Former US intelligence analysts: CIA allegations of Russian email hacking are baseless
jamie said:paulsurovell said:I read it - but don't know what to comment on. What's the takeaway - Intelligence can be wrong? You pointing me here seems to be whataboutism at the finest level. My link was relevant to the topic - your link sounds like you're building up a character case study for the defendant.
jamie said:Jamie: If you agree to read and comment on my McGovern link, I'll read and comment on your McGovern link. Agreed?
His whole argument throughout the whole video sounds like your narrative. Maybe listen to a couple minutes and a see if you're on the same page. I also thought you may have been familiar with his assessments by now.
Here's the full transcript:
https://larouchepac.com/20170402/ray-mcgovern-deep-state-assault-elected-government-must-be-stopped
Is it true McGovern is a 911 truther also? Are most of the VIPS guys?
Sorry but you're not even close. His point is not that intelligence can be wrong but that intelligence officers who are aware of false intelligence usually lack the courage to speak out because they want to protect their careers. He speaks of his own failure and that of a colleague during the Vietnam war. Ray stayed quiet and rose to the top. His story is important for anyone who wants to understand the reality of what goes on inside intelligence agencies.
Edited to Add: With regard to your transcript, I can't speak for every detail of his talk, but overall, Yes, he expressed my stance. However, Ray published something this evening which comes much closer to my position. Will post that next.
ok, and where's the evidence this is happening with Mueller? Or is it WHATABOUT the time during Vietnam - and 911. I still don't see the connection. Do you believe Clapper and Brennan have mislead the country?
Hot off the press from Ray McGovern. Spot-on, on target, on the nose. It's a must-read that deserves full-posting here. And to reiterate my response to Jamie, Yes this reflects my position.
https://consortiumnews.com/tag/ray-mcgovern/
Mocking Trump Doesn't Prove Russia's Guilt
November 13, 2017
By Ray McGovern
If the bloody debacle in Iraq should have taught Americans anything, it is that endorsements by lots of important people who think something is true don’t amount to evidence that it actually is true. If endorsements were the same as evidence, U.S. troops would have found tons of WMD in Iraq, rather than come up empty.
So, when it comes to whether or not Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year and slipped them to WikiLeaks, just because a bunch of people with fancy titles think the Russians are guilty doesn’t compensate for the lack of evidence so far evinced to support this core charge.
But the reaction of Official Washington and the U.S. mainstream media to President Trump saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed sincere in denying Russian “meddling” was sputtering outrage: How could Trump doubt what so many important people think is true?
Yet, if the case were all that strong that Russia did “hack” the emails, you would have expected a straightforward explication of the evidence rather than a demonstration of a full-blown groupthink, but what we got this weekend was all groupthink and no evidence.
For instance, on Saturday, CNN responded to Trump’s comment that Putin seems to “mean it” when he denied meddling by running a list of important Americans who had endorsed the Russian-guilt verdict. Other U.S. news outlets and politicians followed the same pattern.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a big promoter of the Russia-gate allegations, scoffed at what Trump said: “You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies?”
The Washington Post’s headline sitting atop Sunday’s lede article read: “Trump says Putin sincere in denial of Russian meddling: Critics call that ‘unconscionable.’”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and another Russia-gate sparkplug, said he was left “completely speechless” by Trump’s willingness to take Putin’s word “over the conclusions of our own combined intelligence community.”
Which gets us back to the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” and its stunning lack of evidence in support of its Russian guilty verdict. The ICA even admitted as much, that it wasn’t asserting Russian guilt as fact but rather as opinion:
“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”
Even The New York Times, which has led the media groupthink on Russian guilt, initially published the surprised reaction from correspondent Scott Shane who wrote: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
In other words, the ICA was not a disposition of fact; it was guesswork, possibly understandable guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. And guesswork should be open to debate.
Shutting Down Debate
But the debate was shut down earlier this year by the oft-repeated claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the assessment and how could anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies concluded!
However, that canard was finally knocked down by President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who acknowledged in sworn congressional testimony that the ICA was the product of “handpicked” analysts from only three agencies – the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
In other words, not only did the full intelligence community not participate in the ICA but only analysts “handpicked” by Obama’s intelligence chiefs conducted the analysis – and as we intelligence veterans know well, if you handpick the analysts, you are handpicking the conclusions.
For instance, put a group of analysts known for their hardline views on Russia in a room for a few weeks, prevent analysts with dissenting viewpoints from weighing in, don’t require any actual evidence, and you are pretty sure to get the Russia-bashing result that you wanted.
So why do you think Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan put up the no-entry sign that kept out analysts from the State Department and Defense Intelligence Agency, two entities that might have significant insights into Russian intentions? By all rights, they should have been included. But, clearly, no dissenting footnotes or wider-perspective views were desired.
If you remember back to the Iraq WMD intelligence estimate, analysts from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, known as INR, offered unwelcome dissenting views about the pace of Iraq’s supposed nuclear program, inserting a footnote saying they found it too difficult to predict the fruition of a program when there was no reliable evidence as to when – not to mention if – it had started.
DIA also was demonstrating an unusually independent streak, displaying a willingness to give due consideration to Russia’s perspective. Here’s the heterodox line DIA took in a major report published in December 2015:
“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab Spring and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”
So, not only did the Jan. 6 report exclude input from INR and DIA and the other dozen or so intelligence agencies but it even avoided a fully diverse set of opinions from inside the CIA, FBI and NSA. The assessment – or guesswork – came only from those “hand-picked” analysts.
It’s also worth noting that not only does Putin deny that Russia was behind the publication of the Democratic emails but so too does WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange who has insisted repeatedly that the material did not come from the Russians. He and others around WikiLeaks have strongly suggested that the emails came as leaks from Democratic insiders.
Seeking Real Answers
In the face of Official Washington’s evidence-free groupthink, what some of us former U.S. intelligence analysts have been trying to do is provide both a fuller understanding of Russian behavior and whatever scientific analysis can be applied to the alleged “hacks.”
Forensic investigations and testing of relevant download speeds, reported by members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), have undermined the Russia-did-it groupthink. But this attempt to engage in actual evaluation of evidence has been either ignored or mocked by mainstream news outlets.
Still, the suggestion in our July 24 VIPS memo that President Trump ask current CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take a fresh look at the issue recently had some consequence when Pompeo contacted VIPS member William Binney, a former NSA Technical Director, and invited him to explain his latest research on the impossibility of the Russians extracting the Democratic emails via an Internet hack based on known download speeds.
In typically candid terms, Binney explained to Pompeo why VIPS had concluded that the intelligence analysts behind the Jan. 6 report had been making stuff up about Russian “hacking.”
When news of the Binney-Pompeo meeting broke last week, the U.S. mainstream media again rejected the opportunity to rethink the Russia-did-it groupthink and instead treated Binney as some sort of “conspiracy theorist” with a “disputed” theory, while attacking Pompeo’s willingness to discuss Binney’s findings as “politicizing intelligence.”
Despite the smearing of Binney, President Trump appears to have taken some of this new evidence to heart, explaining his dispute with open-mouthed White House reporters on Air Force One who baited Trump with various forms of the same question: “Do you believe Putin?” amid the new jeering about Trump “getting played” by Putin.
Trump’s demeanor, however, suggested increased confidence that the Russian “hacking” allegations were the “witch hunt” that he has decried for months.
Trump also jabbed the press over its earlier false claims that “all 17 intelligence agencies” concurred on the Russian “hack.” And Trump introduced the idea of a different kind of “hack,” i.e., Obama’s political appointees at the heads of the agencies behind the Jan. 6 report.
Trump said, “You hear it’s 17 agencies. Well it’s three. And one is Brennan … give me a break. They’re political hacks. … I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, you have [FBI Director James] Comey. Comey is proven to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.”
Later, in deference to those still at work in intelligence, Trump said, “I’m with our [intelligence] agencies as currently constituted.”
While Trump surely has a dismal record of his own regarding truth-telling, he’s not wrong about the checkered record of the triumvirate of Clapper, Brennan and Comey.
Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.
In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA’s unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper’s testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, “My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize.” Despite the deception, he was allowed to stay as Obama’s most senior intelligence officer for almost four more years.
Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian “interference” in the U.S. election to NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about “the historical practices of the Russians.” Clapper said, “the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”
Brennan, who had previously defended torture as having been an effective way to gain intelligence, was CIA director when agency operatives broke into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was investigating CIA torture.
Former FBI Director Comey is infamous for letting the Democratic National Committee arrange its own investigation of the “hacking” that was then blamed on Russia, a development that led some members of Congress to call the supposed “hack” an “act of war.” Despite the risk of nuclear conflagration, the FBI didn’t bother to do its own forensics.
And, by his own admission, Comey arranged a leak to The New York Times that was specifically designed to get a Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate Russia-gate, a job that fell to his old friend Robert Mueller, who has had his own mixed record as the previous FBI director in mishandling the 9/11 investigation.
There are plenty of reasons to want Trump out of the White House, but there also should be respect for facts and due process. So far, the powers-that-be in Washington – in politics, the media and other dominant institutions, what some call the Deep State – have shown little regard for fairness in the Russia-gate “scandal.”
The goal seems to be to remove the President or at least emasculate him on a bum rap, giving him the bum’s rush, so to speak, while also further demonizing Russia and exacerbating an already dangerous New Cold War.
The truth should still count for something. No one’s character should be assassinated, as Bill Binney’s is being now, for running afoul of the conventional wisdom that Trump – like bête noire Putin – never tells the truth, and that to believe either is, well, “unconscionable,” as The Washington Post warns.
Edited to correct the link.
please just post the link in the future - or highlight one or two paragraphs
and it's far from a "must read" - nothing new in the Binney - McGovern talking points.
So many scandals to choose from! This is my favorite tweet about Roy Moore. "A family friend in Alabama just told my wife that a WAPO reporter named Beth offered her 1000$ to accuse Roy Moore???” the account has since been deleted since they gave themselves away too easily.
Page 13 of the official report with the CIA disclaimer cited by McGovern:
Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.
And a specific disclaimer about "high confidence" judgments:
High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or certainty; such judgments might be wrong.
So according to the CIA/NSA/FBI, the judgment of "high confidence" that Russia hacked the DNC is not a fact or a certainty and it "might be wrong."
According to this - there's no confidence level above "high confidence" - is this correct?
Or if so - how would it be labelled? What confidence level would satisfy VIPS?
That was a mistake, so the lesson learned from Iraq was to really focus on your level of confidence in the judgment you’re making. ‘Not only do I think its going to rain tomorrow, but I have high confidence in that,’ or ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow but you guys have to know that I only have low confidence in that.’ That has become a big focus. What really caught my attention in the leaks that came out about the CIA’s judgment about what Putin was trying to achieve in his interference in the election is that the analysts applied ‘high confidence’ to that judgment. What that says to me, because we don’t attach high confidence levels to just any judgment, very few judgments actually have a high confidence level, so to get that, you have to have more than one source of data. I think we’re looking at multiple sources of data here, and you have to have something that is stronger than just a circumstantial case. I think you have to have some direct evidence, so I think we have some direct evidence.
The stuff that’s being talked about publicly, is all stuff that doesn’t really damage sources and methods, and that’s stuff that seems to be circumstantial, right? How do you know what Russian intentions are simply from the fact that they hacked the DNC, right? It’s the stuff that takes you directly to the top and directly to Putin’s intentions that probably have very sensitive sources and methods involved, and that’s why you’re not hearing anything about them.
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/expert-view/intelligence-trump-putin-and-russias-long-game-2
This is from Michael Morrell, Former Acting Director CIA. Though I'm not sure if he's credible because he hasn't appeared on Infowars yet.
As I noted last time Iraq came up -- the crucial difference there was that people with access to evidence were disputing the claim that Iraq had WMD.
Listen to people who actually have access to the evidence. Everything else is just noise.
PVW said:
As I noted last time Iraq came up -- the crucial difference there was that people with access to evidence were disputing the claim that Iraq had WMD.
Listen to people who actually have access to the evidence. Everything else is just noise.
Before the invasion, VIPS warned of the flawed "evidence" Iraq WMDs. The most prominent expert who warned of false WMD "evidence" before the war was former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who is now a VIPS member.
https://consortiumnews.com/2003/03/12/cooking-intelligence-for-war-in-iraq/
Scott Ritter was worth listening to then because he was on the ground in Iraq. Unless he is similarly looking at evidence around Russian involvement in the 2017 election, he's not relevant here.
paulsurovell said:
PVW said:
As I noted last time Iraq came up -- the crucial difference there was that people with access to evidence were disputing the claim that Iraq had WMD.
Listen to people who actually have access to the evidence. Everything else is just noise.
Before the invasion, VIPS warned of the flawed "evidence" Iraq WMDs. The most prominent expert who warned of false WMD "evidence" before the war was former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who is now a VIPS member.
https://consortiumnews.com/2003/03/12/cooking-intelligence-for-war-in-iraq/
jamie said:
That was a mistake, so the lesson learned from Iraq was to really focus on your level of confidence in the judgment you’re making. ‘Not only do I think its going to rain tomorrow, but I have high confidence in that,’ or ‘It’s going to rain tomorrow but you guys have to know that I only have low confidence in that.’ That has become a big focus. What really caught my attention in the leaks that came out about the CIA’s judgment about what Putin was trying to achieve in his interference in the election is that the analysts applied ‘high confidence’ to that judgment. What that says to me, because we don’t attach high confidence levels to just any judgment, very few judgments actually have a high confidence level, so to get that, you have to have more than one source of data. I think we’re looking at multiple sources of data here, and you have to have something that is stronger than just a circumstantial case. I think you have to have some direct evidence, so I think we have some direct evidence.The stuff that’s being talked about publicly, is all stuff that doesn’t really damage sources and methods, and that’s stuff that seems to be circumstantial, right? How do you know what Russian intentions are simply from the fact that they hacked the DNC, right? It’s the stuff that takes you directly to the top and directly to Putin’s intentions that probably have very sensitive sources and methods involved, and that’s why you’re not hearing anything about them.
https://www.thecipherbrief.com/column/expert-view/intelligence-trump-putin-and-russias-long-game-2
This is from Michael Morrell, Former Acting Director CIA. Though I'm not sure if he's credible because he hasn't appeared on Infowars yet.
Morell was deputy director of the CIA when it promoted false information about Iraq WMDs. In recent years, when he wasn't defending torture, Morell apologized for the CIA's incorrect assessment on Iraq.
So Morell is actually a poster boy for why the CIA assessment -- which itself says "a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or certainty; such judgments might be wrong" -- should not be accepted on trust.
PVW said:
Scott Ritter was worth listening to then because he was on the ground in Iraq. Unless he is similarly looking at evidence around Russian involvement in the 2017 election, he's not relevant here.
Scott left Iraq five years before the invasion.
To reiterate, the hacking scenario is based on an "assessment" which its own authors say "might be wrong." And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
I think I may have actually been thinking of Hans Blixt, not Ritter.
I don't really see the point of this thread so long as it's just trading speculation. I'll excuse myself until the next evidence-based development -- there's enough noise as it is without contributing to it myself.
paulsurovell said:
PVW said:
Scott Ritter was worth listening to then because he was on the ground in Iraq. Unless he is similarly looking at evidence around Russian involvement in the 2017 election, he's not relevant here.
Scott left Iraq five years before the invasion.
To reiterate, the hacking scenario is based on an "assessment" which its own authors say "might be wrong." And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
The CIA used spies of allies located in Russia to provide much of the information. How are those sources supposed to be disclosed without harm to those sources?
eta -Cross-posted with DaveSchmidt.
paulsurovell said:
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
Easy for you to say.
DaveSchmidt said:
paulsurovell said:
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
Easy for you to say.
Show me the rebuttal and I'll stand corrected.
cramer said:
paulsurovell said:
PVW said:
Scott Ritter was worth listening to then because he was on the ground in Iraq. Unless he is similarly looking at evidence around Russian involvement in the 2017 election, he's not relevant here.
Scott left Iraq five years before the invasion.
To reiterate, the hacking scenario is based on an "assessment" which its own authors say "might be wrong." And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
The CIA used spies of allies located in Russia to provide much of the information. How are those sources supposed to be disclosed without harm to those sources?
eta -Cross-posted with DaveSchmidt.
What information came from spies of allies located in Russia?
paulsurovell said:
DaveSchmidt said:
paulsurovell said:
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
Easy for you to say.
Show me the rebuttal and I'll stand corrected.
I said I'm out, but I have to ask --- what exactly do you think happens to spies when the country they are based in learns they are spies?
paulsurovell said:
cramer said:
paulsurovell said:
PVW said:
Scott Ritter was worth listening to then because he was on the ground in Iraq. Unless he is similarly looking at evidence around Russian involvement in the 2017 election, he's not relevant here.
Scott left Iraq five years before the invasion.
To reiterate, the hacking scenario is based on an "assessment" which its own authors say "might be wrong." And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
The CIA used spies of allies located in Russia to provide much of the information. How are those sources supposed to be disclosed without harm to those sources?
eta -Cross-posted with DaveSchmidt.
What information came from spies of allies located in Russia?
Early on Clapper said that the CIA relied on such information. I've looked for the reference but have been unable to find it - but I have a pretty good memory, particularly about something like that.
The IC assessment wasn't just about hacking, per se. It was also about how the hacked info was given to Wikileaks (via cutouts) among other things.
paulsurovell said:
DaveSchmidt said:Show me the rebuttal and I'll stand corrected.
paulsurovell said:Easy for you to say.
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
To rebut the claim that the evidence "could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods", the evidence would have to be disclosed. We've all seen enough movies to know that "the identity of the source" is often the MacGuffin. I think it's safe to say that the VIPS folks know that their claim CAN'T be disproven without causing the harm they say won't happen.
paulsurovell said:
DaveSchmidt said:Show me the rebuttal and I'll stand corrected.
paulsurovell said:Easy for you to say.
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
I gave you that same rebuttal earlier. It’s that, no, the evidence can’t be disclosed without harm to sources and methods, but you’d have to know the evidence to be convinced of that, which brings us back to square one with critics who say it can be done.
It’s a rebuttal, just not one you accept. I think you’re confusing the two.
ETA: Cross-posted.
It was at that point that ridski realized the avatar going by the name of paulsurovell was nothing more than a character in a Philip K. Dick novel.
DaveSchmidt said:
paulsurovell said:
DaveSchmidt said:Show me the rebuttal and I'll stand corrected.
paulsurovell said:Easy for you to say.
And the VIPS position that if evidence existed it could be disclosed without harm to sources and methods stands unrebutted.
I gave you that same rebuttal earlier. It’s that, no, the evidence can’t be disclosed without harm to sources and methods, but you’d have to know the evidence to be convinced of that, which brings us back to square one with critics who say it can be done.
It’s a rebuttal, just not one you accept. I think you’re confusing the two.
ETA: Cross-posted.
Yes you did rebut their position.
paulsurovell said:
Yes you did rebut their position.
To clarify, I said there was at least one rebuttal and described it for the purposes of this discussion. I did not make it myself.
If that distinction is not clear, I’ll be bowing out.
DaveSchmidt said:
paulsurovell said:
Yes you did rebut their position.
To clarify, I said there was at least one rebuttal and described it for the purposes of this discussion. I did not make it myself.
If that distinction is not clear, I’ll be bowing out.
So is the distinction that the rebuttal is "not yours" in the sense that it's something that you're describing as an example of what one might say in rebuttal?
Interesting interview with Abby Martin about the future of Journalism. They discuss the smearing of Bill Biney at the begininng.
Is Rachel Maddow Dangerous To Journalism? W/Abby Martin
oy.
I made it to 35 seconds, but when she agreed that "MSNBC was the mirror image of FoxNews" I gave up.
utter idiocy. Why should I listen to a person who declares "I am a lying idiot" right at the start?
You guys don't have a clue what FoxNews is.
Not. A. Clue.
And guess what - Binney believes in a conspiracy of the DNC and Strikeforce that is attempting to fool the FBI into thinking that an inside-job leak was actually a Russian hack.
His evidence for this is ridiculous- and hence, this makes him a conspiracy theorist.
Kind of by definition.
It is not a smear. It's a description.
Do you believe in chem-trails too?
eta: you know, just because some guy does something laudible 15 years ago, does not give him some kind of blanket authority. He clearly doesn't understand the tech, and believes a lot of crap right now.
nan said:
Interesting interview with Abby Martin about the future of Journalism. They discuss the smearing of Bill Biney at the begininng.
Is Rachel Maddow Dangerous To Journalism? W/Abby Martin
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McGovern is a 911 truther.