Ray McGovern and Bill Binney have written an open letter to President Trump ahead of Monday’s summit.
With Friday’s indictments of Russian intelligence officers, Ray McGovern and Bill Binney have written an open letter to President Trump making clear that the “evidence” behind the indictments is as fraudulent as the intelligence alleging WMD in Iraq. It is being published exclusively here ahead of the Trump-Putin summit on Monday.
BRIEFING FOR: The President
FROM: Ray McGovern, former CIA briefer of The President’s Daily Brief, and William Binney, former Technical Director at NSA
SUBJECT: Info Your Summit Briefers May Have Missed
We reproduce below one of our most recent articles on “Russia-Gate,” which, in turn, draws from our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Memorandum to you of July 24, 2017.
At the time of that Memorandum we wrote:
“Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.
Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack.”
“We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI,” we wrote. However, we now have forensic evidence that shows the data provided by Guccifer 2.0 had been manipulated and is a fabrication.
We also discussed CIA’s cyber-tool “Marble Framework,” which can hack into computers, “obfuscate” who hacked, and leave behind incriminating, tell-tale signs in Russian; and we noted that this capability had been employed during 2016. As we pointed out, Putin himself made an unmistakable reference to this “obfuscating” tool during an interview with Megan Kelly.
Our article of June 7, 2018, explains further:
“Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack”
If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand close scrutiny. It could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity — including two “alumni” who were former National Security Agency technical directors — have long since concluded that Julian Assange did not acquire what he called the “emails related to Hillary Clinton” via a “hack” by the Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage device — probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.
On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted that the “conclusions” of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to WikiLeaks were “inconclusive.” Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA “Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections” of January 6, 2017, which tried to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the “handpicked” authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee … to WikiLeaks.” Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.
Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA “assessment” became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had to have been the Russians.
Five days into the Trump presidency, McGovern had a chance to challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks. Schiff still “can’t share the evidence” with me … or with anyone else, because it does not exist.
It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that Assange announced the pending publication of “emails related to Hillary Clinton,” throwing the Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to create what we call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the emails by blaming Russia for their release.
Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various media outlets at the convention with instructions “to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.” The diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting “The Russians did it,” and gave little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer’ Fox, Bernie didn’t say nothin’.
Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating “forensic facts” to “prove” the Russians did it. Here’s how it played out:
June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”
June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: “Guccifer 2.0” affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the “hack;” claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”
The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to “show” that it came from a Russian hack.
Enter Independent Investigators
A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the “handpicked analysts” who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5, 2016 showing that the “hack” that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else.
Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider — the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016 for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the “fluid dynamics” principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)
One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May 31 published new evidence that the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not from Russia.
In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated, “We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.”
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: “Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled ‘Vault 7.’ WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
“No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA’s Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]
Marbled
“Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the “Marble Framework” program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as ‘news fit to print’ and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since.
“The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, it seems, ‘did not get the memo’ in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: ‘WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.’
“The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use ‘obfuscation,’ and that Marble source code includes a “de-obfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.
“More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a ‘forensic attribution double game’ or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.”
A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical director, and Ray McGovern commented on Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version published in The Baltimore Sun.
The CIA’s reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates “demons,” and insisting; “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”
Our July 24 Memorandum continued: “Mr. President, we do not know if CIA’s Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ]
“We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today’s technology enables hacking to be ‘masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin’ [of the hack] … And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.
“‘Hackers may be anywhere,’ he said. ‘There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine such a scenario? … I can.’
New attention has been drawn to these issues after McGovern discussed them in a widely published 16-minute interview last Friday.
In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, we believe we must append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24, 2017:
“Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.
“We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental.” The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.
Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst for 27 years, was chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and briefed the President’s Daily Brief one-on-one from 1981-1985.
William Binney worked for NSA for 36 years, retiring in 2001 as the technical director of world military and geopolitical analysis and reporting; he created many of the collection systems still used by NSA.
This went way over my head. I am technologically-challenged to say the least; however, despite my lack of skills, even I could grasp the concept that this is problematic. Over the past few months we have heard or read about problems with the DNC systems. That causes me to wonder whether it is an insider or a remote access. Perhaps, there was consideration of “blame it on Russia” so that the DNC won’t be blamed. Maybe I am overreaching but over the past two or three months, we have seen and heard of ongoing issues with the DNC systems including seeing videos with DNC staff commenting openly on certain subjects involving the systems.
Thanks, very interesting. Wish this was put out by mainstream media so many could actually know what’s going on. They only watch CNN or MSNBC. So that’s not going to happen!!
Great job!!. I was just addressing this on the LPAC activist call today that these forensic evidencesis are being ignored. The FBI and congress is ignoring it, hoping that it will go away. Praying that the hoax will be exposed in all it’s dark deviousness.
“Memo to the President Ahead of Monday’s Summit”
Mr. Tambourine Man
WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Though I know that evenin’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship
My senses have been stripped, my hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way
I promise to go under it
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Though you might hear laughin’, spinnin’, swingin’ madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone, it’s just escapin’ on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facin’
And if you hear vague traces of skippin’ reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time, it’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seein’ that he’s chasing
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
Then take me disappearin’ through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come followin’ you
(.)
To the managers of this site. I’m trying to stimulate debate, here what has become a monotone of information with little “flesh” to it.
I do not have a web site I’m a patriot trying to sift through these things pretty much on my own. So far DOJ and the SCOTUS have me as worried as the Fake President and “his” nukes!
Ray McGovern a question. Or two. Does the Sergei Magnitsky Act and his murder in soviet prison have any connection to what the discussion is here? I’m referencing the recent Time article by Bill Browder.
I know CIA has had help with laundering money in the past. I’m curious is the CIA just like everyone else now since the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers, wondering if they have been caught also.
To use the fake presidents phrase, “There lots of people out there who are doing this!”
robert e williamson jr, —
Thank you for coloring inside the vacant, dreary, prejudiced empty spaces
within the words of our Plain Wrap POTUS, incapable of adaptations to humanity
The Hollow victory of an Insincere Trump will totally collapse in upon him
in manifold After Affects like unto the after affect of Radiation Clouds
He will never contemplate/understand the insurrection Driving him Out of power when
Truth reduces him to realization of the concupiscent, pretentious Empty Suit he really is.
??yea right!!
Robert-
If you want to find out who Bill Browder really is, I suggest you view the movie “The Magnitsky Act, Behind the Scenes”. It has been virtually banned here, but it is possible to view it from Vimeo, although you’ll need a password from one of the producers of the movie to see it. If you send an email to [email protected] he will send you a link. He will then request to send the p/w via text to your cellphone. It took almost a month for him to get back to me, but it was well worth the wait. The archives here also have some good articles from when Robert Parry was still alive: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/28/guardians-of-the-magnitsky-myth/
So the shame of it is that most people, including those investigating these events, are not really “computer-savvy”. Or are liars. The US has been saddled with computer (and most relevant here) and network illiteracy for too long. It’s a national embarresment. That’s what makes discussing these things especially hard. It takes years for most of us to master just the basics, but knowing those basics is essential to evaluating the evidence. The article in Disobedient Media is excellent, but it will take some work for nontechnical people to get the most out of it.
“I have GREAT confidence in MY intelligence people.”
Translation: “Ray & Bill, I’ve read your stuff and it’s really great, really fantastic. I have absolutely no confidence in the Obama and Bush intelligence people.”
RAY and BILL are TWO men of a very small number in the USA that you can trust to tell the truth…..imo
Question to authors and group about the details and timeline:
There were 2 leak events? One before June 12, 2016 (June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”)
And a second on July 5th?
Thanks in advance for any clarification.
yep, it’s true
Thanks, Alcuin, for that link to Rand Paul’s interview with Jake Tapper on CNN. Tapper tried to twist him but Senator Paul spoke very well. It’s clear Rand Paul would never make it for POTUS, more’s the pity.
Hi Ray, I’ve always loved reading your analysis, especially back in the days when you commenting on Iraq. You are probably right regarding the lack of evidence for Russian hack. I wonder though if all that matters if Trump dismantles our democracy (or whatever that is left of) through
– dismantling the EPA and our air, soil, and water. I like clean water, call me crazy.
– dismantling of the judicial department and an appointment of a DOJ head with zero prosecutorial experience
– take over of the supreme and federal court
– clear daily violation of the emoluments clause and ties to shady businesses, foreign and domestic
As a citizen, should we worry more the government’s breach of the 4th amendment (which I think you often allude to) or acute toxicity of Trump. I sure think of permanently moving to Canada every day.
Andrew, you need to study up on the emolument clause. Your ignorance is making you look foolish. Trump cannot violate the emoluments clause without accepting payments directly. Every office holder with shares in a blind trust would be guilty under you definition.
Sure… Arthur. U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte in Maryland disagrees with you.
and why do you have a problem with judges who follow the Constitution?
you worry about epa, liberals want to dismantle our country!
Guess what? The president gets to appoint judges to the Supreme Court, remove judges at certain levels and replace them with others, etc. This is not “taking over,” nor is there anything undemocratic about it.
Undermining or overturning environmental regulations is bad news, but it is not “dismantling our democracy.”
The Democrats seem to me like a bigger threat to democratic institutions these days than the Republicans, when you have figures like Howard Dean and Joe Biden asserting a non-existent free speech exception to so-called hate speech.
Additionally, many of the Democrats seem enthusiastic about destroying U.S. national sovereignty, particular where immigration enforcement is concerned. Sovereign nations have borders and enforce laws related to those borders. They do not exist at the whim of everyone in the world who wants to enter them.
VIPS has made noteworthy comments but what faces the President is the persistent effort to quash cooperation between Russia and America and to use the claims of interference in our elections as a way attempting to shape the agenda between Trump and Putin. It is to be hoped that Trump will decide to put on his statesman’s hat and either ignore or quickly dispose of the issues that opponents of détente are trying to force on the agenda. A show of cooperation between Putin and Trump may be quickly sabotaged but it will be there for all to see and that is an essential first step.
Egad, Barbara Honegger, what rock did you crawl out from under? You don’t know about PNAC, Policy for the New American Century? You don’t remember that Hans Blix of the IAEA was shut down in his Iraq assessment of WMD by Rumsfeld and Cheney? Despite a wealth of investigation that uncovered the facts about how we were lied to, in order to invade Iraq and begin implementing the PNAC, you can still come up with this hornswaggle? Remember the UK and Blair and the only investigation, although curtailed over there, stating “the facts were fixed around the policy”. Iraq was the first of seven nations slated for “regime change”, as General Wesley Clark found out unexpectedly from a US commander at the Pentagon. Clark had been commander of bombing Serbia in the NATO led Bill Clinton war to take apart the former Yugoslavia, all to implement Brzezinski’s “Grand Chessboard” strategy to control the world.
The PNAC of 1997 even mentioned controlling China, as he said “who controls Eurasia controls the world”. We can see that those neocon madmen didn’t count on the rise of someone such as Xi Jinping, nor did they anticipate in 1997 the ascendance of Vladimir Putin, who continues to state that the world is “multipolar, not unipolar”.
No, Ms Honegger, and others like you, if you continue to follow such fairy tales, you only help take yourself and the rest of us into a fascist society, not one of Mussolini, but one dominated by wealth and power that only sees you as a fool of a tool for their games of domination.
The basic reality is that the Super Rich want WAR, while the people of Earth want PEACE. The whole enmity with Russia and China is created by the hyper greedy Super Rich behind the US government and military industrial complex. This is the simple truth hidden by all the lies from media and deep state sources, including the house of puppets called the US Congress.
Ray McGovern is a decades long colleague and I have been on the radio with Bill Binney,
but they really need to stop trying to invoke the alleged ‘Iraqi WMD Lie’ to attempt to
add credibility of their analysis of the DNC ‘hack’. This is because there WERE WMD in Iraq —
massive quantities of deadly VX Nerve Gas and Nuclear Triggers with bills of lading linking
them directly to the Carlyle Group (Bush Sr.) and to Cheney. They were ordered destroyed
because of the explosiveness of that fact and precisely so they could claim that no WMD
had been found. Nerve gas is a chemical weapon and chemical weapons are the”C’ in NBC —
Nuclear, Biological and Chemical — weapons; and nuclear triggers are a key component
of nuclear weapons. The courageous and patriotic whistleblower, Gregory Ford, who
personally found and reported these WMD in Iraq in 2003 has gone public with this
information: YouTube https://youtu.be/lxKl8rh5O_Q (type into a search engine).
I informed Ray and Bill of this at the mic at their Executive Intelligence Review event
in NYC in Sept. 2017.
Barbara Honegger
You would need a lot more than that to support such a unlikely assertion:
1. If so, were the CW of Hussein that were destroyed by the US also from Carlyle?
2. If so, why would the US later export CW to Iraq when concerned about Iraq getting CW, and why would Iraq buy from the US to circumvent a treaty involving the US?
3. Why would the US claim that no CW were found when this was an embarrassment?
4. The source is wrong that Iraq had nuclear triggers with no nuclear program.
And (1b.) If so, why was the US exporting CW to Iraq after Iraq War I in 1990?
The source would have to claim that the US supplied CW long before Iraq War I.
If the US knew the quantity, why no complaint that not all were destroyed?
Looks like another fake WMD story by the right wing to cover the earlier story.
The US provided CW to Iraq in the 80’s to beef up defense against Iran. The WMD BS from W Bush was pushed by Cheney who at the time had a huge hand in Halliburton.
And who believes that Iraq kept shipping “bills of lading” stored with US WMD?
In case they had to be returned as defective?
I think the remark reproduced from your June 7, 2018 article is too broad and potentially confusing to those of us without an expert knowledge of the issues. You write:
“If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand close scrutiny.”
It depends on what you mean by “hacked into the US election”. The indictment, and the coverage of it, tends to conflate in our minds the Guccifer 2.0 activity (no good evidence for Russian state involvement) and the DNC with other activity that may indeed have been sponsored by the Russian govt. Adam Carter himself notes: “Following this [para. 64], the indictment covers allegations of hacking and stealing voter data which are completely unrelated to Guccifer 2.0 (so, really, there’s not much I have to say on those claims immediately) and for all I know, it could have been connected to Russian hackers working for the GRU.”
This possibility does not take away from your main point concerning the main issue of Wikileaks and Guccifer 2.0 activity, but more distinctions need to be made so that your readers are not tempted to make excessive claims.
Carter: “Yes, Guccifer 2.0 did use a Russian VPN service. However, the premise that intelligence agencies would use a commercial VPN service in their own nation to conceal their own state-backed hacking operations is just as ridiculous as the notion that the GRU would frame Russia though that’s exactly what the Guccifer 2.0 persona did from the moment he appeared.”
Webb (for what it’s worth): “They’re really not Trump’s Russians; they’re really not Putin’s Russians — they’re really Rosenstein and Comey’s Russians.”
Rand Paul, perhaps conceding too much, but putting it in context: https://youtu.be/Bzp4R97s39s
Alcuin – excellent link of Rand Paul. I admire his calm demeanor and well-thought-out responses. You could almost see the gears grinding in Tapper’s head as he tried to trip up Paul. Please tell me that Tapper really doesn’t believe what he’s saying, or is he really just another bubble head?
Alcuin,
We all know the truth of ground zero. There’s no question of how Wikileaks got the Clinton and Podesta emails. JULIAN ASSANGE SAID MANY TIMES, “THEY WERE LEAKED DIRECTLY FROM THE DNC.” What more do you need?
Why do you think the public is no longer allowed to hear from Julian Assange? The US pressured Ecuador into cutting him off from all outside communication. It’s cruel; he’s essentially in solitary confinement, which drives people to lose their minds.
A clear, concise, well-supported and credibly sourced article. I can find no flaw in the basic premise: that the emails in question were accessed on or near the U.S. East Coast by an insider and there downloaded onto storage media. There was no hack. Therefore there were no Russian hackers. Why high-level office holders in the federal government are unable or unwilling to accept this as factual, is beyond my understanding. As is the inexcusable failure of the FBI to take charge of the DNC servers at the outset. The whole affair reeks of partisan skullduggery.
It may be beyond your understanding, but, if we play detective, we must come up with plausible scenarios to pursue: I’ve read, over the years, how people are hand-picked for high positions (by the “powers behind the throne”, the Managerial Elite who rule the World but almost never stand for election to high office) who must have skeletons in their closet so as to be susceptible to bribery, to not see what the Managerial Elite do not want them to see.
Ken Hudson: I agree. The facts speak for themselves. As for not understanding, it’s actually easy. Hillary started this whole Russiagate the minute she told the lie that 17 intelligence agencies said Russia hacked the emails and also stole the election. I heard her myself and thought at the time…uh, oh, here we go. She couldn’t admit even to herself that she was the reason she lost the election. She would have been a terrible president and if she were in office, we would already be bombing Iran and Russia. How do I know? I read her emails.
Here is someone who has done good work on the DNC leaks, Guccifer and also if i may add the ongoing Smear campaign against Assange and Wiki Leaks in the Guardian..
the world is awry ,topsy turvy….. there is now more truth told on fox news about certain things pertaining to empire than in the left liberal media..
https://jimmysllama.com/2017/05/28/9867/
One example of that last statement is former Soap Star , Pamela Anderson publicly defending Assange on conservative pundit Tucker Carlson’s Fox tv show.. worth Googling
or failing that The , Anti Neo-Con conservative News site The Duran has a piece on that …
VIPS absolutely MUST make themselves as public as humanly possible. The media, complicit in this game, is showing signs comparable to the march to WAR on Iraq with the same measured hysteria, lies & obfuscations.
This visit with President Putin who has shown TREMENDOUS patience throughout all of this, is IMPERATIVE to our survival on Earth in the face of warmongering criminally insane NEOliberals who have no intention of changing the FRAUDS they are.
Never did I believe we could be lied into another war, but here we go.
Democratic voters are CLUELESS to foreign policy otherwise this Russiagate nonsense could never have taken off in the first place. The psychopathic elite always one step ahead, I now believe Obama was the Democrats selection to SILENCE the anti war left. I’m astonished when I see a D voter extol the virtues of a man whose silver tongue had us in three regime change wars of aggression and they don’t even know he was doing this!
This insanity has to stop and only experts like VIPS who know about the echelons of power can do it.
For Bill Binney:
I just found this comment on a CN article about a week old that might get easily missed. I am not smart enough to refute it, but feel that you need to see it and respond.
Eric Gisse
July 15, 2018 at 1:15 pm
“Retired senior NSA technical experts have examined the “Guccifer 2.0” data on the web and have concluded that “Guccifer 2.0’s” data did not involve a hack across the web but was locally downloaded.”
Except the download speed quoted is trivially achievable with standard leased hardware. I am curious why none of these “technical experts” mention this.
For nearly ten years you’ve been able to lease an OVH/Hetzner/online.net dedicated server that has had at least 100 megabyte connectivity. Current servers frequently offer gigabyte connectivity.
I would love it if Bill Binney (or anyone involved in this claim) could explain precisely why they feel 22 megabytes per second is an unachievable result.
I’ve noticed some technical oversights / missing pieces that were never addressed.
First, the analysis was never performed by Binney, et al. It was performed by a pseudononymous “forensicator”, and they merely referenced the work. This is an important point that is overlooked.
Second, I note that there was never once any evidence that the data was exfiltrated to an overseas server as a first hop, yet any such analysis specifically assumes that in order to assert how impossible that is.
With the recent GRU indictments we now have information that the data was compressed and exfiltrated to a server on the US mainland. Does Binney, et al stand by such an analysis in that case? Or is there a claim the information in the indictment is mistaken?
Basically what I’m wondering at this point is whether any of these publications will be retracted or even modified with the subsequent release of the IRA and GRU indictments, as well as the Senate Intelligence report.
The technically detailed response on Disobedient Media – linked in a comment below – is worth consulting.
It features this on the alleged use of compression tools, quoting from the indictment:
“To ‘enable them to steal a large number of documents at once without detection,’ downloaded and executed a compression tool to compress a bunch of documents, many of which are already in compressed formats?
In reality, this would actually cause a needless spike in CPU activity, instigate a load of read/write operations on disks and alter disk space considerably all of which contribute to increased risk of detection rather than reduce it.”
The availability of external highspeed servers and lines does not affect the argument, which is based upon typical local server and connection speeds, the limiting factor.
jaycee and Sam F-
Thanks for the replies. I’m not very computer savvy. However, there is so much “common sense” in Ray and Bill’s position that it was an inside job by a disgruntled DNC worker, that I figured Eric Gisse was blowing some hi-tech smoke.
Skip, it’s not just Ray and Bill’s position. It’s Julian Assange’s which makes it absolutely true that the emails were leaked to him directly from the DNC.
@Skip…
“For nearly ten years you’ve been able to lease an OVH/Hetzner/online.net dedicated server that has had at least 100 megabyte connectivity. Current servers frequently offer gigabyte connectivity.”
While I do not have data to support it, I would be surprised if the gigabits (not gigabytes) connection has not been standard for online.net customers in 2016.
.
“I would love it if Bill Binney (or anyone involved in this claim) could explain precisely why they feel 22 megabytes per second is an unachievable result.”
There are bits and bytes, without going in to details…
The multiplier between bit and bytes is eight; it takes eight bits to create one byte. In your example above of the “22 megabytes per second”:
22MB/sec* x 8 = 176 Mb/sec**
*MB/sec = MegaBytes per second
**Mb/sec = Megabits per second
Note: the bandwidth/transfer rate abbreviation can be Mbps, Mb/sec and so on; all of them mean the same. Bandwidth is nominal, while transfer rate is actual/measured value for the given connection.
The hosting companies, ISPs, etc., advertise nominal bandwidth in Mb/sec, for simple reason; the number is eight times larger than the actual/measured transfer rate.
The online.net does offer 1 Gbit/sec (or 1,000 Mbit/sec) bandwidth as a standard for pretty much all of their services, the nominal maximum transfer rate is 125 MByte/sec that does not take in to account the transfer overhead of roughly 10%. If you do, the actual/measured transfer rate is about 110 MByte/sec. If the destination, where the data sent has the same nominal bandwidth, there would have been about 110 megabytes per second.
For me, the “22 megabytes per second” actual network transfer rate could easily be achieved, anywhere in the world in 2016. Wikileaks, the alleged recipient of the data transfer, has multiple 1 Gbit/sec Internet connection, accessible from anywhere in the world.
On the other hand… The “22 megabytes per second” actual transfer rate quoted happens to coincide with the average USB 3.0 write transfer rate. In another word, transferring the data over the network with 1 Gbit/sec at both the sender and recipient’s end, it would have been five times faster than copy/pasting same data to a USB 3.0 drive.
And here’s the kicker…
Network transfer will leave traces; the government agencies will have a record, if not the data, of this data transfer. On the other hand, USB data transfer may not leave any traces on the email server. Especially, if the server backup copied to the USB drive from the backup server.
Al-
Thanks for your input. Your last two points are what I consider to be most significant. The same speed of transfer of the DNC emails just happens to be the “usual” speed for loading a thumb drive. And of course the NSA would have it in their files if it went over the net, and they wouldn’t be revealing anything the public didn’t already know (sources or methods), and the Mueller investigation wouldn’t have taken so long, if it needed to occur at all.
Also the timing of this “indictment” just “happens” to coincide with Strzok’s testimony and the Helsinki summit. Too many coincidences for me.
Mueller’s most recent indictment is a sham:
https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/muellers-new-indictment-do-the-feds-take-us-for-idiots-5406ef955406
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/07/muellers-latest-indictment-ignores-evidence-in-the-public-domain/
The most egregious aspect of it is the claim that Guccifer 2,0 (whom they claim to be a Russian hacker, is defiance of all cyberanalytic findings), sent an email to Wikileaks on July 14th, 2016 giving them access to the DNC emails which WL subsequently released July 22nd.
Two small problems with this – as Ray and Bill note, Assange had announced the impending release of these emails on June 12th – over a month prior to the alleged email from G2.0. Secondly, Wikileaks takes great care to validate the authenticity of its releases, and there is no way in hell that they could have processed over 20K emails in a week or less.
Ferchrissake, can’t the Deep State even afford SMART liars? We’re paying them enough!
From Strategic Culture:
“Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction. The following so stretches credulity that sources will have to be cited and an exact quotations given to be believed. A case in point is the following title: “Fears growing over the prospect of Trump ‘peace deal’ with Putin”.
The Times does not here fear a military escalation in Ukraine, an armed clash in Syria, a false-flag poisoning in England, or a new Cold War. The Times does not fear a nuclear apocalypse, the end of humanity, the suffering of hundreds of millions of people.
No, one of the most authoritative and respected broadsheets in the world is fearful of the prospect of peace! The Times is afraid that the heads of two nuclear-armed superpowers are able to talk to each other.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/07/13/globalist-elite-fears-peace-wants-war.html
Ray,
I’ve been in your corner for years, but need to post a question to you. In your 16 minute interview, you say the CIA did the hacking of the DNC server. I have no reason to doubt that, but what was their motive? That is something missing from this debate. What motive did anyone have–Seth Richards of the CIA–to disclose the fraudulence of the Hillary campaign?
I can come up with a number of speculative motives, but what is your best judgment?
Thanks–and carry on sir. Critically important work.
Best,
Dick Behan
Thanks, Dick,
The whole thing is pretty complicated. We did our level best to sort it all out in our VIPS memo to the president of July 24 last year. And then Bill Binney and I did a follow-up two months later. ( See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/20/more-holes-in-russia-gate-narrative/ )
As clear as we tried to make it, most folks tell us they have to read it at least twice, in order to avoid mixing up what Seth Rich, or someone else with direct access to the DNC computers, might have done (before June 12, 2016) on the one hand; and, on the other, what cyber warriors seem to have done — quite separately — to blame “hacking” on Russia.
Hope you can plow through our July 2017 memo again and see if it becomes any clearer. If not, please just ask again. We believe it is of continuing importance, and that those who wish to know our points of view deserve every effort on our part to explain them — and make it possible to explain them to others, uphill struggle though it be.
Btw. I’ll be coming out to Northwest first week of August. Speaking at Ground Zero across from the Tridents, and also before Veterans For Peace in Seattle. Any chance you will be around?
Ray
Ray, thank you for this excellent article & for all your other ones as well. Ive watched you a few times on the RT Channel & your always very knowledgeable & truthful. Your light a lighthouse, shining its light, out into the darkness & exposing those who hide there! Sir, keep up the great work.
Ray, it would be great to visit again. Can you email me the dates of your visit to Seattle and where you’ll be staying? ([email protected]) Hope we can pull it off. I live in Corvallis, OR, now, and I-5 is a bitch through Portland and Tacoma, but I’ll see what I can do.
Best,
Dick
I think Ray may have misspoken by using the word “hack”. I think he was referring there to the Guccifer 2.0 activity. Guccifer 2.0 tried to discredit WL by intentionally leaving hints that he worked for the Russian govt. while claiming to be the source of all Clinton campaign WL leaks. There are reasons to believe he/it/they were working for Podesta/Clinton as part of a diversionary cover-up.
The probable motivation behind the Guccifer 2.0 activity is explained well at https://amgreatness.com/2018/07/13/julian-assange-crowdstrike-and-the-russian-hack-that-wasnt/
Good non-technical summary of a sane, common-sense attitude towards all this at https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-15/five-things-would-make-ciacnn-russia-narrative-more-believable
It should be added that if the Washington Post could received a Pulizer for publishing the stolen Pentagon Papers, then WL should receive a Pulizer too, assuming the content of the leaks was authentic — something that does not appear to be disputed.
If we as a country stand so much for “democracy,” why don’t we rise up and demonstrate against the US government when it interferes in other countries’s elections and murders their elected leaders? Read these two books by William Blum that detail these illegal acts: ‘Killing Hope, U.S. and C.I.A Interventions Since World War II’ and ‘America’s Deadiest Export, Democracy, The Truth about U.S. Foreign Policy and Everything Else.’
And, of course, the biggie of the U.S. interference in the democratic process: The murder of our President on November 22, 1963.
H Beazley – absolutely! Followed within the next five years by the government sponsored assassinations of Malcolm, Martin and Bobby – the remainder of the elite progressive leadership in the nation. Then there was Operation Gladio, the NATO/CIA bombing and assassination program used to subvert European democracy. And of course all the while, just like today, the MSM was complicit in covering for the deep state apparatus and it’s criminal activities. Nothing new here but the deep state’s attempt to blame Russia for the DNC’s own election rigging. The entire artifice of Western power rests within the institutions of it’s military and the intelligence communities – used to enforce economic servitude on the world’s poor. There will never be peace and the world will never be free until that power is dismantled.
H Beasley although the U.S. has had a few pivotal moments, like installing the Federal Reserve into service in the dead of night, and establishing the CIA to be a convert instrument of discontent, the JFK assassination I believe was a true and terrible turning point in American history. As if JFK’s murder wasn’t enough back then they successfully rubbed out Martin and Bobby, and no doubt had a hand in the death of Malcolm X. I feel that if we Americans are ever going to reconcile our nations history, then solving these assassinations under the sparkling sunlight of truth will be the start of our country’s renewal to rejoin our fellow humans who inhabit this dying green planets earthly spaces. Joe
Yes, Joe. I agree completely. Sadly, the MSM is still controlled by the C.I.A. and Operation Mockingbird. I lived through those times but I am silenced in my own family about my divergent views and insistence that the Coup of ‘63 was an important turning point in American History. I judge the truth of a media source by what it says about that assassination. If the source claims that a “Lone Nut” killed the President and that Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby, I know that it spreads propaganda and cannot be trusted. I hope you have read ‘American Values’ by Robert F Kennedy, Jr. that exposes these lies. I majored in history in college and taught it for years, and it makes me so sad that many do not care that our history has been so twisted. I think this whole Russiagate thing is an attempt to continue the profitable War Machine. I am thankful that Ray McGovern displays such courage in writing about these matters. Be well.
H Beazley glad we agree, it’s always nice to find a like minded person.
Russia is being blackballed I believe, because the MIC needs an enemy. The MIC thrives on just that type of excuse to increase weapons spending, and with that there go we citizens for the worst, and not much better.
All this noise over Russia hacking, and yet no one is talking about how to avoid it. It would seem to me that if our voting is that vulnerable to hacking, and whatever, that we would be now installing a paper ballot voting process. This of course would happen if there was a real problem, and if there was a real attitude towards changing this dilemma.
In the case of the MSM we Americans don’t really have a real informative press. Instead we have partisan news agencies, and there in lies the problem of us citizens being honestly informed.
As you know H Beazley money is our problem…. we have too much of it, or at least a small minority of some do.
take care H Beazley. Joe
Joe, Gary and H Beazley – you might be interested in this:
“In November, 2017 President Trump released 35,000 documents [on] the Kennedy assassination that were withheld for half a century. He wanted to release more, but the CIA requested more time. He gave them six months, and, on April 26 of this year another 18,000 documents came forth. The media hardly covered the April release, and, overall, the reporting was cursory at best and pathetic at worst. […]
Private First Class Eugene Dinkin worked in Metz, France. He was a cryptographic code operator for the U.S. Army and in early November, 1963, three weeks before the assassination, he discovered something sobering, a plot to assassinate the President of the United States. He intercepted—or decoded— two messages, and the names he relayed all make a lot of sense today, a French/Corsican assassin, Jean Souetre, Guy Banister, and William Harvey.”
This guy ended up in a psychiatric ward at Walter Reed.
“A second soldier peeks through Trump’s document dump too, and entirely independent of Eugene Dinkin, David Christensen:
There are two CIA documents on him which were released in April. Christensen was an Air Force Sergeant who was stationed at Kirknewton, Scotland. He intercepted a communication just before Novemeber, 1963 that an assassination attempt would be made on President Kennedy.
Little substantive information beyond this fact is given except that Kirknewton was an RAF base, which had a relationship with the CIA, which was using it as a top-secret listening station.
Christensen heard something he shouldn’t have heard, and he heard it in a top-secret CIA listening post. As you can probably guess, Sgt. Christensen, like Eugene Dinkin, was summarily ‘committed to a mental institution.'”
I always wondered whether more documents would follow after the initial batch, and I guess they did. Not that we’d hear about it from the MSM!
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49828.htm
amazing
How could it be allowed to be told?
I remember crying on the elementary school playing field after my friend told me that he had died. Yes, very strange and sad the whole event surrounding JFK’s assassination. We are all held hostage until such a day comes, but its telling would lay bare the framework of the control and the players, both living and dead. How could it be allowed to be told? Are there any that know that will have a change of heart and find a way to testify? We hope.
Reality, I’m afraid, will be again lost in the noise. For an eye-opening exercise, go to any of the NYT’s recent articles on Trump and Russia, and peruse the readers’ comments, ordered by popularity.
Educated, socially-evolved Times readers have been flipped into fear-freak Russophobes by the DNC, by the Deep State, and by their tools such as the Times. The NYT’s readers’ rhetoric is indistinguishable from the worst McCarthyites of the 1950s… the essential difference being that anyone able to post a comment today can pierce the anti-Russian propaganda with 30 minutes and a search engine… but these tribalists choose ignorance, instead.
This is an unprecedented turn of events, and one which may lead to our extinction. With ostensible liberals screaming for “retaliation” against a “hostile power”, what will happen when President Booker takes office, and ramps up the aggression against the only other nuclear superpower able to end civilization in an afternoon? Who is left to resist escalation and Armageddon, when antiwar and anti-nuke forces have been utterly gutted and turned into warmongers?
More immediately, if Trump succeeds in reaching any agreements with Putin, there is no chance that they will be ratified by the Neocon madmen and women running this Congress – nor the next.
I agree about the commenters at the Times and Post being affected by the propaganda thrown at them on a daily basis. If these childish comments are coming from an ‘educated electorate’ I fear for the country my grandchildren will inhabit.
The truth is that the US population is the most thoroughly propagandized in the history of the world, as it has been since at least the 1950s, by way of not only the news media but of course by the entertainment arm of the TV industry and the film industry.
Kim,
Glad to read your comments. I get enraged when I read the NYT these days. In the 70s they cared about fact-checking. No longer. What’s worse is the New Yorker that I have subscribe to for decades has lost its moral compass and thrown out all fact-checking on Russiagate propaganda. Up to the election of Trump, Remnick had great pride in accuracy. Now the magazine that had the highest standard of journalism prints the garbage of Susan B. Glasser, Masha Gessen, et. al., and treat their lies as gospel. Oh, none of these papers plus the London Times and the Guardian would not print Sy Hersh’s proof that Bashar al Assad didn’t use chemical weapons on Syrians. Let us not hear truth if it’s not what the PTB want to hear.
And, god forbid, that peace should break out between the US and Russia. That apparently scares people to death.
From Paul Craig Roberts:
“Does Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers for allegedly hacking Hillary’s emails and interfering in the US election have any purpose other than to throw a monkey wrench in President Trump’s upcoming summit with Putin?
Don’t forget that Rosenstein is implicated in the orchestration of Russiagate as a weapon against Trump, a weapon that serves the interests of the Democratic Party and the military/security complex about which President Eisenhower warned us 56 years ago to no avail. […]
Rosenstein has thrown red meat to the presstitutes, who are assets of the military/security complex and Democratic Party, and the presstitutes will pressure the Republicans to get behind Rosenstein’s call for a united front against Russian interference. […]
During the presidential election campaign, I pointed out that Trump was not Washington savvy, did not know who would support his positions, which were antithetical to the interests of powerful interest groups such as the military-security complex and global offshoring corporations, and that Trump ran the risk of being destroyed by his own appointments.
Rod Rosenstein is a Trump appointment. Moreover when Trump’s Attorney General ordered Rosenstein’s resignation, Trump refused to accept it and kept Rosenstein in office. Trump’s miscalculation is so enormously wrong that he deserves the knife in the back that Rosenstein just delivered.
If there were a valid indictment of 12 Russians, for the sake of the summit’s success, a normal functioning deputy attorney general would have held the indictment until after the summit results and, if the summit were successful, would have deep-sixed the indictment regardless of whether there is a basis for it. My 25 years in Washington tells me clearly that Rosenstein has knifed Trump in the back. If Rosenstein has caused the summit to fail, Rosenstein has raised the risk of thermo-nuclear warfare.”
Here is the link for the above article:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/07/13/trump-should-fire-rosenstein-immediately/
Roberts includes a link to a good Stephen Cohen article as well.
Great work, Ray McGovern and Bill Binney!
Excellent as usual. I’m concerned though that it seems the President and his advisers aren’t capable of understanding the message you have been sending. I’m not a fan of and don’t like most of what Trump is and has been doing, but these actions are abetted by people in positions of power, political and economic, who seem to be willing to “let it ride” regarding these Russiagate accusations and innuendo.
There is a huge disconnect that is, as you correctly point out, reinforced by the corporate media with propaganda masked as news. The key, perhaps, is the fact that the vilification of Russia, and other nations dejur, is now more necessary as the US citizenry is increasingly a victim of the policies and agenda of globalized capitol and its endless reaping of profit at any cost, which the government of the US is single minded in supporting. Remember, as Nancy Pelosi stated, “We’re capitalists, and that just the way int is.” The government of the US is an absolutely fascistic machine. With that understanding we can better comprehend that what you have offered the President as a window to reality won’t indeed help as the machinations of the power hungry and their servants have a completely different agenda.
The truth, the search for understanding, or justice, these aren’t things that matter anymore here in the US. “Show Me The Money!” is the rule.
Here’s a little article on Mueller I found interesting.
https://caucus99percent.com/content/what-mueller-wont-find
Thanks Ray and William
His son, son-in-law, and campaign manager met with a Russian agent with the specific goal of colluding with campaign information and then tweeted the e-mails himself; his former campaign manager is currently in jail for colluding with a Russian agent to create a cover-story; he was originally indicted for multiple foreign campaign violations, with specific interest being paid to a meeting in the UAE involving Russian diplomats and a possible proposal to ease sanctions on Ukraine; a foreign policy adviser has admitted to his part in colluding with the Russians for the specific gain of the Trump campaign and has mentioned others higher up with more knowledge; Trump himself specifically held a press conference asking the Russians to hack the Clinton campaign on the exact same day that the Russians began hacking the Clinton campaign; independent cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, and ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have stated that these attacks are a known work of the GRU and have published independent, reable works to that effect.
What more evidence do you need exactly?
My only question is for Mr. McGovern. Did Mrs. McGovern have any idea of the handful she was getting when she married you or did she only find out after?
Kidding aside. Thank you to both Mr. Binney and Mr. McGovern for your courage and service to this country.
Sharon,
Luckily (for me), she had no idea … but neither did I. A lot of stuff going on in the world over the 57 years since she married this slow reader/writer. Fortunately, she has extraordinary patience — and insists that I do no more than one all-nighter a week (in my ocd-type, illusory attempt to get the prose “just right”). And I am required to eat a lot of vegetables. So we hope to be around for a while more. Thanks for asking.
Ray
You sound well matched! Interesting to know you weren’t born like this & that we can all aspire to become “handfuls” too. Thank you.
A good piece but I wish that these two gentlemen would directly address the indictments. Most of the indictments are just claims and there’s nothing there that provides any evidence (regardless of how specific the allegations are) but I will say that they seem very sure of themselves. But I do wonder why they didn’t send someone to London to interview Julian Assange, under oath if possible, about where he got the emails from. There is much in the indictment that is suspicious and incomplete but that won’t be seen by someone reading the headlines. As I’ve also said, Russia should open a case against those Americans that have meddled in their elections.
My dear Harrison. Good to see you weigh in, astutely as always. Yes, a full-dress consideration of the new indictments, as VIPS can best do it. Like shooting at the side of a barn, but getting it into the record impt.
Mind them weeds.
Patrick Lawrence
Jeff, I’m fairly certain the information given is a direct debunking of the indictments. The problem lays within Mueller knowing he can’t bring charges on anyone from Russia while in Russia. So he/they can basically get away with all the indictments they want, they’re smoke screen. Even if he could, to do so would mean he has to provide evidence, the very evidence they’re telling us we can’t know about in the public due to national security. He tried that last year and got his ass kicked! When they brought charges up on that click bait shop in Saint Petersburg, he never expected them to show up to the hearing. Well, their lawyers did. And they asked for all material leading to the indictments. Now Mueller is in a battle to keep them out of the court.
Dude, those indictments were this year.
The Russian who owns the Saint Petersburg troll farm, one of Putin’s pals, also runs Wagner Group.
Wagner Group is Russian private military contractors operating in eastern Ukraine and Syria. They attacked US soldiers at an outpost in Syria.
You love these Russians?
Also, of course you, Joe Public, don’t get to see all the evidence until trials.
Same thing happens in every court in the US everyday.
Jeff, how would Assange be “under oath” ? He’s not a US citizen or on US territory.
Maybe he’d pinky swear?
What were US soldiers doing in Syria against international law?
What fear motivates hiding evidence until trial? Fear of a fair defense?
Exposure of falsehood by a journalist would be a strong disincentive.
He’d be under oath by raising his right hand and solemnly swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Same as anyone else. Vowing to tell the truth has nothing to do with your nationality or where you are.
so true. My question is WHY aren’t we hearing about this memo anyplace? I’m not hearing about it even from Republican news or talk shows and I’ve sent it to several.
Ambassador Craig Murray has offered to come to the USA and testify under oath….no takers…..says volumes
“But I do wonder why they didn’t send someone to London to interview Julian Assange, under oath if possible, about where he got the emails from.”
Maybe because if he told them he’d be telling them something they already know? I don’t trust the current batch of Intelligence spooks one bit. I suspect they killed Seth Rich and that he was the leak. I also suspect they killed Michael Hastings by taking control of his car. I suspect they killed Gary Webb and made it look like a suicide.
and I suspect you are right, Miranda.
Whatever is to be done don’t let Trump alone in a room with Putin, is the battle cry. It’s utterly amazing to how panic has set in amongst the Trump haters. The freaking out on this tv of mine this morning, by every major news outlets pundits is by all common standards, excessive to say the least. I mean these knuckleheads in DC are doing their best to scare the life out of everyone. It’s hard to reason with the citizens who take this stuff seriously. We Americans have loss our sense of control, as now the National Deep State Security goes even deeper to bring down Russia, and Trump. I’ll admit Trump is not the answer, but rubbing a super power wrong like Russia isn’t wise in anyway.
Yes, regrettfully I was watching this morning too. But as the late great Bill Hicks said, “you gotta take a peak.” These people look like true believers of some anti-Russian hysteria cult. It’s like WWF except they believe it’s real.
Homer respectfully I don’t think it’s about any of them being true believers, as much as it’s about the money. Many a soul got loss due to their climbing up the ladder of success. Careerism can be rewarding, but for some along with it comes an emptiness of the spirit that for those who choose the tangled narrative path that leads them astray from their fellow man.
The whole reason for the Russian fake conspiracy is to cover up the doings of the Clinton gang.
Joe, Yesterday’s full front page headlines on the top in Los Angeles Times screamed about the indictment of Russian agents with all the rest of the garbage in the news article. In the inside page there was Rosenstein’s beaming picture standing at the podium, probably announcing indictments; and a full news article about canceling the meeting in Helsinki. I do not watch TV any more or read L.A. Times for news. We do not have RT channel here. When all this nonsense started two years ago, I started watching some Russian Political Talk shows on Youtube. The Russians are publishing and putting on TV all the garbage which is being being presented and written about them here and in the Western Europe. It is hilarious; they seem to be having fun in this freak show about them orchestrated by the West.
Here they, the Ruling Powers, are completely blocking all information from Russia, their view point. What an irony? The roles have been reversed. It used to be the Soviet Union doing this, blocking all information from their citizens except what was acceptable. But the Soviets were not good in that , they failed. But the West’s Propaganda Machine is global and very efficient. It has succeeded.
It is not going to end up pretty. It has been going on for too long now. Most of the population has been brain washed and are ignorant; It is the case in my own home too.
Hey Dave nice to hear from you.
Funny how a lot of nice average educated Americans have bought into the big lie. These people Dave are a our fellow Americans, and for what they know and to how they perceive it, they rally behind a blind patriotism only to be lied to time, and time again. Due to the consistency of always being let down you would think more Americans would join you and I, but rating progress is hard to impossible, so I’ll just hope more people are wising up.
Although my wife at times thinks I’m a Trump supporter, that’s the price you pay when you start making sense and you are not bad wrapping the Donald. On a better note, our one daughter has become a Consortium reader, along with my one brother in law too. My brother in law thinks the Consortium readers don’t like anything, and he agrees he doesn’t either. So things you might say are improving.
I also wish more Russians, as well as Europeans and Middle Easterners, oh and why not invite the rest of the world, would come to this site and talk with us. I’d love to hear the news from the people living from within it.
May Russia, the U.S., and the world find peace.
Always a pleasure Dave, you take care and say hi to Misses Dave for me, okay. Joe
I’ll agree, Trump is not the answer.
Russia isn’t a super power, it’s a Petrostate with nukes. And hackers.
All they have is oil, gas, and metals. They can’t make sophisticated products like microchips or solar panels at scale.
MSM is freaking because Trump thinks he’s a negotiator, but Putin is way smarter. That’s a fact.
Trump doesn’t understand geopolitics or international trade. Putin does.
Trump does excel at bankruptcy. Credit him that.
Oh Sammy.
Sammy – “Trump does excel at bankruptcy. Credit him that.” And you excel at bullsh*t.
Russia might not be an economic power, but it definitely is a military power. You might want to read the “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein to see what happened to Russia when the West got a hold of her. It is a good thing for Russia that Putin came along.
“MSM is freaking because Trump thinks he’s a negotiator.” No, they’re freaking because Trump and Putin might see eye to eye. They’re freaking because THEY want that oil, gas and those metals for next to nothing, and how are they going to do that when peace breaks out?
“Trump doesn’t understand geopolitics or international trade.” On geopolitics, I think he’s beginning to get a good understanding. It’s simple: the West stays on top, and you can exist somewhere down around its ankles. Take it or leave it.
On international trade, I think Trump has a very good understanding. The U.S. multinationals probably don’t like his understanding, though. “Bring the jobs home, boys, or face tariffs which will squeeze your margins.” He nixed the TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), he’s opened up NAFTA. You can’t run a successful country with McDonald’s and Starbucks jobs. I could go on and on, but I won’t.
Sammy, it looks like you’re another one who is happy with the status quo and wants to see it continue.
How are those Eu-China and Eu-Japan trade talks reducing tariffs, helping the American workers/farmers?
Hint:
They are not. Our brilliant president is making Americans pay more for both foreign and domestic products.
I wonder if how much of this President Trump is aware of. Since Bill Binney got to speak to Pompeo, he must have some awareness. But of course Pompeo is most likely playing for the wrong team. I suspect Trump is probably attempting to preserve his own skin, but I am constantly disappointed in him not taking all this directly to the American people. He has the power to address the Nation and lay out the whole ploy. He could bring Ray and Bill along to help him get the message across. The timing of this latest theatrical “indictment” could not be more obviously meant to sabotage the Helsinki summit, and also to distract from the embarrassing Strzok testimony.
Until we wrest control of the MSM from the Deep State, the masses will persist in their state of hypnosis.
Skip Scott – “…but I am constantly disappointed in him not taking all this directly to the American people.”
I’m disappointed too. He should be going directly to the people. It makes you wonder whether Trump is getting any of this material or, if he is getting it, whether he understands it well enough to fight them. Maybe Putin can clue him in. Ha!
Several legal experts have emphatically said that Trump, as President, has the power to order that all documents be released immediately – not in a few weeks or months – but immediately. These documents that are being held back by the DOJ and FBI are crucial to understanding what really went on.
OTOH, if Trump is getting the facts and if he does understand what really went on, then maybe Trump is just biding his time. When you are going up against the same types of people who assassinated JFK and MLK, you best go at them very carefully.
Perhaps you’re giving him too much credit. Skip S. was right when saying he wants to save his own skin – and understandably so given the den of lions Washington (and beyond) is.
It’s not only about assassination – they have the power to destroy him/anyone completely. With his past, you can bet that he could face fed. prison for the rest of his life – in solitary.
He’s gonna keep reading the script…
Ken – Skip Scott is no more right than I am (and that’s no criticism of Skip Scott). It’s all speculation, isn’t it? Maybe they’ve told Trump that if he goes to the American people, they’ll take out his daughter or maybe his young son. Who knows?
Yes, they have the power to destroy Trump. That’s what they’ve been trying to do for the last year and a half. But if he orders that all documents be released, if he goes to the American people, then THEY also risk being completely destroyed and spending the rest of THEIR lives behind bars.
Don’t be so sure that he’ll continue reading from the script. The noose is currently tightening around their necks, and when it tightens just a little bit more, as it will, things can change quickly.
Backwards,
Remember when Trump went on national TV and said he fired the director of the FBI because of this “Russia thing”.
That could be obstruction of justice, or dereliction of duty, trying to stop an investigation into election meddling (regardless if it was Russia or the “deep state”).
Yes, it’s true, that Trump can demand to see everything, that’s his right as president.
But it makes him look guilty if he wants to oversee an ongoing investigation into the election interference, his campaign, his family members etc…
More obstruction and dereliction of duty,
Remember his only real press conference, where he said he, personally, had nothing to election inference, but inferred others close to him might have?
If Trump is innocent, he doesn’t need to see all those documents.
If Trump insists on see all the documents, then he is guilty like my 5 year old with chocolate on his face denying he ate chocolate chip cookies before dinner.
Sammy – “Yes, it’s true, that Trump can demand to see everything, that’s his right as president. But it makes him look guilty if he wants to oversee an ongoing investigation into the election interference, his campaign, his family members etc…”
How so, Sammy? The DOJ and the FBI are refusing to release documents to the House Intelligence Committee, and these are subpoenaed requests. Witnesses are refusing to testify, that is until they are faced with Contempt of Congress charges. They’ve used the excuse that they can’t release documents or have to heavily redact them because of national security, only to find out later that what they redacted had nothing to do with national security.
It wouldn’t be Trump demanding to see the documents for himself. It would be Trump demanding that the American people be able to see the documents. There’s a world of difference. Lay it all out there. Kind of like the release of the JFK documents that Trump demanded. Same thing.
Maybe you are unaware of the deceit and corruption that has gone on. If you’re reading or watching the MSM, you would be completely in the dark. There’s the FBI draft exoneration of Hillary Clinton months before she or witnesses were even interviewed. In fact, her witnesses were given immunity before they were even interviewed, and they were not interviewed separately, but together. The whole exoneration was rigged and fixed.
Where are Hillary’s servers and why were they never forensically examined by the FBI? Because the fix was in. Let’s see those servers. Let’s determine once and for all whether they were “hacked” or whether they were “leaked”.
And Loretta Lynch just coincidentally runs into Bill Clinton on an Arizona tarmac? Yeah, right. And because of this, she now has to recuse herself? It stinks.
Let’s get a hold of the over 30,000 subpoenaed emails that Hillary and her lawyers just took it upon themselves to delete. Talk about obstruction of justice! The NSA would have these emails. Bring them on.
Let’s see the FISA Court requests. You know, the requests where the judges were NOT told that the informant was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Oh, these little details!
There is a cabal of corrupt individuals working out of the DOJ, the FBI, CIA, and these individuals are running a parallel government. IF all of the information is laid out for everyone to see, these people will go to jail. Yeah, it’s no wonder they’re wanting to accuse Trump of obstruction of justice! They’re trying to save their own skin.
Lay it all out there, and then let the American people decide. Let’s bring the Deep State out into the open.
Excellent reply B.E.! The only reason I see for Trump not doing what you say is Schumer’s “six ways from Sunday”. I’m sure Trump has some skeletons in his closet we don’t even know about, and he’s had his “trip to the woodshed”. That said, the best thing that could happen to this country would be to have the Deep State brought out into the open, and have people like Brennan wind up in jail.
Haha
“Sammy – “Yes, it’s true, that Trump can demand to see everything, that’s his right as president. But it makes him look guilty if he wants to oversee an ongoing investigation into the election interference, his campaign, his family members etc…”
How so, Sammy? The DOJ and the FBI are refusing to release documents to the House Intelligence Committee, and these are subpoenaed requests.”
Haha, you don’t understand this?
The president is the end all be all declaring declassification.
The House isn’t.
Trump can make the FBI and DOJ give everything to the House but he hasn’t.
Why?
Sammy – patience.
An excellent summary and good advice for Mr. Trump. I love the disclaimer, but in this case would leave off “presidents” from the list of occasional truthsayers by mere coincidence. Noted a few minor typos with a missing space before/after a link.