America vs Russia - Spy vs Spy
Where Are We In 2018 ?
One has to remember that espionage is not a single Spy vs Spy issue. It is multi-dimensional. Look at the dates. The Obama administration received multiple warnings from national security officials (global allies saw the action and warned us as well) as early as 2014 and on into 2016, that the Kremlin was ramping up its intelligence operations and building disinformation networks which could be used to disrupt the U.S. political system.
The US and Russia have taken turns playing this game for decades. For example, The July 1996 cover of Time Magazine boasted that the US had been responsible for the election of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton was privy to that intel since it first surfaced in 2014. When WikiLeaks, an award-winning journalistic operation, did a document dump that exposed the HRC/DNC rigged primary election, Clinton used the Russia related intel as a perfectly viable shiny object diversion. The claim was easy enough to support because the intel agencies already knew the Russians had long planned to be disruptive during the 2016 election. Evidence eventually surfaced in 2017 indicating that Russian military hackers had been lurking around both RNC and DNC websites since 2015.
On June 12, 2016, Julian Assange announced that WikiLeaks had and would publish documents pertinent to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The SOURCE of the WikiLeaks documents, vetted and known to WikiLeaks,was an INTERNAL WHISTLEBLOWER AT THE DNC.
On June 14, CrowdStrike, a cyber-security firm hired by the DNC, announced, without providing evidence, that it had found malware on DNC servers and had evidence that Russians were responsible for planting it.
A collection of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails stolen by Russian intelligence agency hackers was published by DCLeaks, a front for Russian Military Intelligence in June and July 2016.
So two separate and distinct things were transpiring in the same general time frame. A DNC employee or subcontractor who became privy to the internal electiion rigging being conducted by the DNC, downloaded (forensically confirmed) emails to a portable memory device, and Russians were also vacuuming up information from poorly secured websites.
On June 15, Guccifer 2.0 first appeared, took responsibility for the "hack" reported on June 14 and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source. It then posted the adulterated documents just described.
On June 22 WikeLeaks published the carefully vetted emails which had been provided by the DNC whistleblower.
On July 5, Guccifer again claimed he had remotely hacked DNC servers, and the operation was instantly described as another intrusion attributable to Russia. Virtually no media questioned this account.
On July 10, 2016 a 27 year old DNC staffer and Sanders supporter by the name of Seth Rich, computer specialist for the Democratic National Committee, was murdered. Rich had worked for the DNC for two years and helped develop a computer program to make it easier for people to find polling places on Election Day.
Rich was shot twice in the back as he walked to his townhouse about 4:20 a.m. Neither his watch, his credit cards, his cellphone, nor his cash were taken, but police have said attempted robbery is their leading theory for a motive. The band of his wristwatch was torn but not broken. Within approximately one minute after the gun shots, police officers found Rich conscious with multiple gunshot wounds.
He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he later died. According to police, he died from two shots to the back and may have been killed in an attempted robbery, noting that the neighborhood had recently been plagued by robberies. Rich's mother told NBC's Washington affiliate WRC-TV, "There had been a struggle. His hands were bruised, his knees are bruised, his face is bruised, and yet he had two shots to his back, and yet they never took anything... They didn't finish robbing him, they just took his life."
WikiLeaks released the trove of emails later that month, on July 22. The disclosure forced the ouster of DNC chairwoman and former head of Clinton's campaign, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. It also badly wounded the campaign of Hillary Clinton. An official with Clinton's campaign and some cybersecurity experts have said Russia may be behind the email hack. A spokesman for the DNC did not comment on WikiLeaks or the increasing speculation about Seth Rich.
“In a July 27, 2016 news conference, U.S. President Donald Trump said on national television, "Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Determining whether Russians were specifically involved in the release of the DNC emails was like examining a crime scene. What a staged crime scene looks like at first glance doesn't necessarily mean that one's first impression is the correct impression. There were Russian STYLE digital fingerprints, from alleged hacker Guccifer 2.0 which were later determined to have been forged.
It was later learned in 2017 that as a result of Trump's invitation, a fresh assault by Russian Military Intelligence hackers was immediately begun "after hours."
US intel agencies do not care for Assange because although WikiLeaks is a well-respected journalism operation, they consider him a "whistleblower", whom they would prefer to silence, thus it was not a heavy lift for them to agree that he "may" have been in cahoots with the Russians. With very little dissent, it was announced that Assange's group "may" have been involved with Russians, who "may" have hacked the DNC and that became the "official story" which was eagerly pushed by Clinton and the DNC as "fact".
Naturally, mainstream media ran with it, as they also did with the official story of 9/11, never questioning how two 110 story high-rise buildings and a 47 story high rise plus the entirety of each building's contents, plus the (still missing) 1116 people, could turn into dust in mid-air, mysteriously vanishing from existence in less than 15 seconds.
In August of 2016 WikiLeaks announced on Twitter a $20,000 reward for information leading to a conviction in Rich's killing on July 10 in the 2100 block of Flagler Place NW. It adds to a $25,000 reward offered by D.C. police, customary in all District homicides. The question posed to Assange was why WikiLeaks would offer a hefty reward in the case of an unknown DNC staffer who was supposed to have been the victim of a botched robbery attempt, was deliberately ignored. The silence spoke volumes.
"What are you suggesting?" a startled interviewer
from Dutch television asked the editor of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, after he
announced the reward.
"I am suggesting," Assange said, "that our sources, ah, take
risks, and they, they become concerned to see things occurring like that."
His organization later "clarified" on Twitter that "this should
not be taken to imply that Seth Rich was a source for WikiLeaks or to imply
that his murder is connected to our publications."
Assange then said in a statement issued through an intermediary that he would not confirm or deny whether Seth Rich or any person was a source for the organization, which over the years has obtained and released massive amounts of internal emails and other documents from the military, the State Department and other agencies. The statement says that WikiLeaks policy "also covers alleged sources who were deceased."
Assange, no fan of Trump, denied talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin, his surrogates or anyone associated with the Trump campaign. Assange also stated he would have "absolutely" released information about Trump and his campaign if he had received it. He was still actively seeking it in January of 2017. (Also he continues to seek it in February of 2018.)
Craig Murray, highly intelligent, extremely well respected, with a long career in the diplomatic corps, is the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange. Murray was removed from his post as a British ambassador amid politically motivated false allegations of misconduct. Murray had the temerity to speak out against the human rights violations of Uzbekistan (including unwarranted imprisonment, nightmarish torture and murder) whilst speaking at a Human Rights conference. Murray was ultimately cleared of all trumped up charges.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Murray)
Murray told the Dailymail.com he flew to Washington, D.C. to
personally accept the DNC emails. Murray stated that he had a clandestine hand-off
in a wooded area near American University with one of the email sources.
(The Daily Mail is the United Kingdom's second-biggest-selling daily newspaper
after The Sun.-Wikipedia)
In an interview with the Daily Mail in August of 2016, Murray stated: The CIA "are absolutely making it up" in their report claiming a Russian had provided WikiLeaks with thousands of private emails from the Democratic National Committee. "I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things" According to Murray, the release of Democratic National Committee emails was the deed of a disgruntled Democrat employee
"The leakers' motivation was 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the 'tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders," Murray said. "Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,'"said Murray. "The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that," Murray stated emphatically.
The documents revealed efforts by some DNC officials to undermine
the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, who was running against Hillary
Clinton.
Others revealed that Clinton aides were concerned about potential
conflicts and mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation.
'I don't understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn't true,' he said. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that.'
"Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That's false - we can say that the Russian government is not the source."
In May of 2017 a lawsuit was filed against the District of Columbia (DC Metropolitan Police Department) demanding police hand over records including officer's body camera video. The Profiling Project, funded by GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman, filed the suit demanding police hand over records including officer's body camera video.The Project wants surveillance video, ballistic reports and the autopsy of Rich. "Specifcally, The Profling Project is seeking: 1) The surveillance video footage from thesecond-?oor camera at Fragler Market; 2) The Medical Examiner's report from the examination of the body of Seth Rich; and 3) The forensic ballistic report of from the murder of Seth Rich." https://www.scribd.com/document/350003894/Seth-Rich-Lawsuit
In June of 2017, The Profiling Project, based in Arlington, Virginia, which is a group of about 20 current and former George Washington University forensic-psychology graduate students and instructors, who had spent three months investigating the Seth Rich homicide, weighed in on the Seth Rich murder. Those researchers, an independent group, published their findings in an 83-page report which states that Rich's July 2016 "death does not appear to be a random homicide" or "a robbery gone bad," as police had suggested. "The fact that this person has gotten away with it shows a level of proficiency." "We may never know why Seth was targeted for attack, but we do know that so many nonroutine events had to take place prior to the interaction that it was not statistically random," the researchers write. The murderer, according to the Profiling Project, "brought a most likely unregistered firearm to the crime scene, utilized the firearm and most likely carried the firearm away from the crime scene." The report continues, "That the crime scene appeared to be almost sanitized (no firearms casings were reported to be found, no physical evidence was reported), and that there does not appear to be excessive use of force (as only two shots were reported), the offender does not appear to be psychotic."
The researchers believe there was just one shooter. The report says the "death was more likely committed by a hired killer or serial murderer," and that the killer is likely still at large. "With such a sanitized crime scene and no emotional indications," the report says, "this is not Offender['s] first kill." Rich did not die immediately at the scene: "A professional killer, whose sole job would have been to terminate Seth, did not accomplish their mission prior to escaping."
The Profiling Project is funded by GOP lobbyist Jack Burkman, who in September of 2016 announced he was offering a $100,000 reward for information into Rich's death. He added another $5,000 to his offer in December and another $25,000 in January of 2017, bringing the total of the rewards offered to $175,000. As of February 2018 the case remains open. http://www.newsweek.com/seth-rich-murder-report-profiling-project-627634 (Note that the Newsweek headline deliberately misconstrues the findings to avoid using the term "hired killer" which appeared in the report. Possible motive had it been a murder for hire: Possible retribution for data theft? To keep the victim from testifying? The answer remains pure speculation.
In August of 2017 Julian Assange met personally with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California during a three-hour private gathering at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Assange told Rohrabacher he can prove the leaked Democratic Party documents he published during last year's election did not come from Russia. Assange also assured the American public that he is 1,000 percent confident that neither the Russian government, nor anybody else associated with Russia, was the source of hacked DNC emails published on WikiLeaks.
August 9, 2017, "A New Report Raises Big Questions About
Last Year's DNC Hack
Former NSA experts say it wasn't a hack at all, but a leak-an inside job by
someone with access to the DNC's system."
The article largely reported on a recently published memo prepared by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), which argued, based on their own investigation, that the theft of the DNC e-mails was not a hack, but some kind of inside leak that did not involve Russia. VIPS, formed in 2003 by a group of former US intelligence officers with decades of experience working within the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies, previously produced some of the most credible-and critical-analyses of the Bush administration's mishandling of intelligence data in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They concluded;
"There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee's system on July 5 last year-not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak-a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC's system. This casts serious doubt on the initial "hack," as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.
Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source-claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative."
"In a letter to Barack Obama dated January 17, three days before he left office, the group explained that the NSA's known programs are fully capable of capturing all electronic transfers of data. "We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks," the letter said. "If NSA cannot produce such evidence-and quickly-this would probably mean it does not have any."
"The day after this letter was published, Obama gave his
last press conference as president, at which he delivered one of the great gems
among the official statements on the DNC e-mail question. 'The conclusions
of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking,' the legacy-minded
Obama said, 'were not conclusive.'"
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/
The statement alone suggests that while Trump may or may not
be innocent of colluding with Russia to interfere with the election, which will
only be determined at the conclusion of the Mueller investigation, (which could
immediately clear him if he is innocent, thus one would logically expect he
would be encouraging the investigation, but we're witnessing just the
opposite) Trump's actions, his willingness, his determination
to place the entire country at risk in order to prevent any and
all investigations, begs a far bigger, far more concerning question for America...
WHAT IS HE HIDING?
#WhatIsTrumpHiding
