Campaign 2016, Commentary, Intelligence, International, Legal, Russia, Russiagate, WikiLeaks
FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted or Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None was Produced
The FBI relied on CrowdStrike's "conclusion" to blame Russia for hacking DNC servers, though the private firm never produced a final report and the FBI never asked them to, as Ray McGovern explains.
By Ray McGovern
Special to Consortium News
CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department has admitted.
The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.
The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports" from CrowdStrike in an effort to get the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The government … does not possess the information the defandant seeks," the filing says.
In his motion, Stone's lawyers said he had only been given three redacted drafts. In a startling footnote in the government's response, the DOJ admits the drafts are all that exist. "Although the reports produced to the defendant are marked 'draft,' counsel for the DNC and DCCC informed the government that they are the last version of the report produced," the footnote says.
In other words CrowdStrike, upon which the FBI relied to conclude that Russia hacked the DNC, never completed a final report and only turned over three redacted drafts to the government.
Stone on his way to court in February. (Victoria Pickering/Flickr)
These drafts were "voluntarily" given to the FBI by DNC lawyers, the filing says. "No redacted information concerned the attribution of the attack to Russian actors," the filing quotes DNC lawyers as saying.
In Stone's motion his lawyers argued: "If the Russian state did not hack the DNC, DCCC, or [Clinton campaign chairman John] Podesta's servers, then Roger Stone was prosecuted for obstructing a congressional investigation into an unproven Russian state hacking conspiracy … The issue of whether or not the DNC was hacked is central to the Defendant's defense."
The DOJ responded: "The government does not need to prove at the defendant's trial that the Russians hacked the DNC in order to prove the defendant made false statements, tampered with a witness, and obstructed justice into a congressional investigation regarding election interference."
Thousands of emails from the DNC server were published by WikiLeaks in July 2016 revealing that the DNC interfered in the Democratic primary process to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders for the party's presidential nomination. The U.S. indicted 12 Russian military intelligence agents in 2018 for allegedly hacking the DNC server and giving the emails to WikiLeaks.
Comey Can't Say Why
At a time of high tension in the 2016 presidential campaign, when the late Sen. John McCain and others were calling Russian "hacking" an "act of war," the FBI settled for three redacted "draft reports" from CrowdStrike rather than investigate the alleged hacking itself, the court document shows.
Then FBI Director James Comey admitted in congressional testimony that he chose not to take control of the DNC's "hacked" computers, and did not dispatch FBI computer experts to inspect them, but has had trouble explaining why.
In his testimony, he conceded that "best practices" would have dictated that forensic experts gain physical access to the computers. Nevertheless, the FBI decided to rely on forensics performed by a firm being paid for by the DNC.
Suspicions grew as Comey started referring to CrowdStrike as the "pros that they hired." Doubts became more intense when he referred to CrowdStrike as "a high-class entity." In fact the company had a tarnished reputation for reliability and objectivity well before it was hired by the DNC.
Comey in 2013 with Robert Mueller and Barack Obama. (Wikimedia Commons)
Dimitri Alperovitch, a CrowdStrike co-founder, is an opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin and a senior fellow at the anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. CrowdStrike said it determined that Russia had hacked the DNC server because it found Cyrillic letters in the metadata, as well as the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief—clues an amateur might leave.
CrowdStrike was forced to "revise(d) and retract(ed) statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign," Voice of America reported in March 2017.
CrowdStrike's Early Role
In a Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity referred prominently to this instructive time sequence:
June 12, 2016: Julian Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish 'emails related to Hillary Clinton.'
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: 'Guccifer 2.0' affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the 'hack;' claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with 'Russian fingerprints.'
VIPS does not believe the June 12, 14, & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPS member, filed an affidavit in Stone's case. Binney said: "WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive."
Preferring CrowdStrike; 'Splaining to Congress
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee there were "multiple requests at different levels" for access to the DNC servers."Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw," he said. Comey described CrowdStrike as a "highly respected" cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. "Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that's involved, so it's the best evidence," he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR:And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate — did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY:In the case of the DNC, … we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn't get direct access.
BURR:But no content?
COMEY:Correct.
BURR:Isn't content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?
COMEY:It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks — the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
More telling was earlier questioning by House Intelligence Committee member, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), who had been a CIA officer for a decade.On March 20, 2017 while he was still FBI director, Comey evidenced some considerable discomfort as he tried to explain to the committee why the FBI did not insist on getting physical access to the DNC computers and do its own forensics:
HURD:So there was about a year between the FBI's first notification of some potential problems with the DNC network and then that information getting on — getting on Wikileaks.
COMEY:Yes, sir.
HURD:… when did the DNC provide access for — to the FBI for your technical folks to review what happened?
COMEY:Well we never got direct access to the machines themselves. The DNC in the spring of 2016 hired a firm that ultimately shared with us their forensics from their review of the system. …
HURD:… So, Director FBI notified the DNC early, before any information was put on Wikileaksand when — youhave still been — never been given access to any of the technical or the physical machines that were — that were hacked by the Russians.
COMEY: That's correct although we got the forensics from the pros that they hired which — again, best practice is always to get access to the machines themselves, but this — my folks tell me was an appropriate substitute.
Comey Spikes Deal With Assange
Assange: Comey killed deal. (YouTube)
Director Comey's March 20, 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee came at the same time he was scuttling months-long negotiations between Assange and lawyers representing the DOJ and CIA to grant some limited immunity for the WikiLeaks founder. In return, Assange offered to: (1) redact "some classified CIA information he might release in the future," and (2) "provide technical evidence and discussion regarding who did not engage in the DNC releases."
Investigative journalist John Solomon, quoting WikiLeaks' intermediary with the government, broke this story, based on "interviews and a trove of internal DOJ documents turned over to Senate investigators." It would be a safe assumption that Assange was offering to prove that Russia was not WikiLeaks' source of the DNC emails, something Assange has repeatedly said.
That, of course, would have been the last thing Comey would have wanted.
On March 31, 2017 WikiLeaks released the most damaging disclosure up to that point from what it called "Vault 7" — a treasure trove of CIA cybertools leaked from CIA files. This disclosure featured the tool "Marble Framework," which enabled the CIA to hack into computers, disguise who hacked in, and falsely attribute the hack to someone else by leaving so-called tell-tale signs — like Cyrillic, for example.
The CIA documents also showed that the "Marble" tool had been employed in 2016.
Two weeks later, then CIA Director Mike Pompeo branded WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service," and the U.S. put pressure on Ecuador, which had given Assange asylum, to expel him from its London embassy. He was on April 11 when British police arrested him. On the same day he was convicted of skipping bail on a Swedish investigation that had since been dropped. Assange was sentenced to 50 weeks in London's max-security Belmarsh prison.
Comey, it seems a safe bet, still worries that Assange or one of his associates, will provide "technical evidence" enough to prove "who did not engage in the DNC releases."
What Were They Thinking?
At the March 20, 2017 House Intelligence Committee hearing, Congressman Trey Gowdy heaped effusive praise on then-FBI Director Comey, calling him "incredibly respected." At that early stage, no doubt Gowdy meant no double entendre. He might now.
As Russia-gate transmogrifies into Deep State-gate, the DOJ is launching a probe into the origins of Russia-gate and the intelligence agencies alleged role in it. It remains to be seen whether U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham, who is leading the probe, will interview Assange, unlike Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who did not.
It is proving very difficult for some of my old FBI friends and others to believe that Comey and other justice, intelligence, and security officials at the very top could have played fast and loose with the Constitution and the law and lived a lie over the past few years.
"How did they ever think they could get away with it?" they ask. The answer is deceivingly simple. Comey himself has explained it in a moment of seemingly unintentional candor in his pretentious book, "A Higher Loyalty." He wrote, "I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president."
There would be no problem, of course, if Mrs. Clinton had won the election. That's what they all thought; and that probably explains their lack of care in keeping their activities off the written record and out of computers. Elementary tradecraft goes out the window with these upper-echelon, "high-class-entity" officials, when they are sure that she, and they, are going to be the inevitable winners — with promotions, not indictments in store for them.
Additional reporting by Joe Lauria
Background Reading on Deep State-Gate
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/doj-admits-fbi-never-saw-crowdstrike-report-on-dnc-russian-hacking-claim/
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/06/figures-fbi-doj-never-obtained-the-unredacted-crowdstrike-reports-on-russian-hack-of-dnc-server/
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/04/16/vips-fault-mueller-probe-criticize-refusal-to-interview-assange/
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/03/orwellian-cloud-hovers-over-russia-gate/
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
http://raymcgovern.com/2017/05/17/beneath-the-corporate-mediadeep-state-campaign-to-remove-trump-and-thwart-detente-with-russia/
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/06/13/ray-mcgovern-doj-bloodhounds-on-the-scent-of-john-brennan/
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/14/clappers-credibility-collapses/
https://raymcgovern.com/2019/01/06/transcript-when-clapper-was-asked-real-questions/
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-hacking-intelligence-20170105-story.html
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-trump-russia-phony-20170517-story.html
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career as a CIA analyst, he led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and prepared the President's Daily Brief for three presidents. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Tags: Bill Binney James Comey Joe Lauria Julian Assange Ray McGovern Roger Stone
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202 comments for "FBI Never Saw CrowdStrike Unredacted or Final Report on Alleged Russian Hacking Because None was Produced"
robert e williamson jr
Exactly! Skip!
It's called having a legitimate value set to run your life by. I'll save you the anguish of reviewing my dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac routine but I by Dog know the difference between right and wrong. Mom and Dad made sure of that! Life really is that simple at times.
Giving the CIA or any other Government agency a pass on committing murder, undermining other countries because they can, the pursuit of wealth for the sake of pursuing individual wealth at any cost to the other are all proof of what I say about lacking a valid value set.
See the white mans war of genocide he prosecuted against the indigenous North American people and the horrid conditions of slavery the white man cursed the black man with . No valid value set there either.
No surprise now about the white man's total lack of respect for the rights of others. Especially the super rich elitists. SEE DONALD TRUMP, his band of thugs and bullies and how the DOJ ignores his behavior, government security agencies and the super wealthy elitists ("SWETS").
I'm not perfect don't claim to be but wrong is wrong and as Americans if we don't put a stop to it, doing wrong acts, we deserve to loose out country. Our government has about reached the dark side and we whites are there with it! If America is truly great and it is, then the B.S.- ing of ourselves so we don't feel guilty needs to stop.
Moral again, no "not again", but for the first time!! Dealing with these two issues would give all white Americans a reason to be proud because we changed OURSELVES and did the right thing.
AHHhhh! But what do I know! Go see Beau at the Fifth Column, he lets me know I'm not alone wanting to be a decent human being.
FYI Check out Bryan Stevenson's TRUE JUSTICE: The Fight for Equality
I'm one very disappointed 70 year old white man!
Ray McGovern. Now for something totally different and depressing.
I want to challenge all contributors here to do something that they maybe totally against but PLEASE hear me out. This is my attempt to aid Ray McGovern with getting his story out. Ray please think about this.
See http://thefifthcolumnnews.com/2019/06/lets-talk-about-the-evils-of-virture-signaling/ It runs 8 minutes.
I know , I know, humor me. Now after you watch this video go for something new and refreshing , go to you tube and search "The Fifth Column News. Scroll through the list and NOTE the views this guy is generating. Watch a few short more videos to get a feel for his subject matter.
I have no clue what number of views Consortium News has and in no way am I criticizing the site I love so much but Beau is gaining viewers.
I believe to get the word out takes networking, obvious right! Not so easy in practice though. I think Justin has figured something out.
See David Otness comment in this string – https:www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-grand-illusion-of-imperial-power/
There is a T.E. Lawrence quote, from "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" "All men do not dream equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds awake in the day to find that it was vanity: but those dreamers of the day are dangerous men for they act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."
I believe Justin King dreams in the day light. Is he dangerous? Only as dangerous as you or another above average truth teller.
Ray you might be interested in Justin's story if you don't know it already.
It has been said that ideas stand or fall on their own.
But remember this, "It's Just a thought!"
Skip Scott
Thanks Robert. We need to work together to make America moral. (again?)
Maybe all 20 or 30 Dimo presidential candidates need to be barraged with tweets asking them to look into this or else. Call them out on their lack of demanding from the DNC the truth about just what the hell happened here. Some one there knows.
No! I don't tweet!
Val Taire
Can I remind readers that Tim "Awan" Ryan is one of the "20 or 30 DINO presidential candidates" for 2020? Where is our collective moral outrage that DNC would permit a known House DINO, complicit in the AWAN Cybersecurity Breach, to enter the Presidential race? Should Tim "AWAN" Ryan win 2020, he will have ability to pardon his fellow thirty-two AWAN House Dems.
Julian Castro, also a Presidential candidate 2020, is the twin brother of Joacquin "AWAN" Castro, another House AWAN Democrat. Should Julian win 2020 Presidential race, he has the power to pardon all thirty-three AWAN House Dems involved in the Pakistani Spy Ring.
Lujan "AWAN" Grisham, now Governor of NM, defied Trump's stationing of National Guard troops along NM border. Yes, she sent Natl Guard troops packing. New Mexico, dominated by Dem voters (Repubs are the minority), is applauding Lujan's pro-illegal immigration stance. Gaining in popularity, it's entirely conceivable Lujan would be approached for 2024 Presidential run.
Dem Party/DNC are lining their ducks up in a row. Can you see the intent? Election of Dem AWAN President is a dire necessity. It protects their wall of silence, makes legislative branch normalize Espionage behaviors and protects thirty-three AWAN House Dems—Pelosi included—from prosecution.
Call your US House Reps, your US Senators demanding Tim Ryan be removed from 2020 race. Demand that all AWAN Dems be removed from their Committees, Subcommittees and Caucuses. Insist that these Dems not be able to question Cabinet members, ie: Hope Hicks, in Congressional hearings when they themselves have never faced individual Congressional investigations for their Pakistani Espionage.
There are four AWAN Dems on House Judiciary Committee who will participate in July's Mueller hearing: Ted Lieu, Karen Bass, Cedric Richmond and Hakeem Jeffries. Tweet, email, PHONE —yes "barrage" your elected Reps and Senators informing them you will no longer tolerate AWAN Dems acts of treason. Failure to hold the AWANDEMS accountable for their crimes will result in you voting them out of Office.
Disclaimer: I am DemExiter 2016, voted for Obama twice.
Acquired Expertise > Thank you so much with helping me make my point!
Look folks if you want to make mayonaise YOU MUST break a few eggs! We will not get ANY answers with proof until this story starts to cause lots pain for someone. It appears to me that the someone is likely at or was at the DNC.
At this juncture the Dimos need to help clean this up.
Seth has already felt the pain and it killed him.
Ray read what you had to say about not being able to get media traction with your revelations and it is not surprising since you have provided the closet thing to facts, real facts. . Which in my opinion are valid. I say if the dimos want to hide behind the national security apparatus we need to understand what it is they fear.
The dimos are caught between the next presidential election and the hard place THEY and/or SOMEONE created during the last one.
Maybe it's time add fuel to the fire.
Acquired Expertise
Seven months before the DNC hired Crowdstrike, the FBI reportedly informed the DNC that at least one of its computer systems had been compromised by hackers linked to the government of Russia, hackers that federal investigators had already spent several years trying to remove from unclassified White House and State Department as well as highly protected Joint Chiefs email systems.
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/us/politics/russia-hack-election-dnc.html?
Mueller's indictment of these same Russian hackers includes independently developed forensic evidence, records of searches run and files deleted by the hackers, and internal communications of the hackers with individuals in the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/mueller-probe-indicts-12-russians-in-hacking-of-democratic-national-committee-1531498286
All this information has been on the public record for a period ranging from 11 to 30 months, and to the best of my knowledge and understanding, none of it has been refuted successfully by anyone, including VIPS, to date.
Bill Duckworth
I think what's most alarming about this Russia thing is that an obvious troll gap has developed – they're obviously ahead of us!
Mark McCarty
The Mueller indictment of "Russian hackers" for supplying the DNC emails to Wikileaks is absurd on its face – I published an essay proving this within several hours of the indictment appearing on-line:
https://caucus99percent.com/content/mueller%E2%80%99s-new-indictment%E2%80%8A%E2%80%94%E2%80%8Ado-feds-take-us-idiots
Daniel Lazare at Consortium News has recently reiterated the points I make here – which are simple enough that a reasonably intelligent 10-year-old with no knowledge of computer science could readily grasp. What is YOUR excuse? And what is your explanation?
The fact is that Mueller has ZERO knowledge of how the DNC emails got to Wikileaks – and people who do know, notably Assange, assure us the The RussiansTM were not the source.
As to the alleged hack of the DNC servers in early 2016, it is my strong suspicion that Crowdstrike faked this hack after the DNC was informed by US intelligence that someone was planning to leak their emails to Wikileaks. It is more than clear that Guccifer 2.0, alleged by Mueller to be a Russian hacker, is operating in US time zones and is a fraud designed to incriminate Russia.
And, if there actually was a hack as Crowdstrike claims, their basis for attributing this hack to the Russian government is entirely specious. As Bill Binney notes, the NSA has never pinpointed when and how the hack was perpetrated. Which means that Crowdstrike incriminates Russian intelligence only because of the nature of the malware used. Well, even if that malware HAD been used in the past, it is now commonly available to the hacker community. So Crowdstrike's logic is equivalent to this; The victim was killed with a bullet; The Mafia has used bullets to kill people; Therefore, the Mafia killed the victim. Pimp that argument up with a bunch of fancy computer terminology that most don't understand, and our MSM will swallow it in a heartbeat.
And bear in mind that Mueller's indictment proves nothing – it only makes assertions. Who knows if any of the technical persiflage in it has any validity?
So what is next?
Does FBI raid the offices of CrowdStrike? Why not? Why doesn't the Hillary camp come clean about what actually happened here? If she doesn't why doesn't she get an invitation to go before congress. and explain some things? Someone at the DNC knows what happened.
The e-mails got to wikileaks some way, so something happened. Isn't that correct. I feel many individuals first impulse was to conflate the e-mail theft with the story of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Some Russians were charged. The intelligence community raved about how they all agreed and verified these stories and still the lies persist.
Seems to me the dimocraps have a seriously tender underbelly because of this event. Someone some where knows what went down and maybe we all need to see who was actually involved here.
You know since so much of the legislative clock has been wasted by the congressional pursuits of the fallacious claims made by the intelligence community.
Maybe if the dimos would come clean they could run a much more successful presidential campaign for 2020. Maybe just maybe those actions could restore some of the lost faith in the dimocrapic party.
Then and only then will the scourge of having both the most powerful political parties in the U.S. being totally corrupted by this insane thing called the modern presidential election process be lifted.
Why in the hell are democrats ignoring this elephant in the room. Do they actually fear the intelligence community and the Office of Homeland Security that much? Because if they do we all are in really big trouble here.
Hell it's just the future of the country that is at stake.
You give them hell Ray and thanks again to Bob Parry. lest we forget what is the real issue here, truth from and in government.
Personally, I think Joe Biden publicly groping Hillary and that Indian woman who's running would restore confidence.
I don't think this all that hard to understand.
1) The available metadata on the email files showing Hillary/Democrat election corruption that Wikileaks received indicates an in-office leak (maybe copying to a USB thumb drive drive), not an internet hack. That's what Binney is talking about, and he points out that as such, there is no EVIDENCE of Russian intelligence passing the email files showing Hillary/Demo party election corruption to Wikileaks.
Therefore, there is no EVIDENCE of Russia and evil Putin doing this "act of war on the US", as numerous media and politicized fools have claimed.
In normal human dealings, EVIDENCE, not just an accusation, is required before making judgments of guilt and invoking punishments.
2) If that metadata on the subject email files was faked to make it look like an in-office leak (by the Russians), then the FBI could request that NSA make available its data on hacked internet trace routes of packets of data from DNC servers to Russia, then show internet trace routes of packets of data from Russia to Wikileaks.
But apparently, Comey's FBI "investigation" didn't want to do that.
3) The subject DNC computer(s) were never turned over to the FBI. The first thing done in most investigations nowadays by local police, Federal authorities etc., is to seize relevant computers or any other comm. devices for forensic analysis.
No valid FBI investigation dealing with matters of national security, election hacking, validity of the election of a President, would hand off the computer forensics analysis to a company paid by and subject to retaliation by an entity (the Clinton machine, Democrat party) with a huge political stake in the results of the investigation, as was done in this "investigation".
4) The FBI wants leverage over the people they interview in criminal investigations – they have had enormous leverage over Assange, but they never interviewed Assange, who knew how the emails came into Wikileak's hands. They never interviewed Craig Murray, who says he knows a lot of what went on in the matter.
5) Hillary Clinton, the Democrat party, the FBI, the CIA had roles in paying British intelligence agent Steele (and others?), generate a fake dossier about Trump having Russian prostitues urinate on a bed the Obamas had used during a visit Russia, and depravely rolling around in it.
Top level FBI people used that fake dossier to get a FISA court judge to issue surrveilance warrants on Trump campaign/administration personnel in order to spy on them in hope of getting incriminating evidence. Among other things, that's a felony – that is, unless we live in a degenerated police state. That dossier was also leaked to the information media, which then widely gave it wide airing.
6) The attempted destruction of George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser, by assorted intelligence operatives and the FBI, brings things down to an individual level.
Papadopoulos has been doing some interesting interviews. Here's one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggNWpNZJjNg
Thank you for this:
We have Comey, close to the Crowdstrike chief forensics man (ex-FBI), we have Brennan pushing the Steele Dossier as THE evidence. And we have Mueller using these as main sources while being highly selective with witnesses. And we have FBI agents with Russian origin/double agents working people like Papadoupolis. Given Mueller must have known it was all going nowhere two years ago why the delay? Well, for one thing that delay certainly assisted brainwashing the American public into this hoax.
> brainwashing the American public into this hoax.<
Brainwashing is the right word.
The most powerful aspect of advertising is — repetition— not any actual evidence and reasoning associated with what's being sold.
And, people who have paid subscriptions to cable/sat tv, newspapers, etc. are SUPPORTING all this crap.
CitizenOne
You raise an important point. All of the reporting by the major media outlets have never questioned the claims of the intelligence agencies that "all" of them concluded that Russia hacked the election and had such a massive influence that they effectively threw it for Trump. There is nothing in Mueller's report that finds anything close to this nor any evidence that Russia had more influence than any other nation capable of posting on Facebook. It is a bit alarming that Mueller's investigation was so narrowly focused on Russia. The narrow focus on Russia while ignoring any similar interference by other nations acutely demonstrates the bias that this investigation had.
Foreign interference in elections in the USA would be equally exploited by any number of nations given our open internet and lack of censorship and lack of supervisory control over social media outlets like Facebook unlike what China has accomplished or any number of nations that filter and control what the citizens of those nations can see read or hear.
After all these social media platforms are our home grown tech industries that have grown exponentially and are the darlings of Wall Street delivering returns on investments that wildly exceed investor expectations as they carve out new markets for themselves by selling all sorts of information about anything.
Is it any wonder that they would gladly accept money from any source at any time? Of course they would. Their entire business model is based on selling information about all of humanity to their clients in order to increase their clients ability to sell more stuff to all of humanity.
It is not some conspiracy that some foreign powers might use the business model of social media to inject their propaganda in order to influence elections since it as easy as typing some words and hitting the send button.
We need to ask what it would be like if every tweet and every Facebook post was scrutinized by the censors and was deleted if it did not support the interests of the state? Would that be a benefit for free and fair elections? Would state control of the internet protect us from election influence by foreign nations or would it itself become a filter that stopped all information it deemed that was counter to its economic interests?
It is a worrying possibility that all the Russia Gate conspiracy theories posited by the intelligence agencies have as their aim to blame a free and open internet and a free press for allowing foreign powers to influence elections.
Let's look at some other facts.
The Republicans are aligned that millions of illegal immigrants went marching to the polls to deny Trump his popular vote. The Trump administration demanded that all 50 states turn over their voter data to prove the claim. Republican Congressmen were polled and stated they would be okay with postponing the presidential election if there were doubts about the integrity of the process. The continued republican focus on the national crisis at the border further inflames the right wing claims that all of these immigrants might jeopardize elections.
The Democrats are narrowly focused on an investigation of the election of Donald Trump that claims foreign interference by Russia is to blame for his election as they feel that Hilary Clinton should have won but somehow lost.
Both parties are narrowly focused on reasons they believe that the election process in the USA is flawed and is not to be trusted.
Neither party is focused on the reasons that elections are routinely influenced by common practices like gerrymandering. Perhaps the Russia Gate probe should have focused on gerrymandering rather than Russia. Perhaps they should focus on the elimination of campaign finance regulations as a culprit. But that will not happen and even the democrats shut out Bernie Sanders in favor of Hillary probably because he opposed the ability of billionaires to influence our government while Hillary Clinton was more than willing to sign up for a war with Russia.
So where does that leave us ordinary citizens with both parties questioning our ability to have free and fair elections for different reasons but to the same effect?
We are in fact being propagandized from both sides into surrendering our belief that we live in a democracy where free and fair elections result in the will of the people to be done by elected candidates who will act on behalf of their constituents and are instead the victims of foreign powers be they illegal immigrants of foreign nations that have so corrupted our national election system which is the underpinning of our democracy that our democratic processes have been totally corrupted. We also need to understand what their proposed solution is.
Sorry to inform that their solution to the crisis is warmongering and possibly real war. War will keep the foreign interests like Russia at bay. War on illegal immigrants will eliminate their falsely accused influence on elections by locking them up and deporting them in order to keep us safe from their undue influence in our elections. War with Iran and other nations will instill in us the core beliefs that external forces are jeopardizing our national interests.
Of course there is the other side of the argument that overthrowing foreign governments will save their citizens from the corruption of their governments. Again the other side of the story is the role of the US in rebuilding nations after WWII with the Marshall Plan. We have high hopes that if we go to war we will be victorious and we will repeat the magnanimous history of WWII to rebuild former enemies into reliable economic partners just as we did in the last great war. That is the party line which is inching us closer to war in Venezuela and Iran.
The problem here is that we are playing up our old imperialist goals and disguising them as freedom missions.
Such freedom missions have launched wars in the past history of the US. We sought to free many nations from their corrupt governments before. We overthrew the democratically elected President of Iran back in the 1950's but failed to launch a new Marshall Plan in Iran and instead we chose to plant a Shah of Iran which truly terrorized the citizens of that nation.
That is really the reason they hate us although we always ask the question of "why they hate us" and come up with no answers other than that they (the Iranians) hate us because of our support for our allies.
It is certainly true that what we seek in regime change is the conversion of the Iranian government ruled by religious leaders into a more western friendly government. But what we really seek is their oil.
Why do we seek to overthrow the Iranian government and then to control Iran's Oil? Why do we seek to overthrow the government of Venezuela and then to control their oil? Why do we support Saudi Arabia with its long close ties with America by supplying us with oil?
Can this whole multi-decade confluence of US wars in the Mideast be just about oil?
Follow the money.
It looks like Mueller used the Crowdstrike report and just assumed it to be true.
The crowdstrike report was reviewer and verified by many IT security firms, and their conclusions were collaborated by the CIA, NSA, and every other national security agency in the country.
What reason would he have had to doubt it?
You're still trying to sell the "17 agencies" lie too? Unbelievable.
Freedomlover
Try three of Brennan's hand picked analysts and by the way they never say in their report that it was the Russians only that they have a high degree of confidence that it could be the Russians and top it off by saying this report is not intended as conclusive proof. They do in fact cover their rear ends every which way but Sunday as senator Shimmer is now famous for saying.
CIA?
NSA?
Are you kidding me?You answered your own question and dont know it.And they did NOT confirm anything.
Evidently you don't read Consortium News on a regular basis. Go back and read the great essays that Ray McGovern and Robert Parry wrote skewering the joke ICA to a fare-thee-well.
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/01/07/a-look-back-at-clappers-jan-2017-assessment-on-russia-gate/
"every other national security agency in the country"
This has to be one of the most ignorant statements I have read in a long time. We know Clinton lied about the 17 agencies and it's been disproved ever since. It's time to read John.
If you can come back with a reason why Mueller, the liar of Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction has ANY credibility, and he is a war criminal as well, let's all hear it.
While you are defending this criminal, please explain why someone writing a report so important never interviewed Assange, William Binney (the list is longer), nor did his own homework on Clintons' servers, and never even repeated Clappers public admission that there were only 3 agencies involved and they were handpicked (handjobed) analyists from these 3, not 17 as you pretend. Since the NSA can't prove it was a hack, even after having the entire 'haystack' of every email and phone call in the world, I doubt they were seriously involved in this anal-yst report. You must be too busy to inform yourself, which is quite obvious, but nice attempt at trolling without any bait on your hook.
He had every reason to doubt the crowdstrike report if he had the least bit of critical thinking skills, but instead he played the "magic bullet" game to give Fox news some more weak soundbites to continue to bend the minds of their brainwashed masses. And you of course too, all too eager to ignore the information coming out since as it would corrupt your ill-informed presuppositions.
I highly suspect that "John" is a paid troll from one of our three letter agencies. He is impervious to any thoughtful analysis of his comments. He ignores what doesn't fit his narrative. He fails miserably here at CN because the commenters are mostly very intelligent and informed.
Yup. In the game of disinformation what single characteristic of electronic documents would purveyors of disinformation make sure they did? Would it be to make sure they spell checked the document? Perhaps but more importantly they would be concerned about the ability to test the document by exploring the metadata. In fact since metadata is seldom questioned and is used as evidence for a documents origin it would naturally be a chief concern of the purveyors of disinformation. To not care about it would be the same possible misstep of a person that used a gun in some capacity which required forensic analysis of the weapon to determine who fired it.
Since everybody and their grandma knows that law enforcement looks for fingerprints on the recovered weapon there is generally not anybody who commits an illegal act with a gun who also does not scrupulously wipe down the weapon so it is sure to be free of any fingerprints. The actual occurrence of finding fingerprints on a weapon used in a crime is extremely low approaching zero.
The reason is everybody knows they have to wipe off the gun after firing it to remove their fingerprints. It is the same with metadata which are the electronic fingerprints on a document. Before publishing a document to be attributed to another party everybody knows that the metadata must be dealt with to pull off the con job. To leave this step out is the same thing as leaving ones fingerprints all over the document. Thus it would be a priority in any protocol to deal with this problem and I am sure there are folks in the government intelligence agencies that are skilled at manipulating the metadata on a bit by bit level to wipe off the real origin and to place fake electronic "fingerprints" on the document in order to attribute it to some other author or source.
Any investigation that concludes that a document comes from one source versus another based on metadata overlooks the similar capacity of a man with a gun that shoots another man killing him and then wipes off his fingerprints from the weapon, places the gun in the hands of the victim and claims after a "careful investigation" that the death was a suicide based on the fingerprints found on the gun.
Knowing this is possible the conclusions based on the metadata either assume that the author was an ignorant idiot lacking even the most basic understanding of criminal investigations not even knowing that the electronic fingerprints would get them in trouble or vastly more likely would have known such basic information about how electronic documents are tagged and would do their best to hide the truth by messing with the little ones and zeroes in the document to hide their involvement. They would even likely try to frame the victim as the perpetrator.
We call these situations kangaroo trials or witch hunts. They ignore the plausible reasons for the observed facts and just railroad the process with blind assumptions that the evidence presented is factual like believing a child that accuses the defendant "the bad witch" who cast a spell on her instead of looking at the possible ability and motives of the child to lie and then place appropriate weight on what are essentially unprovable accusations for what they are; impossible to prove.
Yes, but in this particular witch hunt there were no "blind assumptions", as the process was agenda driven from the get-go. The task: Keep/Get Trump out of the White House by any means possible, blame the Russians, divert attention away from the leaked documents, and while you're at it, bury all the crime scene evidence we left lying around because we were so sure Hillary was going to be president.
Just like the evening news, this requires the expertise of keeping any facts which do not support your goals safely locked away, while others are manipulated or created out of thin air.
I am no fan of Mr Stone, but I wonder if his attorneys have the authority as a defense, to bring in Crowdstrike personnel and talk about their funding (I can hear the judge say 'inadmissible) and their full unredacted report. To whom did they give their research? Are the FBI that stupid or are they part of the plan?
While they are at it, bring in William Binney as a witness to talk about hacking in general, and the DNC servers in specific. Bring in Guccifer 2.0 himself as a witness, what the heck. Have a witness clarify on the record the very people Mueller never interviewed and make some very valid points as to why he didn't.
If Mr Stone wanted to spend some of his ill-gotten gains by blowing this ruse wide open I'm for it. He would probably recoup a lot of his money on a GoFundMe account if he did it correctly.
Of course he is against a corrupt judge who probably will not let it get that far, but why not try?
Robert Mayer
Tnx CN, Ray… This reader continues2 wonder What the Hecc is cui-bono4 DNC, DCCC If Ruskies (not GOP) hacking agency?!!!
So coverup4 incompetence by BluParty contractor (w/ incentives undisclosed)?
IMO: 1 study on hackable US vote machines had 1st graders or some such attempt timed unauthorized access (whether Sierra…ESS… Diebold don't remember) but appx 1/2 hour!
I think the resta Ruskigate deserves its due funeral
Many thanks to Ray's persistence; plus to Norumbega and Mark McCarty in comments below.
Particularly important (updated June 9, 2019), thanks for this link Mark McCarty!
http://g-2.space/
As to the puzzle of Guccifer 2.0 as false GRU hacker revealing damaging info on Clinton (a seeming inconsistency) I found the following (from the link just sited) helpful:
"In total, the amount of new controversies specifically exposed by Guccifer2.0's actions – was very little.
The documents he posted online were a mixture of some from the public domain (eg. already been published by OpenSecrets.org in 2009), were manipulated copies of research documents originally created by Lauren Dillon (see attachments) and others or were legitimate, unique documents that were of little significant damage to the DNC. (Such as the DCCC documents)
"The DCCC documents didn't reveal anything particularly damaging. It did include a list of fundraisers/bundlers but that wasn't likely to cause controversy (the fundraising totals, etc. are likely to end up on sites like OpenSecrets, etc within a year anyway). – It did however trigger 4chan to investigate and a correlation was found between the DNC's best performing bundlers and ambassadorships. – This revelation though, is to be credited to 4chan. – The leaked financial data wasn't, in itself, damaging – and some of the key data will be disclosed publicly in future anyway.
"All of his 'leaks' have been over-hyped non-controversies or were already in the public domain – the only exception being the apparent leaking of personal contact numbers and email addresses of 200 Democrats – and really that was more damaging to the reputation of Wikileaks than causing any real problems for Democrats. – Ultimately, it only really served to give the mainstream press the opportunity to announce that 'leaked emails include personal details of 200 Democrats', again, seemingly an effort to undermine other leaks being released at the same time by legitimate leak publishers."
Thanks for drawing further attention to Adam Carter's work and wonderful website – he has done a really heroic job of cataloging multiple lines of evidence pointing to Guccifer 2.0 being the furthest thing from a GRU hacker.
Of particular importance in this regard are the Forensicator's brilliant deductions that G2.0 has at various times been working in time zones corresponding to the US East Coast, West Coast, and Central Zone. (I note that Crowdstrike has facilities in Sunnyvale, CA, St.Louis and Minneapolis – and that the DNC servers are of course on the East Coast.) These findings are complementary to – and in my judgment, more compellingly definitive in dismissing the notion that G2.0 is Russian – than the discoveries highlighted by Bill Binney pointing to transferals by G2.0 and the source of the DNC Wikileaks emails passing through thumbdrives.
You emphasize the important fact that G2.0 himself – supposedly a Russian hacker bent on destroying Hillary – posted nothing truly harmful to Hillary's campaign. Adam's linguistic analyses – endorsed by a professor who is expert in this regard – indicate that G2.0 has done a very poor and inconsistent job of mimicking the grammatical errors one would expect from a native Russian speaker communicating in English. Adams' website also includes the Forensicator's discoveries showing that G2.0 intentionally placed "Russian fingerprints" in the meta-data of some of his postings. Beyond all this, if a GRU hacker were responsible for the Wikileaks releases, why on earth would he emerge publicly to brag about his exploit while intentionally leaving clues of his Russian origin? Would the GRU employ total nutcases?! Whereas G2.0's behavior makes perfect sense if his intention was to falsely incriminate Russia as the source of the Wikileaks releases.
I have to confess that I have little expertise in computer science, and hence would be susceptible to being bamboozled in this regard by propagandists. It's therefore important to note that I have gained the impression that both Adam Carter and Forensicator are functioning as honest scientific analysts, ready and indeed eager to disavow any of their previous conclusions when they realize they have erred. Intellectual integrity is a very valuable commodity, and my sad observation over the last several years is that it is far, far rarer than intelligence. So I commend Adam's website to those who seek an in-depth understanding on these matters, and are willing to cope with a measure of technical complexity.
Adam Carter and Foresnicator are frauds.
– "Forensicator" and Adam carter are both fake ID's created by created by a right-wing activist named Tim Leonard with a long history of working on disinformation campaigns.
– The "analysis" he did was gobbledygook to any seasoned IT engineer: Presumption of use of methods, tools and techniques nobody actually uses; essential variables glossed over, etc.
– The data file he "analyzed" was fabricated after the fact
– its creator also posted instructions on how to use it to "prove it wasn't a hack".
– The website where Leonard got the file from was managed by the GRU.
I would be very interested in following you information on this matter, so no need to hesitate longer on presenting whatever it is you have with the details we need to evaluate what you're saying, including links to authoritative sources. And–just a suggestion–leaving off the name-calling and overall emotional presentation you're offering would be a tad more persuasive. At this point, sorry to say, your arguments are thin and unconvincing.
Adam Carter
You're citing debunked bullshit invented by Duncan Campbell.
1. I'm left-libertarian, not right-wing.
2. Foreniscator is an American, I am a Brit. Although I write for a US audience, British spellings do sometimes slip into my articles. This doesn't happen in Foreniscator's work. An objective analysis of corpuses of both our work will make clear we're separate people.
3. Campbell is yet to actually debunk Forensicator's work as where Forensicator has debunked Campbell's "Forensicator Fraud" conspiracy theory and just recently dismantled Campbell's "Timestamp Tampering" technical theory too.
4. The NGP-VAN archive has long been available as a torrent (since the time the files were announced/released at a security conference in London), you're reference to "fabricated" here can only relate to Guccifer 2.0's releasing that evidence (though Campbell does try to engage in wordplay to mislead readers into thinking Forensicator or I may have fabricated something and even distorts Binney's testimony to try to make it look like Binney was accusing me of that – it's not true and, thankfully, Binney has cleared this up in an interview for anyone interested in reality.)
5. I got my copy of the NGP-VAN archive from a torrent posted to PirateBay, I don't think the GRU operate TPB.
For full details on how Campbell's nonsense has fallen to pieces, see: http://d3f.uk/duncan-campbell.html
Yes, it is saddening to see the intellectual integrity you speak of disappearing. In this respect I would like to acknowledge one more commenter below, deep in this thread–Eric32.
Seems to me Eric's statement here pierces the façade we've been discussing very well:
"No valid FBI investigation dealing with matters of national security, election hacking, validity of election of a President, would hand off the computer forensics analysis to a company paid by and subject to retaliation by the entity (the Democrat party) with a huge political stake in the results of the investigation."
geeyp
hetro – I just got to this material. Does any of it mention what happened to the man who was originally arrested as Guccifer 1.0?
It's my understanding that the original "Guccifer"–at just that, Guccifer, there is no 1.0 on it–, a Romanian, has been in jail for several years and is about to be released, or perhaps has been released. Someone may know.
As an aside (for some amusement only) I can't help noticing in studying this site indications the impersonator G2 was behaving a lot like David Atlee Philips, for those of you who have been looking into the JFK murder, and realize the significance of that name. Philips was fond of theatrics, as was G2 here according to the info on the site. This might suggest CIA creativity in play for this persona.
Again the site is:
hetro – Yes, I know there is no 1.0 on the original Guccifer's name. I only put it that way to make clear the individual I was timelining (look, I also just made up a new word).
And ahh, yes. David Atlee Philips. A name that I recall quite well. I started my research into the JFK assassination in 1966.
to geeyp: just in case you haven't seen this on JFK–check out Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation–outstanding writing style and very informative.
There is one interesting thing about G 1.0 – he most likely actually did hack into Hillary's private server (even though the FBI whores protecting Hillary denied it). In 2013, he published doodles which Bill Clinton had made while President. The media presumed that he had gotten these by hacking the Clinton Library – they didn't report that the Library denied ever having had them. A more credible possibility is that, after his presidency ended, he had a lot of material scanned and put on his own server – which subsequently was handing over to Hillary for use as her private server during her tenure as SOS. Which is where G 1.0 likely got them. Through his hack of Sid Blumenthal, G 1.0 claimed that he was able to access Hillary's server. But the FBI got him to recant this heresy.
Here's the story: https://thehornnews.com/secret-smoking-gun-proof-clinton-going-jail/
So yet more corruption from Obama officials on Hillary's behalf.
DW Bartoo
The many excellent, informed and very educational, comments on this thread are much appreciated.
Reasoned, comprehensive, and thorough comments, fashioned by articulate, considerate commenters are stellar hallmarks of this site.
My deepest respect to all who contribute to maintaining such standards.
Especially, I thank, Adam Carter, Mark McCarty, and Norumbega for the education and insights you have provided on this thread and through other links.
Thanks, DW Bartoo.
And I add my thanks to what you have just expressed for the excellent, data-filled comments appearing under my article. I find the comments rich and instructive and, not for the first time, have learned a lot from them. Even most of the technical info comes through loud and clear to what Bill Binney calls, with sympathy, a "history major."
Dare I express — again — my frustration that we cannot get this story into any media that most folks access for their "news" about what's going on. Clearly, there are a lot of smart, knowledgeable people commenting here. Are none of us smart enough to figure out a way to get this story up and out?
I mean, DOJ, in an official Court filing, has just soaked James Comey in deep kimchi; THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THE RUSSIANS HACKED THE DNC. And we can't get that info out? Forgive me, but I fear the fault may not be so much in the stars, as in ourselves.
Let's address this key challenge……like right here.
Ray, I read your response to my comment rather late last evening, well after eleven, and decided that although I quite agree with you, that the fault may very well be in ourselves and not our stars, that I ought sleep on it.
Odd as this may seem, for well over a decade, I have been chastising myself for having failed in the task I set for myself some sixty years ago.
I have long held it my responsibility to encourage people to think, not what to think or even how, but why, as human beings, living a finite life, on a planet that, for our purposes is paradise, we must engage in thought and consideration, not occasionally, not simply while in school or at work, but as our fundamental expression of consciousness.
Many of us, of a certain age have witnessed the harm our species may inflict upon the air, the water, the very soil around us.
Yet many are unable or unwilling to consider the the inner terrain may be as readily savaged, as callously ignored, as superficially dismissed as extraneous, as some internal "externality", if the thrust of society is dominance, unfettered acquisition, and narcissistic egoism.
Yes, you are absolutely correct, the current "narrative" that Russian hordes, genetically warped and mindlessly indifferent to all that is good, noble, and exceptional, have wrest "control" away from our natural betters, have infiltrated the empty minds of the deplorable, susceptible many, and hijacked the throne away from the anointed one, has led to a plethora of outrageous consequences.
Clearly, to some of us, this is obviously absurdity, but to those whose paychecks depend upon maintaining the tottering status quo, of Full Spectrum Dominance, over all aspects of life and especially over the thought processes of the many, this canard is as necessary as breathing if they are to go on with the comforts and perks of life they have come to depend upon, not merely for bodily well-being, but as proof that they are special, that they deserve to rule and lord it over the many.
So pervasive is this "sensibility", so deliberately inculcated is this sense of righteousness, this "right" to dominate and control,that it is nothing less than pathological.
That means that the larger narratives are shaped by a media owned by a handful of corporations, not just in the U$, but over much of the world, even as corporations, again a small and shrinking number, "own" and control governments, including the legal systems of those governments, readily control institutions of higher learning and so on.
Corporations control the voting systems of our pretend democracy making mock of the very notion of democracy itself, permitting a rising chorus to sing that the very idea of democracy is foolish.
In other words, our culture, our very language is being used to circumscribe thought, to delimit imagination and the formation of new, different, or alternative narratives of how to construct and maintain a sane, humane, and sustainable human future.
Frankly, in the U$, we have no longer even the pretense of an intellectual heritage, of any true openness to new thoughts or perspectives, and those who would dare expose the larger, more pervasive corruption that permits and sustains false narratives such as "Russia did it!", such as Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and others, not least the members of VIPS and the commenters here are, at worst, hounded, threatened, imprisioned, at best ignored, maligned, and dismissed as "too negative", or "conspiracy theorists".
Nonetheless.
I see few give up or knuckle under.
I have known more than a few who have died, while still trying.
Yet we still are, overall, a few.
So, what shall we do?
Realizing that our task is neither financially nor socially rewarding, how shall we become more effective at getting some necessary messages across or through walls of fear, indifference and, frankly, induced ignorance?
What, specifically, is our goal?
Is it "simply" to find some way past Mark Twain's observation that it is easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled, about some specific narrative?
Or does it require some broader examination of the means by which such narratives are induced, promulgated, and enforced?
Is it both these things and more?
If the inner terrain of consciousness is exploited, savaged, and ravaged, then how shall there be healing sufficient to combat the "learned helplessness" which is the overall intent of those who seek to control, generally not with outward brutality, but with subtle psychological coercion, the many?
It would seem, it would appear, that what we face, the manipulation of consciousness, the internalization of submission, dressed up to appear like patriotism or "common sense" that cannot, rationally, be argued with, an inculcated mesmerization of compliance and diminished curiosity, these things require far more than simply pointing out fallacious narratives to a society convinced that it is so special that it is beyond question of any sort, no matter what might be done in the name of the many.
Perhaps we should try to actually get together, meet each other, sit down and talk to one another.
For are we not vulnerable if we use an electronic, digital media subject to the control of those who may "ban" us, "de-platform" us, determine that we are unworthy of even having a voice, especially as larger "authority" moves to undercut the rule of law to such a degree as to render "law" into an empty form with which it may bludgeon any or all of us into silence whenever it feels like doing so?
Further, if we debunk narratives that need such debunking, what narratives of a better future have we prepared, have we honed, that might inspire a willingness to explore the possibilities of meaningful and vitally necessary change?
Who has coherent ideas about creating a more healthy and rewarding society based on something more like common empathy and mutual support?
Who is articulating visions that might encourage the young to feel that this world that we bequeath them is not royally fucked for the dubious benefit of a mere handful of individuals who care about nothing but themselves.
Certainly it must be appallingly obvious that those who seek dominance and wealth at the expense of others are not the best and brightest, that they are among the least able and least compassionate, in fact, the very ones whose pathology is detrimental to the continued existence of the human species, and that of many other species, as well.
How do we undo the madness, disarm the learned hostility and violence?
Do we simply TALK LOUDER?
Do we simply TOOT OUR OWN HORNS or BEAT OUR OWN DRUMS more obnoxiously?
Or, do we dare continue on, seeking ever more effective connection, ever more opportunities of one to one conversations, where we not only talk, but also, listen?
I agree, let us not curse our stars.
Let us not blame fickle fate, as so often do those who lead the many into war or privation, into precarity, or famine.
Let us not claim that the deteriorating environment is caused by Sun Spots or desperate peoples driven to the brink by exploitation and avarice.
However, let us not imagine that the many who still are comfortable, who still believe the nonsense, may not yet succumb to the siren calls for war, for punishment, however brutal, of those who would expose the secrets of power while exposing the comfortable to their own complicity – which might well be what the still-comfortable might consider to be the greater "crime".
Do I have answers?
No. However I do have questions that might suggest some ideas.
I am very certain that the same is true for most every one of us.
Let us share these ideas, even as we seek to debunk the deceits, as we provide the elite with opportunities to expose and reveal their lies and corruption.
No single one of us will solve much of anything. No one has all the answers.
Those who await saviors, wait in vain.
Our future is very iffy.
If someone has a theory or a plan, beyond keeping on, then please share it.
Do not prattle on about "hope".
Do not say, "Well, we have always muddled through before, and shall do so again."
For we are in territory, outwardly, because of our "abilities" to destroy ourselves unlike anything our species has confronted heretofore.
Yes, "Russiagate" must be debunked before it leads to war.
Yes, humanity is fast approaching a place where it can take no more ..,
for granted and without thought, from a finite world.
Neither can our species long endure further empires of brute power or subtle manipulation.
Do not say, "Well, that is just human nature", for it is learned attitude and prejudice to claim so.
To continue such excuse, for that is what it is, ensures extinction, even for the idiots who "get off" the First Strike.
Now, my intent is not to depress, nor to impress, merely to suggest that such future as we might have is up to us.
So, it might be of worth to not spend too much time cursing ourselves for failing to make much headway.
It might take calamity to shake the complacent from their happy stupor, it may well require catastrophe.
Perhaps, just perhaps, patient reason might prepare the way for changing minds.
It is the internal terrain that must be pondered, quite as much as the outer manifestations of behavioral absurdity.
Why do so many believe absolute nonsense?
Perhaps they simply cannot access enough imagination to consider anything else, especially if the external mythologies bolster their internal emptiness?
Pissedoffalese
You write well. A rarity.
DW, I sympathize much with these comments. I recall a time I had faith in critical reasoning and that a generation following segregation and the horrors of the 60's would not succumb to what we are now experiencing. It seems a system emphasizing narcissism and materialism, as you indicate, is inimical to the essential notion that a citizenry must be alert, thinking, and persistently evaluating its government, which I believe was intended at the nation's origins. I am astounded at neighbors I have whom I thought sensible completely gulled by the propaganda, and who solemnly tell me their main sources of news are CNN and NPR. Countering this laziness and complacency is as vital as ever–as with Camus: "freedom is a burden."
What do I think? I think we are all indebted to you for thinking this through and setting forth your thoughts so lucidly. I need to ruminate on them. THANKS. Ray
The challenge we face, Ray, is that most MSM simply will refuse to report FACTS that contradict the official Russophobic Deep State-driven narrative. Note, for example, that the recent revelation that the OPCW censored its own technical experts in preparing its politically-biased conclusions on the Douma "gassing" incident, simply isn't being reported in MSM. Our MSM are now practicing a type of criminality that one would have expected from the "journalists" in Nazi Germany.
There may be one small ray of hope. Tucker Carlson at Fox has been notably contrarian on some issues, and has featured such luminaries as Aaron Mate, Glenn Greenwald, Michael Tracey, and Tulsi Gabbard. Tucker is definitely skeptical about arguments driving us into needless wars and conflicts – he got Iraq wrong, and, unlike most of the journalists who did, he is sincerely penitent – and just a couple of nights ago he actually dared to question whether there is real evidence supporting the "Russian meddling" claim, reporting the essence of THIS ESSAY of YOURS! It is not inconceivable to me that you or Bill Binney might be able to get onto his show. And this might become more likely if prosecutor John Durham begins to look seriously at the "evidence" which Brennan, Clapper, and Comey used to justify their fraudulent ICA.
Tucker's show has the highest ratings on Fox, and he is very skeptical of the rampant Russophobia of our day – he views China as a truer rival. I have no idea how you might get through to him, but perhaps Mate, Greenwald, or Tracey – all major Russiagate skeptics – might have some insights.
And let me take his opportunity to offer my heartfelt thanks for your wonderful essays and your political activism over the years. I've been following your work diligently ever since VIPS emerged in the run up to the Iraq catastrophe.
Another idea might be to try to get Oliver Stone or John Pilger interested in doing another movie–Stone's JFK movie turned the American public around on that scenario, reversed from perceptions due to the original double whitewash (60's and 70's). There may even be supporting creative writers for that project right here on CN.
Fazsha
The corruption is well documented on the internet- Comey is immoral.
Guccifer 2.0 was another trick of the Dems, created to provide substantiation of Russian hacking of DNC computers. It was the Democrats who produced Guccifer 2.0.
By that logic, it was the Democrats who sabotaged Hillary Clinton's Convention by releasing supposedly anti-Clinton documents on Wikileaks a day before. That makes no sense.
It makes complete sense, and is the origin of "RussiaGate". They knew Wikileaks was going to release the data they got from a LEAK, so they made up G2 to shift the story and blame it on Russia. With their MSM lackeys playing along it worked like a charm. No MSM ever mentions the damning CONTENTS of the DNC and Podesta emails, just RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA! Only I think it was Brennan's baby, with DNC complicity.
Guccifer 2.0 may well have been Brennan's baby, Skip Scott, although I am more inclined to consider 'twas Crowdstrike which hatched the wee tyke, though Brennan could well have been Godfather.
Does anyone here have any evidence that Crowdstrike or Brennan created G2?
John – Is that you?
Stygg
Does anyone have any evidence that they didn't? If he's real, surely his existence rests on solid ground.
CrowdStrike claimed Russians hacked in and grabbed opposition research from DNC.
Next day… Guccifer 2.0 turns up with the opposition research (with files apparently tainted by Russian metadata).
However… we learned that the research (and the other document it was mangled with) really came from Podesta's attachments rather than the DNC and we know the Cyrillic metadata/stylesheet entries/etc were introduced through a process that was deliberate and not the result of simply mishandling the files.
So we know Guccifer 2.0 was fabricating evidence and doing so in accordance with the claims CrowdStrike had made the previous day.
Not hard proof but certainly a strange symbiosis.
Two words: Seth Rich.
Bob Van Noy
You're right Carolyn, and Bill Binney can prove it. See video in previous post…
Clearly, Carolyn, Guccifer 2.0 was a confection. If not of the DNC, then, most likely, of CrowdStrike.
Just as clearly, Guccifer 2.0's announcement of being the "hacker" would be mightily useful for those claiming Russia did it, especially if incriminating little identity clues pointing toward unprofessional clumsiness, "Oh my Gawd! The Russians are hacking!", could be strewn about.
Determining such things, seizing upon contrived "sloppiness" and such things, is well beyond my knowledge base. However, imagining the means, the subterfuge that would be used to psychologically manipulate the many, especially considering both "manufactured consent" and "learned helplessness" are both part of the "methodology", we have all long observed, comes far more readily to mind.
This article is also available at information clearinghouse and accompanied by a valuable video presentation and exchange that further clarifies what has happened. It also includes yet more insight by William Binney…
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51776.htm
Bill Binney, in that video, makes two very important points 1) That it's important to realize that when this began the opposition research assembled by the Hillary team was being assembled against all possible opposition including the Democrats own Bernie Sanders. And 2) Bill Binney extends the ultimate blame way back to President Ford pardoning Richard Nixon for his Crimes, thus creating the concept of pardoning all previous administrations of guilt. Keep in mind that Cheney and Rumsfeld were on that staff…
Thank you for the link to that Bill Binney – Larry Johnson interview, Bob Van Noy.
It is absolutely a must-view history of what occurred around the Russiagate idiocy that was intentionally contrived to mislead, not only US citizens, but also British subjects and Europeans generally, with the deliberate intention of rekindling the Cold War and building a lock-step willingness among the people to engage in official hostile behavior by the governments involved toward Russia, specifically, but China as well, from the imposition of sanctions and tariffs, to the claims of the "necessity" of First Strike "options", all the way to nuclear warfare.
Beyond that, there are substantive questions that raise issues of criminal behavior, on the part of US intelligence officers, and others, ranging from the sedition of an attempted coup to outright treason.
Yes, it is that serious.
The CIA, the FBI, Brit intelligence, and possibly other "friendly" foreign intelligence agencies, "very likely", conspired to undermine the US election process of 2016 to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton, which many of the actors obviously considered would be a "slam dunk". Meaning simply that their illegal and unConstitutional activities would never be discovered or held to account.
My continuing appreciation to the members of VIPS, to Consortium News, and to other sites that have consistently dared examine, consider, and seek to hold to account those, including members of the political class, who have sought to undermine truth, justice, democracy, and trust for political power and financial gain. The degree of corruption, which must be exposed, held to account, AND punished, is of such a level and destructiveness that, were our society to fail to do these things, we would guarantee the likelihood of our future being nasty, brutish, and short.
OlyaPola
" the unintended consequence of poorly executed foreign policy could be the potential end of the U.S. dollar as the world's currency of choice in international trade as nations around the world attempt to minimize the impact of Washington's sanctions."
Unintended consequences are functions of both formulation and implementation both of which do not necessarily restrict the unintended consequences to the " the potential end of the U.S. dollar as the world's currency of choice", a component part of formulation being predicated on notions that " the U.S. dollar (was/is) as the world's currency of choice (rather than a function of coercion in myriad forms).
"Unintended consequences" are consequently functions of intended consequences – an example of the mantra that "The United States sometimes does bad things, but always with good intentions".
John Drake
Good follow up on your previous revelations Ray.
"I was making decisions in an environment where Hillary Clinton was sure to be the next president."(Comey) Certainly demonstrates the FBI director's lack of integrity and objectivity. A ladder climber not a real cop, only interested in his career trajectory; willing to fix the intelligence to get along.
So much for serving his country; but it speaks also to the incredible negative influence the Clintons have had on our nation.
Has anyone ever asked Comey whether he sought, or why he didn't seek, a court order to seize the DNC server and other relevant hardware? Even the members of Congress who seem inclined to interrogate him a little on this subject are content to let him act like some helpless guy who would've liked to have gotten the computers, but aw shucks, he just couldn't swing it.
(I'm not sure a court order would even have been necessary: cops and the FBI take custody of evidence at crime scenes all the time on their own authority.)
jeffmontanye
the fbi also claims, to this day, that it never looked at seth rich's phone or computer.
You mean, "Why didn't the FBI try to cripple the DNC, but not the RNC, several weeks before a Presidential election, by seizing all the computer systems the national party uses to coordinate political activity and communicate with state party workers?"
Or do you mean seize them after the election, when the systems were already cleaned and/or wiped and rebuilt, all viable evidence long gone?
I mean what I asked: why has no one ever put the question directly to Comey?
I'm not sure if your answers to the question I would like to see put to Comey make sense, but they're not an explanation of why he has been spared the effort of supplying such rationales (or possibly better ones) on his own.
While you evaded the question I actually asked, your answers might be something like what Comey would say if he were ever confronted on the subject. Of course the only way to find out for sure …
In any case, while they're not ridiculous answers, especially compared to what Russia-gate has accustomed us, I'm not ready to buy them either.
The Clinton campaign in its final weeks wasn't being run out of the DNC HQ in DC. It was being run from – brace yourself – the Clinton campaign HQ in Brooklyn (albeit dysfunctionally). The DNC fulfilled its key role months earlier when they rigged the race against Sanders. If you think some disruption at the DNC in the final weeks of the race would have unfairly crippled Hillary's campaign, you should explain exactly how.
For your second point, part of what one might ask Comey is why he didn't get a court order forbidding the DNC from having their systems "cleaned and/or wiped and rebuilt" before the FBI could get a look at them. I don't suppose any operation wants to keep malware (assuming such actually was present) on the premises, but law enforcement isn't known for being super solicitous about such inconveniences when conducting investigations, and the DNC are big boys and girls with more resources than most would have had to draw on to keep the lights on in a pinch – especially if it was for the *patriotic* cause of gathering evidence of the dastardly attack on Democracy Itself by the nefarious, onion-domed, Muscovite menace bearing down on every apple pie and baseball game in the land!
I didn't evade squat. I answered your implied comment, because your explicit "why didn't Comey" question had no explicit answer.
– No third-party can realistically know "why" anyone does anything, unless that person tells you. Comey didn't. And you asked the question at US, not him.
– Since the explicit question was unanswerable, that meant your question only had implicit answers.
When you asked why didn't Comey try to get a court order to seize the DNC computers, you implied he SHOULD HAVE attempted to seize them, (with a lesser implication that only some guilt or nefarious purpose was behind Comey's decision not to.)
– I simply provided some of the very realistic reasons why the FBI should NOT have atttempted the acts you implied Comey should have done.
And let me remind you – the DNC was not just assisting with the Clinton campaign.
– They were supporting Congressional, State and even local elections up-and-down the ticket.
– They were coordinating canvasing groups, running polls and supplying resources to all sorts of down-ticket efforts.
So your FBI seizing the DNC computers would have hamstrung EVERY Democratic candidate, not just Clinton.
And all your "big boys and girls" comments disregards the big problem – the DNC would have be DOWN. For a while.
Interesting assertion, John, that Hillary and the DNC were supporting local and state committees and candidates.
Likely you have neither seen nor heard of FEC (Federal Election Commission) records which paint a rather different picture?
The "Hillary Victory Fund" claimed that Clinton raised big "bundled" checks of $350,000.00, and more, some $84 million in total, of which the states got to keep 1% (such an elite number), according to the FEC, which regarded this money as "laundered" through "legal loopholes", using the state committees to pass the cash on to the Clinton Campaign.
Further, the FEC, revealed that the DNC has paid Clinton $1.65 million to rent access to her email list, voter data, and software produced by "Hillary For America" during her 2016 presidential campaign.
Now, you can argue an number of things.
You can just say, "It ain't so!", offering nothing to support your contentions, thus implying that the Legacy Political Parties AND the status quo are simply above question or reproach. That such parties are not only above the law, but owe no allegiance, in any way, to the many, that these two parties are Private Clubs, not public institutions, and can do, or not do, anything that they wish.
Or, you could say that the DNC owes Hillary because she financed the DNC, in 2016, and that the "Victory" funds and the "rental fee" are merely her due.
Of course, were you to claim the latter, then you would have to make clear that such financing involved neither control nor guid pro quo, that it was simple generosity in theone instance and merely "business", in the other.
Following on with quo, do you imagine, "looking forward", that Biden will win in 2020?
Should the Dems seriously fight for medical care (not insurance) for all?
Should the Dems call for an end to endless war, or go all in for drone, AI, and robots to further "humanitarian interevention" (of course, we have to kill some folks, how else to ensure peace)?
Should the Dems have interest in preserving the environment (you know, for the kids)?
Should the Dems be for an actual, functioning rule of law (not lip service; think Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, are the receiving justice)?
Or, should the Dems just run on, "We ain't him!"
I realize that you would likely not wish to presume what the Dems should or should not do, that being speculative and not "normal"
procedure.
Having said all that, John, and realizing that your perspective differs greatly from the perspectives of many, here, I appreciate the civility of your comments.
Nice cherry picking and misrepresentation, DW Bartoo.
The DNC did a whole bunch of other fundrasing besides the "Hillary Victory Fund".
– The "Hillary Victory Fund" was setup to take money excplicitly just for Clinton, and raise ~$85 million.
– However the DNC in total raised about $350 million for the 2016 campaign. The rest of the money went elsewhere.
– You cherry-picked the "Hillary Victory Fund" spending and made it look like it represented the entire DNC spending, when it didn't.
Misrepresnetations like this do nothing to boost your credibility.
So, John, you are going with, "It just ain't so!".
Yet you have nothing to say about the Democrats being a Private Club which has no allegiance, of any sort, to the many?
That is the essential aspect which 2016 revealed.
2020 presents a perfect vision of total failure for the Di$mal Dollar Dem$.
A rallying cry of, "We ain't Trump, we Biden!",
will take you, all, down and out.
The Dustbin of History awaits, truly s most well-deserved, well-earned fate.
BTW, your accusatory comment, some distance up-thread, reveals not skill in honest debate, the factual refutation of or challenge to the perspective of others, but the slander of
ad-hominem assault.
With the resources the DNC had at its disposal, the down time could have been minimal. Your telling me they couldn't afford to replace the equipment and have it set up and keep the down time to a matter of hours or less?
philnc
"… the DNC would have been DOWN. FOr a while." Doubtful. Any enterprise of the DNC's size, whatever e-mail service it uses, should maintain (or contract for) regular backups of their data and have a DR (Disaster Recovery) plan to restore service in the event the existing servers go offline without warning. If they failed to take those measures then it should raise questions about whether there was anything "big" about the people running that operation.
I love you, the way you write anyway. Yer probably a one-toothed old shit living out in the middle of Kentucky, but you turn a nice phrase.
Wasnt that a crime scene?
With respect to the creation of the Marble Framework program, I would like to ask: What can be the legal or ethical basis of creation of a tool that enables hacks to be falsely attributable to others? Such an action, even if used against a foe, would be intolerably vile. I suggest that anyone who engaged in the creation of this program should be fired, stripped of all pensions, indicted, tried, and sentenced to a lengthy prison term. Indeed, anyone in our government who would tolerate such conduct should be finding another line of work.
i'm willing to wait on that trial if we can expedite the mass murder trials of 9-11. trump has said it was bombs not planes that destroyed the wtc.
Good one, Jeff. We should start where this all started.
Norumbega
To my understanding Marble Framework was a subset of tools within the what has been called Vault 7. One of the tools within that subset, I forget what its name actually is, is the language "obfuscation" tool that everybody talks about.
I would say "it just goes with the territory". Hacking as such is illegal by definition and it stands to reason that hackers will take what steps they can to disguise their own identity. Conversely, solid attribution to particular actors is said to be generally very difficult.
But see my reply to John, below, reporting a new discovery of fraud in the malware samples CrowdStrike put in its report. If confirmed, that would indeed be vile and shocking conduct. We're talking about ratcheting up tensions toward war as a result of this, and fundamentally deceiving the American people.
And see my reply to John A giving my opinion that the focus on Vault 7 misdirects attention that would better be directed toward the actual steps that were used to put those "Russian fingerprints" into some Guccifer 2.0 metadata, as already fairly well understood by analysts like Adam Carter.
FIRED???
Firing SQUAD more like.
That'd be MY pleasure, but I'm kinda warped.
Jim Glover
Well this helps explain why Pelosi knows that Impeachment of Trump will not only fail but blow up in their face.
Andrew Thomas
Only because of their utterly imbecilic reliance on this made-up scenario. The Dems are obviously convinced that the made up crap about Muslims that has led to the outrage of the Muslim ban, the lies about the border emergency, the savaging of all of our laws by ICE on the border, the self-dealing, etc. etc. ad infinitum, though obviously impeachable offenses, wouldn't play well among soccer moms or hockey dads or whatever group it is counting on in 2020.
donald trump is a lucky man, but perhaps his greatest good fortune is history's choice of his opponents.
The Federal "justice" system can create crimes that never happened, avoid collecting evidence that would prove these crimes didn't happen, issue subpoenas and warrants, force people into bankruptcy hiring lawyers, interrogate people until they can entrap them in statements and actions that they can pretend are lies or obstructions to "justice", put innocent people in lockups with violent street criminals, into solitary confinement to debilitate them mentally and physically.
And why not? If you can publicly murder a President and then obviously cover it up and pin it on a patsy, with no consequences, then the Clinton coverups and political destruction operations are a small thing.
Washington networks have long deep histories.
Or is it just a coincidence that Mueller's wife is from the Cabell family – one of whom was the assistant CIA director who John Kennedy fired after the failed Bay of Pigs operation, and whose brother was mayor of Dallas when Kennedy was ambushed in rifle attacks, and was revealed in FOIA document releases to have been a CIA associate.
From manufacturing consent to manufacturing reality…There's been a determined effort to use portions of the Mueller Report to not just buttress the notion that an official Russian government operation indeed "hacked" the DNC to support the opposition candidate, but to assume this information as Established Fact. The revelation that the US government investigators relied entirely on a redacted draft from a private firm with huge conflicts of interest severely challenges this concept, and this obvious weak link now joins the sad list of unprofessional conduct including use of the Steele dossier to establish surveillance on a political campaign, and the description of a State Dept informant as a GRU agent even though Mueller's office had the proper information.
As exhibited in comments below, the partisan divide in America is as wide as it has ever been, with two camps hurling insults while believing only what they want to believe irregardless of factual evidence, and a third camp just trying to navigate through what can be objectively determined. In my observation, commentary over the past three years on this story by groups like VIPS have held up pretty well, while most of the legacy media and partisan bloggers such as empty wheel have embarrassed themselves.
The funny thing is that people who buy into this Russian propaganda nonsense is that they excuse Hillary for actually working with people from foreign countries. Steele who wrote the dossier is from the U.K.. He worked with people in Russia and elsewhere to create it. Hillary paid for him to get 'dirt' on her opponent which is against the law. Taking information or anything from a foreign country to advance her campaign. But the biggest stink here is that she used her party's intelligence agencies to spy on her opponent. This sure seems like shades of what Nixon did…
But her supporters don't have any problem with that…
Google has a cozy $100 million "shared kindred spirit" with "best in class" Crowdstrike.
In this video, Google Capital's Gene Frantz and Dmitri Alperovitch's buddy George Kurtz discuss what led to Google's decision to back Alperovitch and the Keystone Cops at Crowdstrike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRMPZp70WVI
CrowdStrike received funding of $156 million from Google Capital, Accel Partners, and private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
According to the company, CrowdStrike customers include three of the 10 largest global companies by revenue, five of the 10 largest financial institutions, three of the top 10 health care providers, and three of the top 10 energy companies. CrowdStrike also keeps "Partners" like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform out of the clutches of invisible bears.
CrowdStrike still "stands fully by its analysis and findings" (aka evidence-free allegations) of "Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network" in 2016.
Crowdstrike and Bellingcat benefactor Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.
In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish "partnerships" with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.
Meanwhile, Crowdstrike is growing very fast. It achieved $250 million in revenue in fiscal year 2019 compared to $119 million in fiscal year 2018, 110% year-over-year growth.
In May 2019, Crowdstrike, filed a SEC Form S-1 to raise $100 million for their initial public offering. It is the first American cybersecurity company to file and IPO in 2019 and second overall after the Israeli company Tufin.
Crowdstrike believes it is creating a new category called the "security cloud."
Given the enormous cloud of smoke blown by Alperovitch and Crowdstrike, there definitely is truth in advertising.
David Otness
Thanks, Abe. Keep the truth coming—while we are yet able.
"The funding of "The Trust Project" — coming largely from big tech companies like Google; government-connected tech oligarchs like Pierre Omidyar; and the Knight Foundation, a key Newsguard investor — suggests that an ulterior motive in its tireless promotion of "traditional" mainstream media outlets is to limit the success of dissenting alternatives.
Of particular importance is the fact that the Trust Project's "trust indicators" are already being used to control what news is promoted and suppressed by top search engines like Google and Bing and massive social-media networks like Facebook. Though the descriptions of these "trust indicators" — eight of which are currently in use — are publicly available, the way they are being used by major tech and social media companies is not."
"….Even if its effort to promote "trust" in establishment media fail, its embedded-code hidden within participating news sites allow those establishment outlets to skirt the same algorithms currently targeting their independent competition, making such issues of "trust" largely irrelevant as it moves to homogenize the online media landscape in favor of mainstream media."
https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-trust-project-big-media-and-silicon-valleys-weaponized-algorithms-silence-dissent/259030/?fbclid=IwAR26cfboaHlUptEt4Lnt4NToqFRRLfmC5xzqqJx6DAAgZTqZD8PDSJADwvQ
Their more competent (and dangerous) partner:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/business/media/democrats-disinformation-election-interference.html
https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/28/new-knowledge-just-raised-11-million-more-to-flag-and-fight-social-media-disinformation-meant-to-bring-down-companies/
The trolls/propagandists are arriving again with their silly BS about being patriots and not "communists" etc. plus assuming they're in a nest of Trump supporters and Putin lovers. Their ignorance of CN, and the pathetic, childlike quality of these comments, resembles the five year old disappointed with his birthday party.
I'm looking forward to a complete narrative of details on what has been revealed, piece by piece, going back to at least when Assange announced he had a leak on the Podesta emails and the DNC.
The case, in general, and putting it mildly, indicates Official Bias to discredit Trump–clung to, expanded, drummed home in the daily news, and given the semblance of seriousness by an already compromised Mueller investigation.
I realize that to want this case detailed, as part of the question what US official credibility is left, if any? is to be a horrible commie freak SOB supporter of Putin, when I should be saluting the flag and genuflecting toward Washington.
Actual espionage and infiltration of election systems by Israeli intelligence, not to mention direct interference in US electoral politics by the pro-Israel Lobby organizations backed by the Israeli government is being assiduously ignored by most mainstream and independent journalists, as well as veteran intelligence professionals.
Not a peep, nary a whisper from our vaunted VIPS about such matters as this:
"Following the 2016 election and the heavily promoted concerns about 'Russian hackers' infiltrating election systems, federal agencies like the NSA have used that threat to lobby for greater control over American democracy. For instance, during a 2017 hearing then-NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers stated:
"'If we define election infrastructure as critical to the nation and we are directed by the president or the secretary, I can apply our capabilities in partnership with others – because we won't be the only ones, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI – I can apply those capabilities proactively with some of the owners of those systems.'
"With Rogers – who is now employed by the Microsoft-funded and Israeli military intelligence-connected company Team8 – having lobbied for the direct involvement of U.S. government agencies, including the NSA and DHS, in supervising elections, it seems likely that ElectionGuard will help enable those agencies to surveill U.S. elections with particular ease, especially given Microsoft's past of behind-the-scenes collaboration with the NSA.
"Given that ElectionGuard's system as currently described is neither as 'secure' nor as 'verifiable' as Microsoft is claiming, it seems clear that the conflicts of interests of its developers, particularly their connections to the U.S. and Israeli militaries, are a recipe for disaster and tantamount to a takeover of the American election system by the military-industrial complex."
Microsoft's ElectionGuard a Trojan Horse for a Military-Industrial Takeover of US Elections
By Whitney Webb
https://www.mintpressnews.com/microsoft-electionguard-a-trojan-horse-for-a-military-industrial-takeover-of-us-elections/258732/
Remember when Karl Rove (aka turd blossom) had his meltdown on fox news over the Ohio vote count. He just knew Romney was going to win that state, but somehow his fix got "unfixed" by the counter hacking group "anonymous". Well, now our so-called "Intelligence" agencies and their corporate sidekicks are going to make sure there are no more surprises. Elections are going to be even more of a useless show than they already are. Zappa was truly prescient when he said "politics is the entertainment division of the Military Industrial Complex."
Here's a good story on Rove in 2012:
https://truthout.org/articles/anonymous-karl-rove-and-2012-election-fix/
Good recollection, Skip. I had completely forgotten that little nugget, as probably did most other people. Our brains are so slipshod, we create our own memory holes big enough for the villains to drive a dumptruck through.
I can also appreciate your caution about all further elections. Will they be entirely orchestrated by the string pullers who make the final choice by simply creating the numbers out of thin air? If so, will the candidates themselves also be clued in to prevent a meltdown like Hillary Clinton's never-ending tirade?
John Hawk
Comey: lying through his butthole!, longtime bagman for the Demorat elites…and a traitor to boot!
"Thousands of emails from the DNC server were published by WikiLeaks in July 2016 revealing that the DNC interfered in the Democratic primary process to favor former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders for the party's presidential nomination" notes veteran intelligence professional Ray McGovern.
Can't Say Why:
Two weeks ahead of the Democratic National Convention, celebrating a "revolution" worthy of the CIA, sheepdog Bernie pledged his fealty to Hillary: "I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States."
Hillary crowed, "Senator Sanders has brought people off the sidelines and into the political process. He has energized and inspired a generation of young people who care deeply about our country."
She imperiously declared, "To everyone here and everyone cross the country who poured your heart and soul into Senator Sanders' campaign: Thank you."
Bernie had performed his sheepdog function by exciting the Democratic Party's liberal base and winning young voters by large margins during the primary.
The Sanders campaign won primaries and caucuses in 22 states.
But Bernie spat in the face of his "revolution" by not energetically fighting efforts at black voter suppression, and not effectively contesting the votes in states like California and Arizona, as was his campaign's right by law.
Long after Hillary clinched the nomination with California, sheepdog Bernie continued to hold rallies and advocate for his "revolution", which not only served the interests of the Trump campaign, but very effectively delayed incensed Sanders supporters from migrating to third party tickets.
Green Party leader Jill Stein correctly remarked: "A revolution that goes back under Hillary Clinton's wing is not a revolution."
Black Agenda Report editor Glen Ford described the debacle:
"Bernie Sanders did not lie to his followers; they deceived themselves, just as most of them – the ones that were old enough – had fooled themselves into believing that Barack Obama was a peace candidate and a political progressive back in 2008, although Obama's actual record and policy pronouncements showed him clearly to be a corporate imperialist warmonger – a political twin of his principal primary election opponent, Hillary Clinton and her philandering, huckster husband.
"Back then, phony leftists like Bill Fletcher and Tom Hayden swore on their mothers' honor that Obama's campaign was really a people's movement, a prelude to revolution – as if the Democrats, a militarist corporate political party, could give birth to an anti-corporate, anti-militarist people's revolution.
"Real Fascist vs. Trump Cartoon Version
"Bernie Sanders threw around the word 'revolution' quite a bit. He was still using it in his surrender speech on Tuesday [July 12, 2016], assuring his flock that the revolution would continue as he marched arm in arm with the most dangerous person in the world, today – far more dangerous than Donald Trump […] Sanders' job is to shepherd his flock into a little leftwing corner of Hillary's Big Tent, right next to the latrine and alongside her loyal Black Democrats, who are so meek in the presence of power that they won't even complain about the smell."
https://www.blackagendareport.com/bernie_endorses_greatest_evil
Bernie's own behavior during and after the "revolution" belies this prattle about CIA "derailment" of a "Sanders insurgency".
A guy who once urged once urged abolishing CIA, Bernie now can't get enough of fact-free claims by "intelligence agencies".
Bloviating with Wolf Blitzer in CNN's Situation Room on 10 May 2017, Bernie declared: "Our intelligence agencies all agree that [Russia] interfered significantly in the American election."
"This is an investigation that has to go forward," he said.
Bernie wasn't so keen on investigation when American votes were at stake during the "revolution" in 2016.
What better way for the CIA to thwart a "revolution" against "intelligence agencies" than to have the Dems front an "insurgent" sheepdog candidate who would not only throw the "fight" at critical moments, but turn around and praise the BS produced by the very "intelligence agencies" he previously sought to abolish.
Put that in your vape and smoke it, kids.
And why is it that all these "intelligence agencies" have nothing whatsoever to say about Israeli intelligence operatives and Israeli interference in the US electoral process?
Let's hear our vaunted veteran intelligence professionals 'splain' that.
Again, Abe—Keep bringing it while we still can.
Thanks for your courage and honesty.
Outstanding comment, Abe! This is exactly who and what Bernie is and here he is doing it again. People who were upset with him doing that last time are once again getting ready to back his candidacy and when he betrays them again they will wonder why.
Bernie has signed on to the Russian interference nonsense and tells people that Vlad is controlling Trump and he also says that Madura must step down. He was asked after the election if Hillary had won it fair and square and he said yes knowing damn well that she rigged it against him.
As for the big elephant in the room no one ever talks about how Israel has congress in its pocket.
Abe, thanks so much for ripping off Bernie's little revolutionary fig leaf and stomping it into the dirt. It really made my day.
EchoDelta
Garbage, embarrassing garbage and magical thinking from an Ahab with a fan club.
Address why Roger Stone is now claiming Russians did hack the DNC? And https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/05/15/cloud-computing-and-the-single-server/ splain this?
Otherwise admit you're a red hat brownshirt or profiteering like Alex Jones from gullible chuckleheads.
well oh boy
Emptywheel? Isn't this the same person who still thinks Russia elected Trump..? The one who revealed her source to the FBI? Doesn't seem like a journalist at all. What are her credentials?
certainquirk
Troll. Starve.
nwwoods
Indisputable fact:
Comey has committed purgery under oath
Clapper has commited purgery under oath
Brennan has commited purgery under oath
This is a matter of public record that is beyond dispute.
Your faith-based belief in the Russiagate conspiracy theory is entirely grounded in the baseless assertions of three confirmed liars who have provided precisely zero evidence in support of their claims.
That is a completely inappropriate comment. Stone's lawyers filed a discovery request for the documents. That is not the same thing as expecting to believe their contents.
Anne Jaclard
This is a garbage comment. @EmptyWheel is just another blue-check pseudo-left journalist who outright promoted the idea that Trump is Putin's puppet before the Mueller Report revealed that to be untrue https://mobile.twitter.com/emptywheel/status/821348649108205569. I don't know how much CN pays but I'm sure Ray isn't making the big bucks of conspiracy theorist Jones, let alone conspiracy theorists David Corn and Rachel Maddow.
Even the Democratic Party is focusing on propping up their neoliberal leader, Biden, and is not wishing to defend a failed theory exploited by the DNC as an excuse for why they failed to defeat Donald Trump. Their rigging of the primaries, detailed in the WikiLeaks documents, ensured a Trump victory which has seen massive ecological devistation, right-wing ghouls appointed to the Supreme Court, and multiple wars or war scares. I get that they want to hide their and Hillary's personal responsibility, and that the elite as a whole wants to cover up the failed system they have established, but we should be focused on the Sanders campaign and beating Trump in 2020, or grassroots work on saving the environment and helping organize working people.
I thought RussiaGate was false from the moment Hillary blamed Putin for the leaks this time three years ago. It's good to be vindicated, but I'm not really interested in the Trump-Barr counterinvestigation, either, I, like probably most other people, just want the whole thing to be over with.
But the fact that this fake narrative continues to be perpetuated makes me have second thoughts, sometimes.
Robbin Milne
Empty wheel Marcy wheeler isn't a credible source.
Michael Keenan
She forgot to keep her chastity belt on when she went to Mueller. Still not sure why.
No such claim dimwit.
lol! You're quoting emptywheel? Oh boy she is so far out there on this Russian propaganda nonsense I don't recognize her from when she was sane back on daily kos. But then they have bought into too.
I think that you are the one who needs to wake up. Tell us what evidence Mueller or anyone has shown us that proves Russia did the deed? I'll wait…
Actually, Echo Delta, according to a link Realist has provided on the thread of a later article, here at CN, Stone and his attorneys are insisting that the government must provide actual proof that Russia hacked the DNC, and the government is claiming, apparently, that it is not subject to any such burden as providing actual proof.
This will be very interesting to observe.
Either the rule of law demands actual proof, or the "rule" has become so very bent that it has broken and disappeared entirely, leaving behind merely an empty nothing that may be shaped, twisted, or sculpted into whatever "authority" may wish, to whatever ends power desires or insists upon.
Vera Gottlieb
Oh, enough of this already. Keep distracting people so as not to pay attention to more important matters. Enough!
Vera, "this" is what started the "Russia has attacked us!" hysteria, the new McCarthyist xenophobia, the new Cold War, the new arms race, the Doomsday Clock's current "two minutes to midnight" (first time since 1953), etc. So, if in fact Russia didn't attack, it has some importance.
Ikr? And this when people have already stopped arguing about the Game of Thrones finale. Get your priorities straight, everybody talking about things corporate media isn't instructing you to!
Go away and be an obedient believer then.
Has VIPS said anything about the possibility of a hack first, followed by a leak? (The Nation?)
Password was used to enter DCCC and then DNC. George Webbs theory. So that would put us somewhere in between a hack and leak?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFbCiVzbVYE&t=426s
In fact, VIPS had some evidence (since discredited as falsified) of a possible leak. They hyped it as "disproving" any hack. If you want nuanced analysis, don't go to VIPS.
"YOU" say–without any backup to your assertion.
New around here, aincha?
I wonder why…
Some parties did make broad and sweeping assertions on evidence that really only related to Guccifer 2.0's releases and they probably should have been more cautious.
However, the underlying research (showing that Guccifer 2.0 moved files around via thumbdrive and then archived them almost 2 months later with Eastern timezone settings in effect) has not been discredited as falsified.
Someone did cook up a highly speculative conspiracy theory and a flawed technical theory to try to support the premise that there was a conspiracy and that files were tampered with but it didn't work out too well for them. (Forensicator debunked their primary conspiratorial claims within a month and just recently dismantled their timestamp tampering theory too.) :)
Tim Leonard (real name for Adam Carter): The "research" was gobbledygook.
– Even if someone believed every word of your "analysis", it still disregards many variables about how data is handle, and presumes that people used tools, methods and communication techniques no one actually uses in real life, making it stink to high heaven.
– And,of course, nothing can be realistically "proven" from a data file whose source cannot be verified.
And stop referring to yourself as "forensicator" in the third person. It's embarrassing.
As my other response to your defamation here made clear. Forensicator and I are separate people and even a basic corpus analysis of our work outputs would make that clear.
Also, where have I (or Forensicator) "presumed that people used tools, methods and communication techniques no one actually uses in real life" specifically?
You're not very good at this.
The NSA probably has the greatest computer forensics capability in the world – Comey's FBI investigation never asked them to analyze these leaks?/hacks? by internet tracking and hard drive analysis.
No real investigation would depend on consultants paid by interested parties when it could do it itself or through the NSA.
As for hard drive forensic analysis, people who actually know about computer forensics say that the way to make hard disk data irretrievable is to PHYSICALLY destroy the HD plates. Drilling multiple holes through the HD including all the plates is what most of them do. "Cleaning"? No.
Actually A LOT of investigations rely heavily on computer security consultants and non-FBI security staff. It happen every day. Banks hand off forensic data collected by consultants all the time to the FBI. The word for it in court is "expert witness".
And while the only surefire way to destroy data is to destroy the HD, simply deleting and overwriting it would mangle the **** out of it, making it hard to determine what file the scraps of data are from, when they were written, and if they were ever executed. Basically making it useless to anyone wanting to build a case with it.
No, what you're saying does not hold up to analysis or common sense.
There's no big mystery about this – Binney and his retired intelligence associates figured it out early on.
The Clinton / Democrat party story line was Russian hacking, Russian influenced President Trump, poor victim Hillary.
Private businesses often do leak/hack investigations through private consultants because they fear the (business) consequences of the investigative information becoming public or into criminal prosecution, just like the people controlling the Democrat party feared having the actual method of the email data showing Clinton corruption and Democrat party corruption becoming public was due to an internal leak, not an over the internet hack.
The FBI wants leverage over the people they interview for info – they had enormous leverage over Assange, but they never interviewed Assange, who knew how the emails came into Wikileak's hands. They never interviewed Craig Murray, who says he knows lot of what went on in the matter.
If it was a hack, or even a partial hack the NSA would have the forensics and the copies. Please explain why they have not released this information to anyone in authority.
Pancho Vanilla
Seth Rich
Lorri Strawser
If I hide someone who is being sought for murder, I will still be charged with harboring a fugitive, even if they later decide that the person Ic was hiding, didn't do it.
And instruction is Justice, is obstruction of Justice, no matter how the lawyers and politicians try to spin it.
Bill Walton, NBA Hall of Fame, sports announcer, dad and all that was once heard to utter on National Television, shortly after winning an NBA Title with the Portland Trailblazers, regarding possible guests of an A-Frame he owned out in the sticks somewhere (As I recall regarding SLA alums Jake and Emily Harris >), " I would never Co-operate with a Fascistic Organization like the CIA". Oh the Times they are a Changin' and have been for what 45 years now.
Pablo Diablo
All of this has been an effective distraction to WHAT was in those emails. Far worse than WHO hacked/leaked them.
AnneR
So very true, Pablo. And distraction from the content – so well managed by the MSM – was the intent behind this whole lying farrago.
That is so true.
Can't be said too often. And the media misdirection began immediately after the DNC docs were published, largely crowding out coverage of the substance from then until today. Among other things, this is why it's so wrong to even credit/blame Wikileaks for Trump's victory.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Donna Brazile took one for the team, but the big story of DNC dishonesty was relegated to the vast sea of true things that, as Harold Pinter put it, "never happened".
WHAT was in those emails was basically nothing. No coordination with Clinton, no orders or actions to deliberately sabotage Sanders. Just a handful of snarky comments by a few staffers.
Linda Wood
No. DNC emails evidence crimes of money laundering and entering into agreements with state officials to close polling places in order to disadvantage Sanders voters.
http://thefederalist.com/2018/04/24/bombshell-fec-records-indicate-hillary-campaign-illegally-laundered-84-million
https://www.mockingbirdpaper.com/content/leaked-emails-prove-dnc-suppressed-voters-favor-clinton-rhode-island
http://linkis.com/wikileaks.org/dnc-em/zxSHn
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 6:30 PM To: CaucusGroup; Wilson, Erin; Wei, Shu-Yen; Miranda, Luis; Pratt Wiley; Jefferson, Deshundra Subject: Problem brewing in Rhode Island New report shows RI gov't opening only a fraction of polling locations: http://www.bustle.com/articles/156771-why-is-rhode-island-closing-its-primary-polls-voters-need-to-check-their-polling-locations Bernie leads Hillary by 4 in the latest poll: http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2016/04/clinton-sanders-close-in-ctpari-trump-headed-for-big-wins.html If she outperforms this polling, the Bernie camp will go nuts and allege misconduct. They'll probably complain regardless, actually. We might want to get out in front of this one with an inquiry to the RI Gov, even though she's one of ours.
The DNC emails include evidence of crimes of money laundering and of entering into agreements with state officials to close polling places in order to disadvantage Sanders voters.
John-
This comment, more than any other, exposes your goal to obfuscate the truth and further a propaganda narrative. They were not "basically nothing". They showed that Clinton holds "private" positions separate from her "public" positions, and is therefore a self-confessed liar. They showed that she used her position as SoS to get large donations from foreigners for the Clinton Foundation. They showed she was involved in cheating and given debate questions ahead of the actual debates. They showed coordination with the DNC to sabotage the Sanders campaign. They showed she had inside connections to quash the investigation into the use of her private server and mishandling of classified information as SoS. They showed her own staff was worried about her health and found her "often confused". I could go on. Here is a link with some of the more serious findings thanks to Wikileaks.
http://www.trueactivist.com/the-20-most-damning-revelations-from-wikileaks/2/
HEY JOHN….. HEY JOHN….. Crickets.
Did anyone here actually read Crowdstrike's publicly issued report? The traffic patterns, malware examples and code samples were MORE than enough to conclude Russia did the hacking.
I doubt Crowdstrike even MADE a "unredacted" report everyone here is asking for.
Some data may have been excluded, like sniffed usernames and passwords, but a good security company never publishes use4rnames and passwords of their clients.
Ruth the Truth
RE: your question, "Did anyone read Crowdstrike's report?" Ray McGovern read it and so did the rest of VIPS, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. I read parts of it, but don't know anything about computer hacking, so I have to depend on what experts say about it. You say you've seen enough evidence, can you help me understand how you know that Crowdstrike did not plant that evidence? I'm skeptical. Doesn't it bother you that the FBI did not do their own investigation? Why not? It seems to me that it's like me telling the police, "My house was robbed, and I know the Russian guys who live next door did it"…"My evidence? Well, I destroyed the actual evidence, but I do have this report from my own private security company and they are really reliable. The best people."… I'm sure in that instance, you would not accept my word for it- how is this situation different? I don't understand how a private security firms report is evidence. Why weren't the servers examined by law enforcement, which the FBI admits would have been best? Why wasn't Assange interviewed? There was not a thorough investigation-why not? I still need more evidence to draw a conclusion-Can you answer my questions?
Essentially the DNC destroyed any evidence of a crime. As Hillary herself has said "No evidence, no crime". As federal judge Zloch noted, the DNC is not a government agency, it is not a public company, it is essentially like a yacht club or country club (that can do whatever it wants as far as backstabbing members and determining candidates). It follows that any crime against such a club is inconsequential, or the Federal Bureau of Investigation would have been all over it. Since it was trivial, why bother?
And Crowdstrike may not have had the skills to mimic Russian hacking, they sound like total incompetents (perfect for muddying the water).
But New Knowledge, which was reported by the New York Times to have interfered in the Alabama Senate Election by pretending to be Russian hackers, DID have the skills, as well as having former NSA employees familiar with Vault 7 tools. They're likely Guccifer 2.o and possibly the "only Russians" involved.
Thank you. I'll google more about "New Knowledge" and Alabama Senate Election.
Notice how John ignores questions he has no answer for. Typical acute TDS. Also examine who Crowdstrike is and ask yourself how they could ever be trusted.
I am exactly ZERO surprised the servers were not sent to the FBI.
– In 25 years of IT security and many virus/hack cleanups, I have NEVER NEVER NEVER seen servers shipped to the FBI for investigation.
– IN ALL CASES the hacked equipment was cleaned and reused. Even at Microsoft. THIS IS THE NORM.
I can't imaging the DNC shutting down all their systems, spending piles of money on new duplicate hardware, and terminating all campaign operations for a week while they recover on new hardware, weeks before a Presidential election.
– Especially since the systems were ALREADY CLEANED, and there was essentially nothing new for the FBI to learn from them.
LOL. From the FBI's site:
Computer Forensic Science
Computer forensic science was created to address the specific and articulated needs of law enforcement to make the most of this new form of electronic evidence. Computer forensic science is the science of acquiring, preserving, retrieving, and presenting data that has been processed electronically and stored on computer media. As a forensic discipline, nothing since DNA technology has had such a large potential effect on specific types of investigations and prosecutions as computer forensic science.
Computer forensic science is, at its core, different from most traditional forensic disciplines. The computer material that is examined and the techniques available to the examiner are products of a market-driven private sector. Furthermore, in contrast to traditional forensic analyses, there commonly is a requirement to perform computer examinations at virtually any physical location, not only in a controlled laboratory setting. Rather than producing interpretative conclusions, as in many forensic disciplines, computer forensic science produces direct information and data that may have significance in a case. This type of direct data collection has wide-ranging implications for both the relationship between the investigator and the forensic scientist and the work product of the forensic computer examination
Piotr Berman
If the virus/hack cleanups you have witnessed lead to indictments. then I imagine it would be imperative to establish a custody chain for evidence. As a semi-layman, I imagine that it would suffice if FBI made copies of the content of the storage, confirmed that it has "hack signature" described by the private experts and made their own determination if this signature does constitute a proof. However, tracing a hacker is usually pointless and fruitless, so the systems are cleaned and that is that. NEVERTHELESS, Mueller made indictments based on the evidence that had no chain of custody but rather was "hearsay".
At least some elements of the "signature" were very suspicious to me. For example, using name Felix which is not a Russian name, but which belongs to Feliks Dzier?y?ski, a Pole who was the first head of a Soviet internal security and who died in 1926. Far a young Russian hacker it would be somewhat improbable, but to a foreigner who knows very few facts about Russia, Felix is easy to remember. Same with Bear. It was totally a trademark how a Western foreigner images Russians to behave. Same with switching from Latin to Cyrillic keyboard mode in the middle of coding to type a single Russian word.
Hell, Felix's name is probably known among many hardcore Sanders supporters as a key Soviet socialist figure.
Crowdstrike's technology for tracking hackers is impressive.
– They can follow every single command and data flow between hackers' command systems and the hacking victim's systems and security log it with timestamps in audited and access-controlled systems.
– Those logs follow chain-of-custody rules, and constitute some of the most powerful evidence a hacking victim can bring to court.
Those may be reasons the DNC wouldn't have wanted to give their hardware to the FBI, but they aren't reasons for the FBI not to have sought a court order and seized it.
So, if the FBI had crippled the DNC a few weeks before the election by seizing all the computers running their email systems, calendars, contacts, planning and legal documents, group schedules and coordination plans with state and local party workers, you would have happier?
stop making sense John.
You're missing the point, John. This has been portrayed as "an act of war against the United States of America" on par with the 9/11 terrorist attacks or the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. The normal procedures for virus/hack cleanups don't apply because this isn't a normal event.
This isn't about some clown planting malware to mine bitcoins. This is supposed to be a dire threat to our national security, and it calls for a different response.
This isn't about normal IT work like removing malware and patching vulnerabilities so everybody can get back to work. This is about attribution and accurately identifying the hackers — and since a nuclear superpower is the suspected culprit it's especially important that we get this right.
The investigation should have been led by the FBI, not by CrowdStrike. The FBI should have been the one sharing images of the DNC's servers with CrowdStrike, not the other way around. The FBI should have been the one sharing it's redacted findings with CrowdStrike, not the other way around.
Wrong – the behaviour of the DNC, Crowdstrike, and the FBI was completely about "normal IT work" for several quite a while.
It was not until WEEKS later, when Wikileaks began publishing internal DNC documents the day before the Convention that this became an issue.
HINDSITE IS 20/20.
On April 11, 2019, NPR,
Nation Public Radio, carried story about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange by David Welna.
"12 Years of Disruption:
A WikiLeaks Timeline".
I am curious about your perspective about Jillian Assange, primarily because you said this.
Would "this" be what you consider to be "normal IT work", John?
Essentially that any rigorous examination of the claim of "Russian hacking", BY the FBI, would have hindered what might be termed, based on your assertion, "business as usual"?
Especially, if the computers were to be considered evidence, as that, if I understand your grave concern, would have cost Crowdstrike too much time and money and would have harmed Hillary and the DNC, is that the gist of it?
Frankly, that seems quite akin to notion of "too big", too important, to be treated to an actual rule of law, reminiscent of "too big to fail, too big to jail".
Of course, as soon as the claim was made, not by WikiLeaks, but by politicians, that Russia had "hacked" those computers, some later even called the alleged "hack" an "act of war", then, at the moment of the assertion, the comfortable (and convenient) "normal IT work" perspective has, and had, no validity.
Under a functioning rule of law, a chain of evidence, not hearsay, is required.
Unless we accept either an empty form of law or a multi-tiered legal system, both of which make mock of rule of law, then evidence, genuine and actual, must take precedence over comfort, convenience, or convention.
The lack of substantive evidence regarding the "hack" is quite as destructive to the whole Russia did it BS as is the use of the Steele Dossier to establish "collusion".
For both taint the two cases, long held to be so related as to be conjoined.
The lack of evidence of hacking, cannot be made something by mere assertion, and the Dossier is evidence of what is known as a "poison tree" and all things growing from are known as "fruits of the poison tree.
So, John, my question for you is this.
Should Jullian Assange be locked up, not merely for offending official authority, but also for causing so much embarrassment for "normal IT work"?
The comment above is addressed to, John.
@John – No hindsight was needed. The DNC should have brought in the FBI the second they realized their internal files and communications had been compromised regardless of who did it or why. The theft of this data is the digital equivalent of Watergate, and the Democrats should have turned the matter over to the FBI to figure out who was responsible, not to some private IT company that they paid for themselves.
What if the shoe was on the other foot? What if internal documents from the Trump Organization had shown-up on Wikileaks. Suppose Donald Trump said the Democrats stole the documents and used that accusation to justify punitive measures against them. Then suppose Trump wiped his servers so the only evidence anyone had to go on was what a private cyber security company that he was paying provided. And suppose the co-founder of Trump's private cyber security company also happened to be a senior member of the Heritage Foundation. Would any of that arouse your suspicion, because that's basically what we're looking at here.
CrowdStrike's co-founder is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which has a long standing animus towards Russia. CrowdStrike's findings are being used to justify sanctions and other punitive measures against Russia and nobody can independently corroborate CrowdStrike's findings because the servers have been wiped.
The Democratic party is a political organization with a political agenda, and so is the Atlantic Council. You can't just take them or their surrogates at their word.
If you clean and reuse, you lose the license to make statements and allegations based on what you just bleachbitted.
Nice try to shift focus.
You're a believer and are out of line here on VIPS.
You're not even a competent IT professional, with your 'clean' and 'reuse'-mantra.
Actually, just telling you what I see. Nobody spends the money to buy new hardware after a hack attack.
– To my knowledge, only a handful of multi-billion dollar banks and defense contractors have ever preserved hardware after an attack, and only in exceptionally rare cases.
– Even when I have recommended full rebuild on new hardware, I was overridden by the customer or management.
Seeing something nefarious in the DNC having acted just like any other organization of its size in a similar situation is a sign you don't understand the subject.
Oh brother? Are you a clown? Don't be silly. That is a leap of faith when Bill and Hillary were meeting publicly on a plane on a tarmac with Attorney General Lynch after an investigation was in progress. The reason there was an immediate investigation going on and Comey was compelled to intervene and whitewash the situation was to try and save the validity of the electoral process , the credibity of the Department of Justice and the credibility and objectivity of investigations by the FBI. And just what of the precedence of using an absurd and obviously phony and unverifiable dossier attributed to a BRIT Clown from MI6, hired by the Clinton Campaign, to secure a FISA warrant to investigate and hopefully discredit the campaign of the presumptive, no the actual nominee of the opposition party? Let's just forget all that. Your point is ridiculous and your experience is of no value in the real world that we all witnessed in real time. No doubt, the people and corporations that paid for your services and expertise knew what they were getting when they hired you and I have no doubt you did a bang up job. Keep it in your own lane. It's safe there. We don't want none of that Seth Rich business unless it is absolutely unavoidable.
My guess is that John is here to protect the value of his stock options.
Bravo, Ruth. (I got a good chuckle from your straight-ahead, quite civil rebuke of what *John* posits.)
Now will he respond at all, let alone without deflection and/or obfuscation?
Yer move, Johnny…
I am fairly confident Crowdstrike did NOT falsify claims or evidence based on a combination of the following reasons:
– Their reports, analysis and conclusions were made public, and were reviewed by several competing security firms. No firm with experience in IT forensics disagreed.
– Their report on tools and files found, infection and control methods and pwershell coding were technically viable and reasonable for a hacking attack. No "Where did they get this" moments you find in flimsier analyses.
– The reports were fat with background and supporting info to read as a "evidence leads to conclusions" report instead "conclusions lead to evidence" reports which tend to be fat with conclusions and skimpy on background info.
– There have been no murmurs or leaks of "they faked this" from inside Crowdstrike. All the "faking" claims are coming from people far outside the company with no security expertise.
– IT Security people tend to be pretty libertarian, so I doubt Crowdstrike could have actually "faked" anything without generating a mini-revolt by the people involved.
– Crowdstrike has MASSIVE incentives to deal honestly in the IT Security field. They do criminal and fraud investigation work for banks, and anything that risks that would be very stupid. (Note: motive evidence tends to be weak, but I included it anyway.)
Now if someone can present evidence that DID fake it, beyond association or speculation about motive, I'm willing to listen.
John A
Traffic patterns as in how Wikileaks has already shown the CIA can create false trails?
The CIA's ability to "create false trails" maybe somewhat interesting in itself, but I would urge caution in drawing a connection, even just a speculative one, between this capability and the "Russian fingerprints" in the metadata of some of the files released by Guccifer 2.0. As far as I can see, the two situations are completely different. This is a point on which I disagree with Ray McGovern, insofar as his repeated emphasis on the point has the effect of misleading many into looking in a direction which is very unlikely to be related to the actual solution of the Guccifer 2.0 "Russian fingerprints" issue. Most of the rest of his excellent article I agree with.
The CIA clearly has computer hacking capabilities. And one of the tools in its Marble Framework toolbox is software specifically engineered to _disguise its own hacking activities_ by leaving accompanying "clues" in several foreign languages (namely, ones spoken in so-considered adversary states).
With the G-2 materials, are we then possibly presented with something that was actually hacked by the CIA, the said hack having been disguised as the work of Russia by means of "Russian fingerprints" added by means of the automated software program revealed in Vault 7?
I cannot see how this could be so, given that I don't believe that the G-2 materials were obtained by means of a remote hack (even though Guccifer 2.0 did _claim_ to be a "lone hacker" and to have obtained his materials by that means). And if the G-2 materials were not obtained by a hack at all, then ipso facto they were not obtained by a CIA hack. Furthermore, although I am not an expert, it seems to me that researchers like Adam Carter have analyzed the series of steps that were actually taken to produce the "Russian fingerprints" in the metadata of the documents that G-2 released, and produced a plausible account of how this was done. This account does not include anything that relates to Vault 7 software. In my opinion, Ray McGovern would do well to direct people toward Adam Carter's work instead of misdirecting them toward Vault 7.
Thanks, Norumbega,
I take your comment seriously and am checking it out with folks who know a lot more than I about all this.
Are you aware that Bruce Leidl has claimed in the last few days to have discovered clear evidence that the malware samples CrowdStrike produced were fraudulently recycled from an earlier hack of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?
He wrote on Twitter, June 12: "There was no APT29 hack of the DNC at all. I know this because crowdstrike produced fraudulent malware samples, you know, like they always do."
"The seaduke samples are recycled from the joint chiefs incident. I (and others) know bc they dun goofed stripping the relevant metadata."
And (June 12): "I'll be deleting this tweet and the prior one soon due to suspected lurks on my TL. It's too late in the game for me to sock up."
"The samples were compiled (by cozybear) on 7/30/15 and 8/4/15"
"JCS email hack was 7/25/15 – 8/6/15"
"Not much room for plausible deniability there."
There followed some exchanges with Stephen McIntyre and Larry Beech, which may be of interest to people with technical backgrounds.
There are many other public reasons to suspect that something is amiss in the official version of the timeline, notably the highly implausible claim that WikiLeaks only received the supposedly hacked emails from Guccifer 2.0 during July 14 -18, 2016, leaving far too little time for WikiLeaks to review them for authenticity and publication value before they actually did release them on July 22, and after Julian Assange had already announced more than a month earlier that WikiLeaks already at that time possessed "leaks" related to Hillary Clinton, in the form of "emails" which it planned to publish.
For those who are technically proficient, this essay by Adam Carter provides evidence that 2/3 of the "Fancy Bear (APT28)" malware which Crowdstrike claimed had been implanted in the DNC in spring of 2016 had in fact been compiled AFTER the date on which Crowdstrike was brought into the DNC servers in early May 2016. In other words, this suggests that Crowdstrike may have created this supposed hack.
https://disobedientmedia.com/2017/12/fancy-frauds-bogus-bears-malware-mimicry/
Crowdstrike's claims also appear absurd in light of the fact that the latest DNC email published by Wikileaks was written on April 25 – three weeks AFTER Crowdstrike installed its Falcon anti-hacking program on the DNC computers.
I reason as follows: Adam Carter, Forensicator, and VIPS have provided a range of compelling evidence that, far from being a GRU hacker, Guccifer 2.0 was a construct, operating within US time zones and most likely controlled by Crowdstrike, intended to falsely incriminate Russian hackers as the source of the DNC emails subsequently released by Wikileaks.
As Norumbega indicates, Mueller's tale of how G2.0 allegedly transferred the DNC emails to Wikileaks is absurd on its face.
But there is a conundrum – Assange stated on June 12 that Wikileaks would soon be releasing "material related to Hillary" . But he did not indicate that this material was DNC emails (indeed, many may have thought he was referring to Hillary's erased SOS private server emails). It is clear that, when Crowdstrike and G2.0 made claims in the next 2-3 days that the DNC server had been hacked and that G2.0 had provided the hacked emails to Wikileaks (note the inconsistency with Mueller's claims!), that they had GUESSED that Assange had been referring to DNC emails. I propose that this was a very educated guess, and that our intelligence agencies had tipped the DNC off to the fact that someone at the DNC was proposing to send leaked emails to Wikileaks. This indeed seems likely if Sy Hersh's informant inside the FBI is correct, and Seth Rich had offered sample emails to Wikileaks, asking for payment for a subsequent large trove. It's reasonable to suspect that the NSA had been attempting to capture all communications to and from Wikileaks, and thus could have intercepted this communication. They could then have informed the DNC that someone on their staff was planning to leak to Wikileaks. That's when Crowdstrike was brought in, and the strategem hatched to fake a GRU hack and attribute the subsequent Wikileaks release to the Russian state.
https://caucus99percent.com/content/how-did-crowdstrikeguccifer-20-know-wikileaks-was-planning-release-dnc-emails
This scenario makes sense only if the DNC was not initially informed that Seth Rich was the source of the impending leak, presumably because he had not been legally unmasked at the time. Otherwise, Seth would have been summarily fired.
The creators of the G2.0 farce were betting Hillary's campaign on it. Which means that the real source of the leak would have to be silenced to prevent unmasking of their hoax. If the perpetrators of the hoax subsequently learned that Seth was the source, eliminating him would have been a high priority.
If someone has an alternative explanation of these facts, of equal or greater plausibility, I would be pleased to read it.
Norumbega and Mark-
Thank you for your comments. I have seen this "John" around here before, and he always tries to make the case for Crowdstrike. I also notice that whenever there is something he can't account for he goes silent, or just goes back to regurgitating the same garbage.
One of the underlying themes of RussiaGate is that those evil Ruskies made Trump president, and that he is somehow beholden to them. This is an obvious psy-op with the purpose of distracting from the CONTENTS of the emails, which are mind blowing for their exposure of the shameless duplicity of the Hillary campaign and the DNC. And of course the secondary purpose is to prevent Trump from seeking detente with Russia. In my opinion, even if the Russians were the source, we'd owe them a big THANK YOU.
I believe in freedom of speech, and I think I should be free to speak my mind to anyone on any subject. I also believe that even the Russians have the same right. There is no way that freedom of speech can subvert democracy. In fact, it is essential.
The MSM's job is to control the narrative, and the internet is giving them fits. Sites like CN are a big thorn in their side. Thanks for being part of it. Your comments are invaluable.
Mark F. McCarty
Many thanks Skip. You make a point that I've also raised.
As you can imagine, I've quite a number of times been labeled a "Putin puppet" or "Russian troll" while trying to shed some light on the Russiagate hoax on social media. My response is that, if in fact I were in thrall to "the Russians", then I would be eager to give them CREDIT for doing the job that our MSM failed to do, revealing the crass bias of the DNC against Bernie. But I only give credit where credit is due! I suspect our thanks are due to poor Seth Rich.
As to all the "progressives" who are so enraged about the DNC/Podesta Wikileaks releases, may they rot in Hell. The REAL reason that Trump was elected was not the journalism of Wikileaks – revealing TRUTH that the public was entitled to – but to the DNC's efforts to ram Hillary – the most blood-drenched woman in history, a mega-grifter lacking in any intellectual integrity whatever, reviled by a high proportion of the American public – down the throats of the Democratic Party and the American people
These are interesting speculations, worth thinking about.
Two quick thoughts:
Bruce Leidl and Larry Beech are working on the hypothesis that the people behind G-2 didn't actually know (or have) what was in WikiLeaks' possession, until just prior to July 14, when the FBI reported results of its examination of SR's computer.
About possible NSA involvement and possible use of "masked" records. I would consider what we are now hearing regarding NSA database abuses by private FBI contractors, and their use in "unmaskings" of US citizens. I have even read one claim that CrowdStrike was among those private FBI contractors. The names are redacted in Judge Rosemary Collyer's April 26, 2017 FISA court opinion.
I think this is a very important point, and explains motive for SR's murder, and for the timing of the creation of the G-2 propaganda ploy. If Barr really does pursue all possible leads, I think it will end up tying into SR's murder. However, I've seen this type of play before, and I expect more theater and very little truth from Barr. I pray I'm wrong.
The first shift to using attachments that were later found in WikiLeaks' DNC emails observed in Guccifer 2.0's releases came at the very end of June 2016.
A few days later (July 6, 2016) he published a batch that was entirely DNC email attachments (including a document that revealed it had been edited using LibreOffice 6 by someone with Eastern timezone settings in effect). ;)
Source attribution and leak attachment correlation information is available at: https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2s-russian-breadcrumbs/
There were a bunch of out-of-context IOCs produced by CrowdStrike and when researching the malware samples, we learned most of the APT28 malware was compiled while CrowdStrike were installing Falcon at the DNC.
Putting questions that raises aside, the existence of the Marble framework shows us that relying on code and malware samples for attribution alone isn't entirely reliable.
More significant than all the above, though, is that we saw no incident specific evidence (evidence relating to email exfiltration events) or even had confirmation of the dates on which exfiltration of the DNC's emails occurred and these are things that CS, with Falcon installed across the network, should have recorded and been able to accurately report on.
The report lacked critical information regarding events and any observed/recorded malware activity (not much beyond identifying presence/discovery and what the malware was theoretically capable of).
May 26, 2019 Trump Scares Swamp with Declassification Move
Ohr-Fusion GPS caught deleting emails; and yet ANOTHER Clinton email cover-up….Latest Judicial Watch Update
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/trump-scares-swamp-with-declassification-move-ohr-fusion-gps-caught-deleting-emails-and-yet-another-clinton-email-cover-up-latest-judicial-watch-update/
Jeff Harrison
So much for the so-called "rule of law". The government has been playing Calvinball for some time now. Making up the rules as they went to make sure that they win and you lose.
Regardless what people might think about Russia, Vladimir Putin, WikiLeaks, Donald Trump, Roger Stone or anyone else, it should be a major cause of concern that the FBI's "investigation" relied completely on the incomplete findings of a private tech company contracted by the DNC.
Had anyone even heard of CrowdStrike before Election 2016? It's absurd that some unknown IT company would be trusted to do forensic analysis of an alleged crime of any sort, much less one that has been described as an "act of war" by a "foreign adversary" and has sent the US political system into a perpetual state of crisis.
James Comey testified that "best practices" would have dictated that the FBI actually physically access the computers. That's the understatement of the century. In fact I would call it gross misconduct and malpractice for the FBI to outsource this responsibility to a private contractor paid for by the DNC. It calls the entire premise of Russiagate into question and anyone who can't see that is being willfully obtuse.
Thanks Ray McGovern for this report and keeping this fundamental issue in the spotlight.
worldblee
Like Bellingcat, the genius of CrowdStrike is that they can instantly confirm the results their paymasters have requested. It's so much more efficient than, you know, actually investigating evidence and following the information to an unbiased conclusion.
Noncomunist American Patriot
That doesn't change the fact that the Internet Research Agency (kept closely inline with Putin's wishes) interfered with the election, to help Trump and hurt Clinton, as well as the fact that Trumps campaign welcomed the help and had more secretive encounters with Russian agents than all other campaigns combined.
I remember when the Republicans DIDN'T like Russian meddling, and deeply distrusted Russian intentions. Yet less than a year after Russia HELPED Trump get elected – president Trump announces his great new epiphany to put Russia incharge of American cyber security?
Come on, let's elect a president who promises to brown nose our greatest enemy and hand them all of our greatest Intel!
Vote Trump/Putin for 2020!!
You call yourself a noncomunist. What is a comunist?
I think he/she cannot spell. But he/she clearly is Russophobic as well as being ahistorical, not seeming to be aware that Russia is no longer communist, no longer the USSR. But in that he/she hardly differs from the rest of the neo-liberal, Demrat/Republirat crowd.
I don't see Russia as "our greatest enemy" and this Russia hysteria is a kind of resurgence of neo-McCarthyism. I think "Russian meddling" was a very minor issue compared to problems that exist within our own system. I'm more worried about voter suppression via "Cross Check", gerrymandering, etc. I'm more worried about campaign financing, and the fact that our elections are controlled by two political parties that apparently are under no obligation to hold fair and open primary elections. I think the Russian threat has been exaggerated and it distracts us from other issues with our election process. I couldn't find anything when I googled "Trump puts Russia in charge of American cyber security" Can you tell me more about this?
Absolutely, Ruth the Truth. And that's even assuming that Russia did meddle (Russia, of course, seeming to "mean" the Kremlin always).
Yes, voter suppression, especially in the usual southern states is appallingly undemocratic (even assuming that what exists in the western world is, in fact democracy, which is questionable); gerrymandering, too.
And the corporate-capitalists together with two other nations, well, three, in fact: SA, IS and the UK, have far too much sway, one way or another the former two via money the latter via the cozy relationship between the secret services in our politics (and those of other nations).
The money should be stripped away – no lobbying, no donations, none of that. Simply a certain and small sum of money per candidate from the taxes and an electioneering period that is short. And candidates picked by the people, *not* by the party insiders.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/27/the-grand-illusion-of-imperial-power/
Your proof that the "IRA" interfered with the election in the Strumpet's favor?
Clearly you would seem to think that dearest Killary would have won but for the Russians – never mind that she ignored the three crucial swing states that determined the Electoral College outcome which in its turn decided which candidate won. The problem lies in both Killary's court and in the existence of the Electoral College – a deliberate stumbling block, erected by those much fawned over FFs to ensure that the great bewildered herd would *not* be the ones to decide, ultimately, who won the presidency.
Your proof that Russia is "our greatest enemy"?
Oh – they're Russian and they won't allow us, god's gift to humanity, to plunder and pillage their natural resources for our benefit not theirs. They want a multi-polar world in which every nation state is sovereign and not at under the hegemonic boot of the Anglo-Americans. Of course, they're our enemy, silly me for thinking that they have sensible people in their government and we have bloodthirsty, hypocritical psychopaths who are all linked arm in arm with the corporate-capitalist elites in ours.
And – talking about interfering in our election??? The sheer hypocrisy of menacing Russia over something that this country has done on a regular basis to other nations is, well, bloody mind-blowing.
Paul Merrell
@ "That doesn't change the fact that the Internet Research Agency (kept closely inline with Putin's wishes) interfered with the election, to help Trump and hurt Clinton …"
Why so? Robert Mueller has a huge credibility problem and particularly so in his Internet Research Agency ("IRA") indictment, from the day of its announcement. See e.g., https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html
It was downhill from there. Mueller apparently assumed he would never have to prove his case since the U.S. has no extradition treaty with Russia and the indictment charged only 13 Russians and 3 Russian corporations. But surprise for him! One of the Russian corporations (Concord Management and Consulting ("Concord") showed up in court and asked to plead not guilty. Mueller immediately began backspinning, arguing that the court could not accept the plea because Concord had not been served with the indictment. The Court had no difficulty shutting down that spurious argument, properly ruling that it could attain jurisdiction over the defendant by accepting its not guilty plea.
Then Mueller began trying to avoid providing mandatory discovery allegedly because of an alleged threat to national security and because counsel for Concord might show the documents to other defendants who had not been served (more likely because he could not prove his case). That effort to deny discovery is still continuing. See e.g., government's June 12 motion. https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580.24.0.pdf
Then it turned out that another of the charged corporations did not even exist. Mueller had indicted the proverbial ham sandwich.
No one yet knows how that case will turn out, but I would certainly not bet that Mueller got it right, particularly in a case he never thought he would have to prosecute.
@ "Come on, let's elect a president who promises to brown nose our greatest enemy and hand them all of our greatest Intel!"
Has it ever occurred to you that Russia is only our "greatest enemy" because our government has made it so? The fact that the Democratic Party has teamed with the Deep State and military/industrial complex in a glaringly obvious propaganda campaign against Russia counsels restraint and suspicion in regarding Russia as an enemy, unless, of course, you're an unwitting target of the propaganda.
Or didn't you get the memo from Mueller about no collusion with the Russians?
Not to mention that those charged Russians showed up in court to the surprise of Mueller.
Yes, the IRA agency ran the Face Book Ads that did encourage Democrats to "stay home." But this is not an election "hack," it is a very successful influence campaign. I find it incredulous that Mueller failed to follow the money to the most obvious entity that purchased the services of IRA in the first place- maybe the guy that bought the firm… that created the FB targeting algorithm…. used to select very specifically the right voters in the right states?
Cambridge Analytica… Bannon… Mercer…
It might be uncomfortable to admit that American Oligarchs and their henchmen exerted the lions share of election "influence."
Indeed! When will the free peoples be rid of Putin and the plague of cute puppy pictures he loosed on the poor, helpless U.S.?
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/04/the-mystery-of-the-russia-gate-puppies/
In case you hadn't noticed, this isn't exactly the place for dimwits.
So much of Comey's schtick is predicated on his Boy Scout image that he has cultivated in his many years as an insider Beltway creature and the same goes for Mueller. At least insofar as Mueller can pull off the choirboy effect with his own physical countenance.
As both are former Fibbie Directors (and significantly, buddies,) just think of what kind of dirt they likely hold over so many D.C. pols in their toolkits. J. Edgar Hoover showed the way for his successors and in incestuous D.C. its top sharks always win. Between them they likely have a threatening wherewithal that many careerists in Foggy Bottom fear. And in that incestuous temple we have Comey's brother employed as an attorney with the firm that's keeping financial score for Clinton Inc—a "charitable" swamp of its own that has broken virtually every rule on what constitutes a legal U.S. non-profit.
It is patently absurd that an FBI Director would allow an outside entity to substitute for the Bureau's criminal investigation authority and its unparalleled means to attain "honest" and complete answers. If it were indeed 'justice' being sought.
Comey's time at the ultra-crooked HSBC bank must have yielded an interesting harvest of favors owed as well, let alone his $ six million dollar salary for his one year working for Lockheed-Martin.
Both of these guys are cover-up artists, 'fixers' frequently in demand, and for good reason, so the powerful can continue their systematic, multi-generational pillage of not only the U.S., but the world as well.
I think this is one of the largest scandals ever in the history of the United States, along with the Kennedy brothers' assassinations, and that of Martin Luther King. The knaves of both parties with their asses hanging out are going all-out to keep the lid on it. Because what's at stake here is the sanctity of the Empire's Matrix of Woo. Our perception of "exceptionalism" and all that rah-rah jazz. For if the believers that glue this country together get wind of the magnitude of its interior rot and far-advanced decline…
A lot of people are doing anything and everything (inventing and exacerbating, inviting and callously so) even potential nuclear destruction in a craven attempt to salvage their dubious-already reputations and their place in their lifespan's pecking order. It's screw us and screw the country; and while they're at it: screw the world too.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/08/comey-and-mueller-russiagates-mythical-heroes/
https://digwithin.net/2018/04/08/muellers-history/
Also take a look at:
"And as the Conservative Treehouse notes: 'This means the FBI and DOJ, and all of the downstream claims by the intelligence apparatus; including the December 2016 Joint Analysis Report and January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, all the way to the Weissmann/Mueller report and the continued claims therein; were based on the official intelligence agencies of the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of Justice taking the word of a hired contractor for the Democrat party….. despite their inability to examine the server and/or actually see an unredacted technical forensic report from the investigating contractor'."
"Meanwhile, the Crowdstrike analyst who led forensics on the DNC servers is a former FBI employee who Robert Mueller promoted while head of the agency. It should also be noted that the government of Ukraine admonished Crowdstrike for a report they later retracted and amended, claiming that Russia hacked Ukrainian military."
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-06-16/us-governments-entire-russia-dnc-hacking-narrative-based-redacted-draft-crowdstrike
I am trying to figure out how Julian Assange could prove that it was not Russia without revealing Wikileaks' source for the DNC emails. It is simple enough to prove that it was a leak instead of a hack, but how do you prove the person wasn't a Russian agent without disclosing their identity?
If they could prove that Guccifer 2's stuff was an intelligence agency "vault 7" ploy, it would lend a lot of credibility to the real leak being a disgruntled DNC employee, probably Seth Rich.
Silly. It was Seth Rich who leaked — the LATE Seth Rich, killed as he recovered from Clinton/Podesta's assassin in an ICU unit that was invaded by a suspicious SWAT team. Craig Murray has broadly hinted so; so has Kim Dotcom.
I am not saying that I believe it was a Russian spy, I am asking how anyone would prove it without divulging the actual leaker, which Wikileaks has claimed they will never do. How do you prove a negative?
Skip: Julian Assange could provide evidence that WikiLeaks possessed the DNC emails it published already early June 2016, i.e. by the time he announced that WikiLeaks would soon be publishing leaked emails related to Hillary Clinton.
He could provide internal WikiLeaks communications documenting that work was being done to review these materials for publication between early June and the July 22 release (and specifically prior to their alleged transfer by G-2 on July 14).
These could be done even if the lawyers for Seth's brother Aaron Rich refuse to release Assange from confidentiality obligations, as requested by Ed Butowski's attorney Ty Clevenger.
And, yes, exposure of the persons behind G-2 would certainly help, though I doubt WL will be the one to do that. But people need to stop thinking of "Vault 7 ploys" in this connection, and look instead at the actual work on G-2. My reasons are elaborated in a previous response to John A, above.
I understand that revealing the timing would undercut the G2 story, but without identifying the source how could they prove that the leaker wasn't a Russian spy who infiltrated the DNC staff? I haven't heard them try to sell that one yet, but they might try it when the G2 story and the hacking story falls apart.
Comey has already testified that they "think" the "Russians" used a "cut-out". The Mueller report admits in passing that emails (in that context the Podesta emails or the second batch of DNC emails) may have been passed to WikiLeaks by an intermediary in the late summer of 2016. So some, at least may be contemplating such an allegation as a way out. Nevertheless, further information that underlined the falsity of the official timeline would be significant, I think.
Sally Snyder
As shown in this article, the entire anti-Russia narrative was built on a lie:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/06/washingtons-duplicitous-approach-to.html
Here are, however, serious repercussions that are a result of this lie; the unintended consequence of poorly executed foreign policy could be the potential end of the U.S. dollar as the world's currency of choice in international trade as nations around the world attempt to minimize the impact of Washington's sanctions.