It’s been long dead but new revelations have thrown dirt on it. Ex-C.I.A. Ray McGovern and ex-NSA Bill Binney were pioneers in debunking it. They joined CN Live! Friday. Watch the replay.
The phony scandal of Russiagate was already dead. Now it is decomposed. It was killed off by the Mueller Report finding no conspiracy between Russia and the Donald Trump campaign; by the CrowdStrike president’s testimony that there was no evidence of a hack of DNC servers; and by the revelation that the story was based on made-up opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign, which was deceptively treated as serious intelligence by senior Obama administration officials and the Democratic-aligned media.
New revelations this month from Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, shows that President Barack Obama and his senior intelligence officials intentionally suppressed dissenting intelligence assessments that Russia did not interfere in the 2016 election.
GUESTS: Ray McGovern, former senior C.I.A. analyst and Bill Binney, former NSA technical director.
HOSTS: Elizabeth Vos and Joe Lauria.
PRODUCER: Cathy Vogan
TIME: 2 hrs, 5 min.
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Get it through your thick heads, my gosh!
The DNC was not hacked by Russians and wiki leaks didn’t leak it.
I very strongly suspect Seth Rich’s family received orders to shut up about this, letting the pieces fall where they may. I will not speculate however a family who had just lost one son might have received a message informing them if they strayed from the Capital police story their other son might be in danger. After winning lawsuit settlements which had restrictions on who they told what to, had to remain silent.
The Clinton’s however do not have pristine records and have flown on Jeff Epstein’s Lolita Airlines more than once.
Regardless questions still remain about what exactly happened. Could be U.S. intelligence has something to do with this. Their handling of this case leaves much to be desired with respect to explanations. The entire area around D.C. can be a very dangerous place for a large variety of reasons.
This what happens when governments constantly cover things up. Especially when we are talking about the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
I ain’t saying I’m just saying if all the liars in the D.C. dropped dead right at this moment the place would be deserted.
A truly sad state of affairs, except for Donald of Orange. No one seems to want to get close enough to him to cuff his ass.
I hope there is a transcript of this. Many might read it and learn.
Maybe get a “co-author” to write a book with everything they can glean from the duo before they die.
I’m older than all of you and when we are gone the world needs this info accessible in as many forms as possible.
Very good job on the video and hope for more. Bob Parry would be proud of the job you are doing continuing in his name!
Ray commented on possible reasons Tulsi focused initially on the question of whether Russia hacked US voting machines. I would expand on his thoughts.
I think that was a smart opening by Tulsi. This happened in the context of an on-going debate about whether computer voting machines were vulnerable to hacking by domestic actors, including their manufacturers. So this possibility was on people’s minds, and would be the most serious type of foreign interference.
The Russiagate conspirators talked in vague ways, like “Russia hacked our democracy”, that could lead many people to envision Russia hacking the voting machines. A similar strategy of vague claims led most Americans to think Iraq was behind 9/11 even though that was never explicitly claimed. So taking that scenario off the table at the start was a smart move.
The Russiagate conspirators knew they could not argue against Tulsi on that point, so they conceded it. This forced them to retreat to their actual claims for the next round. The primary claim here is that the Russians hacked the DNC computers to embarrass Hillary and help Trump. This claim was decisively debunked by Binney, McGovern, et. al.
A secondary claim was that Trump was being blackmailed into colluding with Russia, based on the Steele dossier. This too was debunked, helped by Binney’s knowledge of what data the NSA would have if that claim were true.
A third claim was that Russia flooded America with social media ads, notably on Facebook. This was also decisively debunked by a numerical and content analysis of the Facebook ads, also published at the time by Consortium News.
The murder of Seth Rich was never mentioned by the Russiagate conspirators. The excellent account given by Ray and Bill here deserves serious attention.
A very ineffective interference compared to the republicans Bill Casey and GHWB events to hold Iranian US Embassy hostages until after the Reagan election which may have prevented the Bush second election when the 1980 election and other CIA practices in the 1980’s were being investigated by congress in 1992.
So to the Nixon/Kissinger interference in the Paris Peace negotiations prior to 1968 election of Nixon over Humphrey.
In this case Colbert called out the false Putin-Trump issue nearly every night form 2016-2020 which has gotten a reaction.
What got the republicans in the 2016 election was the deal to hold up a religious war Supreme Court deal held for after election a large religious vote regardless of who ran.
Thanks, well said.
I’m so thankful Consortium News presents this kind of factual information. Something I don’t understand about what Bill Binney said. He said that the NSA logs could know where something on the internet came from, anywhere in the world. My question is, what about VPNs – don’t they obscure IP addresses? Especially, what about the Tor browser? I thought that browser made you untraceable.
Combining all indisputable accounts, Trump is thoroughly morally compromised, riddled with psychological wormholes and a narcissistic bully; unfortunately this does not especially distinguish him from many of our leaders. The mistake is to fall into the all too common human cognition trap of assuming that if someone is ‘bad’ then those who oppose that person must be ‘good’; the idea of Trump Derangement Syndrome is more foolishness based in a see-saw version of reality. We are just fortunate (if that is the right descriptor) that some of his attempts at self-aggrandizement have some positive consequences….the rest of the program is disastrous at many levels.
That previous administrations have been immoral, murderous and scheming in no way tips the other end of the see-saw up into the acceptable heights: the see-saw is broken and both ends are on the ground. There is no side to be picked; a new and more ameliorating metaphor is needed.
All the factual materials presented in this discussion are very likely accurate, but the conclusions and implied conclusions seem to be going too far in absolving geopolitical actors with both vested interests and fully developed powers to act on those interests. No doubt Obama, Clinton, et al, tried to screw Trump; there is also little doubt that, in 2016, Trump was more desirable to Russian, and other autocratic, interests than Clinton, if only because he was seen as transactional.
Finally, I just don’t see that the ‘dirty trick’ part of the Russia question in the election rises to the level of a ‘_____gate’ designation; the principles that give, and have given, order and some stability to the full range of economic classes in the US and a few other places, however imperfectly, are giving way to the exigencies of wealth and power as human expansion is facing greater and existential threats. We seem to be moving toward a more ‘natural’ feudal social/economic order. It is that process that we need to confront.
The real interference was the actions in the Senate of McConnell to save a Supreme Court nomination for a republican of any kind for the religious culture war against secular society and a triangulating large religious warfare empire of the ages. The same one that was promoted by Bill Casey and the Reaganites to hold embassy hostages until after an election and set off the reactionary Reagan era now called project 2025 on steroids.
Great show, I really appreciate every time you get Bill Binney on to explain the technical details on this. It’s shameful how few independent journalists concern themselves with the technical analysis because they’re the most damning, irrefutable aspect of the entire Russiagate scam.
These arguments have to be clear and succinct. The nature of the subject matter demands that this be so.
I believe everything Ray and Bill say except one thing, that Sean Henry stated in so many words there existed zero evidence of a hack. I may perhaps on occasion be a careless reader, but I have read the Henry testimony pdf, at least up to page 26. I’ve read it because Ray had it linked at his site. The search block/field at Ray’s site used to fetch the pdf; now one route fails and another brings up “404.” At any rate, at the moment I’m relating a remembrance of frustratingly not being able to find Henry saying, in so many words, there was no evidence. Yep, so now I’m going on memory…but if anybody can get to that document again, I believe the moment in question was covered around page 25, where Henry consulted with his lawyer. If you search “Ray McGovern” and “Only If the News Fits, Do We Print,” you will find my last route to the link…the link which no longer works.
IMO before anybody says Gabbard needs to discover this or that, some summary of this issue needs to go over the Henry testimony word by word…I mean the statement in question. These two guys I respect as much as anybody living on the planet, but more than two people with knowledge of the issue need to be able to vouch to us: that that indeed was the meaning of what Henry said. The Dems started the great hoax to begin with, and if our arguments aren’t rock solid, the Dem neocons’ll shred what we say yet again. I look forward to finding out I had a blind spot.
HENRY: “We did not have concrete evidence that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated’… we don’t have video of it happening, but there are indicators that it happened. 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.”
He never explained what those indicators were but was pretty clear there is no “concrete evidence” the DNC was successfully hacked.
hXXps://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/shawn_henry_testimony_dec_5_2017.pdf
Page 32
The public had been led to believe for a long time that there was concrete evidence and much of the public still believes that. Schiff buried it for two and a half years and for more than five years after its release it has ever been suppressed by mainstream media.
In the UK press, it is routinely referred to as incontrovertible fact. No evidence is ever cited in support of such a claim.
I have yet to see anybody refute it or even to question it.
CORRECTION: The above originally incorrectly read that it was “never” suppressed by the MSM, when it should have read “ever” suppressed by the MSM. It has now been corrected. Corporate media has never reported on Henry’s testimony and
one must ask why? To do so would call into question years of misleading reporting and rather than do their job to inform the public, they would rather continue to misinform them to save their own careers.
Most Republicans in congress are with the war lobby. I have come to the conclusion that they like the narrative that the Russians intervened in the 2016 election but hate the narrative that Trump colluded with the Russians.
Maybe because he didn’t.
Wasn’t Sean Henry the Democrat contractor (CrowdStrike) who refused to give the DNC computer over to the FBI/ NSA to see if it was really hacked? Why would you trust ANYTHING Henry said? Would you trust Hillary?
Generally, if a crime is committed the investigation is performed by the authorities, not by someone allied with/ contracted by the criminals and victims. Henry has no credibility in this situation and was more likely concerned with covering up any illegal activity.
It was the DNC and the Clinton campaign that prevented the FBI from examining the servers and instead hired the private firm CrowdStrike.
Normie Dems will still yell in your face or scoff at and mock your protestations that the evil Putin interfered in the ’16 Presidential election.
Just try meekly and casually addressing the topic with them and see what happens.
Yep. They cling to their blue tinted rose colored glasses, insisting if Trump and the Rs were gone, everything would be fine.
It’s difficult enough on sites frequented by nice, educated liberals to get them to realize the D party went neolib, dumped the New Deal, and abandoned the working class majority decades ago. Or that the Biden State Dept. was run by neocons.
I don’t even try with the Putin mythology. Too deeply entrenched; they want someone to blame other than their own corrupt and self-serving party elite.
Excellent comment!
In America, ever since the time of President Tricky Dick and his Watergate crimes and resulting impeachment, every dang headline writer in the nation wants to add the ending “-gate” onto every scandal. And yet, instead of Pearl Harbor, Russiagate should be referencing Watergate as a benchmark for comparison.
Nixon used government agencies against his political opponents. I’m pretty sure that is the gist of one of the impeachment counts against President Tricky Dick. Opponents got audited by the IRS and investigated by the FBI, because the President wanted that way and was willing to go through three attorney generals in one night in order to get one that would say that the President was above the law.
President Obama’s use of intelligence agencies to spy on and try to undermine a rival campaign is the closest we’ve come to Watergate since Tricky Dick. At least in public.
Obama started doing that kind of stuff long before Trump was on the scene. He did it almost immediately upon entering office with the IRS targeting scandal where conservative Tea Party NGOs faced years-long delays in getting tax-exempt status (a process that usually a takes a month or so), and conservative-aligned organizations/businesses/individuals were targeted with a harassment campaign of additional audits, fines, and interference with licensing and other bureaucratic red tape.
hxxps://www.reuters.com/article/legal/justice-department-settles-with-conservative-groups-over-irs-scrutiny-idUSKBN1CV1TX/
So Steve are telling me this behavior start didn’t way back when CIA made damned sure JFK and RFK died?
You want to talk right wing fanaticism we can.
Next you will be telling me it’s not smart to take a gun to a gun fight. Exactly what the democrats have been and are doing of late. All this and not a word about the neocons and the forever wars of choice in Iraq, Afghanistan and Ukraine. Note that we have both parties the democrats and the republicans who rubber stamped aid to Israel in support of Israels on going genocide in Gaza.
Something besides tea in those old ‘Tea Baggers’ Tea Steve.
You have to give better examples to win this point. Both parties are very much closer to being totally worth nothing to the voting public at large than being any better than their current opposition. Look around at this mess sir and be honest with yourself at the very least.