’ Thursday article “Pause in Military Drills, Ordered by Trump, Leaves South Koreans Uneasy” is giving its readers “deceptive” information, historian and investigative journalist Gareth Porter told Sputnik.
The Times’ article piggybacks on US President Donald Trump’s announcement this week on suspended joint military drills between Washington and Seoul, suggesting that an overwhelming amount of South Koreans are now upset with President Moon Jae In for supporting 45 on the matter.
Porter told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear on Friday that the publication’s article shows that it “has a bug up somewhere about this issue,” since polls in South Korea actually show that upwards of 80 percent of the people support Moon’s decision to mend the country’s relations with North Korea.
“The Times is being very deceptive in this, creating the sense or allusion that South Koreans are upset with Moon about this when, in fact, it’s a small percent of the population,” Porter told hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. “[It’s] trying to sabotage the Trump support for a North-South accord and, even more importantly, support for an agreement of some sort with North Korea.”
The statement released by the White House on Wednesday notes that Trump no longer believes that costly war games are necessary in the current climate, a stance POTUS has repeatedly taken in the past.
“The president believes that his relationship with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un is a very good and warm one, and there is no reason at this time to be spending large amounts of money on joint US-South Korea war games,” the press release announced, adding that Trump, if he wishes to do so, can easily reboot the exercises.
According to Porter, the Korean War, which halted in an armistice in 1953 but has still not been concluded with a formal peace treaty, “doesn’t have an end because of the vested interests that are tied up in the status quo.”
“It becomes clear with every passing month that there are tremendous interests involving the US national security state as well as the political and media elite, all of whom want to keep things precisely the way they are because they all have interests that are bound up in keeping this present situation of US military hegemony in northeast Asia,” the historian stressed.
Porter, the author of “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare,” went on to tell Becker that had any other “nominal centrist Republican or centrist Democrat been elected, we certainly wouldn’t be looking at making peace with North Korea.”
“I’m afraid it’s true,” he said, noting that it was shocking to admit.
Israel threatens to use nuclear weapons to ‘wipe out’ its enemies
MEMO | August 31, 2018
Standing next to a secretive Israeli atomic reactor earlier in the week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to “wipe out” his enemies. In a speech that many will see as the Jewish state breaking its long silence over the possession of nuclear weapons, the Likud leader warned that it has the means to destroy its enemies.
“Those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger, and in any event will not achieve their goal,” he said on Wednesday during a ceremony to rename the complex, near the desert town of Dimona. The site has long been suspected to be the location where Israel has been developing nuclear weapons.
Iran hit back by describing Netanyahu as a “warmonger”. The threat “atomic annihilation” against the Islamic Republic was denounced as “beyond shameless in the gall”.
“Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his official Twitter account.
Zarif also commented on Israel’s nuclear programme saying: “As the world marks Int’l Day against Nuclear Tests, let’s remember that only nuclear bombs in our region belong to Israel and the US; the former a habitual aggressor & the latter the sole user of nukes. Let’s also remember that Iran has called for Nuclear Weapon Free Zone since 1974.”
Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, instead maintaining a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. Foreign reports have put the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal in the dozens to hundreds of weapons.
Earlier this month a science journal published by Princeton University’s Science and Global Security journal claimed that Israel conducted illegal nuclear test in contravention of international law.
Netanyahu’s remarks came as Israel lobbies world powers to follow the US in exiting a 2015 international deal with Iran that capped the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capabilities.
Imagine if the BBC Were Honest
By Craig Murray | August 30, 2018
The BBC refuses to answer my Skripal questions to Mark Urban on the grounds they have no legal obligation, instead giving a “statement”. That correspondence follows below. But I want you first to imagine a World in which the BBC and Mark Urban were honest and independent, and imagine these were the answers to my questions:
1) When the Skripals were first poisoned, it was the largest news story in the entire World and you were uniquely positioned having held several meetings with Sergei Skripal the previous year. Yet faced with what should have been a massive career break, you withheld that unique information on a major story from the public for four months. Why?
My interviews with Sergei Skripal were on a strictly off the record basis and I felt honour bound not to mention them until I could obtain his permission.
2) You were an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment together with Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, who also lived in Salisbury. Have you maintained friendship with Miller over the years and how often do you communicate?
I had not heard from Pablo Miller for decades, since I left the army.
3) When you met Skripal in Salisbury, was Miller present all or part of the time, or did you meet Miller separately?
I did not meet Miller.
4) Was the BBC aware of your meetings with Miller and/or Skripal at the time?
Yes, with Skripal.
5) When, four months later, you told the world about your meetings with Skripal after the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you said you had met him to research a book. Yet the only forthcoming book by you advertised is on the Skripal attack. What was the subject of your discussions with Skripal?
A book on Russian intelligence.
6) Pablo Miller worked for Orbis Intelligence. Do you know if Miller contributed to the Christopher Steele dossier on Trump/Russia?
I don’t know.
7) Did you discuss the Trump dossier with Skripal and/or Miller?
No.
8) Do you know whether Skripal contributed to the Trump dossier?
No.
9) In your Newsnight piece following the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you stated that security service sources had told you that Yulia Skripal’s telephone may have been bugged. Since January 2017, how many security service briefings or discussions have you had on any of the matter above.
That was my only contact with the intelligence services on this matter.
Does anybody imagine that, if those were indeed the answers, Mark Urban and the BBC would not freely give those answers, and show up their accusers as “conspiracy theorists” with no foundation?
If those were the answers, they would be shouting them from the rooftops.
And indeed the BBC statement, while refusing to answer the questions directly, does give responses to questions 1, 4 and 5 which are along the lines of this outcome were they behaving honestly, though their phrasing does not carry conviction, especially on 1.
The questions the BBC has refused to address at all are all those related to Pablo Miller, UK intelligence services and the Steele Orbis dossier on Trump/Russia. That is an extremely telling omission. Their attempt to issue a statement rather than address the questions individually, is a deliberate ruse to disguise that.
On a balance of probabilities measure, I am willing to take the BBC’s refusal to answer these very specific questions as strong evidence that the Skripal case is indeed about Miller, Steele, Orbis and the Trump/Russia dossier. Furthermore the BBC knows that and is deliberately concealing the truth, and instead broadcasting evidence free nonsense about Russian agents, knowing that to be untrue. If that were not the case, it would take the BBC quite literally two minutes to give the answers above. There would be no downside for the BBC in giving those answers; indeed they would be vindicated to a sceptical public.
I asked you to imagine those answers were true. In asking us to imagine a better world, John Lennon told us “its easy if you try”. Sadly I find it is not easy. It is not easy to imagine a world in which Mark Urban is not a morally repugnant lying shill for the security services, that takes a very great deal of effort.
Here is the BBC statement and ensuing correspondence:
From: Matthew Hunter
Sent: 29 August 2018 09:42
To: ‘is’
Subject: BBC NewsnightDear Mr Murray,
Matt Hunter in the BBC News Press Team.
I understand you contacted Mark Urban on Monday with regards to meetings he had with Sergei Skripal. Some of the information you’ve requested we are not obliged to share as it is held for purposes of journalism, but I can provide you with a more general response regarding Mark’s meetings with Mr Skripal.
Mark Urban met with Sergei Skripal on a number of occasions last Summer in Salisbury and last spoke to him on the phone in August, 7 months before the poisoning. Mr Skripal agreed to speak to Mark to assist with his research for his latest book on post-Cold War espionage, it was not discussed with Mr Skripal whether the information would be used for the BBC ahead of the book being published. The relevant information gained from these interviews informed Newsnight’s coverage during the early days after the poisoning. Mr Urban reported his meetings with Mr Skripal on BBC Newsnight once the details of the book were made public in keeping with the understood terms of the interview. Mark Urban’s line managers were aware last year that he was working on a book and more specifically from 5th March this year that this work had included interviews with Mr Skripal.
I hope these details help clarify the situation.
Please note that all future journalistic enquiries should be made through the BBC Press Office (press.office@bbc.co.uk).
Thank you for your enquiry.
Best wishes
MattMatt Hunter – Publicist
BBC News & Current Affairs
——–
From: craig murray [mailto:craigmurray@mail.ru]
Sent: 29 August 2018 14:23
To: Matthew Hunter; Mark Urban
Subject: RE: BBC NewsnightDear Mr Hunter,
Thank you for your email. This is an important matter, which interests a great many people, as I am sure you are aware, and which has caused some damage to the reputation of the BBC.
You state that ” Some of the information you’ve requested we are not obliged to share as it is held for purposes of journalism”. My questions were not couched as an FOI request so that is a redundant provision, even if your broad interpretation of the FOIA were correct, which I dispute.
Your email then proceeds on the basis that you should not reveal anything unless you are legally obliged to do so. That seems a very strange stance for a public broadcast body to take. Whether or not you are legally obliged to do so, can I ask you to give the answer to these questions to Mr Urban, or in each case an explanation for why you refuse to give an answer voluntarily, even if legally unobliged.
What is at stake here is the BBC’s reputation for open and honest reporting, and this particular case has done a great deal to increase public distrust in the BBC. All of these are fair and relevant questions which have simple answers. Kindly address them individually.
My questions to Mark Urban:
1. When the Skripals were first poisoned, it was the largest news story in the entire World and you were uniquely positioned having held several meetings with Sergei Skripal the previous year. Yet faced with what should have been a massive career break, you withheld that unique information on a major story from the public for four months. Why?
2. You were an officer in the Royal Tank Regiment together with Skripal’s MI6 handler, Pablo Miller, who also lived in Salisbury. Have you maintained friendship with Miller over the years and how often do you communicate?
3. When you met Skripal in Salisbury, was Miller present all or part of the time, or did you meet Miller separately?
4. Was the BBC aware of your meetings with Miller and/or Skripal at the time?
5. When, four months later, you told the world about your meetings with Skripal after the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you said you had met him to research a book. Yet the only forthcoming book by you advertised is on the Skripal attack. What was the subject of your discussions with Skripal?
6. Pablo Miller worked for Orbis Intelligence. Do you know if Miller contributed to the Christopher Steele dossier on Trump/Russia?
7. Did you discuss the Trump dossier with Skripal and/or Miller?
8. Do you know whether Skripal contributed to the Trump dossier?
9. In your Newsnight piece following the Rowley/Sturgess incident, you stated that security service sources had told you that Yulia Skripal’s telephone may have been bugged. Since January 2017, how many security service briefings or discussions have you had on any of the matter above.I look forward to your response,
Craig Murray
———-
From: Matthew Hunter
Sent: 29 August 2018 15:09
To: ‘craig murray’
Subject: RE: BBC NewsnightI’m afraid we have no further comment beyond the statement provided earlier.
Many thanks,
Matt
———–
From: craig murray
Sent: 29 August 2018 18:22
To: Matthew Hunter
Subject: RE: BBC NewsnightOh, so it was a “statement” rather than a reply to my questions.
May I ask you who drafted the statement, who approved it, and who was consulted on it? The statement, incidentally, does not constitute journalism, so you do have a legal obligation to answer those questions.
Craig
‘Vital’ US moles in the Kremlin go missing!
By Stephen F. Cohen | The Nation | August 30, 2018
According to New York Times intel leakers, “informants close to” Putin have “gone silent.” What can it all mean?
For nearly two years, mostly vacuous (though malignant) Russiagate allegations have drowned out truly significant news directly affecting America’s place in the world. In recent days, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron declared “Europe can no longer rely on the United States to provide its security,” calling for instead a broader kind of security “and particularly doing it in cooperation with Russia.” About the same time, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin met to expand and solidify an essential energy partnership by agreeing to complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from Russia, despite US attempts to abort it. Earlier, on August 22, the Afghan Taliban announced it would attend its first ever major peace conference – in Moscow, without US participation.
Thus does the world turn, and not to the wishes of Washington. Such news would, one might think, elicit extensive reporting and analysis in the American mainstream media. But amid all this, on August 25, the ever-eager New York Times published yet another front-page Russiagate story – one that, if true, would be sensational, though hardly anyone seemed to notice. According to the Times’ regular Intel leakers, US intelligence agencies, presumably the CIA, has had multiple “informants close to… Putin and in the Kremlin who provided crucial details” about Russiagate for two years. Now, however, “the vital Kremlin informants have largely gone silent.” The Times laces the story with misdeeds questionably attributed to Putin and equally untrustworthy commentators, as well as a mistranslated Putin statement that incorrectly has him saying all “traitors” should be killed. Standard US media fare these days when fact-checkers seem not to be required for Russia coverage. But the sensation of the article is that the US had moles in Putin’s office.
Skeptical or credulous readers will react to the Times story as they might. Actually, an initial, lesser version of it first appeared in the Washington Post, an equally hospitable intel platform, on December 15, 2017. I found it implausible for much the same reasons I had previously found Christopher Steele’s “Dossier,” also purportedly based on “Kremlin sources,” implausible. But the Times’ new, expanded version of the mole story raises more and larger questions.
If US intelligence really had such a priceless asset in Putin’s office – the Post report implied only one, the Times writes of more than one – imagine what they could reveal about Enemy No. 1 Putin’s intentions abroad and at home, perhaps daily – why would any American intel official disclose this information to any media at the risk of being charged with a treasonous capital offense? And now more than once? Or, since “the Kremlin” closely monitors US media, at the risk of having the no less treasonous Russian informants identified and severely punished? Presumably this is why the Times’ leakers insist that the “silent” moles are still alive, though how they know we are not told. All of this is even more implausible. Certainly, the Times article asks no critical questions.
But why leak the mole story again, and now? Stripped of extraneous financial improprieties, failures to register as foreign lobbyists, tacky lifestyles, and sex having nothing to do with Russia, the gravamen of the Russiagate narrative remains what it has always been: Putin ordered Russian operatives to “meddle” in the US 2016 presidential election in order to put Donald Trump in the White House, and Putin is now plotting to “attack” the November congressional elections in order to get a Congress he wants. The more Robert Mueller and his supporting media investigates, the less evidence actually turns up, and when it seemingly does, it has to be considerably massaged or misrepresented.
Nor are “meddling” and “interfering” in the other’s domestic policy new in Russian-American relations. Tsar Alexander II intervened militarily on the side of the Union in the American Civil War. President Woodrow Wilson sent troops to fight the Reds in the Russian Civil War. The Communist International, founded in Moscow in 1919, and its successor organizations financed American activists, electoral candidates, ideological schools, and pro-Soviet bookstores for decades in the United States. With the support of the Clinton administration, American electoral advisers encamped in Moscow to help rig Russian President Boris Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996. And that’s the bigger “meddling” apart from the decades-long “propaganda and disinformation” churned out by both sides, often via forbidden short-wave radio. Unless some conclusive evidence appears, Russian social media and other meddling in the 2016 presidential election was little more than old habits in modern-day forms. (Not incidentally, the Times story suggests that US Intel had been hacking the Kremlin, or trying to, for many years. This too should not shock us.)
The real novelty of Russiagate is the allegation that a Kremlin leader, Putin, personally gave orders to affect the outcome of an American presidential election. In this regard, Russiagaters have produced even less evidence, only suppositions without facts or much logic. With the Russiagate narrative being frayed by time and fruitless investigations, the “mole in the Kremlin” may have seemed a ploy needed to keep the conspiracy theory moving forward, presumably toward Trump’s removal from office by whatever means. And hence the temptation to play the mole card again, now, as yet more investigations generate smoke but no smoking gun.
The pretext of the Times story is that Putin is preparing an attack on the upcoming November elections, but the once-“vital,” now-silent moles are not providing the “crucial details.” Even if the story is entirely bogus, consider the damage it is doing. Russiagate allegations have already de-legitimized a presidential election, and a presidency, in the minds of many Americans. The Times’ updated, expanded version may do the same to congressional elections and the next Congress. If so, there is an “attack on American democracy” – not by Putin or Trump but by whoever godfathered and repeatedly inflated Russiagate.
As I have argued previously, such evidence that exists points to John Brennan and James Clapper, President Obama’s head of the CIA and director of national intelligence respectively, even though attention has been focused on the FBI. Indeed, the Times story reminds us of how central “intelligence” actors have been in this saga. Arguably, Russiagate has brought us to the worst American political crisis since the Civil War and the most dangerous relations with Russia in history. Until Brennan, Clapper, and their closest collaborators are required to testify under oath about the real origins of Russiagate, these crises will grow.
Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at NYU and Princeton, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.)
READ MORE:
Russiagate’s ‘core narrative’ has always lacked actual evidence – Stephen Cohen
US: NATO Think Tank Continues Pre-Election Interference
By Rick Rozoff | Ron Paul Institute | August 29, 2018
On August 24 what is in effect the social media warfare division of the Atlantic Council published an article accusing the Russian television and print news outlet RT of running a one-sided attack against the Democratic Party and several leaders thereof ahead of this November’s politically pivotal Senate and House of Representatives elections. (Thirty-five Senate seats and all 435 House seats are being contested.)
The Atlantic Council, until recently kept comparatively in the shadows for obvious reasons, is a think tank that has more than any other organization effected the transition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from a seeming Cold War relic with the break-up of the Warsaw Pact and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 to the world’s only and history’s first international military network with 70 members and partners on six continents currently. All thirteen new full member states are in Eastern and Central Europe; four of them border Russia.
Three months ago it began collaborating with Facebook to police and censor that and (presumably) soon after other social media companies which in recent decades have become the major sources of information and communication for the seven billion citizens of the planet. No modest undertaking.
This is by way of follow up to a Directive on Social Media issued four years ago by NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the bloc’s military command in Europe (which also oversees activities in Israel and until the activation of U.S. Africa Command ten years ago almost all of Africa).
Excerpts from that directive include:
One key challenge is the need to keep informed regarding social media ‘discussions’ on NATO and global security matters in order to maintain situational awareness. Key vulnerabilities include security concerns and the ease by which information can be transmitted globally using social media tools.
It also addresses use of social media for what it calls “operations,” which frequently is a euphemism for bombings, missile attacks and all-out war. Witness Operation Allied Force (Yugoslavia 1999), Operation Unified Protector (Libya 2011), NATO Training Mission-Iraq (starting in 2004), International Security Assistance Force/Operation Resolute Force (Afghanistan from 2001 to the present) and Operation Atlantic Resolve (aimed at Russia since 2015).
The recent article on the website of the Atlantic Council was the creation of the think tank/planning body’s Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which, employing the sort of puerile humor one has come to expect from NATOites, describes its mission under the heading of Digital Sherlocks (after the Arthur Conan Doyle detective):
The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab is building the world’s leading hub of digital forensic analysts tracking events in governance, technology, security, and where each intersect as they occur.
It accuses the Russian news outlet of menacing, egregious, Cold War-era enormities like…unbalanced coverage. That animal, of course, is not known in the US corporate media.
To wit: “This unbalanced coverage was so systematic that it appeared to constitute an editorial policy of attacking the Democrats while boosting the Republicans. While editorial bias can be seen in many commercial US outlets, RT is neither commercial, nor a US outlet.”
And: “Its one-sided midterm coverage strongly suggests that the Kremlin is still attempting to influence American elections through editorial bias in its highest-profile English language media outlet to date – RT – which gets approximately 15,000,000 visits from American readers every month.”
Indeed RT is not an American outlet. In fact all of its features on YouTube have under them the small-case letter i in a circle followed by “RT Is funded in whole or in part by the Russian government,” with a Wikipedia link.
The Atlantic Council item is transparently biased itself, as RT routinely runs news critical of members of both major US political parties.
The author of the piece focuses attention on November’s elections (“attempting to influence American elections through editorial bias,” above), yet he bemoans allegedly less-than-kind portrayals of Hillary Clinton (whose first name is consistently spelled Hilary), who last heard is not at the moment running for public office.
To illustrate how the Atlantic Council and its loyal minions (members routinely move in and out of the State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council, White House, etc.) reverse the threat that exists in relation to Russia, see this from a recent article on its site on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia and the resultant war with Russia:
Exactly ten years ago, Russian forces attacked Georgia, bringing to a violent end a nearly two-decade long advance of a Europe whole and free. In the wake of NATO’s failure to agree on how to advance the membership aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine at its Bucharest Summit months earlier, Moscow acted to block those prospects with its invasion. Moscow’s actions in Georgia ten years ago previewed its far deadlier attacks on Ukraine, which continue today.
Ten years on, the NATO Summit in Brussels July 11-12 offers the prospect of reversing the shortcomings of Bucharest and restoring momentum to NATO’s Open Door policy.
That is, bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO as full member states and court a US-Russia war with all that would entail.
The homepage of the site features a tribute to John MaCain with these words of his on the occasion of receiving its annual Freedom Award in 2011 with which he adds Belarus to the list:
I also want to pay tribute to my fellow honorees here tonight for the contribution they have made to the success of freedom – from here in Poland, to neighboring Belarus, to farther away in Egypt. These champions of liberty are the defenders, supporters, and authors of peaceful democratic revolutions – both those that have been successfully made and those, as in Belarus, that have yet to come, but surely will….
It’s more than American elections that the Atlantic Council and its social media partners intend to influence.
VIPS Tells Media Support for Brennan is Not Unanimous
Consortium News | August 29, 2018
TO: The Media
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Support for Brennan Far From “Unanimous”
As former members of the intelligence community, we feel compelled to add our voice to the public debate surrounding President Trump’s revocation of former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. This action is being falsely portrayed as an assault on Mr. Brennan’s right to free speech.
We note that some of our former colleagues, a number of whom have held prominent intelligence posts, joined the protest against the President’s actions — a phenomenon that provides stark reminder that the United States intelligence community is not a monolith but rather a collection of diverse individuals with a range of opinions on many issues, including what is right and wrong, We the undersigned veteran intelligence professionals agree with President Trump’s decision to strip Mr. Brennan of his clearance.
We also note with irony that several of the former officials protesting the President’s action have themselves been associated with significant misconduct. David Petraeus, who was convicted of sharing highly classified material with his mistress/biographer, is a case in point. As experienced intelligence officers, we believe security clearances should be granted as a sacred trust and not simply a permanent entitlement that comes with a high level job.
Anyone who has read VIPS memos knows we have often expressed opposition to this President’s actions — as we have to those of previous Presidents — on important substantive issues when the intelligence was faulty.
The issue for us is broader than the clearances of Mr. Brennan. We are appalled by the willful misreading by pundits and much of the media of the nature of security clearances. They are certainly not a constitutionally protected right, but a highly conditional privilege. Its granting comes with personal acceptance of restrictions on speech and association: among other things obligating one-time holders to a lifetime pre-publication review of writings that rely on information acquired in performing their official duties.
All of us signed secrecy agreements and accepted the burden of holding a clearance. We surrendered a part of our assumed right to free speech in service of our country’s welfare and safety. Those of us under cover kept secrets from family and friends. We no longer associated freely with foreign nationals; an active clearance carries the requirement to report contacts with them.
Moreover, security classification is provided by Executive Branch authority and is expressed with orders that are subject to change at the will of the current president (the exception to this being the so-called “Q” clearance established by law to protect nuclear weapons secrets, though this is also subject to presidential authority in granting or withdrawing clearance). Federal judges do not have automatic security clearances. Nor do members of Congress. They have access to secret information by virtue of their constitutional office and a presumed “need to know” in order to do their job.
Once a person separates from the intelligence community they can continue to hold a clearance provided they are employed as a contractor working on specific classified programs. There is simply no basis in law entitling anyone to permanent clearance. This includes John Brennan. It goes without saying that individuals who are granted continued clearance out of courtesy to their former high position remain accountable in their conduct, and that the Executive can revoke such clearances at will.
Mr. Brennan’s own record is clearly tarnished. When he was Chief of Station in Saudi Arabia prior to and after the bombing of Khobar Towers in June of 1996, rather than uphold the integrity of existing intelligence he went along with the decision to avoid creating problems with the Saudis. After the attack (which was carried out by Saudi elements linked to Bin Laden and Al Qaeda), Brennan helped push the meme that the culprits were Iran and Hezbollah.
As head of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center in 2003, Mr. Brennan failed to give the State Department complete statistics for terrorist attacks. The initial publication of “Patterns of Global Terrorism” in April 2004 touted a decline in terrorist attacks in 2003 as vindication of Bush Administration policies. The publication later had to be recalled and revised when it was discovered that the CIA had left out a month and a half of data. John Brennan was in charge of that process. Instead of receiving a reprimand, however, he ended up being promoted.
Mr. Brennan has assumed the role of passive spectator in building the fraudulent case to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has claimed only vague awareness of the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. Physical records tell a different story. Brennan was “cc-ed” on “a minimum of 50 memos” dealing with waterboarding and other torture techniques. Senator Saxbe Chambliss noted that Brennan’s boss, A. B. “Buzzy” Krongard, told the Wall Street Journal that Mr. Brennan had a role in setting the parameters of the program and “helping to seek Justice Department approval for the techniques.”
Mr. Brennan also attempted to cover up the truth about the CIA torture. Senator Mark Udall denounced his actions in a floor speech on December 10, 2014, the day after the Senate Intelligence Committee published the Executive Summary of the conclusions of its four-year investigation of CIA torture based on original CIA documents. The investigation not only revealed almost unbelievably heinous practices, but also demonstrated that senior CIA officials were untruthful in claiming that “enhanced” techniques produced actionable intelligence that could not have been obtained by traditional interrogation practices. With strong support from President Obama, Brennan, who was the CIA Director, aggressively fought publication of the Senate report. Here’s Senator Udall:
“The CIA has lied to its overseers and the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture and the results of torture. And no one has been held to account. … There are right now people serving at high-level positions at the agency who approved, directed, or committed acts related to the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.”
Mr. Brennan is now publicly insisting that Russia meddled in the 2016 election. What, however, was CIA Director Brennan saying when the alleged Russian meddling was taking place? Did he warn President Obama? Did he warn the leaders of the Congress? According to press reports Mr. Brennan did brief Democrat Senator Harry Reid on ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government and Reid then wrote FBI Director James Comey demanding an investigation. However, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee has said he was not given the same briefing as Senator Reid. Introducing the weight of national intelligence into partisan politics, as Mr. Brennan appears to have done in his official capacity, is forbidden activity.
We have all held clearances and deeply believe in the importance of intelligence officers conducting themselves with professional integrity, particularly with regard to remaining unentangled in party politics. VIPS is comprised of men and women of highly diverse political views, from Republican to Democrat to Independent. We agree on one thing: when a professional intelligence officer obtains classified information they accept an obligation to appropriately report facts without regard to political leanings. This is not about being a Democrat or a Republican. It is about doing the job of unbiased intelligence analysis. That is why VIPS has, over the years, written memos challenging the intelligence basis for policies and decisions of George W. Bush and Barack Obama as well as Donald Trump.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:
William Binney, Technical Director, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
Richard H. Black, Senator of Virginia, 13th District; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Larry C. Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter Terrorism officer
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, USA (ret) (associate VIPS)
Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Near East, CIA and National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)
Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is made up of former intelligence officers, diplomats, military officers and congressional staffers. The organization, founded in 2002, was among the first critics of Washington’s justifications for launching a war against Iraq. VIPS advocates a US foreign and national security policy based on genuine national interests rather than contrived threats promoted for largely political reasons. An archive of VIPS memoranda is available at Consortiumnews.com.
US Intel, Media Spread Fake Reports on Alleged Russian Election Meddling
Sputnik – 29.08.2018
WASHINGTON – US intelligence officials and the American mainstream media have been propagating false Russia meddling claims to undermine pro-Trump congressional candidates ahead of the midterm elections, analysts told Sputnik.
In particular, The New York Times reported on Friday, citing unnamed intelligence officials, that US sources in the Kremlin who had warned about Russian intervention in the US 2016 presidential election “had gone silent” and now the CIA is in the dark about Moscow’s plans vis-a-vis the upcoming congressional midterm elections.
In November, US voters go to the polls to elect lawmakers who will represent their respective states at the federal level. The midterm elections will determine whether Republicans maintain control of Congress and will be seen by many as a referendum on the sitting president’s performance.
US intelligence leaders, including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, without any evidence have been warning that Russia will likely interfere in the midterm elections. Coats and others have also claimed that Russia is waging an influence campaign via social media.
Former US Defense Department adviser Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik that she had doubts about the reliability of the New York Times report and intelligence community claims.
“Reading between the lines of this article, it seems as if politicized members of the US intelligence establishment — including people like Dan Coats — are hedging their bets,” she said.
Coats and his colleagues were getting on record their ‘concern’ about Russia interference in these upcoming elections in the event of an unexpected wave of support for President Donald Trump, Kwiatkowski explained.
The New York Times report, claiming that the United States had human sources inside the Kremlin appeared to be based on false assumptions and to be part of a wider strategy to try and convince US public opinion about a non-existent Russian plot to influence the elections, Kwiatkowski cautioned.
“In terms of this article, I suspect it is wrong in its assumptions, and is part of a larger domestic propaganda effort,” Kwiatkowski said.
Kwiatkowski pointed out the remarkable lack of evidence to support US allegations of Russia’s meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.
“The American intelligence apparatus is ‘concerned’ that the Russians are trying to pick and choose candidates in midterm elections — 435 Congressional elections and 33 plus Senate elections — but they don’t have any information about this activity that they ‘know’ is happening,” the former Pentagon aide said. “This isn’t how intelligence is done. It is however how agendas are pushed, and propaganda rejuvenated.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who was referred to in the New York Times article, lacked any credibility based on his documented record, Kwiatkowski noted.
“Brennan is an unreliable source, extremely biased, a known liar and he’s currently angrier than usual. With his clearance suspended, he may be receiving less information from his friends in the government, and maybe that’s what he is complaining about,” Kwiatkowski said.
Former Canadian diplomat Patrick Armstrong, who once served as a political official at Ottawa’s embassy in Moscow, told Sputnik that The New York Times report was written to try and sustain flagging interest and support the diminishing credibility of the fiction that Russia intervened in the 2016 US elections.
“The writers are trying to keep the conspiracy going in the hope that the Democrats will control the House and shut down all examination of what really happened,” Armstrong said.
Fake News
However, the fantasy that Russian involvement had cost the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton the 2016 election was supported by no evidence whatsoever, Armstrong emphasized.
“This is nonsense on stilts and only can be twisted into a question if you believe — as New York Times consumers do as a matter of faith — that Russia ‘interfered’ in the first place,” Armstrong said.
No evidence has been produced other than the “fantasies” in the unsubstantiated dossier produced by former UK spy Christopher Steele.
The only plausible content in the New York Times story was the assertion that Moscow had expelled many of Washington’s intelligence assets in Russia, Armstrong observed.
Kwiatkowski pointed out that the real manipulation of US elections was done by countries that had a historically shared culture with the United States.
The UK’s MI6 and Israel’s Mossad, Kwiatkowski said, are far more active in US elections, at many levels, than the Russians could ever hope to be.
“It’s nice for The New York Times to be able not to talk about these risks — in part because Trump is not the candidate these two countries would prefer,” Kwiatkowski concluded.
In January 2017, a US intelligence community report that contained zero evidence claimed that Moscow tried to meddle in the US election process. Moscow has repeatedly denied interfering in US elections as such actions would run counter to the principles and practices of Russian foreign policy.
How the Department of Homeland Security Created a Deceptive Tale of Russia Hacking US Voter Sites
By Gareth Porter | Consortium News | August 28, 2018
The narrative of Russian intelligence attacking state and local election boards and threatening the integrity of U.S. elections has achieved near-universal acceptance by media and political elites. And now it has been accepted by the Trump administration’s intelligence chief, Dan Coats, as well.
But the real story behind that narrative, recounted here for the first time, reveals that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) created and nurtured an account that was grossly and deliberately deceptive.
DHS compiled an intelligence report suggesting hackers linked to the Russian government could have targeted voter-related websites in many states and then leaked a sensational story of Russian attacks on those sites without the qualifications that would have revealed a different story. When state election officials began asking questions, they discovered that the DHS claims were false and, in at least one case, laughable.
The National Security Agency and special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigating team have also claimed evidence that Russian military intelligence was behind election infrastructure hacking, but on closer examination, those claims turn out to be speculative and misleading as well. Mueller’s indictment of 12 GRU military intelligence officers does not cite any violations of U.S. election laws though it claims Russia interfered with the 2016 election.
A Sensational Story
On Sept. 29, 2016, a few weeks after the hacking of election-related websites in Illinois and Arizona, ABC News carried a sensational headline: “Russian Hackers Targeted Nearly Half of States’ Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrated 4.” The story itself reported that “more than 20 state election systems” had been hacked, and four states had been “breached” by hackers suspected of working for the Russian government. The story cited only sources “knowledgeable” about the matter, indicating that those who were pushing the story were eager to hide the institutional origins of the information.
Behind that sensational story was a federal agency seeking to establish its leadership within the national security state apparatus on cybersecurity, despite its limited resources for such responsibility. In late summer and fall 2016, the Department of Homeland Security was maneuvering politically to designate state and local voter registration databases and voting systems as “critical infrastructure.” Such a designation would make voter-related networks and websites under the protection a “priority sub-sector” in the DHS “National Infrastructure Protection Plan, which already included 16 such sub-sectors.
DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and other senior DHS officials consulted with many state election officials in the hope of getting their approval for such a designation. Meanwhile, the DHS was finishing an intelligence report that would both highlight the Russian threat to U.S. election infrastructure and the role DHS could play in protecting it, thus creating political impetus to the designation. But several secretaries of state—the officials in charge of the election infrastructure in their state—strongly opposed the designation that Johnson wanted.
On Jan. 6, 2017—the same day three intelligence agencies released a joint “assessment” on Russian interference in the election—Johnson announced the designation anyway.
Media stories continued to reflect the official assumption that cyber attacks on state election websites were Russian-sponsored. Stunningly, The Wall Street Journal reported in December 2016 that DHS was itself behind hacking attempts of Georgia’s election database.
The facts surrounding the two actual breaches of state websites in Illinois and Arizona, as well as the broader context of cyberattacks on state websites, didn’t support that premise at all.
In July, Illinois discovered an intrusion into its voter registration website and the theft of personal information on as many as 200,000 registered voters. (The 2018 Mueller indictments of GRU officers would unaccountably put the figure at 500,000.) Significantly, however, the hackers only had copied the information and had left it unchanged in the database.
That was a crucial clue to the motive behind the hack. DHS Assistant Secretary for Cyber Security and Communications Andy Ozment told a Congressional committee in late September 2016 that the fact hackers hadn’t tampered with the voter data indicated that the aim of the theft was not to influence the electoral process. Instead, it was “possibly for the purpose of selling personal information.” Ozment was contradicting the line that already was being taken on the Illinois and Arizona hacks by the National Protection and Programs Directorate and other senior DHS officials.
In an interview with me last year, Ken Menzel, the legal adviser to the Illinois secretary of state, confirmed what Ozment had testified. “Hackers have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006,” Menzel said, adding that they had been probing every other official Illinois database with such personal data for vulnerabilities as well. “Every governmental database—driver’s licenses, health care, you name it—has people trying to get into it,” said Menzel.
In the other successful cyberattack on an electoral website, hackers had acquired the username and password for the voter database Arizona used during the summer, as Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan learned from the FBI. But the reason that it had become known, according to Reagan in an interview with Mother Jones, was that the login and password had shown up for sale on the dark web—the network of websites used by cyber criminals to sell stolen data and other illicit wares.
Furthermore, the FBI had told her that the effort to penetrate the database was the work of a “known hacker” whom the FBI had monitored “frequently” in the past. Thus, there were reasons to believe that both Illinois and Arizona hacking incidents were linked to criminal hackers seeking information they could sell for profit.
Meanwhile, the FBI was unable to come up with any theory about what Russia might have intended to do with voter registration data such as what was taken in the Illinois hack. When FBI Counterintelligence official Bill Priestap was asked in a June 2017 hearing how Moscow might use such data, his answer revealed that he had no clue: “They took the data to understand what it consisted of,” said the struggling Priestap, “so they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future elections by knowing what is there and studying it.”
The inability to think of any plausible way for the Russian government to use such data explains why DHS and the intelligence community adopted the argument, as senior DHS officials Samuel Liles and Jeanette Manfra put it, that the hacks “could be intended or used to undermine public confidence in electoral processes and potentially the outcome.” But such a strategy could not have had any effect without a decision by DHS and the U.S. intelligence community to assert publicly that the intrusions and other scanning and probing were Russian operations, despite the absence of hard evidence. So DHS and other agencies were consciously sowing public doubts about U.S. elections that they were attributing to Russia.
DHS Reveals Its Self-Serving Methodology
In June 2017, Liles and Manfra testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that an October 2016 DHS intelligence report had listed election systems in 21 states that were “potentially targeted by Russian government cyber actors.” They revealed that the sensational story leaked to the press in late September 2016 had been based on a draft of the DHS report. And more importantly, their use of the phrase “potentially targeted” showed that they were arguing only that the cyber incidents it listed were possible indications of a Russian attack on election infrastructure.
Furthermore, Liles and Manfra said the DHS report had “catalogued suspicious activity we observed on state government networks across the country,” which had been “largely based on suspected malicious tactics and infrastructure.” They were referring to a list of eight IP addresses an August 2016 FBI “flash alert” had obtained from the Illinois and Arizona intrusions, which DHS and FBI had not been able to attribute to the Russian government.
Manfra: No doubt it was the Russians. (C-SPAN)
The DHS officials recalled that the DHS began to “receive reports of cyber-enabled scanning and probing of election-related infrastructure in some states, some of which appeared to originate from servers operated by a Russian company.” Six of the eight IP addresses in the FBI alert were indeed traced to King Servers, owned by a young Russian living in Siberia. But as DHS cyber specialists knew well, the country of ownership of the server doesn’t prove anything about who was responsible for hacking: As cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr pointed out, the Russian hackers who coordinated the Russian attack on Georgian government websites in 2008 used a Texas-based company as the hosting provider.
The cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect noted in 2016 that one of the other two IP addresses had hosted a Russian criminal market for five months in 2015. But that was not a serious indicator, either. Private IP addresses are reassigned frequently by server companies, so there is not a necessary connection between users of the same IP address at different times.
The DHS methodology of selecting reports of cyber incidents involving election-related websites as “potentially targeted” by Russian government-sponsored hackers was based on no objective evidence whatever. The resulting list appears to have included any one of the eight addresses as well as any attack or “scan” on a public website that could be linked in any way to elections.
This methodology conveniently ignored the fact that criminal hackers were constantly trying to get access to every database in those same state, country and municipal systems. Not only for Illinois and Arizona officials, but state electoral officials.
In fact, 14 of the 21 states on the list experienced nothing more than the routine scanning that occurs every day, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Only six involved what was referred to as a “malicious access attempt,” meaning an effort to penetrate the site. One of them was in Ohio, where the attempt to find a weakness lasted less than a second and was considered by DHS’s internet security contractor a “non-event” at the time.
State Officials Force DHS to Tell the Truth
For a year, DHS did not inform the 21 states on its list that their election boards or other election-related sites had been attacked in a presumed Russian-sponsored operation. The excuse DHS officials cited was that it could not reveal such sensitive intelligence to state officials without security clearances. But the reluctance to reveal the details about each case was certainly related to the reasonable expectation that states would publicly challenge their claims, creating a potential serious embarrassment.
On Sept. 22, 2017, DHS notified 21 states about the cyber incidents that had been included in the October 2016 report. The public announcement of the notifications said DHS had notified each chief election officer of “any potential targeting we were aware of in their state leading up to the 2016 election.” The phrase “potential targeting” again telegraphed the broad and vague criterion DHS had adopted, but it was ignored in media stories.
But the notifications, which took the form of phone calls lasting only a few minutes, provided a minimum of information and failed to convey the significant qualification that DHS was only suggesting targeting as a possibility. “It was a couple of guys from DHS reading from a script,” recalled one state election official who asked not to be identified. “They said [our state] was targeted by Russian government cyber actors.”
A number of state election officials recognized that this information conflicted with what they knew. And if they complained, they got a more accurate picture from DHS. After Wisconsin Secretary of State Michael Haas demanded further clarification, he got an email response from a DHS official with a different account. “[B]ased on our external analysis,” the official wrote, “the WI [Wisconsin] IP address affected belongs to the WI Department of Workforce Development, not the Elections Commission.”
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla said DHS initially had notified his office “that Russian cyber actors ‘scanned’ California’s Internet-facing systems in 2016, including Secretary of State websites.” But under further questioning, DHS admitted to Padilla that what the hackers had targeted was the California Department of Technology’s network.
Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos and Oklahoma Election Board spokesman Byron Dean also denied that any state website with voter- or election-related information had been targeted, and Pablos demanded that DHS “correct its erroneous notification.”
Despite these embarrassing admissions, a statement issued by DHS spokesman Scott McConnell on Sept. 28, 2017 said the DHS “stood by” its assessment that 21 states “were the target of Russian government cyber actors seeking vulnerabilities and access to U.S. election infrastructure.” The statement retreated from the previous admission that the notifications involved “potential targeting,” but it also revealed for the first time that DHS had defined “targeting” very broadly indeed.
It said the category included “some cases” involving “direct scanning of targeted systems” but also cases in which “malicious actors scanned for vulnerabilities in networks that may be connected to those systems or have similar characteristics in order to gain information about how to later penetrate their target.”
It is true that hackers may scan one website in the hope of learning something that could be useful for penetrating another website, as cybersecurity expert Prof. Herbert S. Lin of Stanford University explained to me in an interview. But including any incident in which that motive was theoretical meant that any state website could be included on the DHS list, without any evidence it was related to a political motive.
Arizona’s further exchanges with DHS revealed just how far DHS had gone in exploiting that escape clause in order to add more states to its “targeted” list. Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan tweeted that DHS had informed her that “the Russian government targeted our voter registration systems in 2016.” After meeting with DHS officials in early October 2017, however, Reagan wrote in a blog post that DHS “could not confirm that any attempted Russian government hack occurred whatsoever to any election-related system in Arizona, much less the statewide voter registration database.”
What the DHS said in that meeting, as Reagan’s spokesman Matt Roberts recounted to me, is even more shocking. “When we pressed DHS on what exactly was actually targeted, they said it was the Phoenix public library’s computers system,” Roberts recalled.
In April 2018, a CBS News “60 Minutes” segment reported that the October 2016 DHS intelligence report had included the Russian government hacking of a “county database in Arizona.” Responding to that CBS report, an unidentified “senior Trump administration official” who was well-briefed on the DHS report told Reuters that “media reports” on the issue had sometimes “conflated criminal hacking with Russian government activity,” and that the cyberattack on the target in Arizona “was not perpetrated by the Russian government.”
NSA Finds a GRU Election Plot
National Security Agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. (Wikimedia)
NSA intelligence analysts claimed in a May 2017 analysis to have documented an effort by Russian military intelligence (GRU) to hack into U.S. electoral institutions. In an intelligence analysis obtained by The Intercept and reported in June 2017, NSA analysts wrote that the GRU had sent a spear-phishing email—one with an attachment designed to look exactly like one from a trusted institution but that contains malware design to get control of the computer—to a vendor of voting machine technology in Florida. The hackers then designed a fake web page that looked like that of the vendor. They sent it to a list of 122 email addresses NSA believed to be local government organizations that probably were “involved in the management of voter registration systems.” The objective of the new spear-phishing campaign, the NSA suggested, was to get control of their computers through malware to carry out the exfiltration of voter-related data.
But the authors of The Intercept story failed to notice crucial details in the NSA report that should have tipped them off that the attribution of the spear-phishing campaign to the GRU was based merely on the analysts’ own judgment—and that their judgment was faulty.
The Intercept article included a color-coded chart from the original NSA report that provides crucial information missing from the text of the NSA analysis itself as well as The Intercept’s account. The chart clearly distinguishes between the elements of the NSA’s account of the alleged Russian scheme that were based on “Confirmed Information” (shown in green) and those that were based on “Analyst Judgment” (shown in yellow). The connection between the “operator” of the spear-phishing campaign the report describes and an unidentified entity confirmed to be under the authority of the GRU is shown as a yellow line, meaning that it is based on “Analyst Judgment” and labeled “probably.”
A major criterion for any attribution of a hacking incident is whether there are strong similarities to previous hacks identified with a specific actor. But the chart concedes that “several characteristics” of the campaign depicted in the report distinguish it from “another major GRU spear-phishing program,” the identity of which has been redacted from the report.
The NSA chart refers to evidence that the same operator also had launched spear-phishing campaigns on other web-based mail applications, including the Russian company “Mail.ru.” Those targets suggest that the actors were more likely Russian criminal hackers rather than Russian military intelligence.
Even more damaging to its case, the NSA reports that the same operator who had sent the spear-phishing emails also had sent a test email to the “American Samoa Election Office.” Criminal hackers could have been interested in personal information from the database associated with that office. But the idea that Russian military intelligence was planning to hack the voter rolls in American Samoa, an unincorporated U.S. territory with 56,000 inhabitants who can’t even vote in U.S. presidential elections, is plainly risible.
The Mueller Indictment’s Sleight of Hand
The Mueller indictment of GRU officers released on July 13 appeared at first reading to offer new evidence of Russian government responsibility for the hacking of Illinois and other state voter-related websites. A close analysis of the relevant paragraphs, however, confirms the lack of any real intelligence supporting that claim.
Mueller accused two GRU officers of working with unidentified “co-conspirators” on those hacks. But the only alleged evidence linking the GRU to the operators in the hacking incidents is the claim that a GRU official named Anatoly Kovalev and “co-conspirators” deleted search history related to the preparation for the hack after the FBI issued its alert on the hacking identifying the IP address associated with it in August 2016.
A careful reading of the relevant paragraphs shows that the claim is spurious. The first sentence in Paragraph 71 says that both Kovalev and his “co-conspirators” researched domains used by U.S. state boards of elections and other entities “for website vulnerabilities.” The second says Kovalev and “co-conspirators” had searched for “state political party email addresses, including filtered queries for email addresses listed on state Republican Party websites.”
Mueller: Don’t read the fine print. (The White House/Wikimedia)
Searching for website vulnerabilities would be evidence of intent to hack them, of course, but searching Republican Party websites for email addresses is hardly evidence of any hacking plan. And Paragraph 74 states that Kovalev “deleted his search history”—not the search histories of any “co-conspirator”—thus revealing that there were no joint searches and suggesting that the subject Kovalev had searched was Republican Party emails. So any deletion by Kovalev of his search history after the FBI alert would not be evidence of his involvement in the hacking of the Illinois election board website.
With this rhetorical misdirection unraveled, it becomes clear that the repetition in every paragraph of the section of the phrase “Kovalev and his co-conspirators” was aimed at giving the reader the impression the accusation is based on hard intelligence about possible collusion that doesn’t exist.
The Need for Critical Scrutiny of DHS Cyberattack Claims
The DHS campaign to establish its role as the protector of U.S. electoral institutions is not the only case in which that agency has used a devious means to sow fear of Russian cyberattacks. In December 2016, DHS and the FBI published a long list of IP addresses as indicators of possible Russian cyberattacks. But most of the addresses on the list had no connection with Russian intelligence, as former U.S. government cyber-warfare officer Rob Lee found on close examination.
When someone at the Burlington, Vt., Electric Company spotted one of those IP addresses on one of its computers, the company reported it to DHS. But instead of quietly investigating the address to verify that it was indeed an indicator of Russian intrusion, DHS immediately informed The Washington Post. The result was a sensational story that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. power grid. In fact, the IP address in question was merely Yahoo’s email server, as Rob Lee told me, and the computer had not even been connected to the power grid. The threat to the power grid was a tall tale created by a DHS official, which the Post had to embarrassingly retract.
Since May 2017, DHS, in partnership with the FBI, has begun an even more ambitious campaign to focus public attention on what it says are Russian “targeting” and “intrusions” into “major, high value assets that operate components of our Nation’s critical infrastructure”, including energy, nuclear, water, aviation and critical manufacturing sectors. Any evidence of such an intrusion must be taken seriously by the U.S. government and reported by news media. But in light of the DHS record on alleged threats to election infrastructure and the Burlington power grid, and its well-known ambition to assume leadership over cyber protection, the public interest demands that the news media examine DHS claims about Russian cyber threats far more critically than they have up to now.
Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist and winner of the 2012 Gellhorn Prize for journalism. His latest book is Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare.
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Book Review
Palantir CEO Calls for Draft to Fight the Empire’s Wars
Involuntary servitude is good for business
By Kurt Nimmo | Another Day in the Empire | April 20, 2026
In 2025, Alex Karp, the CEO of government and military tech contractor Palantir, published The New York Times best-seller, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. The Wall Street Journal praised the book as a cri de coeur, a passionate appeal “that takes aim at the tech industry for abandoning its history of helping America and its allies,” while Wired praised the book as a “readable polemic that skewers Silicon Valley for insufficient patriotism.”
On April 18, 2026, Palantir posted twenty-two points to social media summarizing the book. In addition to taking Silicon Valley to task for insufficient patriotism, advocating a role for AI in forever war, and denouncing the “psychologization of modern politics,” the Palantir post on X declares: “National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.”
National conscription, a form of involuntary servitude, and the wars it portends, is good for business, especially for corporations within the orbit of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the national security state. Palantir fits comfortably within this amalgamation. … continue
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