Former US intelligence analysts: CIA allegations of Russian email hacking are baseless

And yet we've still yet to hear a plausible alternative to Russia being behind the hacks.

dave23 said:

And yet we've still yet to hear a plausible alternative to Russia being behind the hacks.

As you know, this has been cited before (start at para 13).  But thanks for the opportunity to post it again.

paulsurovell said:

dave23 said:

And yet we've still yet to hear a plausible alternative to Russia being behind the hacks.

As you know, this has been cited before (start at para 13).  But thanks for the opportunity to post it again.

"I know who leaked them" is not a plausible alternative. And if it's a leak, not a hack, how did the hacker access at least 3 email accounts?

Paul - why does Trump try and stop these investigations if it's a witch hunt and there's no there there?

The reports feel like they come out hourly - here's the latest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according
to current and former officials.

jamie said:

Paul - why does Trump try and stop these investigations if it's a witch hunt and there's no there there?

The reports feel like they come out hourly - here's the latest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

President Trump asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials in March to help him push back against an FBI investigation into possible coordination between his campaign and the Russian government, according
to current and former officials.

Jack Matlock, ambassador to the USSR and Czechoslovakia during the 1980s:

http://jackmatlock.com/2017/03...

The whole brou-ha-ha over contacts with Russian diplomats has taken on
all the earmarks of a witch hunt. President Trump is right to make that
charge. If there was any violation of U.S. law by any of his
supporters—for example disclosure of classified information to
unauthorized persons—then the Department of Justice should seek an
indictment and if they obtain one, prosecute the case. Until then, there
should be no public accusations. Also, I have been taught that in a
democracy with the rule of law, the accused are entitled to a
presumption of innocence until convicted. But we have leaks that imply
that any conversation with a Russian embassy official is suspect. That
is the attitude of a police state, and leaking such allegations violates
every normal rule regarding FBI investigations. President Trump is
right to be upset, though it is not helpful for him to lash out at the
media in general.

That doesn't come close to answering Jamie's question. 

dave23 said:

paulsurovell said:

dave23 said:

And yet we've still yet to hear a plausible alternative to Russia being behind the hacks.

As you know, this has been cited before (start at para 13).  But thanks for the opportunity to post it again.

"I know who leaked them" is not a plausible alternative. And if it's a leak, not a hack, how did the hacker access at least 3 email accounts?

What email accounts do you include your "a least 3 email accounts?"

No, it's not a new cold war.  No, it's not "McCarthyism" for an investigation to take place.  The United States isn't facing a new "Red Menace" or a nuclear war.  Russia is a kleptocracy using what "power" it has to advance its interests. It's appropriate for that to be investigated.

So claims like these, to derail an investigation, aren't persuasive.

"Dr. Strangelove is a parody that portrays American arrogance, paranoia toward Russia and indifference to the risk of nuclear war.  These same qualities are driving today's Russia story, and parallels with Dr. Strangelove are manifest."

"There's a Democratic/Neocon/MSM campaign to promote a new Cold War that employs the methods of the old Cold War and McCarthyism to intimidate dissent."

paulsurovell said:

What email accounts do you include your "a least 3 email accounts?"

I should have written two accounts (DNC and DNCC) + email account (10 years worth of Podesta emails).

ETA: And if you are genuinely interested about the details, this is a good article. (Even if you don't want to believe that it was Russia, it's a very compelling case that it was a series of hacks, not leaks.)

Paul do you still stand by the title of this thread?  Baseless?  Is Brennan now lying on the stand?  Or are you more informed then he is?

there is no doubt that Trump has been doing business with Russia for a very long time.  His son talked about it, and his company's spokesperson admitted it.  At this point, while there is no evidence of any sort available to the public, my gut is telling me that Trump is likely connected to all kinds of shady characters, and likely has been laundering money for them for years.  That's why he's being evasive and trying to shut down the investigation.  But it's also likely that people inside the Pentagon and national security agencies are opportunistically using Trump's Russia stonewalling to make the accusation that Trump and his team are colluding with "the enemy," in order to revive the Cold War.  A lot of people seem intent on hyping a threat from Russia.

And then there is this info from John Brennan's testimony in DC, today. CIA director warned Russian security service chief about interference in election.

jamie said:

Paul do you still stand by the title of this thread?  Baseless?  Is Brennan now lying on the stand?  Or are you more informed then he is?

Has Brennan said anything that we didn't know when I started the thread?  The title is a quote from the OP, written by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  Their expertise on the CIA and intelligence matters is second to none.

The CIA allegation is valid only if one trusts the CIA unconditionally, meaning one is willing to trust them without evidence.  I think most people who believe the allegation that Russia hacked the election have heard the media repeatedly (24/7) misrepresent the allegation as fact.  It's been an allegation from day one and continues to be one today.

I think it's instructive to look again at Comey's confession that the Intelligence Community doesn't know who gave Wikileaks the emails:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/?utm_term=.b103a6445519

SCHIFF: This is a question I think you can answer. Do you know whether the Russian intelligence service has dealt directly with WikiLeaks or whether they too used an intermediary?

COMEY: We assessed they used some kind of cutout. They didn't deal directly with WikiLeaks. In contrast to D.C. Leaks and Guccifer 2.0

Does the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have access to all of the classified data? 

paulsurovell said:

I think it's instructive to look again at Comey's confession that the Intelligence Community doesn't know who gave Wikileaks the emails:

Well, if it was a leak and not a hack, then the Podesta emails had to have come from Podesta himself (or someone with known access to Podesta's email account.  

Hmm, some movement about the hack/leak. 

Rep Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, says DNC hack may have been "insider job." CNN asks for evidence: “There’s stuff circulating on the internet"

dave23 said:

Hmm, some movement about the hack/leak. 

Rep Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, says DNC hack may have been "insider job." CNN asks for evidence: “There’s stuff circulating on the internet"

He could have quoted Craig Murray, but then his comment would not have been aired.  Would create credibility problems for CNN.

PS -- I hope to read and comment on your Crowdstrike article by the end of the day.

Paul - are you only focused on the hacks or have you conceded that Russia meddled more then usual in our election?

As a complete aside and in all seriousness, I'm not sure if you're still in touch with BCC outside of MOL, paulsurovell, but if you are, let him know that his absence has been noticed and that I for one hope he and his family are doing okay.

paulsurovell said:


He could have quoted Craig Murray, but then his comment would not have been aired.  Would create credibility problems for CNN.

Has Murray explained how he knows the "intelligence community" hacked Podesta?

I'm certainly skeptical of the anti-Russia hype.  And I'm not saying Murray is lying.  But the only evidence he cited is "I met the person."  At least he's not anonymous, and he's on the record.  But he hasn't shown any more evidence than Blake Farenthold did.

paulsurovell said:

dave23 said:

Hmm, some movement about the hack/leak. 

Rep Blake Farenthold, R-Texas, says DNC hack may have been "insider job." CNN asks for evidence: “There’s stuff circulating on the internet"

He could have quoted Craig Murray, but then his comment would not have been aired.  Would create credibility problems for CNN.


PS -- I hope to read and comment on your Crowdstrike article by the end of the day.

cramer said:

"Murray’s interview is well worth the listen, as he has nowhere near
the same personal stakes in this story as Assange and — as he makes
clear in the interview — because he seems to have had a role in handing
over the second batch of emails. Ultimately, his description is
unconvincing. But it is an important indication of what he claims to
believe (which must reflect what Assange has told him, whether Assange
believes it or not). Importantly, Murray admits that “It’s perfectly
possible that WikiLeaks themselves don’t know what is going on,” which
admits one possibility I’ve always suspected: that whoever dealt the
documents did so in a way that credibly obscured their source.

Murray explained that the two sets of documents handed over to
Wikileaks came via two different American sources, both of whom had
legal access to them.

He describes a lot more about the Podesta emails, of which he said he
had “first hand knowledge,” because of something he did or learned on a
trip to DC in September. In this interview, he says “The material was
already, I think, safely with WikiLeaks before I got there in
September,” though other outlets have suggested (with maps included!)
that’s when the hand-off happened. In that account, Murray admits he
did not meet with the person with legal access; he instead met with an
intermediary. That means the intermediary may have made false claims
about the provenance.

And even the claims about the provenance don’t make sense. Murray
claimed the documents came from someone in the national security
establishment, and implied they had come from legal monitoring of John Podesta because he (meaning John) is a lobbyist for Saudi Arabia.

Quoting Murray:
"Again, the key point to remember, in answering that
question, is that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak are two different
things and the answer is very probably not going to be the same in both
cases. I also want you to consider that John Podesta was a paid lobbyist
for the Saudi government — that’s open and declared, it’s not secret or
a leak in a sense. John Podesta was paid a very substantial sum every
month by the Saudi government to lobby for their interests in
Washington. And if the American security services were not watching the
communications of the Saudi government paid lobbyist then the American
intelligence services would not be doing their job. Of course it’s also
true that the Saudis’ man, the Saudis’ lobbyist in Washington, his
communications are going to be of interest to a great many other
intelligence services as well.

As a threshold matter, no national security agency is going to
monitor an American registered to work as an agent for the Saudis.
That’s all the more true if the agent has the last name Podesta."

But that brings us to another problem. John Podesta isn’t the lobbyist here. His brother Tony is. So even assuming the FBI was collecting all
the emails of registered agent for the Saudis, Tony Podesta, even
assuming someone in national security wanted to blow that collection by
revealing it via Wikileaks, they would pick up just a tiny fraction of John Podesta’s emails. So this doesn’t explain the source of the emails at all."

https://www.emptywheel.net/2016/12/15/craig-murrays-description-of-wikileaks-sources/#comments

Murray's interview referred to above can be found here: 

http://dissentradio.com/radio/...

Per Russia's wishes, Trump sought to undermine NATO today.

Rumor has it that if he loses his election today, Greg Gianforte will be chosen by Trump to the next U.S. representative to NATO.

http://miamiherald.typepad.com...

Florida Republican operative asked alleged Russian hacker for documents to hurt Democrats

From the Wall Street Journal:

The hacking spree that upended the presidential election wasn’t limited to Democratic National Committee memos and Clinton-aide emails posted on websites. The hacker also privately sent Democratic voter-turnout analyses to a Republican political operative in Florida named Aaron Nevins.

Learning that hacker “Guccifer 2.0” had tapped into a Democratic committee that helps House candidates, Mr. Nevins wrote to the hacker to say: “Feel free to send any Florida based information.”

Ten days later, Mr. Nevins received 2.5 gigabytes of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee documents, some of which he posted on a blog called HelloFLA.com that he ran using a pseudonym.

Soon after, the hacker sent a link to the blog article to Roger Stone, a longtime informal adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump, along with Mr. Nevins’ analysis of the hacked data.

Mr. Nevins confirmed his exchanges after The Wall Street Journal identified him first as the operator of the HelloFLA blog and then as the recipient of the stolen DCCC data. The Journal also reviewed copies of exchanges between the hacker and Mr. Nevins. That the obscure blog had received hacked Democratic documents was previously known, but not the extent of the trove or the blogger’s identity.

 Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, spoke last December with Russia’s ambassador to the United States about establishing a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow to discuss strategy in Syria and other policy issues, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.

The conversation between Mr. Kushner and the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, took place during a meeting at Trump Tower that Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team did not acknowledge at the time. Also present at the meeting was Michael T. Flynn, the retired general who would become Mr. Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, the three people said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

5/27/17 NYTimes

Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch once close to President Trump’s former campaign manager, has offered to cooperate with congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but lawmakers are unwilling to accept his conditions, according to congressional officials.

Mr. Deripaska’s offer comes amid increased attention to his ties to Paul Manafort, who is one of several Trump associates under F.B.I. scrutiny for possible collusion with Russia during the presidential campaign. 

At some point there may be an investigation into whether or not the Trump campaign has any ties to the USA.

So who dropped a dime on Jared?  Who would love to see him take a fall following Flynn?

What are the odds Reince or Bannon had a hand in it?

dave said:

 Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, spoke last December with Russia’s ambassador to the United States about establishing a secret communications channel between the Trump transition team and Moscow to discuss strategy in Syria and other policy issues, according to three people with knowledge of the discussion.

The conversation between Mr. Kushner and the ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, took place during a meeting at Trump Tower that Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team did not acknowledge at the time. Also present at the meeting was Michael T. Flynn, the retired general who would become Mr. Trump’s short-lived national security adviser, the three people said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...