It is now a year since the Democratic National Committee’s mail system was compromised—a year since events in the spring and early summer of 2016 were identified as remote hacks and, in short order, attributed to Russians acting in behalf of Donald Trump. A great edifice has been erected during this time. President Trump, members of his family, and numerous people around him stand accused of various corruptions and extensive collusion with Russians. Half a dozen simultaneous investigations proceed into these matters. Last week news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had convened a grand jury, which issued its first subpoenas on August 3. Allegations of treason are common; prominent political figures and many media cultivate a case for impeachment. The president’s ability to conduct foreign policy, notably but not only with regard to Russia, is now crippled. Forced into a corner and having no choice, Trump just signed legislation imposing severe new sanctions on Russia and European companies working with it on pipeline projects vital to Russia’s energy sector. Striking this close to the core of another nation’s economy is customarily considered an act of war, we must not forget. In retaliation, Moscow has announced that the United States must cut its embassy staff by roughly two-thirds. All sides agree that relations between the United States and Russia are now as fragile as they were during some of the Cold War’s worst moments. To suggest that military conflict between two nuclear powers inches ever closer can no longer be dismissed as hyperbole. All this was set in motion when the DNC’s mail server was first violated in the spring of 2016 and by subsequent assertions that Russians were behind that “hack” and another such operation, also described as a Russian hack, on July 5. These are the foundation stones of the edifice just outlined. The evolution of public discourse in the year since is worthy of scholarly study: Possibilities became allegations, and these became probabilities. Then the probabilities turned into certainties, and these evolved into what are now taken to be established truths. By my reckoning, it required a few days to a few weeks to advance from each of these stages to the next. This was accomplished via the indefensibly corrupt manipulations of language repeated incessantly in our leading media. Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess “high confidence” in their “assessment” as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year—this standing as their authoritative judgment. Few have noticed since these evasive terms first appeared that an assessment is an opinion, nothing more, and to express high confidence is an upside-down way of admitting the absence of certain knowledge. This is how officials avoid putting their names on the assertions we are so strongly urged to accept—as the record shows many of them have done. We come now to a moment of great gravity. There has been a long effort to counter the official narrative we now call “Russiagate.” This effort has so far focused on the key events noted above, leaving numerous others still to be addressed. Until recently, researchers undertaking this work faced critical shortcomings, and these are to be explained. But they have achieved significant new momentum in the past several weeks, and what they have done now yields very consequential fruit. Forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed are now producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year. Their work is intricate and continues at a kinetic pace as we speak. But its certain results so far are two, simply stated, and freighted with implications:
This article is based on an examination of the documents these forensic experts and intelligence analysts have produced, notably the key papers written over the past several weeks, as well as detailed interviews with many of those conducting investigations and now drawing conclusions from them. Before proceeding into this material, several points bear noting. One, there are many other allegations implicating Russians in the 2016 political process. The work I will now report upon does not purport to prove or disprove any of them. Who delivered documents to WikiLeaks? Who was responsible for the “phishing” operation penetrating John Podesta’s e-mail in March 2016? We do not know the answers to such questions. It is entirely possible, indeed, that the answers we deserve and must demand could turn out to be multiple: One thing happened in one case, another thing in another. The new work done on the mid-June and July 5 events bears upon all else in only one respect. We are now on notice: Given that we now stand face to face with very considerable cases of duplicity, it is imperative that all official accounts of these many events be subject to rigorously skeptical questioning. Do we even know that John Podesta’s e-mail was in fact “phished”? What evidence of this has been produced? Such rock-bottom questions as these must now be posed in all other cases. Two, houses built on sand and made of cards are bound to collapse, and there can be no surprise that the one resting atop the “hack theory,” as we can call the prevailing wisdom on the DNC events, appears to be in the process of doing so. Neither is there anything far-fetched in a reversal of the truth of this magnitude. American history is replete with similar cases. The Spanish sank the Maine in Havana harbor in February 1898. Iran’s Mossadegh was a Communist. Guatemala’s Árbenz represented a Communist threat to the United States. Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh was a Soviet puppet. The Sandinistas were Communists. The truth of the Maine, a war and a revolution in between, took a century to find the light of day, whereupon the official story disintegrated. We can do better now. It is an odd sensation to live through one of these episodes, especially one as big as Russiagate. But its place atop a long line of precedents can no longer be disputed. Three, regardless of what one may think about the investigations and conclusions I will now outline—and, as noted, these investigations continue—there is a bottom line attaching to them. We can even call it a red line. Under no circumstance can it be acceptable that the relevant authorities—the National Security Agency, the Justice Department (via the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the Central Intelligence Agency—leave these new findings without reply. Not credibly, in any case. Forensic investigators, prominent among them people with decades’ experience at high levels in these very institutions, have put a body of evidence on a table previously left empty. Silence now, should it ensue, cannot be written down as an admission of duplicity, but it will come very close to one. It requires no elaboration to apply the above point to the corporate media, which have been flaccidly satisfied with official explanations of the DNC matter from the start. Qualified experts working independently of one another began to examine the DNC case immediately after the July 2016 events. Prominent among these is a group comprising former intelligence officers, almost all of whom previously occupied senior positions. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), founded in 2003, now has 30 members, including a few associates with backgrounds in national-security fields other than intelligence. The chief researchers active on the DNC case are four: William Binney, formerly the NSA’s technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis and designer of many agency programs now in use; Kirk Wiebe, formerly a senior analyst at the NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, formerly technical director in the NSA’s Office of Signal Processing; and Ray McGovern, an intelligence analyst for nearly three decades and formerly chief of the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch. Most of these men have decades of experience in matters concerning Russian intelligence and the related technologies. This article reflects numerous interviews with all of them conducted in person, via Skype, or by telephone. The customary VIPS format is an open letter, typically addressed to the president. The group has written three such letters on the DNC incident, all of which were first published by Robert Parry at www.consortiumnews.com. Here is the latest, dated July 24; it blueprints the forensic work this article explores in detail. They have all argued that the hack theory is wrong and that a locally executed leak is the far more likely explanation. In a letter to Barack Obama dated January 17, three days before he left office, the group explained that the NSA’s known programs are fully capable of capturing all electronic transfers of data. “We strongly suggest that you ask NSA for any evidence it may have indicating that the results of Russian hacking were given to WikiLeaks,” the letter said. “If NSA cannot produce such evidence—and quickly—this would probably mean it does not have any.” The day after Parry published this letter, Obama gave his last press conference as president, at which he delivered one of the great gems among the official statements on the DNC e-mail question. “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking,” the legacy-minded Obama said, “were not conclusive.” There is little to suggest the VIPS letter prompted this remark, but it is typical of the linguistic tap-dancing many officials connected to the case have indulged so as to avoid putting their names on the hack theory and all that derives from it. Until recently there was a serious hindrance to the VIPS’s work, and I have just suggested it. The group lacked access to positive data. It had no lump of cyber-material to place on its lab table and analyze, because no official agency had provided any. Donald Rumsfeld famously argued with regard to the WMD question in Iraq, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” In essence, Binney and others at VIPS say this logic turns upside down in the DNC case: Based on the knowledge of former officials such as Binney, the group knew that (1) if there was a hack and (2) if Russia was responsible for it, the NSA would have to have evidence of both. Binney and others surmised that the agency and associated institutions were hiding the absence of evidence behind the claim that they had to maintain secrecy to protect NSA programs. “Everything that they say must remain classified is already well-known,” Binney said in an interview. “They’re playing the Wizard of Oz game.” New findings indicate this is perfectly true, but until recently the VIPS experts could produce only “negative evidence,” as they put it: The absence of evidence supporting the hack theory demonstrates that it cannot be so. That is all VIPS had. They could allege and assert, but they could not conclude: They were stuck demanding evidence they did not have—if only to prove there was none. Research into the DNC case took a fateful turn in early July, when forensic investigators who had been working independently began to share findings and form loose collaborations wherein each could build on the work of others. In this a small, new website called www.disobedientmedia.com proved an important catalyst. Two independent researchers selected it, Snowden-like, as the medium through which to disclose their findings. One of these is known as Forensicator and the other as Adam Carter. On July 9, Adam Carter sent Elizabeth Vos, a co-founder of Disobedient Media, a paper by the Forensicator that split the DNC case open like a coconut. By this time Binney and the other technical-side people at VIPS had begun working with a man named Skip Folden. Folden was an IT executive at IBM for 33 years, serving 25 years as the IT program manager in the United States. He has also consulted for Pentagon officials, the FBI, and the Justice Department. Folden is effectively the VIPS group’s liaison to Forensicator, Adam Carter, and other investigators, but neither Folden nor anyone else knows the identity of either Forensicator or Adam Carter. This bears brief explanation. The Forensicator’s July 9 document indicates he lives in the Pacific Time Zone, which puts him on the West Coast. His notes describing his investigative procedures support this. But little else is known of him. Adam Carter, in turn, is located in England, but the name is a coy pseudonym: It derives from a character in a BBC espionage series called Spooks. It is protocol in this community, Elizabeth Vos told me in a telephone conversation this week, to respect this degree of anonymity. Kirk Wiebe, the former SIGINT analyst at the NSA, thinks Forensicator could be “someone very good with the FBI,” but there is no certainty. Unanimously, however, all the analysts and forensics investigators interviewed for this column say Forensicator’s advanced expertise, evident in the work he has done, is unassailable. They hold a similarly high opinion of Adam Carter’s work. Forensicator is working with the documents published by Guccifer 2.0, focusing for now on the July 5 intrusion into the DNC server. The contents of Guccifer’s files are known—they were published last September—and are not Forensicator’s concern. His work is with the metadata on those files. These data did not come to him via any clandestine means. Forensicator simply has access to them that others did not have. It is this access that prompts Kirk Wiebe and others to suggest that Forensicator may be someone with exceptional talent and training inside an agency such as the FBI. “Forensicator unlocked and then analyzed what had been the locked files Guccifer supposedly took from the DNC server,” Skip Folden explained in an interview. “To do this he would have to have ‘access privilege,’ meaning a key.” What has Forensicator proven since he turned his key? How? What has work done atop Forensicator’s findings proven? How? Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second. These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds. What is the maximum achievable speed? Forensicator recently ran a test download of a comparable data volume (and using a server speed not available in 2016) 40 miles from his computer via a server 20 miles away and came up with a speed of 11.8 megabytes per second—half what the DNC operation would need were it a hack. Other investigators have built on this finding. Folden and Edward Loomis say a survey published August 3, 2016, by www.speedtest.net/reports is highly reliable and use it as their thumbnail index. It indicated that the highest average ISP speeds of first-half 2016 were achieved by Xfinity and Cox Communications. These speeds averaged 15.6 megabytes per second and 14.7 megabytes per second, respectively. Peak speeds at higher rates were recorded intermittently but still did not reach the required 22.7 megabytes per second. “A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.” Last week Forensicator reported on a speed test he conducted more recently. It tightens the case considerably. “Transfer rates of 23 MB/s (Mega Bytes per second) are not just highly unlikely, but effectively impossible to accomplish when communicating over the Internet at any significant distance,” he wrote. “Further, local copy speeds are measured, demonstrating that 23 MB/s is a typical transfer rate when using a USB–2 flash device (thumb drive).” Time stamps in the metadata provide further evidence of what happened on July 5. The stamps recording the download indicate that it occurred in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone at approximately 6:45 pm. This confirms that the person entering the DNC system was working somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. In theory the operation could have been conducted from Bangor or Miami or anywhere in between—but not Russia, Romania, or anywhere else outside the EDT zone. Combined with Forensicator’s findings on the transfer rate, the time stamps constitute more evidence that the download was conducted locally, since delivery overheads—conversion of data into packets, addressing, sequencing times, error checks, and the like—degrade all data transfers conducted via the Internet, more or less according to the distance involved. In addition, there is the adulteration of the documents Guccifer 2.0 posted on June 15, when he made his first appearance. This came to light when researchers penetrated what Folden calls Guccifer’s top layer of metadata and analyzed what was in the layers beneath. They found that the first five files Guccifer made public had each been run, via ordinary cut-and-paste, through a single template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints. They were not: The Russian markings were artificially inserted prior to posting. “It’s clear,” another forensics investigator self-identified as HET, wrote in a report on this question, “that metadata was deliberately altered and documents were deliberately pasted into a Russianified [W]ord document with Russian language settings and style headings.” To be noted in this connection: The list of the CIA’s cyber-tools WikiLeaks began to release in March and labeled Vault 7 includes one called Marble that is capable of obfuscating the origin of documents in false-flag operations and leaving markings that point to whatever the CIA wants to point to. (The tool can also “de-obfuscate” what it has obfuscated.) It is not known whether this tool was deployed in the Guccifer case, but it is there for such a use. It is not yet clear whether documents now shown to have been leaked locally on July 5 were tainted to suggest Russian hacking in the same way the June 15 Guccifer release was. This is among several outstanding questions awaiting answers, and the forensic scientists active on the DNC case are now investigating it. In a note Adam Carter sent to Folden and McGovern last week and copied to me, he reconfirmed the corruption of the June 15 documents, while indicating that his initial work on the July 5 documents—of which much more is to be done—had not yet turned up evidence of doctoring. In the meantime, VIPS has assembled a chronology that imposes a persuasive logic on the complex succession of events just reviewed. It is this:
It does not require too much thought to read into this sequence. With his June 12 announcement, Assange effectively put the DNC on notice that it had a little time, probably not much, to act preemptively against the imminent publication of damaging documents. Did the DNC quickly conjure Guccifer from thin air to create a cyber-saboteur whose fingers point to Russia? There is no evidence of this one way or the other, but emphatically it is legitimate to pose the question in the context of the VIPS chronology. WikiLeaks began publishing on July 22. By that time, the case alleging Russian interference in the 2016 elections process was taking firm root. In short order Assange would be written down as a “Russian agent.” By any balanced reckoning, the official case purporting to assign a systematic hacking effort to Russia, the events of mid-June and July 5 last year being the foundation of this case, is shabby to the point taxpayers should ask for their money back. The Intelligence Community Assessment, the supposedly definitive report featuring the “high confidence” dodge, was greeted as farcically flimsy when issued January 6. Ray McGovern calls it a disgrace to the intelligence profession. It is spotlessly free of evidence, front to back, pertaining to any events in which Russia is implicated. James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, admitted in May that “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies (not the 17 previously reported) drafted the ICA. There is a way to understand “hand-picked” that is less obvious than meets the eye: The report was sequestered from rigorous agency-wide reviews. This is the way these people have spoken to us for the past year. Behind the ICA lie other indefensible realities. The FBI has never examined the DNC’s computer servers—an omission that is beyond preposterous. It has instead relied on the reports produced by Crowdstrike, a firm that drips with conflicting interests well beyond the fact that it is in the DNC’s employ. Dmitri Alperovitch, its co-founder and chief technology officer, is on the record as vigorously anti-Russian. He is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which suffers the same prejudice. Problems such as this are many. “We continue to stand by our report,” CrowdStrike said, upon seeing the VIPS blueprint of the investigation. CrowdStrike argues that by July 5 all malware had been removed from the DNC’s computers. But the presence or absence of malware by that time is entirely immaterial, because the event of July 5 is proven to have been a leak and not a hack. Given that malware has nothing to do with leaks, CrowdStrike’s logic appears to be circular. In effect, the new forensic evidence considered here lands in a vacuum. We now enter a period when an official reply should be forthcoming. What the forensic people are now producing constitutes evidence, however one may view it, and it is the first scientifically derived evidence we have into any of the events in which Russia has been implicated. The investigators deserve a response, the betrayed professionals who formed VIPS as the WMD scandal unfolded in 2003 deserve it, and so do the rest of us. The cost of duplicity has rarely been so high. I concluded each of the interviews conducted for this column by asking for a degree of confidence in the new findings. These are careful, exacting people as a matter of professional training and standards, and I got careful, exacting replies. All those interviewed came in between 90 percent and 100 percent certain that the forensics prove out. I have already quoted Skip Folden’s answer: impossible based on the data. “The laws of physics don’t lie,” Ray McGovern volunteered at one point. “It’s QED, theorem demonstrated,” William Binney said in response to my question. “There’s no evidence out there to get me to change my mind.” When I asked Edward Loomis, a 90 percent man, about the 10 percent he held out, he replied, “I’ve looked at the work and it shows there was no Russian hack. But I didn’t do the work. That’s the 10 percent. I’m a scientist.” Editor’s note: In its chronology, VIPS mistakenly gave the wrong date for CrowdStrike’s announcement of its claim to have found malware on DNC servers. It said June 15, when it should have said June 14. VIPS has acknowledged the error, and we have made the correction. |
Poster Comment:
The Nation is owned by Katrina vanden Heuval, a Lefty heiress. Before she ran it and after, it was always the biggest apologist for Russia around. In addition, in 1988 vanden Heuvel married Stephen F. Cohen, a writer on the Soviet Union and a professor of Russian Studies at Princeton University for 30 years, subsequently at New York University. Cohen is the most pro-Russian of all the respected foreign policy experts.
So maybe the Nation has always carried water for Russia. But if this article is accurate about it being an inside job, perhaps by a Bernie bro, then that is only coincidence. But we can't ignore the Nation's pro-Soviet and pro-Russian stance over the decades either.
#5: rlk To: Tooconservative (#0)
The supposed DNC hack is all hype to create a hysterical atmosphere as if the Russians had busted into the CIA or the Pentagon. There was never anything in the DNC to hack. Just bunch of low IQ leftist assholes mumbling about politics. Big deal.
rlk posted on 2017-08-10 21:40:38 Reply Private Reply
#6: nolu chan To: Tooconservative (#2)
22MB/second is absolutely blazing fast. 22 megaBYTES/sec is 176 megaBITS per second, the usual expressed speed for an ISP.
I don't know of an ISP offering more than 150 Mbs, and that is theoretical speed, not actual. Not only must the hacker have that speed (and more), the DNC would have needed to provide a constant stream at that speed, and all points between the DNC and the supposed hacker had to maintain that sustained speed as well.
https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/2017/08/01/the-need-for-speed/
See "The Need for Speed" at the link.
I do not see how Guccifer 2.0 could achieve that speed from the DNC to Europe, especially if routing around and using a VPN. I don't think he could get that speed from the DNC and the multitude of lines getting the data to him.
Worth noting,
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2017/aug/07/seth-rich-separating-fact-and-speculation/
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 00:43:32 Reply Private Reply
#7: nolu chan To: rlk, Tooconservative (#5)
There was stuff there, and it wound up on Wikileaks. It seems far more likely that it was leaked by a Bernie supporter than that it was hacked by anyone.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 00:46:32 Reply Private Reply
#8: nolu chan To: misterwhite, Tooconservative (#4)
Another consideration may have been limiting the download to 1,976 megabytes to fit it on a 2TB thumb drive. That appears to be the max capacity.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 00:57:37 Reply Private Reply
#9: nolu chan To: misterwhite, Tooconservative (#3)
The DNI released what they called a report entitled, "Background to 'Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections': The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution," dated 6 January 2017.
I did not say it wasn't garbage, just that they called it a report.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 01:18:20 Reply Private Reply
#10: rlk To: nolu chan (#7)
What material that was a violation of national security or required a security clearance? The fundamentals of making a complaint must be an injury of some kind. Was there an invasion of government secrecy or restricted information?
rlk posted on 2017-08-11 05:16:39 Reply Private Reply
#11: Tooconservative To: nolu chan (#9)
Wow. You've been following this much more closely than the rest of us.
I'm not sure the story ever goes anywhere. The libmedia will try to bury it with the old that's-old-news-nothing-new tactic. And I'm not sure Congress has any more interest in it because they seem to like the we-wuz-hacked-by-Russia routine where they get to be all bipartisanish about it.
It's especially rich to hear various congresscritters going on about how the wily Russkies have meddled in our "sacred elections", their cute moniker for the same election process that brought us such swirling turd death-matches as Trump v. Hitlery, 0bama v. Romney (or McStain), Bush v. Kerry (or Gore), Xlinton v. Bush (or Dole).
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-11 08:22:56 Reply Private Reply
#12: misterwhite To: nolu chan (#8)
1,976 megabytes = 1.976 gigabytes. Not a problem for most thumb drives.
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-11 09:44:37 Reply Private Reply
#13: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#11)
I think the DNC's meddling in the Democrat Presidential primary did far more to affect the "sacred election" than anything the Russians did.
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-11 09:52:26 Reply Private Reply
#14: sneakypete To: rlk (#5)
Robert,it was and is a big deal. This is a perfect example of the Dims going on offense when people would think they would be playing defense.
They had just lost,and lost "YUGE",the office of President to a candidate that had never been elected to anything in his life,and who wasn't even supported by his own party. Not only that,but they lost to this man while running a "Leftist Legacy Name Candidate".
They used this to successfully turn public attention away from their humiliating defeat,and helping to take down the man who beat her like a rented mule at the same time.
And what is the official alleged Republican response? "Gee,how bout that,hmmmmm".
sneakypete posted on 2017-08-11 09:55:45 Reply Private Reply
#15: sneakypete To: nolu chan (#7)
Since it seemed like the RNC and typical alleged Republican voter wanted Bubbette! to win and Bernie supporters were the only ones that hated her,I suspect you are right.
sneakypete posted on 2017-08-11 09:59:42 Reply Private Reply
#16: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#13)
Me too.
The Bernie Bros in three northern industrial states voted for Stein and their votes were Trump's margin of victory, at least in two of those states.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-11 10:08:41 Reply Private Reply
#17: nolu chan To: rlk (#10)
There was stuff there. It was not the stuff of the taker. It was wrongful conversion. Taking the data was unlawful. The stuff of the DNC was published at Wikileaks to the detriment of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Security clearance is irrelevant. There is no allegation that it was an invasion of government secrecy or government restricted information.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 13:47:13 Reply Private Reply
#18: nolu chan To: misterwhite (#12)
I stand corrected.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 13:47:50 Reply Private Reply
#19: rlk To: nolu chan (#17)
What was it? Was it more importent than two little kids playing marbles?
rlk posted on 2017-08-11 15:15:02 Reply Private Reply
#20: nolu chan To: rlk (#19)
See Wikileaks. Yes, it was.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 15:25:37 Reply Private Reply
#21: nolu chan To: Tooconservative (#11)
The January DNI report was crap, but it ties the alleged Obama administration intel investigation to the hack claim.
What is interesting here is that The Nation is Libmedia. Wikipedia categorizes it as, "Political, progressive, social liberalism."
Hillary is reportedly puttin' the band back together and the far left progressive movement is coming out destroying the DNC hack story.
Little Debbie is in the doghouse and Lord only knows what the FBI has in its possession from the Awan bust.
State has been ordered to look further for Hillary's missing email in the accounts of aides.
The leaked/hacked email clearly showed that the DNC intervened to aid the Hillary campaign and suppress the Sanders campaign. The Dem party power structure may be under attack from within.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 15:56:37 Reply Private Reply
#22: Tooconservative To: nolu chan (#21)
The only drawback is that it is even more well-known as a pro-Soviet/pro-Russia outlet. And the publisher's husband is the biggest pro-Russian academic in America.
I think a lot of people will discount most anything that the Nation prints on the topic of Russia.
Even so, I thought it at least merited a reading of their article.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-11 16:07:36 Reply Private Reply
#23: nolu chan To: Tooconservative (#22)
For sure, the DNI "report" fails to substantiate its claims of a hack, Russian or other. The FBI claims it has not seen the server. The whole hack story is hinky.
Adam Carter's site has interesting supplementary info.
http://g-2.space/
Also:
HET
/u/tvor_22
https://medium.com/@nyetnyetnyet/russia-and-wikileaks-the-case-of-the-gilded-guccifer-f2288521cdee
Russia and WikiLeaks: The Case of the Gilded Guccifer
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-11 20:25:24 Reply Private Reply
#24: Tooconservative To: nolu chan (#23)
After all, if they don't report it, it's not news. At least in their opinion.
It's Orwellian how the modern media operates.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-11 20:52:05 Reply Private Reply
#25: rlk To: sneakypete (#14)
Don't confuse the absence or ineptitude of a Republican response with truth about the assertion. The Republicans have yet to show courage or a brain in their head.
rlk posted on 2017-08-11 22:09:38 Reply Private Reply
#26: rlk To: nolu chan (#20)
I don't care about Wikileaks. To date there has been no proof that any of this occurred or that it was anything but hyped creative writing and wishful thinking. Where's the supposed injury in all this? The argument reminds me of a case we studied in a law class. The lawyer brought in all the elements except substantial injury.
rlk posted on 2017-08-11 22:39:41 Reply Private Reply
#27: rlk To: nolu chan (#17)
Is that a fancy word for eavesdropping? The stuff of the DNC was published at Wikileaks to the detriment of the Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign. Prove it was detrimental or that her loss wasn't due to other things.
Find Guciffer and charge him with evesdropping if it is unlawful in the country in which he was operating.
rlk posted on 2017-08-11 23:05:19 Reply Private Reply
#28: nolu chan To: rlk (#26)
The email was published on Wikileaks. The occurrence is notorious and undeniable. The email was neither hyped creative writing nor wishful thinking.
The injury was to the Democratic Party, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign. It caused a rift in the Democratic Party that continues to this day.
It caused many Bernie supporters to not support Hillary in the general election.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-12 02:08:49 Reply Private Reply
#29: nolu chan To: rlk (#27)
[rlk #26] The argument reminds me of a case we studied in a law class. The lawyer brought in all the elements except substantial injury.
Really?
One can wrongfully convert property in his lawful possession to his personal use, adverse to the rights of the owner, thereby committing a tort.
Conversion may also be criminal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_conversion
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Guccifer, a/k/a Marcel Lazar Lehel, was convicted and is in a Romanian prison. When he gets done with his Romanian sentence, he is supposed to be transferred to the U.S. to serve his U.S. sentence.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-12 02:11:11 Reply Private Reply
#30: nolu chan To: rlk (#27)
Proving that the leak cost an election is not necessary to proving that the leak was detrimental, a tort, or criminal. Every sentient being on the planet knows it was detrimental. What other effect could one possibly attribute to the published emails???
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WIKILEAKS 38478 - One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash
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WIKILEAKS - John Podesta - home server for security reasons which would fall apart under scrutiny
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WIKILEAKS - to John Podesta - "You represent a client that is not honest and is most likely criminal"
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WIKILEAKS - WARNING TO HILLARY CLINTON [by Brent Budowski]
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WIKILEAKS 15893 - Spirit Cooking
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WIKILEAKS - [atty Erika Rottenberg] none of my friends circle can understand how it was viewed as ok/secure/appropriate to use a private server
Erika Rottenberg: J.D. 1992
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nolu chan posted on 2017-08-12 02:18:41 Reply Private Reply
#31: Tooconservative To: nolu chan (#30)
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-12 08:29:47 Reply Private Reply
#32: rlk To: nolu chan (#30)
You begin with the primace that there was an effect. I'm asking you to prove the effect wasn't negligible or miniscule. What you are trying to make us believe is hillary won the election buy was cheated out of it by a kid hacking with a computer.
rlk posted on 2017-08-13 04:59:31 Reply Private Reply
#33: Tooconservative To: rlk, nolu chan, misterwhite (#32)
HotAir: Another report: That Russian hack of the DNC probably… wasn’t
Another report: That Russian hack of the DNC probably… wasn’t
Remember when the Russians hacked the DNC email and records system last year? Yeah, about that…
Cyber experts have been digging through all of the available material for over a year now trying to pin down exactly what happened but the answers to date have been less than satisfying. This isn’t the first time, but now another report has come out saying that the standard explanation we’ve been given (Russia, Russia Russia) doesn’t appear to hold water. The interesting aspect here is that this one isn’t coming from some right wing source with an ax to grind against Hillary Clinton, but rather from The Nation, a source which is generally only a couple of steps removed from being a DNC public relations firm.
The author is Patrick Lawrence, and if you take a look at other entries from his recent body of work, well… let’s just say he doesn’t spend his free time filling in for Rush Limbaugh. Lawrence’s report is a lengthy think-piece which initially spends quite a while on the background of the story and how critical the idea of Russia being behind the leaks is to many of President Trump’s detractors, But then he gets down to the complicated tale of the experts analyzing all of the evidence and the reasons they have for reaching these two, key conclusions (emphasis added):
Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.
The analysis of the leaked documents is lengthy and of interest, but it also lends support to the underlying theory which prompted so many people to doubt the Russia claims in the first place. I’m not sure I personally buy into this one hundred percent, but they rely on the belief that the NSA currently has programs in place which can capture any and all electronic transfers of data to and from a known source (such as the DNC servers). If the data had been nabbed by the Russians or anyone else they should have been able to pin that down in fairly short order. But a year later they have not done so. Clearly they don’t want to reveal any of their methods our sources, but there should have been a conclusion long before now.
Then we have the Julian Assange side of the story. Of course, Wikileaks has been claiming from the beginning that the material didn’t come from the Russians. Craig Murray claimed that he flew to Washington for a cloak and dagger style, clandestine meeting “in a wooded area” with a disgusted DNC staffer who personally handed off the trove of documents to him. Does that prove anything? Nope. But somebody is either lying or wrong (take your pick) and in this case, the absence of evidence might be reasonably interpreted as evidence of absence when it comes to the silence on the NSA side.
Combine that with the forensic analysis of the revealed documents in the attached report and the Russiagate story starts looking like weak tea. If the government has anything which refutes this with some level of certainty, they should cough it up soon. Otherwise this entire narrative could collapse in a pile of failed memes.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 10:54:03 Reply Private Reply
#34: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#33)
It's time for Julian Assange to come forward. Or maybe he's waiting for the government investigative agencies to really get comfortable with the Russia story before he totally humiliates them.
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-13 11:06:15 Reply Private Reply
#35: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#34)
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 11:08:32 Reply Private Reply
#36: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#35)
Do you mean "the growing pile of evidence that Russia didn't hack the DNC"?
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-13 11:18:46 Reply Private Reply
#37: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#36)
Funny how that works.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 12:31:26 Reply Private Reply
#38: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#37)
I believe it was, "Russia hacked the election".
But liberals are great at changing the narrative. Liberals became progressives. Global warming is now climate change. It's not a tax but a fee (but it's really as tax).
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-13 12:49:20 Reply Private Reply
#39: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#38)
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 12:54:18 Reply Private Reply
#40: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#39)
Who's "we"? They can claim the DNC was hacked, but a) that's not "we", and b) that's their own fault. The FBI offered to help them avoid that but they declined. Then the FBI ofered to help then find out who did it and they again declined.
Maybe this was done by the DNC intentionally as a "Doomsday Device". If Hillary wins, this is all swept under the rug. But on the off- chance that Trump is elected, that triggers the Doomsday Machine and all life as we know it refuses to recognize his legitimacy.
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-13 13:14:44 Reply Private Reply
#41: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#40)
You overlook that the actual facts are irrelevant to them at this point. Because you're a rational conservative type.
However, they consider that they have already established the "we wuz hacked" propaganda line with the Left and many susceptible indy voters so they have every incentive to ignore contradictory facts that surface and keep repeating, like a herd of bleating sheep, "WE WUZ HACKED!".
It's like the low-brow Lefty version of "How Trump Won". No matter what facts surface, libmedia will try to maintain this dubious fiction because it is useful to their entire propaganda line against Trump, his election, the GOP, conservatives, etc.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 13:20:49 Reply Private Reply
#42: misterwhite To: Tooconservative (#41)
It would take one interviewer one time to simply ask them one question: "What do you mean by 'We wuz hacked'?"
misterwhite posted on 2017-08-13 13:44:34 Reply Private Reply
#43: Tooconservative To: misterwhite (#42)
Good luck trying to force them to address that question.
And, even if you do, all their other programming on outlets like NBC/PMSNBC/PBS/NPR/CNN or ABC or CBS will keep hawking the "We wuz hacked" narrative non-stop.
It's propaganda, pure and simple. Our refusal to recognize the modus operandi of libmedia is part of why we don't win. Or at least don't win as much as we should.
Tooconservative posted on 2017-08-13 14:00:27 Reply Private Reply
#44: rlk To: Tooconservative (#33)
rlk posted on 2017-08-13 16:39:42 Reply Private Reply
#45: nolu chan To: rlk (#32)
That there was a negative effect is notorious and I merely take notice of what all but the unwilling already know. That the effect was not de minimis is supported by the public wailing and gnashing of teeth.
What you are trying to make us believe is hillary won the election buy was cheated out of it by a kid hacking with a computer.
This is nonsense.
Hillary LOST the election. No amount of diversion will change that fact.
I do not believe Hillary was cheated out of the election, and neither should you or anyone else. I have maintained that Hillary was god awful as a candidate before her nomination, after the nomination, and still maintain she was god awful. Unlike Bill, Hillary was never a good politician. The revelations of Clinton corruption helped to save the nation from a Hillary Clinton administration.
You are the only one yammering about "a kid hacking with a computer." I am, and have been maintaining, THERE WAS NO HACK OF THE DNC. There was no hack by Russians, there was no hack by a skilled hacker, and there was no hack by a kid in his basement. THERE WAS NO HACK.
THERE WAS A L E A K.
Somebody with inside access to the data loaded it directly onto a thumb drive at a sustained speed of over 178 Mbs (23+ MBs) and deliberately LEAKED it. The most likely suspects for a LEAK from the DNC are Bernie supporters incensed by the notorious DNC intervention on behalf of Hillary Clinton in the primary campaign.
As for Guccifer 2.0, he did not hack anything either. Guccifer 2.0, not to be confused with Guccifer, remains anonymous. He/she may have worked for, or on behalf of, the DNC.
The DNC could not contest the authenticity of the documents that were leaked, so they played the victim and asserted that the Russians hacked them. The hack story is a fairy tale. It was a LEAK by someone with the password and a thumb drive.
http://g-2.space/cs/
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-13 18:15:08 Reply Private Reply
#46: nolu chan To: rlk, Tooconservative (#44)
No. The bogus hack story was to make it appear that Hillary was victimized. They could not dispute the authenticity of the documents. They tried to divert attention for the content of the damning documents by inventing the Russian hack story. This occurred before the election.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-13 18:18:40 Reply Private Reply
#47: rlk To: nolu chan (#45)
Maybe there should be a wailing and gnashing of teeth. I've seen a decay in all aspects of this country for 60 years. It's time to find out why, then do something about it.
I'm not of the opinion that everthing should always be nice.
rlk posted on 2017-08-13 21:19:33 Reply Private Reply
#48: rlk To: nolu chan (#46)
The entire scene is a hoax to present Hillary and the people who supported har as victims. Hillary was not a poor defenseless victim. She has been on a leftist countercultural warpath for sixty years.
rlk posted on 2017-08-13 22:18:24 Reply Private Reply
#49: nolu chan To: rlk (#48)
The entire scene is not a hoax. The LEAK was very real, and harmful to the chosen candidate of the Democratic party elite. It was not the Russians who did the LEAK, it was someone from inside the DNC.
Many of the emails were authenticated by a google hash. All tested proved to be authentic.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-13 23:48:31 Reply Private Reply
#50: rlk To: nolu chan (#49)
You still have not shown significant damage to anybody or anything.
rlk posted on 2017-08-14 00:23:40 Reply Private Reply
#51: nolu chan To: rlk (#50)
The verified authentic trove of email published by Wikileaks prove beyond a doubt that the LEAK was not a hoax. You can stop that nonsense any time now.
Now you are just being ridiculous. Hillary was outed as receiving a debate question in advance from Donna Brazile.
WIKILEAKS 38478 - One of the questions directed to HRC tomorrow is from a woman with a rash
And, of course, the emails were rife with Clinton corruption and spirit cooking.
When you make believe that you cannot see that these were damaging, you only make yourself look like a ridiculous, midol popping, hysterical fruitcake.
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-14 02:25:47 Reply Private Reply
#52: rlk To: nolu chan (#51)
In your eyes.
Not in the eyes of cold logic. You've been all over the map with bull crap and plated every prank in the book. Apparently you don't even read your own posts. Case closed. You want to believe it's the downfall of the world, go on with it and have a ball.
rlk posted on 2017-08-14 21:36:01 Reply Private Reply
#53: nolu chan To: rlk (#52)
Your warmed over bullshit is not logic.
Your heroine Hillary LOST.
The hashed and authenticated emails were real. Not even Hillary claimed they were not authentic. The LEAK was REAL.
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927#efmFhxFke
nolu chan posted on 2017-08-14 22:52:22 Reply Private Reply
#54: rlk To: nolu chan (#53)
Nice try. You figure saying the will create volcanic eruptions of rage that will sentence me to stay and argue with you for weeks. No deal. I'm not taking the bait. If you want to label me a past Ross Perot supporter, I'll agree with you.
rlk posted on 2017-08-14 23:27:35 Reply Private Reply