Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have written a new memo to Attorney General William Barr in regard to new evidence indicating there was no hack of the Democratic National Committee computers.
Far right, William Barr and Rod Rosenstein (Wikimedia Commons)
MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings (Part 2)
REFERENCE: Our March 13, 2019 Memo to you: “Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings” (Part 1)*
Dear Attorney General Barr:
Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s June 4 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee brings to mind our Memorandum to you of March 13, 2019 — nine days before Special Counsel Robert Mueller gave you his “Report on the Investigation Into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election”.
At the time of our Memo, it was already clear that Mueller’s findings would be fatally incomplete. We were virtually certain that Mueller’s report would lack the forensic findings that we VIPS had arrived at through the kind of rigorous investigation that the FBI avoided doing. So we gave our Memo to you with the title: “Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings”.
Sans forensics, Mueller’s report fell far short of Rosenstein’s earlier commitment “to ensure a full and thorough investigation”. It was also clear to us that relying for forensics on CrowdStrike, a private cyber-security firm of checkered reputation, picked and paid for by the Democratic National Committee, would signal a conflict of interest on this controversial issue. Now we know a lot more as a result of testimony released last month (but widely ignored in Establishment media).
?Not until May 7, 2020, when secret testimony to the House Intelligence Committee from late 2017 was made public, did it become completely clear that CrowdStrike has no concrete evidence that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks on July 22, 2016 were hacked — by Russia or by anyone else. Seventeen months earlier, on Dec. 5, 2017, the president of CrowdStrike, former FBI cyber-crimes unit director Shawn Henry, admitted this in sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. This is how he answered a leading question from ranking member Adam Schiff:
Mr. 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.
Is it possible that no one told Special Counsel Robert Mueller about Henry’s testimony? If he was told, why did he not wind up his investigation sooner? Why instead did he keep it going through the election period of 2018, during which very few politicians or established media shed any doubt on the dogma of “Russian hacking of the DNC” and “Russian collusion” with the Trump campaign? How to explain that Mueller and his team could find no evidence of collusion/conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign, but accepted uncritically, without evidence, the Russian-hack story as revealed truth??
During the Rosenstein hearing on June 4, several senators made much of the fact that the Mueller report contained 448 pages. We are less impressed by the heft of Mueller’s two volumes than by the content they include — or don’t include. We look in vain for more nourishing evidence than Mr. Henry’s vague and clumsy references, in his Dec. 5, 2017 testimony, to unspecified “circumstantial evidence”. Henry, a horse’s-mouth witness, so to speak, admitted that there was no concrete evidence of a “Russian hack”, yet Mueller’s investigation persisted for another 15 months?
Can you throw light on these issues?
From our narrow, non-partisan perspective, we hope to avoid having to write a Memo #3 in this genre. More important, we think the public needs enlightenment on this key issue — and sooner rather than later. One keeps hearing that US Attorney John Durham is “investigating the investigators” to determine whether investigating Trump officials was adequately “predicated”. In all likelihood, there will be so many top-level Washington miscreants for DOJ and the media to focus on, that the story of the “Russian hack of the DNC” will be given a comfortable retirement, together with other accusations that are allowed to fade away — with some of them retaining, undiminished, the misbegotten certitude they have always enjoyed.
Given the line Americans have been fed by the media, one would expect your investigators to encounter very heavy flak, were they to determine that accusations of a Russian hack of the DNC were and remain without merit. Nonetheless, we believe that at least equal attention should be given to scrutinizing the major premise/predicate represented by the “Russian hacking” story, with as much attention as is given to the misguided, mischievous minor derivative premises upon which fragile but consequential conclusions have been based until now.
More specifically, is it not time for someone to draw attention to CrowdStrike’s testimony of Dec. 5, 2017? The NY Times is not going to do it. Past experience suggests that what the NYT will do is keep suppressing the sworn testimony of Shawn Henry from which the House Intelligence Committee learned — two and a half years ago — that “Putin’s hacking of the DNC” belongs in the same category as Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.
On the chance no one called to your attention our first memo of March 13, 2019 at the time, we include its Executive Summary below:
Executive Summary
Media reports are predicting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is about to give you the findings of his probe into any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump. If Mueller gives you his “completed” report anytime soon, it should be graded “incomplete.” Major deficiencies include depending on a DNC-hired cybersecurity company for forensics and failure to consult with those who have done original forensic work, including us and the independent forensic investigators with whom we have examined the data. We stand ready to help.
We veteran intelligence professionals (VIPS) have done enough detailed forensic work to prove the speciousness of the prevailing story that the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks came from Russian hacking. Given the paucity of evidence to support that story, we believe Mueller may choose to finesse this key issue and leave everyone hanging. That would help sustain the widespread belief that Trump owes his victory to President Vladimir Putin, and strengthen the hand of those who pay little heed to the unpredictable consequences of an increase in tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.
There is an overabundance of “assessments” but a lack of hard evidence to support that prevailing narrative. We believe that there are enough people of integrity in the Department of Justice to prevent the outright manufacture or distortion of “evidence,” particularly if they become aware that experienced scientists have completed independent forensic study that yield very different conclusions. We know only too well — and did our best to expose — how our former colleagues in the intelligence community manufactured fraudulent “evidence” of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
We have scrutinized publicly available physical data — the “trail” that every cyber operation leaves behind. And we have had support from highly experienced independent forensic investigators who, like us, have no axes to grind. We can prove that the conventional-wisdom story about Russian-hacking-DNC-emails-for-WikiLeaks is false. Drawing largely on the unique expertise of two VIPS scientists who worked for a combined total of 70 years at the National Security Agency and became Technical Directors there, we have regularly published our findings. But we have been deprived of a hearing in mainstream media — an experience painfully reminiscent of what we had to endure when we exposed the corruption of intelligence before the attack on Iraq 16 years ago.
This time, with the principles of physics and forensic science to rely on, we are able to adduce solid evidence exposing mistakes and distortions in the dominant story. We offer you below — as a kind of aide-memoire— a discussion of some of the key factors related to what has become known as “Russia-gate.” And we include our most recent findings drawn from forensic work on data associated with WikiLeaks’ publication of the DNC emails.
We do not claim our conclusions are “irrefutable and undeniable,” a la Colin Powell at the UN before the Iraq war. Our judgments, however, are based on the scientific method — not “assessments.” We decided to put this memorandum together in hopes of ensuring that you hear that directly from us.
If the Mueller team remains reluctant to review our work — or even to interview willing witnesses with direct knowledge, like WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange and former UK Ambassador Craig Murray, we fear that many of those yearning earnestly for the truth on Russia-gate will come to the corrosive conclusion that the Mueller investigation was a sham.
In sum, we are concerned that, at this point, an incomplete Mueller report will fall far short of the commitment made by then Acting Attorney General Rod Rosenstein “to ensure a full and thorough investigation,” when he appointed Mueller in May 2017. Again, we are at your disposal.
General Barr, we remain available for consultation.
* See also our Memorandum for the President of April 16, 2019: “The Fly in the Mueller Ointment”
FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY
William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
Richard H. Black, former Virginia State Senator; Colonel US Army (ret.); Former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, the Pentagon (associate VIPS)
Marshall Carter-Tripp, Foreign Service Officer & former Division Director in the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (ret.)
Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator
James George Jatras, former U.S. diplomat and former foreign policy adviser to Senate leadership (Associate VIPS)
Clement J. Laniewski, LTC, U.S. Army (ret.)
John Kiriakou, former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former senior investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Karen Kwiatkowski, former Lt. Col., US Air Force (ret.), at Office of Secretary of Defense watching the manufacture of lies on Iraq, 2001-2003
Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)
Edward Loomis, Cryptologic Computer Scientist, former Technical Director at NSA (ret.)
David MacMichael, former senior estimates officer, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA
Robert Wing, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (former) (associate VIPS)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat; resigned in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq War
…
I think without much doubt there is going to have to be a “Memo #3”. I hope this one makes a difference, but remember even if it doesn’t in the short term it might in the long term.
Still, there has GOT to be a way to get the reality of the situation out there into the general public. I’ve done my part, and after I read Memo #3, I’ll do my part again.
BK
Don’t hold your breath. I watched Rosenstein’s testimony and it seems that the only thing that the Republican’s (especially the Chair) and the Democrats agree on is that the Russian’s interfered with the 2016 elections. Evidence be damned.
The GOP is ready to go after the low hanging fruit and I suspect that a few heads will roll. But the need for an enemy by the deep state has historically been endorsed on both sides of the isle. This includes the effort to destroy if not actually kill Julian Assange.
Nothing I heard suggests that his is about to change
Fortunately or unfortunately, Senators learned many things about internet over the years. In 2006, Ted Stevens, then the senior Senator from Alaska, explained to his colleagues that “the Internet is not something that you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand, those tubes can be filled”. Unfortunately, Stevens retired and the remaining Senators seem to understand the tube explanations too literally.
What do you want if you want to spread influence over the internet surreptitiously? A huge tube! Now imagine that we watch how Russia is building a big tube, from St. Petersburg all the way to Germany. Is is dangerous? You bet! Senator Shaheen from New Hampshire:
“While there were sceptics, the original sanctions legislation I authored with Senator Cruz was tremendously effective at thwarting the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. We must now continue that effort and ensure that Russia does not surreptitiously extend its malign influence throughout Europe, …”
A reminder is appropriate.
So far I have never got a response from DOJ, FBI, et al in multiple offers to them of complete evidence of the theft of $120 million in Florida conservation funds, where those involved were Republican politicians, operatives and judges.
At least in FL, Republican operatives probably control the DOJ and FBI, or they fear to investigate Republicans.
Anyone with DOJ or FBI connections is welcome to reply and request that we connect via the editors.
So maybe Dems control the DOJ and FBI in DC, and won’t go after the Dem Russiagate hoax.
So I should be reporting the FL racketeering or Reps to the Dem DC offices of DOJ and FBI.
Or maybe they don’t investigate any corruption; maybe they don’t investigate anything!
The entire FBI Public Integrity Section has only 30 attorneys; perhaps even fewer investigators.
Insider info: the FBI Public Integrity Section Director job was open last time I checked, and I almost applied.
I could move to someplace upwind of DC, work from home, and enjoy the mushroom cloud in safety someday.
They couldn’t really care about conflict of interest, could they? Maybe one of the VIPS should apply.
Note for job seekers: that may be the DOJ Public Integrity Section Director job rather than the FBI.
Didn’t realize that Jeffrey Epstein was a Republican when he was “investigated” in Florida and received a cushy deal that only the well-connected can dream of. Those high in the Establishment are above the Law. There are no fundamental Republican/ Democrat differences.
Good point Michael about the Epstein case, very clear judicial corruption in Palm Beach on the other coast.
I haven’t investigated whether those corrupt officials were Reps or Dems, and have no preferences.
Another known center of theft of conservation funds is in that very populous area; I don’t have the details.
It is also a center of investigative reporting but have not heard of detailed investigation or prosecution.
The CIA has become populated by the same kind of people that have murdered JFK and RFK. No wonder that the country is hollowed out — the mega-profiteers and zionists made US intelligence services into their tool. see: globalresearch.ca/the-blatant-conspiracy-behind-senator-robert-f-kennedys-assassination/5642125:
“Robert Kennedy, like his brother John, was a great danger to those virulent forces of war and oppression within his own government, and he died opposing them as a true patriot. … we are obligated to pursue the truth of why he died and why it still matters. … Fifty years of silence must be ended…”
The US-conducted color revolutions and regime changes have come back home to ‘roost.’
@Jeff Harrison
You never know if the fix is gonna work. Many fixes in the past have failed miserably. More often than not, they fail because they are uncovered, revealed, and then shown to all in all of their ignominious glory. I think it could be Part 3 of a 5-Part Act. Virus, protests, ignominy, and then two more things to follow.
Hold onto your hats!
BK
One of the Democrat Senators in the hearing by Senator Graham’s committee lamented the attention being given by Attorney General and the Senate to investigate wrongdoing regarding Russiagate when there is police brutality and Coronavirus to deal with. Why take away from the daily and nightly protests and covid-19.
Why indeed. It is because both are less important than finding out what has happened to the governance of the United States that has implications far beyond Russiagate.
Good summary letter. Hopeless cause.
I just don’t believe anyone is going to open this “can of worms.”
Any more than we’ll ever learn the truth about 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination.
No, I am not a “conspiracy theorist.’ Just a realist who is well-read on those last topics, as well as being someone who has read enough history to understand why a government like that of the United States always lies about matters which touch on the very powerful.
There were Mossad operators observing and photographing events at 9/11, and they were arrested and held for quite a while, but we have never been told what was going on.
Was Mossad cooperating with CIA? Were they on their own? If they knew so certainly that the catastrophe would happen that they were prepared and following, why did they not inform CIA or FBI? If they did inform them, why did not those agencies act?
That’s just one dark little corner of the mysteries around 9/11. I cite it because it involves intelligence agencies operating in the US and high-level government secrets.
As to the Kennedy assassination, we’ve never had even a plausible explanation from government. I read all the quality authors on the subject years ago.
@JOHN CHUCKMAN
So many cans of worms out there and so many to choose from when picking which one to open, but I’m telling you right now WE KNOW and there are some of us who are fedup enough with it to do something even if it means confrontation that takes us to the brink.
So which can do you want to open? I say open the most recent one and the most obvious one and then lets go from there. Without truth there can never be justice. Without justice there can never be peace. So what do you want?
I know a thing or two about Kennedy’s assassination, but don’t forget a fine Iranian general was also most recently assassinated and just as for Kennedy that has had some consequences that we are only just beginning to appreciate. Most of the consequences are to the disadvantage of the perpetrators of the crime and good on that is what I think. Now since I’m in such a sharing mood, let me tell you that I frequented a site where there was a supposition regarding the plane flying from Iran to Ukraine that was downed and I think there is evidence on that as well. It goes directly to Israel if you want my opinion even if that opinion is speculation.
Israel to its shame has been a scourge on the Middle East and I sure hope that can change. If it did, many People would be happy including many Israeli’s (in the long run).
So please, spare me about what you think is a can of worms. Open it up please.
So how did WikiLeaks get the DNC data?
His name was Seth Rich, and he is dead.
William Binney of the VIPS group has determined that the DNC emails were leaked by someone with access to the DNC server and not hacked from the outside.
Did you (n)ever hear of Seth Rich?
Really? How can you ask this question?
Craig Murray a former UK Ambassador – surely as reliable as any US state employee in a position which allows access to secret information – has said both that he knows that the DNC data (those infamous emails) were hand-delivered (i.e. on a thumb-drive) AND that he was willing to be interviewed by the FBI etc. BUT No one on this side of the Atlantic wished to interview him, speak to him. No one in the FBI, CIA etc etc.
Julian Assange has stated time and again that the data was NOT provided by the Russians nor was it hacked but arrived as one might expect on a thumb drive. And in case you consider Mr Assange unreliable (he too has been more than willing to provide the relevant information), consider this: he has had published, on Wikileaks, data, information, documents that really do not do Russia much good either. He is totally unbiased except and only toward Truth and Transparency.
Just because three agencies sided with the Clintons (hardly the most whited sepulchers around in US politics) and the Blue Faces have refused to admit they have used Russia as the scapegoat for their attack on the Strumpet, does NOT mean they have truth on their side, only that they are liars and at base no different from the Red Faces.
Seth Rich
Thanks for the question, Glen. The answer seems to be whoever it was that had direct access to the DNC computers and copied the emails onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). That person or persons would be the one(s) who gave the DNC data to WikiLeaks. We VIPSers been saying this for three and a half years. And it is not as though we all lack for likely suspects.
Everyone and his brother, so to speak, are trying — withe the help of well-heeled dem lawyers and apparently unlimited funds — to keep the “Russian hack” story alive, lest attention be drawn to the “usual suspects”. The Establishment media has, of course, been a big help to them.
I have been told that at least one court case now under way is likely to reveal important information that will help answer your question.
Assange has always indicated that it was a Leak, Not a Hack
Hand delivery by thumb drive.
It was downloaded by an as yet unidentified person with physical access to the DNC computer directly to an external drive. VIPS has already discussed this in previous dispatches. VIPS analysts discovered this fact from extended analysis of the publicly available meta-data that revealed the download speed was too fast for an existing Internet-based (hacking) download. Julian Assange years ago stated that the Russians did not give Wikileaks the data, but why believe him?
The thumb drive itself would have supporting forensics on it right?
Who has it?
Someone had to die just to support the Russian narrative .
That’s the country We live in?
Go get ’em guys. I just hope you realize that the crew in DC isn’t going to pay the slightest bit of attention to people who actually know what they’re talking about. The fix is in and that’s been obvious for literally years now. The fact that the fix continues to work is why we are doomed.
The guy who runs Wikileaks is in custody. Why don’t you just ask him how Seth Rich transferred the data via thumb drive at super high speed and then ended up being Arkancided?
Agreed, and that’s part of why this will never be opened up.
Assange has been effectively a prisoner for years, and no one in a position of power bothered to talk to him.
Americans persist in a slightly ridiculous fantasy, thinking there is justice and thinking the country is democratic.
The same folks literally running terror operations in Venezuela, Bolivia, Iran, Yemen, Syria and other places are very comfortable with their way of doing things.
Why would anyone believe that those dark and powerful people regard the American border as a place where they have to operate differently?