Part I of this article showed a conspiracy to smear Donald Trump with false allegations of collusion with Russia took place, with Hillary Clinton at its head. Part II today will show the FBI was an active participant in the conspiracy to destroy Trump. The facts are not in dispute. We are left only to decide if the FBI acted incompetently and unprofessionally, or as part of a conspiracy.

The first part of the smoking gun may have been hiding in plain sight for some time now. In June 2018 Inspector General for the Department of Justice Michael Horowitz released his report on the FBI’s Clinton email investigation, including FBI Director Comey’s drafting of a press release announcing no prosecution for Clinton, written before the full investigation was even complete. In a damning passage, Horowitz found it was “extraordinary and insubordinate for Comey to conceal his intentions from his superiors… for the admitted purpose of preventing them from telling him not to make the statement, and to instruct his subordinates in the FBI to do the same.”

Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Comey’s boss, is criticized for meeting privately with Bill Clinton as the FBI investigation into Hillary unfolded. “Lynch’s failure to recognize the appearance problem… and to take action to cut the visit short was an error in judgment.” Lynch then doubled-down, refusing to recuse herself from the Clinton case, creating “public confusion.”

The report also criticizes FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, who exchanged texts disparaging Trump before moving from the Clinton email to the Russiagate investigation. Those texts sowed public doubt about the investigation, including one exchange that read, “Page: “[Trump’s] not ever going to become president, right? Strzok: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.” Another Strzok document stated “we know foreign actors obtained access to some Clinton emails, including at least one secret message,” thought that was never prosecuted.

Page and Strzok also discussed cutting back the number of investigators present for Clinton’s in-person interview in light of the fact she might soon be president, and thus their new boss. Someone identified only as Agent One went on to refer to Clinton as “the President” and in a message told a friend “I’m with her.” The FBI also allowed Clinton’s lawyers to attend her interview, even though they were also witnesses to  possible crimes committed by Clinton.

If that does not add up to a smoking gun that the FBI conspired pre-dossier to help Hillary Clinton, how about this?

Following Hillary’s exoneration over her emails and mishandling of classified information, the FBI launched its Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Trump-Russia, based in whole or large part on the infamous Christopher Steele dossier. The public now knows the dossier was paid for and stocked with falsehoods by the Clinton campaign. The unanswered questions from that investigation themselves comprise a second smoking gun of FBI conspiracy. For example:

— Why did the FBI not inquire into Steele’s sources and methods, which would have quickly revealed the information was wholly false? Why was the FBI unable to discover Steele (and later, Clinton lawyer Michael Sussmann, who gave false info to the FBI about Trump and Alfa Bank) were double agents working for and paid by the Clinton campaign?

— When the FBI found the target of its first FISA warrant out of the dossier, Carter Page, was actually a paid CIA asset, why did they hide this information from the FISA court instead of dropping Page? Why did this not cause them to question the credibility of Steele, a master spy who couldn’t even identify his source was actually a CIA asset? Steele claimed the Russians offered Page an insanely huge bribe, billions of dollars, to end U.S. sanctions if Trump became president. Page clearly could never have played a significant role in ending sanctions. Why did the FBI find those statements credible enough to pursue the warrant?

— Why did the FBI cite an open-source press article by Michael Isikoff claiming Trump had Russian ties as part of its FISA warrant application against Page without finding out who Isikoff’s source was? The source of course was Christopher Steele, who was interviewed in a hotel room booked by Fusion GPS who was paid by Clinton. The FBI nonetheless claimed an article from Yahoo! corroborated the dossier, a cite unlikely to pass muster on an undergrad term paper. Were they really fooled?

— Why did the FBI not discover the dossier’s false claim Trump lawyer Michael Cohen visited Prague to meet with Russians? Robert Mueller was able to conclusively dismiss the report. Confirming Cohen in Prague would have been a cornerstone of the FBI’s larger case, but the matter was left open until Mueller.

— Why did the FBI not question Sussmann about the source of his DNS data, some of which came directly from inside the White House? Why would a private citizen have such information?

— When Sussmann, claiming to be a concerned citizen with White House DNS data, first approached the FBI, why was he assigned to meet with the FBI’s General Counsel, its lawyer, and not a case agent? Was something other than his information, such possibly FBI collusion with fraud, being validated?

— Why was the CIA investigation referral saying Hillary was behind Russiagate ignored by the FBI? The memo was addressed to Director James Comey, who claims he has no knowledge of it, and Peter Strzok, who should have been the action officer but did nothing?

— Why did Kevin Brock, the FBI’s former intelligence chief, say “The fact pattern that John Durham is methodically establishing shows what James Comey and Andrew McCabe likely knew from day one, that the Steele dossier was politically-driven nonsense created at the behest of the Clinton campaign. And yet they knowingly ran with its false information.”

— Despite the investigation being run by the FBI, why was it CIA Director John Brennan who briefed (LINK) Obama on the Hillary connection in July 2016 and not Comey?

If any of those questions seem kind of obvious, that is the point. The cover stories only had to hold for a short time, enough to infect the media, enough to make things seem plausible for the FBI. Team Clinton and its co-conspirators were so certain they would win the election they felt none of their tricks needed to stay hidden much past victory. The story is waist-deep rotten.

At this point you can believe the multiple ops paid for and run by Clinton people were uncoordinated events, or that they were part of the broad campaign Hillary was an active participant in, and about which John Brennan warned Barack Obama, and which the CIA warned the FBI, not knowing they were in on it. You can believe the FBI acted incompetently and unprofessionally (yet consistently, no breaks went Trump’s way), or as part of a conspiracy.

What you cannot do any more is pretend this did not happen, and that the person most involved came close to being elected president because of it. If you worry about democracy, worry about that.

In preparing this article, it was fascinating to review the many shameful articles written in 2016 and 2017, the crazy days when every hinted rumor was worth a Breaking! designator. But one piece stood out, from Forbes in 2017. Hillary denied paying for the dossier, and the truth — the campaign paid the law firm Perkins and Coie who paid Fusion GPS who paid Orbis who paid Steele — was not known. The Forbes journalist wrote “If ordered and paid for by Hillary Clinton associates, Russia Gate is turned on its head as collusion between Clinton operatives (not Trump’s) and Russian intelligence. Russia Gate becomes Hillary Gate.” The article went on to say how James Comey refused to comment on Fusion GPS and the dossier in May 2017. Comey by then knew the real story and remained silent, even as the press was still running with the idea the dossier had been paid for by anonymous Democratic donors. If only we’d known.

wemeantwell.com

William S. SMITH

Fittingly, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was founded by a grandnephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, Attorney General Charles J. Bonaparte, during the Progressive Era. Bonaparte was a Harvard-educated crusader. As the FBI’s official history states, “Many progressives, including (Teddy) Roosevelt, believed that the federal government’s guiding hand was necessary to foster justice in an industrial society.”

Progressives viewed the Constitution as a malleable document, a take-it-or-leave-it kind of thing. The FBI inherited that mindset of civil liberties being optional. In their early years, with the passage of the Espionage and Sedition Acts during World War I, the FBI came into its own by launching a massive domestic surveillance campaign and prosecuting war dissenters. Thousands of Americans were arrested, prosecuted, and jailed simply for voicing opposition.

One could write a long history of FBI abuses and failures, from Latin America to Martin Luther King to Japanese internment. But just consider a handful of their more recent cases. The FBI needlessly killed women and children at Waco and Ruby Ridge. Anyone who has lived anywhere near Boston knows of the Bureau’s staggering corruption during gangster Whitey Bulger’s reign of terror. The abuses in Boston were so terrific that radio host Howie Carr declared that the FBI initials really stood for “Famous But Incompetent.” And then there’s Richard Jewell, the hero security guard who was almost railroaded by zealous FBI agents looking for a scalp after they failed to solve the Atlanta terrorist bombing.

But it was 9/11 that really sealed the FBI’s ignominious track record. The lavishly funded agency charged with preventing terrorism somehow missed the attacks, despite their awareness of numerous Saudi nationals taking flying lessons around the country. Immediately after 9/11, the nation was gripped by the anthrax scare, and once again the FBI’s inability to solve the case caused them to try to railroad an innocent man, Stephen Hatfill.

With 9/11, the FBI also began targeting troubled Americans by handing them bomb materials, arresting them, and then holding a press conference to tell the country that they had prevented a major terrorist attack—a fake attack that they themselves had planned.

9/11 also opened the floodgates to domestic surveillance and all the FISA abuses that most recently led to the prosecution of Michael Flynn. I am no fan of Flynn and his hawkish anti-Islamic views, but the way he was framed and then prosecuted really does shock the conscience. After Jewell, Hatfill, Flynn, and so many others, it’s time to ask whether the culture of the FBI has become similar to that of Stalin’s secret police, i.e. “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

I am no anti-law enforcement libertarian. In a previous career, I had the privilege to work with agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and they were some of the bravest people I have ever met. And while the DEA can be overly aggressive (just ask anyone who has been subjected to federal asset forfeiture), it is inconceivable that its agents would plot a coup d’état against the president of the United States. The DEA sees their job as catching drug criminals; they stay in their lane.

For the FBI, merely catching bad guys is too mundane. As one can tell from the sanctimonious James Comey, the culture at the Bureau holds grander aspirations. Comey’s book is titled A Higher Loyalty, as if the FBI reports only to the Almighty. They see themselves as progressive guardians of the American Way, intervening whenever and wherever they see democracy in danger. No healthy republic should have a national police force with this kind of culture. There are no doubt many brave and patriotic FBI agents, but there is also no doubt they have been very badly led.

This savior complex led them to aggressively pursue the Russiagate hoax. Their chasing of ghosts should make it clear that the FBI does not stay in their lane. While the nation’s elite colleges and tech companies are crawling with Chinese spies who are literally stealing our best ideas, the chief of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Section, Peter Strzok, spent his days trying to frame junior aides in the Trump campaign.

Some conservatives have called for FBI Director Christopher Wray to be fired. This would accomplish nothing, as the problem is not one man but an entire culture. One possible solution is to break up the FBI into four or five agencies, with one responsible for counterintelligence, one for counterterrorism, one for complex white-collar crime, one for cybercrimes, and so on. Smaller agencies with more distinctive missions would not see themselves as national saviors and could be held accountable for their effectiveness at very specific jobs. It would also allow federal agents to develop genuine expertise rather than, as the FBI regularly does, shifting agents constantly from terrorism cases to the war on drugs to cybercrime to whatever the political class’s latest crime du jour might be.

Such a reform would not end every abuse of federal law enforcement, and all these agencies would need to be kept on a short leash for the sake of civil liberties. It would, however, diminish the ostentatious pretension of the current FBI that they are the existential guardians of the republic. In a republic, the people and their elected leaders are the protectors of their liberties. No one else.

theamericanconservative.com

Ray McGOVERN

House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber crime investigations unit.

Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

The following excerpts from Henry’s testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:

Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? … when would that have been?

Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). … There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.

Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?

Mr. Henry: There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence … but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. …

Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?

Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network.

Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you’ve indicated. …

Mr. Henry: “We didn’t have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.

In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic: “Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn’t see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw.”

Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike’s “belief” that Russia hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: “There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, but the — what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we’d seen associated with the Russian state.”

Interesting admission in Crowdstrike CEO Shaun Henry’s testimony. Henry is asked when “the Russians” exfiltrated the data from DNC.

Henry: “We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.” pic.twitter.com/TyePqd6b5P

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 8, 2020

Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in the word “exfiltration.”

The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or (2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.

As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not hacked — by Russia or anyone else.

Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and its cooperating foreign intelligence services.

Henry testifies that “it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers “set up” selected emails for transfer to an external storage device — a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any “exfiltration” over that network.

Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPS member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone 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.”

The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment

There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the DNC.

But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant and demonstrably true:

(1) In introductory remarks on “cyber incident attribution”, the authors of the ICA made a highly germane point: “The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation — malicious or not — leaves a trail.”

(2) “When analysts use words such as ‘we assess’ or ‘we judge,’ [these] 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 … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.” [And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure, as was the case with the ICA.]

The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of Holy Writ to the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” (it was a rump effort prepared by “handpicked analysts” from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.

Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump.

On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks, in an apparent effort to cover his own derriere.

Obama: “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”

So we ended up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point. What Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know—or professed not to know—exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack, and then a leak.

From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that “the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks” rested on thin gruel.

In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their “high-confidence” findings.

Clapper replied: “I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.” Pretty sure?

Preferring CrowdStrike; ’Splaining to Congress

CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks. It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s struggle with separatists supported by Russia. A Voice of America report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.

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.

In June last year it was revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.

By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble, as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week — whether the abuses of FISA, misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.

Schiff: Every Confidence
But No Evidence

Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled.

Thursday’s disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin “collusion,” [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of “Russian hacking” of the DNC.

[See: “The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate” republished today.]

Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally about evidence that Russia “hacked” the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta “think tank,” The Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: “You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?” I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.

Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr’s dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.

Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to prevail this time?

consortiumnews.com

The chief beneficiaries have been owners of the arms-makers (such as Lockheed Martin) and of the fossil-fuels extraction firms (such as ExxonMobil). Controlling those types of firms is to participate in controlling the US Government, because the US Government serves those firms. Also, high-tech, such as Amazon corporation (whose cloud-computing for the US Government provides almost all of its profits), benefits enormously not only from the wars, but from the extension of the American empire. A threat by the US Government is a threat on behalf of those owners, and yet the owners who control those international corporations get none of the blame for those wars, which always serve their interests, by extending their empire even when the wars are lost.

How did this ongoing decades-long catastrophe happen?

It didn’t even strengthen the US militarily. Look at the record, and consider not only the phenomenon itself, but its actual results — a ceaseless string of military defeats:

Why did the US lose the war in Vietnam?

Why did the US lose the war in Afghanistan?

Why did the US lose the war in Iraq?

Why did the US lose the war in Libya?

Why did the US lose the war in Syria?

What produces this doubly-bad habit — actually badness squared — of the American Government, during the past fifty years: aggressions that fail?

Could it be because the takeover of America’s Government, by its arms-manufacturers and fuel-extraction firms — and their lobbyists and other agents — has been accompanied by soaring corruption? We’ll deal with that question later here. But first, let’s consider the shocking present condition of America’s military:

On 19 August 2019, the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, in Australia — a prime US ally in that part of the world — headlined a lengthy study and report: “AVERTING CRISIS: AMERICAN STRATEGY, MILITARY SPENDING AND COLLECTIVE DEFENCE IN THE INDO-PACIFIC”. Its Executive Summary presented the following key points:

America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific, and its capacity to uphold a favourable balance of power is increasingly uncertain. …

Over the next decade, the US defence budget is unlikely to meet the needs of the National Defense Strategy owing to a combination of political, fiscal and internal pressures. …

America has an atrophying force that is not sufficiently ready, equipped or postured for great power competition in the Indo-Pacific — a challenge it is working hard to address. …

A strategy of collective defence is fast becoming necessary as a way of offsetting shortfalls in America’s regional military power and holding the line against rising Chinese strength.

But did China actually cause this “atrophying”? Clearly not.

The problem is internal to America itself. Casting the blame elsewhere is only for idiots to believe, but foreign ‘enemies’ (such as China) are needed in order for the military-industrial complex to thrive. Can you imagine the military-industrial complex growing and thriving if the public believe that domestic corruption is actually behind this consistent and constant record, of US military failures?

Did China cause America’s defeat in Vietnam, or in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in Libya, or in Syria?

Let’s be more general about this: Did North Korea cause it? During the four-day period of 24-27 August 2019, an Economist/YouGov poll of 1,500 adult US citizens asked them “Do you consider the countries listed below to be a friend or an enemy of the United States?” and listed 13 countries. The ones scoring highest for “Enemy” — the most-commonly selected, as being an “Enemy” — were: North Korea 53%, Iran 46%, Russia 35%, and China 21%. Did any of those nations cause this “atrophying”?

Ever since 2001, Gallup has asked, almost annually, and always in February, “What one country anywhere in the world do you consider to be the United States’ greatest enemy today?” No countries were ever listed for that question; the respondent in these polls always just answered it however that person wanted. In February 2001, 2% said “North Korea.” 6% said “Russia.” 8% said “Iran.” 14% said “China.” And a whopping 38% said “Iraq.” 4% said “Saudi Arabia.” Those were the most-frequently mentioned countries, shortly before 9/11 struck. 0% said “Afghanistan.” How accurately informed were Americans, by ‘our’ ‘news’-media, then? In February 2001, the top “enemy,” overwhelmingly (at 38%), was Iraq — which had never posed any threat, at all, to America. It was no enemy, whatsoever, to Americans. But we invaded and destroyed it in 2003 — after having long been strangulating its population, by means of an economic blockade, “sanctions,” following Saddam Hussein’s having invaded Iraq’s neighboring country, Kuwait, in 1990, and trying to take it from its owner, Kuwait’s royal Al-Sabah family. Americans then strangled Iraqis with sanctions for what their ruler Saddam Hussein had done to the Sabah clan, and then we invaded and destroyed Iraq altogether in 2003, for nothing but our Government’s, and its ‘news’-media’s, war-mongering lies — the ‘news’-media serving as mere stenographers for (instead of as investigators of) the Government’s ceaseless lies about ‘Saddam’s WMD’, etc.

Gallup’s next poll on this question was 2005, and the top “Enemy”s at that time were 22% each for “North Korea” and for “Iraq,” 14% for “Iran,” 10% for “China,” 3% for “Afghanistan,” and 2% each for “Saudi Arabia,” “Syria,” and “the United States itself.” How accurately informed were Americans, then? (Well: 2% got the answer right — or, maybe, 4% did, if the correct answer was both “the United States itself” and “Saudi Arabia.” That 2% or 4% was the highest percentage ever who got it right.)

By 2012, 10% said “North Korea.” 2% said “Russia.” 32% said “Iran.” 23% said “China.” 5% said “Iraq.” 7% said “Afghanistan.” How accurately informed were Americans, then?

In 2018 (the latest such poll), 51% said “North Korea.” 19% said “Russia.” 7% said “Iran.” 11% said “China.” 2% said “Iraq.” 0% said “Afghanistan. How accurately informed were Americans, then?

Isn’t it remarkable how malleable — changing over time — Americas’ opinions are, of which nations are ‘enemies’? The designation of which ones are ‘enemies’, at any given time, is controlled by the Government and its stenographic press — the ‘news’-media — and by the billionaires’ think tanks (such as Brookings Institution) that provide many of the ‘experts’, which the ‘news’-media cite and interview in order to validate the lies.

None of those countries had ever attacked America (except America’s own Deep State had, if that’s what was being referred to as “the United States itself”). Nonetheless, the US Government has threatened each one of those other countries many times, and has actually invaded some of them, but did even a single one of those countries ever commit aggression against the United States? Not even Afghanistan did, though the US-and-Saud-created Taliban had protected the Saudi aristocrat Osama bin Laden leading up to the 9/11 attacks. However, the Afghan Government afterward never invaded America. Not only was the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 unprovoked aggression, but (though less clearly) the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan also was. And yet, for some reason, Americans don’t view the US Government as a global criminal outlaw. Instead, Americans view the targeted foreign governments as if they were that. This is the consequence of a ceaselessly propagandistic national press, which protects itself and its masters (never revealing the truth about either itself or its masters — the regime’s propaganda that supplants truth), and fools its public to hate and fear those masters’ targeted ‘enemies’ — instead of to loathe those masters and their press (which have actually engendered such malleable mass-hatreds and the resulting unprovoked invasions by the US).

Is it the case that Americans’ fear and hatred of foreign governments varies according to what the owners of America’s major news-media have had their reporters report during the year before, and that the latter is, in turn, unskeptical stenographic reporting from whatever the US Government had just told them during the year before, and that it’s always full of lies, and none of it should be uncritically believed, and the American public are merely fools who are constantly being manipulated by the owners of the military-industrial complex, which actually controls not only the President, but the Congress, in both Parties, as well as their deceiving media? If that’s the case, then the generals and the armaments and extraction firms could be making lots of money, from manipulating the public, in this carefully coordinated way, by the controlling owners, the big stockholders — America’s 607 billionaires. It’s sometimes called “the Deep State.” But it’s not aiming for any actual victory by a military that actually represents the interests of the American people; it is instead merely aiming to generate sales of weapons and spreading of fear, and a continual succession of wars, so as to feed the controlling owners’ bloody greed to sell more weapons, oil, and gas. It’s safe for them to do, because international laws aren’t ever enforced against them, nor even against their top agents (such as America’s President, members of Congress, the CEOs of Lockheed Martin and of CNN, and all other agents of the billionaires). They’re all immune, no matter how many times they have deceived their public into supporting the perpetration of international war-crimes, on the basis of lies about their ‘humanitarian’ concern to spread ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’.

Is there any alternative explanation for these catastrophic continual results?

The US military is so profoundly corrupt that there are “Trillions of Dollars in US Military Spending Unaccounted For”, and yet the US military remains, by far, the most-trusted and highest-approved, of all institutions in America, respected above the Presidency, above the Congress, above the courts, above the schools, above any, at all, year after year, for decades. And the public accept this even when the US public themselves disapprove of the Government’s wars. So: there is total impunity for the mega-profiteers from all of these international war-crimes that are so routinely perpetrated by the US In fact, there is sound reason to believe that the corruption is so enormous that not only is the military-industrial complex the most corrupt part of the American nation, but this nation itself is actually, according to the most-reliable measures, the world’s most corrupt at its very top, and perhaps even below the very top. Perversely, the military is not only the most respected, but it’s also the most corrupt, of America’s institutions: it is corruption on top of corruption, the peak of corruption. And this is the reason why it’s the only federal department that is — and has always been — unauditable.

This is how the country that actually (though not in the official figures) spends around half of the world’s entire military budget can lose war after war after war and its military still retain the highest respect from its public — the highest of all of the nation’s institutions — regardless of its astounding longstanding record of failure and ongoing global catastrophes, producing benefits virtually only for the nation’s billionaires and their top agents, while mass-murdering millions abroad, for no other real purpose than to keep the profits flowing. Like Barack Obama (the invader of Libya and Syria on the basis of lies) repeatedly bragged, “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation”, meaning that all others are “dispensable.” Those others serve their purpose, as ‘allies’ to buy US-made weapons, or else as ‘enemies’ for those weapons to be used against. Even if the wars are lost, the weapons were sold, and the ‘enemies’ had served as target-practice, to keep the juices flowing, for America’s owners — people like this, and these. Such a nation used to be called an “Empire,” but now it’s called “hegemony”, in the wake of WW II. Perhaps it’s now called “the one indispensable nation,” and “hegemony,” because FDR had been opposed to empires, so they can’t call it an empire. Opposition to empires was FDR’s guiding principle in international relations, and this conviction he held was a major reason behind his plan for the UN to become the basis of an international democracy to emerge — no empires, at all. Today’s America is the reverse of that, more like a posthumous victory of fascism, which is based upon empire: this fascist victory after World War II is the burial of FDR’s plan and dream for the world. His dream has been buried by America’s own fascists.

The German intelligence-analyst who blogs anonymously as “Moon of Alabama,” and whose predictions, which I have closely watched for five years and found to be stunningly accurate, wrote, on September 5th, that, “The US military and its weapons are regularly hyped in ‘western’ media. But it has long been clear to (non-US) experts that US military technology is not superior to that of other countries. In several important fields Russian, Chinese and even Indian build weapons have much better capabilities. The reason is simple. US weapons are not developed or built with a real strategic need in mind. They don’t get developed for achieving the most effect in an existential war against a capable enemy, but to create profit.”

Given that America spends around half of the entire world’s military budget, and yet gets very bad military results, there can be no reasonable doubt that the reason is massive corruption. One prominent example is James Comey, who served President Clinton 1996-2001, President Bush 2002-2005, and President Obama 2013-2017; and he was Lockheed Martin’s second-or third-highest-paid executive, and then the chief lawyer for Lockheed Martin’s second-biggest owner, during the interim period 2005-2013, between Presidents Bush and Obama.

As I wrote in March of this year:

The liberal Republican James Comey became the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Lockheed Martin Corporation during 2005-2010, where his 2009 pay was $6,113,797. During that time, he also was a Director of the US Chamber of Commerce’s National Chamber Litigation Center, which works to support business interests in the courts, especially the interests of US-based international corporations, including Lockheed Martin. Furthermore, as of 12 March 2010, Comey also had been granted 162,482 free shares of stock in Lockheed Martin, which number was higher than that of anyone except the Chairman, the CEO President, and an Executive Vice President; so, Comey was among the very top people at Lockheed Martin. Lockheed Martin’s largest foreign customer was the Saudi Government, which is 100% owned by the Saud family. Today, those Comey shares are worth $47,119,780 — after his five years with the company, plus nearly nine years of growth in that stock, from the war-producing policies that Comey had helped to initiate.

Then, Comey bought a $3M mansion in Connecticut and became the General Counsel and a Member of the Executive Committee at the gigantic hedge Fund, Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater Associates, in Connecticut, where Comey’s only publicly known pay was $6,632,616 in 2012. Dalio and Comey became very close — Dalio called Comey his “hero.” But Obama then hired the liberal Republican Comey as FBI Director in 2013, replacing the liberal Republican Mueller in that role, from which Obama’s successor President Trump fired Comey, and congressional Democrats then succeeded in getting Mueller assigned to become the Special Counsel who would supposedly investigate the legitimacy of that firing.

On 21 May 2013, Marketwatch bannered “Bridgewater Associates’ trades for Q2” and reported that

“After a number of tech companies — including those we’ve mentioned [Microsoft, Oracle, and Intel] and EMC — the largest single-stock holding in the fund’s portfolio was its roughly 220,000 shares of Lockheed Martin LMT, +1.93%. The company recently reported an increase in earnings compared with the first quarter of 2012, but revenue was down slightly and there is a good deal of speculation that the business will be impacted by cuts in US military spending. … Billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Investment Group reported a position of 1.2 million shares at the end of December.”

Lockheed Martin is by far the largest US ‘defense’ contractor, taking 8.3% of all US Government purchases during 2015, as compared to #2 Boeing’s 3.8%, and #3 General Dynamics’s 3.1%.

That’s where the big money is being made: not in Government-service, but in the private-sector side of the revolving door between Government-service and the private sector. Phrased in a different way, and using a different metaphor: Government-service is the career’s entré, but the private sector is its dessert, in America’s corrupt system. Outright bribes aren’t necessary, in this system — the aristocratic system — where what matters is not what you know, but whom you know; not what skills you have, but whom your friends are. It doesn’t produce efficiency, but it does produce supercharged wealth at the very top, amongst the richest and most powerful few.

And it produces gargantuan and longstanding military failure.

On August 29th, the US Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General issued its “Report of Investigation of Former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey’s Disclosure of Sensitive Investigative Information and Handling of Certain Memoranda”, which identified US criminal statutes that Comey had personally violated in order to precipitate the Obama Administration’s Russiagate investigations against then-candidate Donald Trump. It noted that “Comey’s closest advisors used the words ‘surprised,’ ‘stunned,’ ‘shocked,’ and [expressed] ‘disappointment’ to describe their reactions to learning what Comey had done.” And it stated, not just once but a number of times, the terse phrase that “After reviewing the matter, the [Justice] Department [now under Trump] declined prosecution.” Ironically, some of the very same criminal statutes that they said Comey had violated had been the same ones on which Comey had earlier refused to recommend prosecution of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — that the documents were his (her) personal property, and not the property of his (her) employer, the US Government. The I.G.’s report stated unequivocally, in his own case, “We conclude that the Memos were official FBI records, rather than Comey’s personal documents.” Perhaps Comey had felt free to do this because he had earlier refused to recommend prosecution of her for having done it. Perhaps he felt that his actions, as FBI Director, had, in her case, established a legal precedent, which superseded the congressionally passed and Presidentially signed-into-law criminal statutes that he was actually oath-bound to enforce and possessed no legal authority to either override or ignore. Perhaps that’s why he did it — perhaps he had persuaded himself that he wasn’t a criminal who was at the top. Perhaps he had deceived himself about that.

At the top, in the United States, corruption is not only massive; it is entirely bipartisan. There’s no way around it.

On 10 September 2019, the independent investigative journalist Sarah Carter headlined “Flynn Hearing Reveals Existence of Bombshell DOJ Memo Exonerating Michael Flynn”, and revealed evidence that Michael Flynn’s guilty plea in the Russiagate-Trump case had been based on Comey’s having hidden from Flynn exculpatory evidence, and that therefore the plea-agreement might be ruled invalid. Furthermore: “the existence of a Justice Department memo from Jan. 30, 2017 exonerating Flynn of any collusion with Russia,” and the document continues to be hidden from the public, but might soon be released. Yet the resulting war-mongering lies have shaped the public’s attitudes, and those attitudes could last for years and continue to shape American politics even long after the fraud has been exposed.

And that’s just one person’s case, Comey. The entire military-industrial complex operates this way, and long has been doing so, very successfully for America’s billionaires and their foreign allies, such as for the Sauds, and for the billionaires who control Israel. (Israel is the largest recipient of US foreign aid, and virtually all of that aid from US taxpayers pays for Israel’s purchases of weapons from Lockheed Martin and other US weapons-firms.)

That’s the “swamp,” and Trump is part of it, like all recent US Presidents have been. There is no accountability, at the top. And this is why America’s military capabilities are failing.

Peter VAN BUREN

When it comes to the Mueller report, believing there are still more questions than answers means refusing to accept the answers. With the release of the redacted report, #MuellerTime is now over. Robert Mueller has ended conclusively the three-year Russiagate tantrum, and chosen not to pursue obstruction via indictment or a direct referral to Congress for action. He could have but he did not. Trump will serve his full term and voters will decide whether he gets another. That should be it.

But it won’t be. Mueller’s inclusion of information on obstruction of justice that portrays unbecoming conduct by the president that nonetheless doesn’t rise to the level of indictable crime allows Democrats to decide where to take this next.Mueller has not tossed the ball to a Democratic Congress to play out its check and balance role so much as handed dirt to Democratic politicians to use as they see fit.It’s an odd end for the righteous Robert Mueller, twisting the tools of justice and state to slander.

The report was issued in two “volumes.” Volume I focuses on Russian interference in the election. Volume II focuses on obstruction of justice.

Volume I concludes two important and exclusive things. First, the Russian government, under Barack Obama’s watch, tried to influence the election via social media and by obtaining Democratic National Committee emails. And second, no American colluded, cooperated, or coordinated with that effort. The report (volume I, page 2) is clear that the Trump campaign’s reacting to or even anticipating released materials was not criminal. A crime would have required coordinated interaction, not merely two parties (in Mueller’s words) “informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.”

An analogy (not in the report) might involve the Clinton campaign and the infamous Access Hollywood tape. The campaign may have heard that the tape was going to leak and exploited its release, but that would not have created “collusion” between Clinton and the leaker.

The report also deflates any credibility left in the Steele Dossier and most of the Russiagate reporting. None of the subplots matter outside of the Washington-Twitter-New York corridor because either they didn’t happen or they did not constitute a crime. That includes the Trump Tower meeting, the Moscow Hotel Project, the polling data, the Alfa Bank server, the changed Republican platform on Ukraine, Jeff Sessions meeting Ambassador Kislyak, the meeting in the Seychelles, Cohen (not) in Prague, Manafort (not) meeting Assange, and Trump (not) ordering Cohen to lie to Congress.

All of that should be in the headlines but isn’t. That’s because of a new focus on obstruction of justice.

Volume I of the report deals with actions taken independently by the Russians that had no coordinated connection to Trump’s own actions or decisions. The second half deals with obstruction of justice, events that occurred because there was an investigation into collusion that itself never happened. Obstruction, like a perjury trap, is a process crime, which can only exist because an investigation exists. As with most of Mueller’s perjury convictions in this saga, there was no underlying crime.

And as with collusion, we already know the ending on obstruction. Mueller did not indict because the evidence did not support it.Attorney General Bob Barr and his deputy Rod Rosenstein, by law the actual intended recipients of the report, agreed with Mueller.Trump’s actions were lawful. Though some of them were troublesome and even immoral, they were not criminal. Most significantly, Mueller could not indict on obstruction because it was not possible to determine that Trump had showed the legally required corrupt intent. All of that precedes any consideration given to Department of Justice and Office of Legal Counsel advice that a sitting president cannot be indicted.

If Mueller had an obstruction case, he would have made it. He could have specifically recommended indictment and made explicit that the complex legal issues around presidential obstruction meant a decision was beyond his and the attorney general’s constitutional roles and must be addressed by Congress via impeachment. He could have indicted any number of people in Trump’s inner circle, or issued a sealed indictment against post-White House Trump himself. He could have said that he couldn’t indict solely because of DOJ/OLC rules and therefore explicitly created a road map for impeachment to guide the next step.

None of that happened. Mueller had no reason to speak in riddles, show restraint, send signals, embed hidden messages, or hint at things that others should do. He could have swung in any number of ways but instead found reason to leave the bat on his shoulder. Volume II should have ended there.

But it seems obvious from reading the report that stories alleging that members of Mueller’s team saw evidence of obstruction that they found “alarming and significant” were true. Barr did a great disservice in omitting at least mention of this from his summary, as it forms the bulk of Volume II and will fuel nearly everything that happens next.

Despite no indictment, the report outlines 10 instances containing elements of obstructed justice by Trump, with a suggestion (volume II, page 8) that someone may want to look again. Apparently not everyone on Mueller’s team agreed with the boss’s conclusion that the evidence was insufficient, and Mueller chose to allow what is essentially dissent Talmudically contradicting his major Volume II conclusion to be baked into his own work.

Mueller was tasked with making an unambiguous decision: either to prosecute or not. He made it, and then included pages of reasons suggesting he might be wrong even as he also found space to say that the dissent might also be missing the key element of corrupt intent. There is no explanation for this confusing, ambiguous, and jumbled departure from traditional prosecutorial judgment. The final line (volume II, page 182) reads like a Twilight Zone script: “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

One focus of the dissent is on Trump firing former FBI director James Comey. For this to be obstruction, Trump would have had to have fired Comey with the corrupt intent to impede the investigation. The Mueller report is clear that this was not what happened. Despite the public messaging, the firing was related to Comey’s mishandling of the Clinton email case. The report shows that the president was angry at Comey for telling him privately that he was not under investigation but refusing to say so publicly, as Comey had done (once) for Hillary Clinton. Volume II, page 75: “Substantial evidence indicates that the catalyst for the president’s decision to fire Comey was Comey’s unwillingness to publicly state that the president was not personally under investigation.” That’s not obstruction of justice;it’s presidential rage.

Yet elsewhere, the report says something more… leading to set up the argument for obstruction post-Comey. Volume II, page 7: “Some of [Trump’s] actions, such as firing the FBI director, involved facially lawful acts,” but “at the same time, the President’s position as the head of the Executive Branch provided him with unique and powerful means of influencing official proceedings, subordinate officers, and potential witnesses—all of which is relevant to a potential obstruction-of-justice analysis.” It was even clearer elsewhere. Volume II, page 157: “[we] found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations.”

Mueller’s team concluded that Trump lawfully fired Comey, as the intent was not to obstruct, but it was still dirty play, “undue influence,” not a crime but still something that, according to Volume II, page 2, “presents difficult issues that prevent us from conclusively determining that no criminal conduct occurred.”

Ironically, while Trump was not under investigation when he fired Comey for refusing to say that publicly, he was placed under investigation by the FBI (for obstruction) after he fired Comey.

The report suggests that Trump’s post-Comey actions (broken down into 10 episodes) would have constituted obstruction if seen as a pattern of behavior, not as the discrete acts the law focuses on, and if they had included the critical element of corrupt intent. Those “if” words are doing all the work because there was no corrupt intent. Mueller said so.

So if Trump could not take his obstructive actions to cover up his crimes with Russia because they did not exist to be covered up, ie corrupt intent, why did he act in ways that appear designed to disrupt the investigation? Mueller answers the question. Vol II, page 61:

Evidence indicates that the President was angered by both the existence of the Russia investigation and the public reporting that he was under investigation, which he knew was not true based on Comey’s representations. The President complained to advisers that if people thought Russia helped him with the election, it would detract from what he had accomplished. Other evidence indicates that the President was concerned about the impact of the Russia investigation on his ability to govern. The President complained that the perception that he was under investigation was hurting his ability to conduct foreign relations, particularly with Russia.

If you believe Mueller, Trump was concerned about his ability to govern, about as far from corrupt intent as you can get. At the pre-release press conference, Barr agreed with Mueller’s assessment. Trump knew, and Mueller came to know, that he did not collude with the Russians. To show corrupt intent, Mueller would have had to prove Trump was trying to stymie the process that would ultimately clear him.And while there can be obstruction without an underlying crime, that requires even clearer evidence of corrupt intent, because in such cases obstruction on its face is counterproductive.

Everything that’s happened over the last two years was because Democrats, the media, and the FBI falsely conflated Russia’s actions with Trump’s, and then imagined that Trump committed serial acts of obstruction to cover up something he never did.

Prosecutors don’t issue road maps for others. They charge or drop a case. Not charging is a conclusion and the only one that matters in the end. The Mueller report is not a pretty picture of power being exercised. But ultimately Trump did not commit a chargeable crime, and in between some muddled dissent text, Mueller the prosecutor said so.

Politicians, however, are bound by a different code. They can conduct investigations, hold hearings, speculate about what’s under black redaction bars, and file articles of impeachment whose only purpose is to drag Trump through the Benghazi-like muck. They can desperately pursue a climax to this anti-climatic report, but they’ll never achieve it. Democrats know they have no chance of impeaching Trump. The question is, by playing at trying, do they think they have a better chance of defeating him in 2020?

theamericanconservative.com

Recent hearings by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees reflected the rising tide of Russian-election-hacking hysteria and contributed further to it. Both Democrats and Republicans on the two committees appeared to share the alarmist assumptions about Russian hacking, and the officials who testified did nothing to discourage the politicians.

On June 21, Samuel Liles, acting director of the Intelligence and Analysis Office’s Cyber Division at the Department of Homeland Security, and Jeanette Manfra, acting deputy under secretary for cyber-security and communications, provided the main story line for the day in testimony before the Senate committee — that efforts to hack into election databases had been found in 21 states.

Former DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson and FBI counter-intelligence chief Bill Priestap also endorsed the narrative of Russian government responsibility for the intrusions on voter registration databases.

But none of those who testified offered any evidence to support this suspicion nor were they pushed to do so. And beneath the seemingly unanimous embrace of that narrative lies a very different story.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a record of spreading false stories about alleged Russian hacking into U.S. infrastructure, such as the tale of a Russian intrusion into the Burlington, Vermont electrical utility in December 2016 that DHS later admitted was untrue. There was another bogus DHS story about Russia hacking into a Springfield, Illinois water pump in November 2011.

So, there’s a pattern here. Plus, investigators, assessing the notion that Russia hacked into state electoral databases, rejected that suspicion as false months ago. Last September, Assistant Secretary of DHS for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment and state officials explained that the intrusions were not carried out by Russian intelligence but by criminal hackers seeking personal information to sell on the Internet.

Both Ozment and state officials responsible for the state databases revealed that those databases have been the object of attempted intrusions for years. The FBI provided information to at least one state official indicating that the culprits in the hacking of the state’s voter registration database were cyber-criminals.

Illinois is the one state where hackers succeeded in breaking into a voter registration database last summer. The crucial fact about the Illinois hacking, however, was that the hackers extracted personal information on roughly 90,000 registered voters, and that none of the information was expunged or altered.

The Actions of Cybercriminals

That was an obvious clue to the motive behind the hack. Assistant DHS Secretary Ozment testified before the House Subcommittee on Information Technology on Sept. 28 (at 01:02.30 of the video) that the apparent interest of the hackers in copying the data suggested that the hacking was “possibly for the purpose of selling personal information.”

Ozment ‘s testimony provides the only credible motive for the large number of states found to have experienced what the intelligence community has called “scanning and probing” of computers to gain access to their electoral databases: the personal information involved – even e-mail addresses – is commercially valuable to the cybercriminal underworld.

That same testimony also explains why so many more states reported evidence of attempts to hack their electoral databases last summer and fall. After hackers had gone after the Illinois and Arizona databases, Ozment said, DHS had provided assistance to many states in detecting attempts to hack their voter registration and other databases.

“Any time you more carefully monitor a system you’re going to see more bad guys poking and prodding at it,” he observed, “because they’re always poking and prodding.” [Emphasis added]

State election officials have confirmed Ozment’s observation. Ken Menzel, the general counsel for the Illinois Secretary of State, told this writer, “What’s new about what happened last year is not that someone tried to get into our system but that they finally succeeded in getting in.” Menzel said hackers “have been trying constantly to get into it since 2006.”

And it’s not just state voter registration databases that cybercriminals are after, according to Menzel. “Every governmental data base – driver’s licenses, health care, you name it – has people trying to get into it,” he said.

Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan told Mother Jones that her I.T. specialists had detected 193,000 distinct attempts to get into the state’s website in September 2016 alone and 11,000 appeared to be trying to “do harm.”

Reagan further revealed that she had learned from the FBI that hackers had gotten a user name and password for their electoral database, and that it was being sold on the “dark web” – an encrypted network used by cyber criminals to buy and sell their wares. In fact, she said, the FBI told her that the probe of Arizona’s database was the work of a “known hacker” who had been closely monitored “frequently.”

James Comey’s Role

The sequence of events indicates that the main person behind the narrative of Russian hacking state election databases from the beginning was former FBI Director James Comey. In testimony to the House Judiciary Committee on Sept. 28, Comey suggested that the Russian government was behind efforts to penetrate voter databases, but never said so directly.

Comey told the committee that FBI Counterintelligence was working to “understand just what mischief Russia is up to with regard to our elections.” Then he referred to “a variety of scanning activities” and “attempted intrusions” into election-related computers “beyond what we knew about in July and August,” encouraging the inference that it had been done by Russian agents.

The media then suddenly found unnamed sources ready to accuse Russia of hacking election data even while admitting that they lacked evidence. The day after Comey’s testimony ABC headlined, “Russia Hacking Targeted Nearly Half of States’ Voter Registration Systems, Successfully Infiltrating 4.” The story itself revealed, however, that it was merely a suspicion held by “knowledgeable” sources.

Similarly, NBC News headline announced, “Russians Hacked Two U.S. Voter Databases, Officials Say.” But those who actually read the story closely learned that in fact none of the unnamed sources it cited were actually attributing the hacking to the Russians.

It didn’t take long for Democrats to turn the Comey teaser — and these anonymously sourced stories with misleading headlines about Russian database hacking — into an established fact. A few days later, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff declared that there was “no doubt” Russia was behind the hacks on state electoral databases.

On Oct. 7, DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement that they were “not in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian government.” But only a few weeks later, DHS participated with FBI in issuing a “Joint Analysis Report” on “Russian malicious cyber activity” that did not refer directly to scanning and spearphishing aimed of state electoral databases but attributed all hacks related to the election to “actors likely associated with RIS [Russian Intelligence Services].”

Suspect Claims

But that claim of a “likely” link between the hackers and Russia was not only speculative but highly suspect. The authors of the DHS-ODNI report claimed the link was “supported by technical indicators from the U.S. intelligence community, DHS, FBI, the private sector and other entities.” They cited a list of hundreds of I.P. addresses and other such “indicators” used by hackers they called “Grizzly Steppe” who were supposedly linked to Russian intelligence.

But as I reported last January, the staff of Dragos Security, whose CEO Rob Lee, had been the architect of a U.S. government system for defense against cyber attack, pointed out that the vast majority of those indicators would certainly have produced “false positives.”

Then, on Jan. 6 came the “intelligence community assessment” – produced by selected analysts from CIA, FBI and National Security Agency and devoted almost entirely to the hacking of e-mail of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta. But it included a statement that “Russian intelligence obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple state or local election boards.” Still, no evidence was evinced on this alleged link between the hackers and Russian intelligence.

Over the following months, the narrative of hacked voter registration databases receded into the background as the drumbeat of media accounts about contacts between figures associated with the Trump campaign and Russians built to a crescendo, albeit without any actual evidence of collusion regarding the e-mail disclosures.

But a June 5 story brought the voter-data story back into the headlines. The story, published by The Intercept, accepted at face value an NSA report dated May 5, 2017, that asserted Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, had carried out a spear-phishing attack on a U.S. company providing election-related software and had sent e-mails with a malware-carrying word document to 122 addresses believed to be local government organizations.

But the highly classified NSA report made no reference to any evidence supporting such an attribution. The absence of any hint of signals intelligence supporting its conclusion makes it clear that the NSA report was based on nothing more than the same kind of inconclusive “indicators” that had been used to establish the original narrative of Russians hacking electoral databases.

A Checkered History

So, the history of the U.S. government’s claim that Russian intelligence hacked into election databases reveals it to be a clear case of politically motivated analysis by the DHS and the Intelligence Community. Not only was the claim based on nothing more than inherently inconclusive technical indicators but no credible motive for Russian intelligence wanting personal information on registered voters was ever suggested.

Russian intelligence certainly has an interest in acquiring intelligence related to the likely outcome of American elections, but it would make no sense for Russia’s spies to acquire personal voting information about 90,000 registered voters in Illinois.

When FBI Counter-intelligence chief Priestap was asked at the June 21 hearing how Moscow might use such personal data, his tortured effort at an explanation clearly indicated that he was totally unprepared to answer the question.

“They took the data to understand what it consisted of,” said Priestap, “so they can affect better understanding and plan accordingly in regards to possibly impacting future election by knowing what is there and studying it.”

In contrast to that befuddled non-explanation, there is highly credible evidence that the FBI was well aware that the actual hackers in the cases of both Illinois and Arizona were motivated by the hope of personal gain.

consortiumnews.com

This is a short follow up on yesterday's false news stories topped with a Comey leak.

1. The New York Times tries to add to the story of the WannaCry ransom virus (which is based on NSA exploits),  hyping the unfounded claim that North Korea is behind it: Focus Turns to North Korea Sleeper Cells as Possible Culprits in Cyberattack. The story curiously does not even mention the nonsensical claim of a Google staffer that points to common code snippets in reused software stacks. Instead we get a long elaboration on how North Korea sends students abroad to be trained in IT and programming. In paragraph 4 the story asserts:

As evidence mounts that North Korean hackers may have links to the ransom assaults …

But no evidence, none at all, is cited in the piece. The "mounting evidence" is a molehill without the hill. Eleven paragraphs later we learn that:

It also is possible that North Korea had no role in the attacks,

Duh. Six NYT reporters collaborated in writing that twenty paragraph story which contains no reasonable news or information. What a waste.

2. The State Department claim that Syria built a crematorium inside a prison to burn executed prisoners saw no follow up. But it had consequences. The presented "evidence" was too thin to make it believable. Even the staunchly anti-Syrian SPIEGEL doubted it: USA bleiben Beweise für Assads Leichenöfen schuldig. Translated: "U.S. fails to give evidence for Assad crematorium claims."

The State Department claim was presented in a special news conference by Stuart Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs. A day later Jones announced that he would retire:

Jones, 57, told colleagues the decision was his own and that he had not been pushed out or asked to leave the department.

Ahem. Sure. Maybe. Or Secretary of State Rex Tillerson disliked the lame propaganda shows Jones presented under the official State Department seal.

3. Yesterday's "Trump revealed critical intelligence to Russia" nonsense is already dying down. Even regular NYT readers criticize their paper's reporting of it:

It’s quite strange that the media is giving such prominence to and broadcasting so much detail about supposedly highly secret information and its source in order to show how irresponsible President Trump is.
…
It seem that of the two, the media and the President, the media is by far the most at fault for leaking state secrets. Strange indeed: it seems the goal of bringing down Trump overrides all other considerations.”

To recap – in March the U.S. and the UK had issued a ban on laptops for fights from certain Middle Eastern airports:

The U.S. officials said intelligence "indicates terrorist groups continue to target commercial aviation" by "smuggling explosive devices in various consumer items."

It was known from other reports that the threat was from ISIS. Trump repeated this to the Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and added that the origin of the treat is the ISIS capital Raqqa. Anyone would have guessed that. It was no secret. But "current and former officials" phoned up reporter after reporter to claim that Trump revealed critical intelligence because the Russians might now guess which country the information was coming from. A few hours later the Washington Post and the New York Times, not Trump, revealed that the original information came from Israel. It will be difficult to blame Trump for "leaking to the Russians" less information than "current and a former American official" leak to mainstream paper.

But as that smear against Trump and Russia has failed a new one is needed.

A week ago Trump unceremoniously fired FBI boss James Comey:

After six months of investigation the FBI had no evidence for any of the rumors about Russian interference [in the U.S.] that were thrown around. It should have closed the case with a clear recommendation not to prosecute the issue. That Comey kept the case open was political interference from his side. Hearings and public rumors about the case blocked the political calendar. Instead of following the facts, and deciding based upon them, he was himself running a political campaign.

Comey had hoped that he would not be fired as long as the investigation was running. Since Trump kicked him out Comey tried to get a public hearing in Congress to spill the beans and get some revenge. The Republican majority leaders smelled the trap and did not invite him. Today he upped his game: Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

Comey leaked the memo to raise new allegations against Trump and to finally get his day in Congress. But Trump's “I hope you can let this go” is not a clear interference in a judicial investigation. Trump just wished that the FBI would use its resources to look into other issues, like the extensive leaking of secret intelligence that occurred during recent months. Nothing nefarious can be constructed from that reasonable explanation. The investigation into Flynn, for violating the Foreign Agent Registration Act with relation to Turkey(!), continues. Trump has had no influence on it. If this talk has been so important as to possibly constitute a breach of law why did Comey wait months, until after he was fired, to leak it?

The Comey claim is another non-issue and non-story. The Republican congress leaders will not jump on Comey's bandwagon (- or will they?) If this was the worst Comey can present he has lost the fight.

The deep-state, which opposes any collaboration with Russia and wants Trump impeached (RealNews vid), will now have to find a new angle for its attack.

moonofalabama.org

Donald Trump in many ways is the inverse of James Comey. Trump was a tycoon, first of real estate and then of himself, who came to embody the glittery excesses of the 1980s before breaking out of his Sherman McCoy milieu and winning the presidency, elected because voters believed he was bad enough to do some good. Comey was the incorruptible lawman, the one with the descriptor “Boy Scout” next to his name in all the stylebooks, who took pride in hovering above politics only to be dragged down into the partisan muck. And here we thought Chuck Schumer would give the president headaches; in retrospect, these two seemed predestined to clash.

And they did: Trump sacked Comey from the FBI exactly one week ago, and now Comey’s revenge tour has begun. The New York Times broke news last night that Trump allegedly pressured Comey to squash the bureau’s investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, a confidant of the president’s. According to Comey’s notes, during a chat in the Oval Office, Trump said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go,” and called Flynn a “good guy.” Comey agreed only that Flynn was a “good guy” and later drafted a memo detailing this unsettling interaction, which he showed to top officials at the FBI. It was one of those associates who yesterday relayed its contents to the Times.

Trump’s scandals have now crossed the threshold from unseemliness to potential illegality. No longer can we roll our eyes and note with fatigue that there still isn’t any hard evidence of malfeasance, as we’ve been doing over the inflated allegations of Russian collusion. Post-interview memoranda like the one recorded by Comey are frequently used by government investigators in criminal cases. If the memos are real, then “obstruction of justice” will continue to peal, along with an even more cacophonous word: impeachment. Whether there are legal consequences will depend on congressional Republicans, who are still generally loyal to Trump but also no doubt tired of having their legislative priorities upended by drama and wary of the midterms in 2018.

In the meantime, two questions need to be answered. The first is one of intent: Did Trump actually mean to pressure Comey into dropping the Flynn investigation? Or was he just being his voluble self and yet another pillars-of-justice-shaking remark accidentally tumbled from his lips? (“Did you try the coffee? I’m fond of coffee. So is Mike Flynn. I hope you’ll let this case against him go—case! I need a new briefcase.”) The Times reports that before making the remark to Comey, Trump first asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Vice President Mike Pence to leave the room, suggesting intent was there. But he also didn’t begin by speaking about Flynn, instead opting for the not-less-discomforting subject of why the FBI should imprison reporters who publish classified information—so perhaps this was a tangent gone wrong.

Whatever the case, the second question is broader and must be answered first: Is the New York Times’ reporting on James Comey’s memo an accurate assessment of what happened in the Oval Office that day? It is, after all, a thirdhand account (Comey told his associate, who told the newspaper) centering on a disgruntled former employee and passed along by an anonymous source. That last part especially irks. The country is weary of news articles premised on faceless “government officials,” a term that presently encompasses everything from Steve Bannon to golden-showers erotica. If Comey was illegally accosted by Trump over the Flynn investigation, he needs to put his name to this story, testify about it in public as he’s offered to do, and turn over any additional information he might have to the pertinent congressional committees.

No more anonymous quotes and no more errant speculation. This is very real and the stakes are high.

nationalinterest.org

It was probably inevitable that Donald Trump would fire FBI Director James B. Comey. The surprising thing may be not that Trump terminated him today, but that Trump waited as long as he did. Comey has repeatedly displayed lamentably bad judgment. The question that those outside of Washington may wonder about is whether anyone can shoot straight in this town. Institution after institution has come into disrepute because of bungling by top government officials. Comey’s missteps are not an aberration, but part of a broader pattern in Washington.

Trump declared, “While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau.” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was right to say that Comey brought discredit upon the FBI by publicly discussing the investigation of Hillary Clinton during the campaign. Trump called the FBI the nation’s “crown jewel” of law enforcement and said he would move to restore its reputation.

On the Russia investigation, Comey has also engaged in questionable actions. He was the head of the FBI. Yet he went beyond his purview in testifying to Congress. He made claims on the order of stating that Russia is the “greatest threat” to the United States. It isn’t the job of the FBI director to indulge in geopolitical analysis. Anyway, how would he know? Comey, who has devoted his career to domestic legal matters, has never evinced any deep or profound knowledge of foreign countries. His testimony to Congress, in fact, has mostly consisted of banalities and conventional wisdom repackaged as cutting-edge analysis based on secret information. But as George F. Kennan once noted, the average citizen who reads the New York Times knows as much, or even more, than many government officials. There is no cogent reason to believe that Comey possessed any great insights that were occluded to most Americans. Quite the contrary. His hapless, serial bungling suggests that he was totally out of his depth as FBI director.

The question for Trump will be whom he chooses to replace Comey. Given that the Russia investigation was given fresh wind by the testimony of Sally Yates on Monday, Trump needs to pick a serious and credible candidate to lead the FBI. Senator Lindsey Graham, who could not be more hawkish on Russia, stated, “Given the recent controversies surrounding the director, I believe a fresh start will serve the FBI and the nation well. I encourage the President to select the most qualified professional available who will serve our nation’s interests.” Already Senator Ron Wyden is calling on Comey to testify in an “open hearing” about the status of the Russia investigation when he was sacked. It’s unlikely that that Comey would disclose anything. But the optics of the Russia investigation have always been more important than the substance.

The stakes for Trump, who has repeatedly inflamed rather than defused the Russia investigation with his truculent tweets, could not be higher.

nationalinterest.org