FBI on Board

FBI Director James B. Comey and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. are in agreement with a CIA assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election in part to help Donald Trump win the White House, officials disclosed Friday, as President Obama issued a public warning to Moscow that it could face retaliation.

[...]

In the closed-door Senate briefing, CIA officials said it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was one of Russia’s goals, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

[...]

Officials close to the FBI and the CIA now say that lawmakers had misunderstood Comey’s position. “The truth is they were never all that different in the first place,” an official said. Similarly, officials said, Clapper and Brennan saw the intelligence the same way.
  WaPo

I'd like to see the smoking gun, please.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ludicrous

Until this moment, I did not realize that hackers require government authorization or else they can't hack.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

There Will Be Fallout

In a breathtaking rush to they-know-not-where, the Democrats have deliberately whipped up an anti-Russian war hysteria not experienced in three generations.

[...]

They hope to create a crisis that might -- at maximum -- reverse the election outcome. At minimum, they seek to force the new administration to abandon any notions of peaceful coexistence with those states that present obstacles to U.S. global domination.

[...]

If the ruling elites fail to uphold the gentlemen’s agreement that is the heart of the duopoly, then the system can fall apart.

[...]

Donald Trump violated the agreement when he signaled a desire for a thaw with Russia, an end to the regime change offensive, and opposition to so-called “free” trade -- and then took a wrecking ball to the Republican Party establishment.

  Bruce Dixon

As Horrible as Donald Trump is, we should probably thank him for that.

For multinational capital, the quest for worldwide full spectrum dominance is an existential issue; they must achieve it, or die. What they have shown over the past several weeks is that they are willing, and even eager, to bring down the whole edifice of U.S. social and political “checks and balances” -- freedom of speech and other civil liberties -- to sustain the momentum of their neoliberal offensive in the world.

[...]

The “fake news” bugaboo is a Trojan Horse for speech and thought control, a ruse to reestablish the imperial narrative in all its domestic and international dimensions. It ain’t about “pizza-gate” -- it’s about corporate global power.

[...]

The same people [...] brought us the Mass Black Incarceration State and preventive detention without charge or trial, too big to jail, systematic Black urban displacement, Kill Lists, proxy jihadist wars and universal surveillance of humanity.

[...]

There is nothing “grassroots” about this orchestration of hearings, investigations and legislation aimed at implicating Russia in some conjured aggression against the United States electoral system -- actions that not only did not happen, but should have no legal implications for Americans even if what is alleged to have occurred -- that the Russians selectively released hacked (factual) documents to embarrass Democrats -- did happen.

[...]

The Democrats never mount a challenge when Jim Crow steals presidential elections. Denying Black people the franchise is kosher, under the gentlemen’s duopoly rules. But, when it comes to improving relations with Russians, the folks in Clinton’s Big Tent go Black Lives Matter on the election process: “Shut It Down!” they scream, “Shut It Down.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Russian's Did(n't Do) It - Part 2

The DNC and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks came from a “disgusted” whistleblower, not from hackers, the whistleblower site’s associate Craig Murray said, as US intelligence veterans question Washington’s version, which blames a Russian cyberattack.

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan who is now a close associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, told The Daily Mail in an interview published on Wednesday.

“The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks,” he said.

The source, identified by Murray as an American, was motivated by “disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders,” he said.

Murray went on to explain that the documents were passed to him during a meeting in a wooded area near American University in Washington, DC. The individual he met with was an intermediary, not the person who originally obtained the information.

[...]

“Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents WikiLeaks published did not come from that.”

[...]

Murray’s statements are also consistent with those of WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, who told Australian journalist John Pilger in November that “the Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything.”

“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,” Assange said at the time.

  RT

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The Russians Did(n't Do) It

“[The CIA] haven’t come out with the evidence to show the tracing of the data from the DNC server to, for example the Russians, or anybody else, or going from them to WikiLeaks, which is a high priority target for NSA, in terms of network monitoring,” [former National Security Agency technical director and NSA whistleblower William] Binney told RT.

  RT

Here are some excerpts from Binney's posted memorandum at Consortium News:

A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else.

[...]

Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.

  Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity @ Consortium News

Yes, but then how could they justify their likely conclusions that Russia hacked our election and keep the public's mind full of Russia as evil enemy?

All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient.

In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.

[...]

Thanks largely to the material released by Edward Snowden, we can provide a full picture of NSA’s extensive domestic data-collection network.

[...]

[A]ny data that is passed from the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) – or any other server in the U.S. – is collected by the NSA.

[...]

When email packets leave the U.S., the other “Five Eyes” countries (the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the seven or eight additional countries participating with the U.S. in bulk-collection of everything on the planet would also have a record of where those email packets went after leaving the U.S.

[...]

The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.

[...]

The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like “our best guess” or “our opinion” or “our estimate” etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been “hacked” cannot be traced across the network.

[...]

The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods.

[...]

Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.

[...]

Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

Now that's a different  - and bold - take on the situation.  And it makes perfect sense.

[Binney] citied a previous occasion when the NSA showed the trace route of a hack from China back to a specific building in China.

“If you did it then, why are not going to do it now when this is a very serious allegation?” Binney said.

[...]

“When you send something across the network you are sending it into NSA land, and they own everything,” Binney said. “They have tens of thousands of embedded implants in terms of hardware and software around switches of the world, and they got trace route programs by the hundreds all around the switches, and they are collecting at different points throughout the network in the entire world, redundant collection. So, there is no excuse for them not to have both the content and the trace route, anything going across the network.”

[...]

“[A] new Cold War” [means] trillions of dollars going into the coffers of [people wanting to sustain a large military budget], they would certainly be advocates for this thing. There is a lot of vested interest to keep this kind of thing going,” Binney added.

[...]

“If the CIA is alleging a different story, they need to produce the evidence like they did on the Chinese hack,” Binney said. “There is no reason to withhold this kind of information, especially if they can prove it and so far as I can see they won’t even brief the House Intelligence Committee on the evidence they are using to make this statement. That tells me that what they are saying is a pack of crap.”

  RT

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Aw, Bless

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Colin Powell Keepin' It Classy

More leaked email.



Nice.

Come on, in 2014, Powell didn't know every email he wrote would be collected and possibly leaked some day?

All of DC must be clinching their asses now.  Who has their emails?  What have they said?  East Coasters take cover.  The collective pucker may suck in everything from the Atlantic to the Smokies.

About two years’ worth of Powell’s emails were apparently stolen and posted at a shady website called DCLeaks.

[...]

Powell has privately denounced Republican nominee Donald Trump in remarkably strong terms. "Trump is a national disgrace and an international pariah," Powell wrote in an email this June, as BuzzFeed News first reported. The email was sent to a journalist who had previously worked for Powell.

In another email, Powell wrote that Trump "appeals to the worst angels of the GOP nature and poor white folks," according to CNN.

[...]

"Benghazi is a stupid witch hunt," he wrote in a December 2015 email to Condoleezza Rice, again according to BuzzFeed News. "Basic fault falls on a courageous ambassador who thoughts [sic] Libyans now love me and I am ok in this very vulnerable place."

However, Powell did add that other officials, including Clinton, did deserve some criticism, writing, "But blame also rests on his leaders and supports back here. Pat Kennedy, Intel community, DS and yes HRC." (Rice responded by writing, "Completely agree.")

[...]

Powell was harshly critical of the Democratic nominee — "Everything HRC touches she kind of screws up with hubris," he wrote — but he also seemed to think that Clinton could have easily quieted the [private email server] scandal by doing "a ‘Full Monty’" when it first broke, according to an email posted by the Intercept.

[...]

Powell was clearly deeply resentful about what he felt was the Clinton team (or "mafia" as he called it) trying to drag him into her email scandal.

[...]

In any case, an email on August 28 (after Powell’s public complaint that Clinton was "trying to pin" the scandal on him) suggests that he had patched things up with the Clinton team. "Spent last week with Cheryl Mills and the HRC team burying the email flap," he wrote, according to the Daily Caller.

  Vox

That patch probably isn't going to hold now.

Just when he thought it was safe to go back in the water.

Powell has chosen not to get involved in the 2016 race just yet. Indeed, before the race had gotten started, back in July 2014 he wrote one email (posted by Will Rahn of CBS News) in which he said, "I would rather not have to vote for her, although she is a friend I respect. A 70-year person with a long track record, unbridled ambition, greedy, not transformational, with a husband still dicking bimbos at home (according to the NYP)."

He's in it now, eh? About chest deep.

Oh, what fun we're havin' now.