SPIES & LIES - PART 1

**Carol** Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:38 pm

Carol: Admin; Posts : 31674
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Post n°476

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Wed Jul 05, 2017 10:38 pm

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jul/5/dnc-email-server-most-wanted-evidence-for-russia-i/
Hacked computer server that handled DNC email remains out of reach of Russia investigators

It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia’s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee.

Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack — but which has come under fire itself for its work.

Some critics say CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin. Members of Congress say they still believe Russia was responsible but wonder why the DNC has never allowed federal investigators to get a look at the key piece of evidence: the server. Either way, a key “witness” in the political scandal consuming the Trump administration remains beyond the reach of investigators.

“I want to find out from the company [that] did the forensics what their full findings were,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is leading the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry, told The Washington Times.

Scrutinizing the DNC server hack and CrowdStrike’s analysis has not factored heavily in multiple probes exploring the Russia issue. But behind the scenes, discussions are growing louder, congressional sources say.

In recent days, questions about the server have taken on more importance as attention has focused on an email suggesting that the DNC and the Obama administration’s Justice Department were trying to limit the scope of the FBI’s investigation into Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s secret email account.

Mentioned in recent reporting and testimony from fired FBI Director James B. Comey, the correspondence reportedly shows Obama-era Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch privately assuring “someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter.”

Some observers have wondered whether the information is real or is Russian disinformation.

The hacked server was last photographed in the basement of the DNC’s Washington headquarters near a file cabinet dating from the 1972 break-in of the DNC headquarters at the Watergate Hotel.

Both Republicans and Democrats say the DNC’s reaction to the hacking is troubling.

Jeh Johnson, who served as homeland security secretary under President Obama, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last month that his department offered to assist the DNC during the campaign to determine what was happening, but Mr. Johnson said he was rebuffed.

“The DNC,” Mr. Johnson said at the time, “did not feel it needed DHS’ assistance at that time. I was anxious to know whether or not our folks were in there, and the response I got was the FBI had spoken to them, they don’t want our help, they have CrowdStrike.”

In January, Mr. Comey told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the FBI issued “multiple requests at different levels” to assist the DNC with a cyberforensic analysis. Those requests were also denied.

DNC officials said the Russian hack had already been discovered and dealt with when the Homeland Security Department approached them last summer.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris, California Democrat and a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said more needs to be known about the interaction.

“As a general point, there is no question that we need to look into everything in terms of who did what, what was invasive about hacking, and what they gained from it and why,” Ms. Harris told The Times. “Not only so we can establish what happened, but so it can teach us what is frankly inevitable about the next election cycle if we don’t figure out what happened.”

The White House has highlighted what it says is the DNC’s reluctance to accept help dealing with the server hack. President Trump, in a May 7 tweet, wondered: “When will the Fake Media ask about the Dems dealings with Russia & why the DNC wouldn’t allow the FBI to check their server or investigate?”

Clouds over CrowdStrike

The DNC hack produced embarrassing internal emails that were posted to WikiLeaks and sparked a nasty internal battle just as the party was preparing for its convention and refereeing a spirited primary contest between front-runner Hillary Clinton and the insurgent campaign of Sen. Bernard Sanders.

Some emails suggested that the DNC leadership — including Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz — had plotted to undermine Mr. Sanders’ ascent in the presidential race. The WikiLeaks revelations on July 22 eventually resulted in the departures of Ms. Wasserman Schultz and several other top DNC executives.

To explore the hack, the DNC called in CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity tech company launched in 2011 hoping to challenge better-known industry leaders such as Symantec and McAfee.

Co-founded by George Kurtz and Dmitri Alperovitch, both former McAfee employees, CrowdStrike quickly acquired a string of high-profile clients.

In 2014, it investigated the Sony Pictures leak, the disclosure of a trove of sensitive and embarrassing internal emails and executive salary data apparently orchestrated by hackers sympathetic to North Korea, and who objected to Sony’s comic depiction of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“We don’t have a mission statement — we are on a mission to protect our customers from breaches,” CrowdStrike’s website declares.

The firm also has found success in generating venture capital support. Fortune magazine reported that it has raised $256 million and boasts a “valuation exceeding $1 billion.”

Investors include Warburg Pincus, whose president, Timothy Geithner, worked for the Clinton and Obama administrations. The Clinton campaign’s largest corporate contributor, Google, whose employees donated more than $1.3 million to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign last year, also has funded CrowdStrike.

During the election cycle last year, the DNC paid CrowdStrike more than $410,000. This year, it has collected more than $121,000 from the party.

The DNC declined to answer questions about CrowdStrike. During a telephone call with The Times, DNC communications staff also refused to discuss the location of its infamous server.

In an ironic twist, CrowdStrike has added the National Republican Congressional Committee to its client list. The NRCC also declined to answer questions for this report.

In an email to The Times, CrowdStrike defended its record and said criticisms about its DNC work and interaction with U.S. law enforcement agencies are unfounded.

“In May 2016 CrowdStrike was brought to investigate the DNC network for signs of compromise, and under their direction we fully cooperated with every U.S. government request,” a spokesman wrote. The cooperation included the “providing of the forensic images of the DNC systems to the FBI, along with our investigation report and findings. Those agencies reviewed and subsequently independently validated our analysis.”

Questions

Still, the company faces increasing scrutiny, including over the impartiality of co-founder Mr. Alperovitch.

Mr. Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank focused on international issues that is partially funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who reportedly has donated at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

Late last year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank, disputed CrowdStrike’s analysis of a Russian hack during Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists. CrowdStrike later revised and retracted portions of its analysis.

CrowdStrike’s most famous finding — that Russian-supported hackers penetrated the DNC server — has triggered the most questions.

Last year, that finding was wrapped into the assessment from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which first raised alarms about Russian meddling.

The DNI, which briefed Mr. Obama and Mr. Trump on the Russian meddling operation and issued classified and public assessments, concluded that “the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” meaning the DNC hack.

CrowdStrike said it found malware known as X-Agent on the DNC computers. Russia’s Federal Security Service and its main military intelligence branch, the GRU, have used this malware to penetrate unclassified networks at the White House, the State Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

CrowdStrike also said it had identified two teams of Russian hackers, with the code names “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” operating inside the DNC network.

“We’ve had lots of experience with both of these actors attempting to target our customers in the past and know them well,” Mr. Alperovitch wrote on CrowdStrike’s blog in June 2016.

But cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr questioned whether CrowdStrike’s evidence clinches the case.

“X-Agent has been around for ages and has always been attributed to the Russian government, but others use it,” said Mr. Carr, who has supplied the U.S. intelligence community with analysis.

Mr. Carr said in an interview that the malware can be recovered, reverse-engineered and reused. Copies of X-Agent exist outside Russian hands, including one with an American cybersecurity company. He said it’s possible CrowdStrike was duped — or simply sees Russia’s handiwork everywhere.

WikiLeaks has consistently denied that it received the material from the Kremlin amid reports that a leaker within the DNC might have abetted the hack. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Fox News in January: “We can say, we have said, repeatedly over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

Atlanta-based hacker Robert David Graham, who runs a consultancy called Errata Security, said CrowdStrike’s certainty about the Russian role can’t be accepted uncritically.

“CrowdStrike is better than anything that the government has,” he said. “But once you decide it is Russia, you will go looking for Russia.”

Overall, he said, political factors distorted what needs to be a more scientific approach to who had access to the DNC servers.

“For good or bad, we make judgments based on our expertise and knowledge,” he said. “Sometimes they are insightful and awesomely correct. Sometimes they fall flat on their face.”

Mr. Graham, a libertarian like many others in the hacker community, said that from a privacy standpoint, he understands why the DNC would not want to hand over its server to the federal government. “What private company would?”

Congressional inquiry?

Whether CrowdStrike appears before a congressional inquiry anytime soon could depend on the momentum of the overall Russia investigations throughout Capitol Hill.

Late last month, after hearing Mr. Johnson say the DNC denied Homeland Security overtures to help secure its computers, Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican and the incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said, “There may be something else on that server [that the DNC] didn’t want law enforcement to see.”

Mr. Graham has insisted he needs to know more about CrowdStrike.

“What did they find?” he asked.

Some on Capitol Hill have an even harsher take. Rep. Louie Gohmert, a conservative Texas Republican and a former prosecutor, said DNC and CrowdStrike are acting like defendants with something to hide in declining to allow government investigators access to the server.

“Why would they not invite them in?” Mr. Gohmert asked in a Fox News interview last month. “And I’m really interested in their excuse. But just from my own experience in all those years, usually the reason somebody didn’t want to invite law enforcement in to investigate is because they knew they would find that they had committed crimes if they came in and started investigating.”

The cybersecurity community also wants more answers.

“The only things that pay in the cybersecurity world are claims of attribution,” Mr. Carr said. “Which foreign government attacked you? If you are critical of the attack, you make zero money. CrowdStrike is the poster child for companies that operate like this.”

Last year, alongside one of the DNI assessments, the Obama administration released a spreadsheet containing part of CrowdStrike’s cyberforensic work. The data included digital signatures and IP addresses, which trace computer-to-computer communications and help identify hackers. Mr. Graham, the hacker, said the only way to dispel all doubt would be to analyze independently everything CrowdStrike has seen. To do so would mean getting access to the DNC server.

As for CrowdStrike, when asked whether officials would be willing to testify before a congressional inquiry, a spokesman reiterated in an email that the company already “provided the forensic images and our analysis to the FBI.” He said the company is “standing by the work it did for the DNC.”

In May, less than a week after Mr. Comey was fired as FBI director, CrowdStrike announced it had raised $100 million in venture capital.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:29 pm

Carol

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Post n°477

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:29 pm

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Trump-putin-640x480

How CNN Fueled the Discredited ‘Peeing Russia Prostitutes’ Anti-Trump Dossier
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/06/how-cnn-fueled-discredited-peeing-russia-prostitutes-anti-trump-dossier/
by Aaron Klein 6 Jul 2017

TEL AVIV — CNN played a critical role in originally publicizing the existence of a 35-page dossier on President Donald Trump that would later become largely discredited.

The dossier in question was authored by former intelligence agent Christopher Steele, who was reportedly paid by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans to investigate Trump. Steele recently conceded in court documents that part of his work still needed to be verified.

The dossier contains wild and unproven claims that the Russians had information regarding Trump and sordid sexual acts, including the widely mocked claim that Trump hired prostitutes and had them urinate on a hotel room bed.

On January 10, CNN was first to report the leaked information that the controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings inside classified documents presented one week earlier to then-President Obama and President-elect Trump.

The news network cited “multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings” – in other words, officials leaking information about classified briefings – revealing the dossier contents were included in a two-page synopsis that served as an addendum to a larger report on Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

The documents were given to the politicians during the briefings delivered by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers, the officials told CNN.

The network reported the documents state that “Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump” and contain “allegations that there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian government.”

Those allegations, made within the dossier, remain unsubstantiated following numerous public hearings.

Indeed, Brennan made clear in May testimony that after viewing all of the evidence that was available to him on the Russia probe he is not aware of any collusion between Russia and members of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

CNN gives media an opening on the dossier

Just after CNN’s January 10 report on the classified briefings about the dossier, meanwhile, BuzzFeed famously published the dossier’s full unverified contents.

The New York Times used CNN’s story to report some contents of the dossier the same day as CNN’s January 10 report on the briefings.

After citing the CNN story, the Times reported:

The memos describe sex videos involving prostitutes with Mr. Trump in a 2013 visit to a Moscow hotel. The videos were supposedly prepared as “kompromat,” or compromising material, with the possible goal of blackmailing Mr. Trump in the future.

The memos also suggest that Russian officials proposed various lucrative deals, essentially as disguised bribes in order to win influence over Mr. Trump.

The memos describe several purported meetings during the 2016 presidential campaign between Trump representatives and Russian officials to discuss matters of mutual interest, including the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta.

Immediately following CNN’s article, Clapper added fuel to the media fire about the dossier by releasing a statement that he spoke to Trump to expressed “my profound dismay at the leaks that have been appearing in the press” – referring to the leaks to CNN about the classified briefing. He called the leaks “extremely corrosive and damaging to our national security.”

Comey’s statement generated fresh media coverage of the dossier briefing.

Prior to CNN’s report, which was picked up by news agencies worldwide, the contents of the dossier had been circulating among news media outlets, but the sensational claims were largely considered too risky to publish.

All that changed when the dossier contents were presented to Obama and Trump during the classified briefings. In other words, the briefings themselves and the subsequent leak to CNN about those briefings by “multiple US officials with direct knowledge,” seem to have given the news media the opening to report on the dossier’s existence as well as allude to some of the document’s unproven claims.

In an updated version of CNN’s report, the network revealed that it had reviewed the 35-page dossier and would not report “on details of the memos, as it has not independently corroborated the specific allegations.”

CNN reported that the classified briefings to Obama and Trump demonstrated the dossier information was “credible enough” to be included in such high-level briefings:

Some of the memos were circulating as far back as last summer. What has changed since then is that US intelligence agencies have now checked out the former British intelligence operative and his vast network throughout Europe and find him and his sources to be credible enough to include some of the information in the presentations to the President and President-elect a few days ago.

When it published the full dossier, BuzzFeed reported that the contents had circulated “for months” and were known to journalists.

The website reported, “The documents have circulated for months and acquired a kind of legendary status among journalists, lawmakers, and intelligence officials who have seen them. Mother Jones writer David Corn referred to the documents in a late October column.”

In his statement following the leaks to CNN about the dossier briefings to Obama and Trump, Clapper also said the dossier contents had been “widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it.”

It seems the news media waited for the leak about the dossier briefings first reported by CNN before publicizing on the dossier’s existence and some of its contents.

Yet in his testimony, Comey claimed the opposite was the case. He claimed that he and other U.S. officials briefed Obama and Trump about the dossier contents because they wanted to alert the president and president-elect that the news media were about to release the material. It is not the usual job of the U.S. intelligence community to brief top officials about pending news media coverage.

In his prepared remarks before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in June, Comey detailed why he claimed the Intelligence Community briefed Obama and Trump on the “salacious material” – a clear reference to the dossier.

Comey wrote:

The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.

Also, Clapper was asked the following question by CNN’s Jim Sciutto during an appearance that aired a week and a half ago on a one-hour network special documentary on the Russia allegations: “Can you tell us your thinking to why you included a summary on the now famous dossier and the briefings to the president-elect and the president?”

Clapper replied, “Well, we thought that it was important that he know about it. That was the main point. Not to comment on the veracity.

Dossier discredited

Major questions have been raised as to the veracity of the dossier, large sections of which have been discredited.

Citing a “Kremlin insider,” the dossier, which misspelled the name of a Russian diplomat, claimed that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen held “secret meetings” with Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016.

That charge unraveled after Cohen revealed he had never traveled to Prague, calling the story “totally fake, totally inaccurate.” The Atlantic confirmed Cohen’s whereabouts in New York and California during the period the dossier claimed that Cohen was in Prague. Cohen reportedly produced his passport showing he had not traveled to Prague.

In testimony in May, Comey confirmed that the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia allegedly wanted Trump in office was not because the billionaire was, as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) claimed during a hearing, “ensnared in” Russia’s “web of patronage” – just as the dossier alleged. Instead, the FBI chief provided two primary reasons for Russia’s alleged favoring of Trump over Clinton during the 2016 presidential race.

One reason, according to Comey, was that Putin “hated” Clinton and would have favored any Republican opponent. The second reason, Comey explained, was that Putin made an assessment that it would be easier to make a deal with a businessman than someone from the political class.

Comey’s statements are a far cry from the conspiracies fueled by the dossier alleging Putin held blackmail information over the billionaire.

Citing current and former government officials, the New Yorker reported the dossier prompted skepticism among intelligence community members, with the publication quoting one member saying it was a “nutty” piece of evidence to submit to a U.S. president.

Steele’s work has been questioned by former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, who currently works at the Hillary Clinton-tied Beacon Global Strategies LLC.

According to the BBC, the dossier served as a “roadmap” for the FBI’s investigation into claims of coordination between Moscow and members of Trump’s presidential campaign.

In April, CNN reported that the dossier served as part of the FBI’s justification for seeking the FISA court’s reported approval to clandestinely monitor the communications of Carter Page, the American oil industry consultant who was tangentially and briefly associated with Trump’s presidential campaign.

Senior Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have reportedly requested that the FBI and Department of Justice turn over applications for any warrants to monitor the communications of U.S. citizens associated with the investigation into alleged Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election.

In testimony last month, Comey repeatedly refused to answer questions about his agency’s ties to the dossier.

In testimony last month to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Comey admitted he pushed back against a request from President Donald Trump to possibly investigate the origins of “salacious material” that the agency possessed in the course of its investigation into alleged Russian interference.

Author and journalist Paul Sperry reported in the New York Post last week that this month, the Senate Judiciary Committee threatened to subpoena Fusion GPS, the secretive firm that hired Steele to produce the dossier because the firm reportedly refused to answer questions about who financed the dossier.

Sperry raised further questions regarding possible connections between Fusion GPS and Hillary Clinton:

Fusion GPS was on the payroll of an unidentified Democratic ally of Clinton when it hired a long-retired British spy to dig up dirt on Trump. In 2012, Democrats hired Fusion GPS to uncover dirt on GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. And in 2015, Democratic ally Planned Parenthood retained Fusion GPS to investigate pro-life activists protesting the abortion group.

Moreover, federal records show a key co-founder and partner in the firm was a Hillary Clinton donor and supporter of her presidential campaign.

In September 2016, while Fusion GPS was quietly shopping the dirty dossier on Trump around Washington, its co-founder and partner Peter R. Fritsch contributed at least $1,000 to the Hillary Victory Fund and the Hillary For America campaign, Federal Election Commission data show. His wife also donated money to Hillary’s campaign.

CNN under fire

CNN, meanwhile, has been under fire for several weeks, after the network retracted a story that relied on one anonymous source to allege ties between a Trump ally and a Russian investment bank. Three CNN staffers reportedly resigned in the wake of the scandal. The network abruptly deleted and then retracted the story after Breitbart News’s Matt Boyle questioned the narrative.

CNN faced more controversy after Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe released a video in which the network’s supervising producer, John Bonifield, who works for the medical and health section, referred to the Russia interference story as “mostly bullshit” while indicating the story was being pumped for ratings.

“I just feel like they don’t really have it, but they want to keep digging. And so I think the president is probably right to say, like, ‘Look, you are witch hunting me,’” Bonifield was filmed stating. “You have no smoking gun. You have no real proof.”

O’Keefe followed that up with a second video on Wednesday in which CNN commentator Van Jones called the Russia collusion story a “big nothing burger.”

A third O’Keefe video caught a producer for CNN’s New Day show with Chris Cuomo criticizing Trump and mocking American voters.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:47 pm

Carol

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Post n°478

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 2:47 pm

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Podesta-annoyed-getty-420x315

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/05/ny-post-its-time-to-investigate-john-podestas-russia-ties/
Schweizer in NY Post: It’s Time to Investigate John Podesta’s Russia Ties

During a heated Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief John Podesta made a series of misleading statements when questioned about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Russian government while Hillary served as secretary of state

On Jan. 18, 2011, a small green-energy company named Joule Unlimited announced Podesta’s appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joule’s board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic-modernization council.

Bartiromo asked Podesta why he failed to disclose his role in Joule as required by law when he entered the White House in January 2014 to serve as counselor to President Barack Obama.

“Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” Podesta shot back.

But according to his own financial disclosure form, Podesta only listed two of the three entities that made up Joule Unlimited, failing to disclose his presence on the board of the Dutch-registered Stichting Joule Global Foundation.

When Bartiromo pressed Podesta on the whereabouts of his 75,000 shares of Joule stock, Podesta resorted to Clintonesque semantics: “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!”

Notice the rhetorical sleight of tongue there: Joule is based in Massachusetts, not Russia, making Podesta’s statement technically true. Podesta added: “And by the way, I divested before I went into the White House.”

Yet again, it’s not that simple. WikiLeaks documents reveal that when he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clinton’s campaign. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.

But nothing to see here, Podesta insisted.

“I was on the board of an American company that did business here and only here,” he said. “The Russian company had a small investment in that company. We can go round and around the tree.”

Was Joule’s business “here and only here” in America as Podesta claimed? Not according to Joule’s own CEO and president, Bill Sims. While thanking Putin’s Rusnano, Sims said the investment would help support “the development of our global presence” and “complements the company’s expansion plans in Europe, the Middle East, and Mexico.” Moreover, Stichting Joule is itself an overseas entity. Indeed, Rusnano’s investment in Joule was in part to develop a manufacturing facility in Russia.

And what about Podesta’s contention that Putin’s investment fund represented a “small investment” in Joule? In 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date.

That meant the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.

There’s also this inconvenient fact: In 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group — which is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta.

In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule. No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.

Are US officials investigating the matter? We don’t know. When Bartiromo asked Podesta whether his closed-door session in front of the House Intelligence Committee included questions about his Russian ties and Joule, Podesta punted: “I have already told you that I was asked not to talk about specific questions, and I said I would respect that.”

After the slippery answers Podesta delivered during his explosive Fox Business interview, US officials have more reasons than ever to demand answers about John Podesta, Joule Unlimited and Putin’s Rusnano investment fund. If they weren’t investigating Podesta before, they should be now.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:16 pm

Carol

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Join date : 2010-04-07
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Post n°479

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:16 pm

BREAKING: Massive PizzaGate Arrests - 3500 Busted!
Posted: 04 Jul 2017 02:05 PM PDT
https://youtu.be/WY5nR4d4Q7A

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 595e2360dda4c825368b4567

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 595e2360dda4c825368b4567

90,000-strong child porn ring busted on ‘dark web’
https://www.rt.com/news/395464-dark-web-child-porn-website/

Police in Frankfurt swooped on suspected pedophiles after busting a massive child pornography website on the ‘dark web’. The site had almost 90,000 users who swapped graphic images of children and arranged meetings to abuse them. The forum, known as ‘Elysium,’ had existed on the internet’s darkside since the end of 2016.

Frankfurt public prosecutor's and Germany’s BKA Federal Police said they arrested several people connected to the forum, including the sites suspected operator, a 39-year-old man living in Frankfurt.

The unidentified man was arrested on June 12 when police raided his apartment seizing the server used to host the site.

Elysium had more than 87,000 users worldwide who utilised the platform to disseminate horrifying pornographic images of children as well as arranging appointments to abuse children.

"Among the child pornographic images and video files exchanged by the members of the platform were recordings of the most serious sexual abuse of children, including toddlers and depictions of sexual violence against children," prosecutors said in a statement, as cited by Reuters.

Authorities have not divulged how many suspects have been arrested. More details will be made available in a press conference Friday.

This latest bust comes just two months after nearly 900 members of a global ‘dark web’ pedophile ring spanning Europe and the Americas were arrested following a two-year investigation by the FBI and Europol.

The website's founder was handed a 30-year jail sentence.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:32 pm

Carol

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Join date : 2010-04-07
Location : Hawaii

Post n°480

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:32 pm

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Abid-e1498524916507-279x120

House Dem IT Suspects Wanted Untraceable Payments. House Dem IT Suspects Wanted Untraceable Payments
— And Sure Enough, Millions Disappeared
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/05/house-dem-it-suspects-wanted-untraceable-payments-and-sure-enough-millions-disappeared/

A Pakistani family under criminal investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police for abusing their access to the House of Representatives information technology (IT) system may have engaged in myriad other questionable schemes besides allegedly placing “ghost employees” on the congressional payroll.

Imran Awan, his wife Hina, and brothers Abid and Jamal collectively netted more than $4 million in salary as IT administrators for House Democrats between 2009 and 2017. Yet the absence of signs of wealth displayed among them raise questions such as was the money sent overseas or did something other than paychecks motivate their actions?

Capitol Police revoked the Awans’ access to the congressional IT system in February 2017 after a major data breach was detected. Their access had allowed them to read emails and files of dozens of members, including many serving on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

House Democrats have been nonchalant about the allegations, with some saying it was just a misunderstanding or the Capitol Police framed the Awans due to Islamophobia.

But official documents, court records and multiple interviews suggest the crew may have engaged in tax fraud, extortion, bankruptcy fraud and insurance fraud and the money could have been funneled overseas. Abid has hired high-profile attorney James Bacon who specializes in anti-money laundering litigation.

The Awans share modest homes, drive unremarkable cars and report little in the way of assets on congressional disclosures. The family owns significant amounts of Virginia rental properties, which are heavily financed, with second mortgages sometimes taken out. It’s unclear where the rental income goes because the Awans insist tenants pay in odd ways.

The Daily Caller News foundation interviewed multiple current and former tenants who said Imran insisted rent be paid in untraceable ways. Many of those TheDCNF interviewed about the Awans asked not to be identified for fear of suffering retaliation by the family, particularly renters to whose homes Imran has keys.

“He only wants cash — for the security deposit, everything. The mortgage is probably $600, we pay $1,800 a month,” one said.

“I would write the rent to all sorts of different people,” another claimed. While still another tenant said the family insisted on blank money orders.

Those interviewed also were puzzled that Congress kept the Awans on the payroll full-time when the family spent months of the year in Pakistan.

The four Awans were each making approximately $160,000 a year on Capitol Hill. Other House IT workers told TheDCNF that the Awans appeared to hold no-show jobs, with bare-bones services provided, and it appeared one person was doing the work for the rest of them.

Cristal Perpignan, a former Awan renter, said Imran instructed her to pay the rent to Imran’s friend, Rao Abbas, who lived in the basement of the home she occupied and was also on the House payroll as an IT worker. But Perpignan said Abbas spent his days at home.

Imran’s wife purchased the home in 2008 for $470,000. A second mortgage was taken out in 2012, and — at least on paper — it was sold to Imran’s 22-year old brother Jamal in November 2016 for $620,000 — $43,000 more than its assessed value.

All but five percent of Jamal’s purchase, $589,000, was financed by the bank, according to records reviewed by TheDCNF. This means the transaction netted the family $119,000 of the bank’s money even as the house remained a rental property, without the ownership ever leaving the family.

According to Wells Fargo, people can’t use a standard mortgage for a rental property. The bank must be told of the intent to use the property as a rental, and the applicant generally is required to make a 20 percent down payment. There are no notes in property records that it was not an arms-length sale.

While the Awans had access to the emails of members of sensitive congressional committees, Abid incorporated a car dealership in Falls Church, Va., with Nasir Khattek, who operated an established car dealership next door.

Khattek later said in sworn testimony that the Abid dealership’s financial books were a sham. Abid’s dealership received $100,000 from Ali Al-Attar, an Iraqi politician who practiced medicine in the Washington, D.C. region and is a fugitive from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The dealership racked up debts to people who subsequently accused Abid of fraud, according to court documents. Abid filed bankruptcy to discharge the debts, while his family members remained untouched. Khattek testified the dealership was run as a “family business,” with Imran, not Abid, in control.

As some of Capitol Hill’s highest-paid employees, the brothers had to submit financial disclosure statements to Congress, but Abid attested that he had no liabilities. Imran checked “no” when asked whether his spouse had any income, even though she was making a top salary from the same employer reviewing the disclosure documents.

The disclosures also ask about rental income, but the Awans often listed either no or little rent payments received.

Though people in bankruptcy procedures must sell off their assets to pay creditors, Abid kept two houses by swearing he was separated or divorcing from his wife and living apart. Years later, they are still together.

In January, as their father lay dying, the brothers tried to commandeer assets stored in his name, according to their stepmother, Samina Gilani. They installed listening devices in her house, plugged in a device behind her computer, and forbade her from leaving the house, she said in court documents and interviews. The brothers’ aim was to obtain a power of attorney giving them control of their father’s assets in Pakistan, their stepmother told TheDCNF.

“Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful, and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Gilani said in court documents.

Days before their father died, the brothers badgered him to sign over assets as insignificant as a $5,000 car — assets they didn’t need, according to a relative. The relative speculated the goal was to make their father desperate enough to sign the Pakistani power of attorney, which would give them access to potentially sizable offshore bank accounts.

They also had their dying father sign a form making Abid administrator of his life insurance policy, though nothing about the change altered Gilani’s position as beneficiary.

However, Jamal falsely attested on the death certificate that his father was divorced, and Abid made himself beneficiary, leading to a lawsuit alleging life insurance fraud. Outside of the Fairfax County court during the case, Abid would say only that “people could harm me,” declining to explain what he meant.

The Capitol Police criminal investigation has gone on for months, but of more than a dozen people with ties to the Awans who were interviewed by TheDCNF, most have not been contacted by officials.

Among those investigators have not interviewed is Gilani, even though the brothers allegedly wiretapped and extorted her — behavior that could be highly relevant to the Capitol Hill probe.

Go to link to Read the rest:

A Continuing DCNF Investigative Group Series

House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs Committee Members Compromised By Rogue IT Staff
Brothers Had Massive Debts, Years Of Suspicious Activity
...Secretly Took $100K In Iraqi Money
...Owed Money To Hezbollah-Connected Fugitive
...Received $4 Million From Dem Reps
...Allegedly Kept Stepmom In 'Captivity' To Access Offshore Cash
...Also Had Access To DNC Emails
...Could Read Every Email Dozens Of Congressmen Sent And Received
Paul Ryan: Capitol Police Getting 'Assistance' On Criminal Investigation
Read the Court Docs Detailing Their Greed, Ruthlessness
House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members
Suspect Has Fled To Pakistan, Relative Says
Wasserman Schultz Threatened Police Chief For Gathering Evidence On Her IT Staffer
DWS Admits To Violating Network Security, Blames House
House Dems Hired A Fired McDonald's Worker As Their Email Administrator
In Dem Email Administrators' Personal Lives, Evidence Of Massive Cons Everywhere
Court docs

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:39 pm

Carol

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Post n°481

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 3:39 pm

GLOBAL WARMING LIES

EXCLUSIVE: Study Finds Temperature Adjustments Account For 'Nearly All Of The Warming' In Climate Data

'Each dataset pushed down the 1940s warming'
ENERGY | MICHAEL BASTASCH
http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/05/exclusive-study-finds-temperature-adjustments-account-for-nearly-all-of-the-warming-in-climate-data/

A new study found adjustments made to global surface temperature readings by scientists in recent years “are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

“Thus, it is impossible to conclude from the three published GAST data sets that recent years have been the warmest ever – despite current claims of record setting warming,” according to a study published June 27 by two scientists and a veteran statistician.

The peer-reviewed study tried to validate current surface temperature datasets managed by NASA, NOAA and the UK’s Met Office, all of which make adjustments to raw thermometer readings. Skeptics of man-made global warming have criticized the adjustments.

Climate scientists often apply adjustments to surface temperature thermometers to account for “biases” in the data. The new study doesn’t question the adjustments themselves but notes nearly all of them increase the warming trend.

Basically, “cyclical pattern in the earlier reported data has very nearly been ‘adjusted’ out” of temperature readings taken from weather stations, buoys, ships and other sources.

Ice temperature warming adjustments cool past temperatures and warm more current records, increasing the warming trend, according to the study’s authors.

“Nearly all of the warming they are now showing are in the adjustments,” Meteorologist Joe D’Aleo, a study co-author, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview. “Each dataset pushed down the 1940s warming and pushed up the current warming.”

“You would think that when you make adjustments you’d sometimes get warming and sometimes get cooling. That’s almost never happened,” said D’Aleo, who co-authored the study with statistician James Wallace and Cato Institute climate scientist Craig Idso.

Their study found measurements “nearly always exhibited a steeper warming linear trend over its entire history,” which was “nearly always accomplished by systematically removing the previously existing cyclical temperature pattern.”

“The conclusive findings of this research are that the three [global average surface temperature] data sets are not a valid representation of reality,” the study found. “In fact, the magnitude of their historical data adjustments, that removed their cyclical temperature patterns, are totally inconsistent with published and credible U.S. and other temperature data.”

Based on these results, the study’s authors claim the science underpinning the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authority to regulate greenhouse gases “is invalidated.”

The new study will be included in petitions by conservative groups to the EPA to reconsider the 2009 endangerment finding, which gave the agency its legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Sam Kazman, an attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), said the study added an “important new piece of evidence to this debate” over whether to reopen the endangerment finding. CEI petitioned EPA to reopen the endangerment finding in February.

“I think this adds a very strong new element to it,” Kazman told TheDCNF. “It’s enough reason to open things formally and open public comment on the charges we make.”

Since President Donald Trump ordered EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to review the Clean Power Plan, there’s been speculation the administration would reopen the endangerment finding to new scrutiny.

The Obama-era document used three lines of evidence to claim such emissions from vehicles “endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations.”

D’Aleo and Wallace filed a petition with EPA on behalf of their group, the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC). They relied on past their past research, which found one of EPA’s lines of evidence “simply does not exist in the real world.”

Their 2016 study “failed to find that the steadily rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations have had a statistically significant impact on any of the 13 critically important temperature time series data analyzed.”

“In sum, all three of the lines of evidence relied upon by EPA to attribute warming to human GHG emissions are invalid,” reads CHCC’s petition. “The Endangerment Finding itself is therefore invalid and should be reconsidered.

Pruitt’s largely been silent on whether or not he would reopen the endangerment finding, but the administrator did say he was spearheading a red team exercise to tackle climate science.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry also came out in favor of red-blue team exercises, which are used by the military and intelligence agencies to expose any vulnerabilities to systems or strategies.

Environmental activists and climate scientists largely panned the idea, with some even arguing it would be “dangerous” to elevate minority scientific opinions.

“Such calls for special teams of investigators are not about honest scientific debate,” wrote climate scientist Ben Santer and Kerry Emanuel and historian and activist Naomi Oreskes.

“They are dangerous attempts to elevate the status of minority opinions, and to undercut the legitimacy, objectivity and transparency of existing climate science,” the three wrote in a recent Washington Post op-ed.

“Frankly, I think you could do a red-blue team exercise as part of reviewing the endangerment finding,” Kazman said.

Though Kazman did warn a red team exercise could be a double-edged sword if not done correctly. He worries some scientists not supportive of the idea could undermine the process from the inside and use it to grandstand.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 4:44 pm

Carol

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Post n°482

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 4:44 pm

NBC: Hillary Clinton Threatened Staff Over State Dept. Pedo Ring Story

An NBC news report claims that Hillary Clinton, while secretary of state, shut down an investigation into an elite pedophile ring in State Department ranks in order to avoid scandal and protect the careers of high ranking officials and an ambassador.
Link from 2013 : http://www.nbcnews.com/id/52184794/t/new-allegations-state-department-cover-up/#.WV6uXDOZOYV

Hillary Clinton team members “threatened the lives” of NBC investigative reporters in order to shut down an investigation into a State Department pedophile ring cover up scandal, according to a member of the NBC production staff.

The day after an NBC news broadcast broke the news of a pedophile ring cover up within the State Department, “members of the Clinton team” contacted executives at NBC and threatened reporters working on the investigation with “the most serious kind of consequences“.

The infamous NBC investigation was broadcast at a time when the network was a real news organization rather than a branch of the Democratic Party’s PR department, and provided internal State Department memos to back up claims of a massive Hillary Clinton elite pedophile ring cover-up.

“Serious allegations concerning the State Department,” Matt Lauer announced, before launching into the disturbing details that mainstream media would be unable to report on in 2017.

However NBC viewers were puzzled when the explosive investigation was suddenly dropped by the network, pulled from the NBC website, and never mentioned by the network again.

“We were devastated when we got pulled from that investigation,” the assistant producer said. “The executives pulled us into a room, which was unusual back then, and told us we had to drop it. They’d been contacted by members of the Clinton team. They were made aware of ‘potential consequences’, the most serious kind, if we continued with the investigation.”

“We had to make a choice between continuing the investigation or risking our lives. Obviously, as you know, as history shows, we decided we had to drop the investigation.”

The original NBC report, broadcast while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, uncovered internal State Department memos proving that a pedophile ring existed within the department – but rather than handing the evidence over to law enforcement, Hillary ordered aides to cover up the scandal and protect the high-profile offenders.

View the original report here:

In the report, NBC’s Chuck Todd said: “According to internal State Department memos the agency might have called off or intervened into investigations into possibly illegal, inappropriate behavior within it’s ranks allegedly to protect jobs and avoid scandals.”

“There is an old saying in Washington that the cover-up is worse than the crime. But in this case both parts of it are disturbing,” Chuck Todd continued.

“Allegations of prostitution and pedophilia, and allegations that those crimes were somehow covered up or not looked into. So the State Department this morning is having to respond to those claims, and those investigations involve misconduct by State Department officials, including an Ambassador and security agents attached to then secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

“The allegations are that these investigations were whitewashed, quashed altogether, and that those orders came from high up.”

“NBC has obtained documents relating to ongoing investigations into some disturbing allegations involving State Department personnel and at least one ambassador. A State Department memo says, quote, “the Ambassador routinely ditched his protective security detail in order to solicit sexual favors from both prostitutes and minor children.

“The memo also says a top State Department official directed State Department investigators to “cease the investigation” into the ambassador’s conduct.” It’s just one of what another document describes as “several examples of undue influence” from top State Department officials.”

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:40 pm

Carol

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Post n°483

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:40 pm

CNN Offices In Moscow Raided By FSB Counterintelligence Team
July 6, 2017

A terse, but mostly classified, Federal Security Service (FSB) urgent action bulletin circulating in the Kremlin today states that the sudden closing of Kutuzovsky Prospekt between 0700-0900 this morning was due to a counterintelligence “action” (i.e. raid) against an American “entity” suspected of conducting subversive activities in violation Federation law—with the only US company being located there being the global news organization CNN whose Moscow office is located at Kutuzovsky Prospekt 7/4,--but that is much reduced from its 2014 staffing levels after it failed to adhere to Russian media laws. [Note: Some words and/or phrases appearing in quotes in this report are English language approximations of Russian words/phrases having no exact counterpart.]

Participating in this “action” against this American “entity”, this bulletin says, were specialized members of The Investigative Committee (SLEDKOM)—which is important to note as they are the lead investigation agency into the money laundering crimes committed by former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—and who a year ago, likewise, raided the Moscow office of PricewaterhouseCoopers who are believed to have been Clinton’s conduit for funneling illicit monies out of the Federation.

Important to note about last years raid (and as we reported in our 29 July 2016 article “Moscow Raid Proves Hillary Clinton Plot To Destroy Boeing, Ship 80,000 US Jobs Overseas”) was SLEDKOM stating in their report that:

“PricewaterhouseCoopers is the largest professional financial services firm in the world and is one of what are called the Big Four auditors along with Deloitte, EY and KPMG—but had increasingly come under suspicion by Federation authorities after it was linked to the US-based criminal organization known as the Clinton Foundation that has amassed a global empire of wealth estimated at $2 billion, while paying virtually nothing in charity, and that this past week (July,2016) the US Congress filed charges against calling it “corrupt and lawless”.

Though we are not able to ascertain many exact details from this FSB bulletin regarding their raid this morning on CNN offices in Moscow, we were able to find a SLEDCOM report filed last week with the Security Council (SC) identifying two former American CIA officers who had become “investigative targets” for their violating Federation laws against subversion—the first being Robert Baer, and the second being Jeremy Bash.

Robert Baer, SLEDCOM noted in their report to the SC, works as an intelligence and security analyst for CNN whom they claim is “one of the most accomplished agents in CIA history”, while Jeremy Bash is a senior national security analyst for NBC News and its cable division MSNBC—and whose wife Dana Bash (who is CNN’s chief political correspondent) the FSB has previously identified as being a top CIA operative, and as we had detailed in our 24 March 2017 article titled “CNN Chief Reporter Dana Bash Revealed As Top CIA Spy Targeting Trump”.

Important to understand is that unlike Russia, where intelligence operatives are forbidden by law to be employed by media organizations, nearly all Western media companies are nothing more than extensions of the CIA—and as noted last year by one of Germany’s most respected journalists, Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, who went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job and shockingly said: “I’ve been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.”

Most unfortunately for Dr. Udo Ulfkotte, though, and as we detailed in our 18 January 2017 article titled “CIA-Linked Reporter Summoned To Meet Trump Assassinated, And His Top Aide Poisoned Too”, he was assassinated just prior to his meeting President Donald Trump where he was widely expected to reveal to America’s new leader how the CIA was preparing to wage an all-out “fake news” media war against him.

Among the worst purveyors of “fake news” to damage President Trump, like Dr. Udo Ulfkotte had warned about, is CNN—whose decades of past “fake news” propaganda has become legendary, their present “fake news” stories about Trump continue to churn out by the day, they republish other “fake news” stories about Trump no matter how false they are, they have now begun threatening a young man for creating a video they didn’t like that was used by Trump, just today published a “fake news” quote about President Abraham Lincoln, and whose president, Jeff Zucker, is now reported to have rushed to The New York Times to defend him as his network burns down.

In light of the FSB and SLEDCOM raid on CNN’s Moscow headquarters today, we, also, find it most interesting that just hours before this “action”, Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak stated that the US will “hardly give up on” attempts to influence Russia’s domestic political life, with his citing US legislation as evidence and warning that “it directly stipulates for the Secretary of State to ‘develop’ the democratic administration, clarity, and so on in the Russian Federation”.

“The list is long”, Ambassador Kislyak further warned, with his stating: “by the way, this includes disseminating broadcasts with the support of the United States and it has already been bankrolled”—and thus explains the millions-of-dollars given by the US government to CNN’s parent company Time Warner.

July 6, 2017 © EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.

[Note: Many governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagree with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their ‘agents’ has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit us, and others like us, that is exampled in numerous places, including HERE.]

[Note: The WhatDoesItMean.com website was created for and donated to the Sisters of Sorcha Faal in 2003 by a small group of American computer experts led by the late global technology guru Wayne Green (1922-2013) to counter the propaganda being used by the West to promote their illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq.]

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:10 am

Carol

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Post n°484

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:10 am

PODESTA'S PROBLEM
Trump rips DNC refusal to give hacked server to FBI
Trump says 'everyone' in Germany talking about Podesta, DNC server
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/07/07/trump-says-everyone-in-germany-talking-about-podesta-dnc-server.html

President Trump tweeted Friday morning that "everyone" in Hamburg, Germany was talking about the Democrats' response to Russian election hacking ahead of his highly-anticipated meeting with Russian President Putin.

Trump tweeted ahead of his arrival at the group of 20 summit: "Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!"

Podesta was the former chair of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. Podesta did not run the Democratic National Committee.

U.S. intelligence agencies have blamed the hacking of the DNC as well as Podesta's personal email account on the Russian government.

The Washington Times reported Wednesday that federal investigators have not been able to obtain the server in question. The only cybersecurity experts who’ve looked at the device is a private company from California called CrowdStrike.

Some members of Congress reportedly raised questions about why the DNC has never allowed investigators to look at the server, which is a key piece of evidence.

Podesta recently had a heated interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Kremlin.

~~~~~~~~~

Uncovering the Russia ties of Hillary’s campaign chief[/b]
By Peter Schweizer July 5, 2017 | 6:43pm | Updated
http://nypost.com/2017/07/05/uncovering-the-russia-ties-of-hillarys-campaign-chief/

Lawmakers failed to seize on an alarming development in the Russia collusion story last week, one that should spark serious and immediate congressional inquiry.

But it didn’t involve President Trump or his administration.

During a heated Fox Business interview with Maria Bartiromo, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chief John Podesta made a series of misleading statements when questioned about his involvement in a company that received $35 million from the Russian government while Clinton served as secretary of state.

On Jan. 18, 2011, a small green-energy company named Joule Unlimited announced Podesta’s appointment to its board. Months later, Rusnano, a Kremlin-backed investment fund founded by Vladimir Putin, pumped $35 million into Joule. Serving alongside Podesta on Joule’s board were senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Ruben Vardanyan, who has been appointed by Putin to a Russian economic modernization council.

Bartiromo asked Podesta why he failed to disclose his role in Joule as required by law when he entered the White House in January 2014 to serve as counselor to President Barack Obama.

“Maria, that’s not true. I fully disclosed and was completely compliant,” Podesta shot back.

But according to his own financial disclosure form, Podesta only listed two of the three entities that made up Joule Unlimited, failing to disclose his presence on the board of the Dutch-registered Stichting Joule Global Foundation.

When Bartiromo pressed Podesta on the whereabouts of his 75,000 shares of Joule stock, Podesta resorted to Clintonesque semantics: “I didn’t have any stock in any Russian company!”

Notice the rhetorical sleight of tongue there: Joule is based in Massachusetts, not Russia, making Podesta’s statement technically true. Podesta added: “And by the way, I divested before I went into the White House.”

Yet again, it’s not that simple. WikiLeaks documents reveal that when he joined the Obama White House, Podesta transferred his Joule shares to an LLC controlled by his adult children. He also resumed communicating with Joule and Joule investors after leaving the White House and joining Clinton’s campaign. In fact, he received an invoice from his lawyers in April 2015 — a consent request for Dmitry Akhanov of Rusnano USA to join Joule’s board.

But nothing to see here, Podesta insisted.

“I was on the board of an American company that did business here and only here,” he said. “The Russian company had a small investment in that company. We can go round and around the tree.”

Was Joule’s business “here and only here” in America as Podesta claimed? Not according to Joule’s own CEO and president, Bill Sims. While thanking Putin’s Rusnano, Sims said the investment would help support “the development of our global presence” and “complements the company’s expansion plans in Europe, the Middle East, and Mexico.” Moreover, Stichting Joule is itself an overseas entity. Indeed, Rusnano’s investment in Joule was in part to develop a manufacturing facility in Russia.

And what about Podesta’s contention that Putin’s investment fund represented a “small investment” in Joule? In 2012 the company claimed it had raised $110 million to date.

That meant the Kremlin-backed $35 million investment given to Joule after Podesta’s board appointment represented over 30 percent of Joule’s outside financing.

There’s also this inconvenient fact: In 2016, Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank, where Joule board member Reuben Vardanyan formerly served as head of its investment banking division, had a $170,000 lobbying contract with the Podesta Group — which is owned by John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta.

In short, Clinton’s top campaign chief and a senior counselor to Obama sat on Joule’s board alongside top Russian officials as Putin’s Kremlin-backed investment fund funneled $35 million into Joule. No one looking at the Podesta fact pattern can claim to care about rooting out Russian collusion and not rigorously investigate the tangle of relationships.

Are US officials investigating the matter? We don’t know. When Bartiromo asked Podesta whether his closed-door session in front of the House Intelligence Committee included questions about his Russian ties and Joule, Podesta punted: “I have already told you that I was asked not to talk about specific questions, and I said I would respect that.”

After the slippery answers Podesta delivered during his explosive Fox Business interview, US officials have more reasons than ever to demand answers about John Podesta, Joule Unlimited and Putin’s Rusnano investment fund. If they weren’t investigating Podesta before, they should be now.

Peter Schweizer is the author of “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.”

Last edited by Carol on Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:22 am; edited 2 times in total

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:58 am

Carol

Carol: Admin; Posts : 31674
Join date : 2010-04-07
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Post n°485

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Fri Jul 07, 2017 10:58 am

Wikileaks Unveils CIA Implants that Steal SSH Credentials from Windows & Linux PCs
Thursday, July 06, 2017 Swati Khandelwal

http://thehackernews.com/2017/07/ssh-credential-hacking.html

WikiLeaks has today published the 15th batch of its ongoing Vault 7 leak, this time detailing two alleged CIA implants that allowed the agency to intercept and exfiltrate SSH (Secure Shell) credentials from targeted Windows and Linux operating systems using different attack vectors.

Secure Shell or SSH is a cryptographic network protocol used for remote login to machines and servers securely over an unsecured network.

Dubbed BothanSpy — implant for Microsoft Windows Xshell client, and Gyrfalcon — targets the OpenSSH client on various distributions of Linux OS, including CentOS, Debian, RHEL (Red Hat), openSUSE and Ubuntu.WikiLeaks has today published the 15th batch of its ongoing Vault 7 leak, this time detailing two alleged CIA implants that allowed the agency to intercept and exfiltrate SSH (Secure Shell) credentials from targeted Windows and Linux operating systems using different attack vectors. Secure Shell or SSH is a cryptographic network protocol used for remote login to machines and servers securely over an unsecured network. Dubbed BothanSpy — implant for Microsoft Windows Xshell client, and Gyrfalcon — targets the OpenSSH client on various distributions of Linux OS, including CentOS, Debian, RHEL (Red Hat), openSUSE and Ubuntu.

Both implants steal user credentials for all active SSH sessions and then sends them to a CIA-controlled server.

BothanSpy — Implant for Windows OS

BothanSpy is installed as a Shellterm 3.x extension on the target machine and only works if Xshell is running on it with active sessions.

Xshell is a powerful terminal emulator that supports SSH, SFTP, TELNET, RLOGIN and SERIAL for delivering industry leading features including dynamic port forwarding, custom key mapping, user defined buttons, and VB scripting.

"In order to use BothanSpy against targets running a x64 version of Windows, the loader being used must support Wow64 injection," the leaked CIA user manual reads.

"Xshell only comes as a x86 binary, and thus BothanSpy is only compiled as x86. Shellterm 3.0+ supports Wow64 injection, and Shellterm is highly recommended."

Gyrfalcon — Implant for Linux OS
wikileaks-cia-ssh-hacking-tool

Gyrfalcon targets Linux systems (32 or 64-bit kernel) using a CIA-developed JQC/KitV rootkit for persistent access.

Gyrfalcon is also capable of collecting full or partial OpenSSH session traffic, and stores stolen information in an encrypted file for later exfiltration.

"The tool runs in an automated fashion. It is configured in advance, executed on the remote host and left running," the user manual of Gyrfalcon v1.0 reads.

"Sometime later, the operator returns and commands gyrfalcon to flush all of its collection to disk. The operator retrieves the collection file, decrypts it, and analyzes the collected data."

The user manual for Gyrfalcon v2.0 says that the implant is consist of "two compiled binaries that should be uploaded to the target platform along with the encrypted configuration file."

"Gyrfalcon does not provide any communication services between the local operator computer and target platform. The operator must use a third-party application to upload these three files to the target platform

Previous Vault 7 CIA Leaks

Last week, WikiLeaks dumped a classified CIA project that allowed the spying agency to hack and remotely spy on PCs running the Linux operating systems.

Dubbed OutlawCountry, the project lets the CIA hackers redirect all outbound network traffic on the targeted machine to CIA controlled computer systems for exfiltrate and infiltrate data.

Since March, the whistleblowing group has published 15 batches of "Vault 7" series, which includes the latest and last week leaks, along with the following batches:

ELSA – the alleged CIA malware that tracks geo-location of targeted PCs and laptops running the Microsoft Windows operating system.

Brutal Kangaroo – A tool suite for Microsoft Windows used by the agency to targets closed networks or air-gapped computer systems within an organization or enterprise without requiring any direct access.

Cherry Blossom – An agency's framework, basically a remotely controllable firmware-based implant, used for spying on the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting flaws in WiFi devices.

Pandemic – The agency's project that let it turn Windows file servers into covert attack machines that can silently infect other computers of interest inside a targeted network.

Athena – A spyware framework that has been designed by CIA to take full control over the infected Windows machines remotely, and works against every version of Windows OS, from Windows XP to Windows 10.

AfterMidnight and Assassin – Two alleged CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform that has been designed to monitor actions on the infected remote host computer and execute malicious actions.

Archimedes – Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack tool allegedly created by the CIA to target computers inside a Local Area Network (LAN).

Scribbles – Software allegedly designed to embed 'web beacons' into confidential documents, allowing the spying agency to track insiders and whistleblowers.

Grasshopper – Framework which allowed the agency to easily create custom malware for breaking into Microsoft's Windows and bypassing antivirus protection.

Marble – Source code of a secret anti-forensic framework used by the agency to hide the actual source of its malware.
Dark Matter – Hacking exploits the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs.

Weeping Angel – Spying tool used by the agency to infiltrate smart TV's, transforming them into covert microphones.
Year Zero – Alleged CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software.

Both implants steal user credentials for all active SSH sessions and then sends them to a CIA-controlled server. BothanSpy — Implant for Windows OS BothanSpy is installed as a Shellterm 3.x extension on the target machine and only works if Xshell is running on it with active sessions. Xshell is a powerful terminal emulator that supports SSH, SFTP, TELNET, RLOGIN and SERIAL for delivering industry leading features including dynamic port forwarding, custom key mapping, user defined buttons, and VB scripting. "In order to use BothanSpy against targets running a x64 version of Windows, the loader being used must support Wow64 injection," the leaked CIA user manual reads. "Xshell only comes as a x86 binary, and thus BothanSpy is only compiled as x86. Shellterm 3.0+ supports Wow64 injection, and Shellterm is highly recommended." Gyrfalcon — Implant for Linux OS Gyrfalcon targets Linux systems (32 or 64-bit kernel) using a CIA-developed JQC/KitV rootkit for persistent access. Gyrfalcon is also capable of collecting full or partial OpenSSH session traffic, and stores stolen information in an encrypted file for later exfiltration. "The tool runs in an automated fashion. It is configured in advance, executed on the remote host and left running," the user manual of Gyrfalcon v1.0 reads. "Sometime later, the operator returns and commands gyrfalcon to flush all of its collection to disk. The operator retrieves the collection file, decrypts it, and analyzes the collected data." The user manual for Gyrfalcon v2.0 says that the implant is consist of "two compiled binaries that should be uploaded to the target platform along with the encrypted configuration file." "Gyrfalcon does not provide any communication services between the local operator computer and target platform. The operator must use a third-party application to upload these three files to the target platform." Previous Vault 7 CIA Leaks Last week, WikiLeaks dumped a classified CIA project that allowed the spying agency to hack and remotely spy on PCs running the Linux operating systems. Dubbed OutlawCountry, the project lets the CIA hackers redirect all outbound network traffic on the targeted machine to CIA controlled computer systems for exfiltrate and infiltrate data. Since March, the whistleblowing group has published 15 batches of "Vault 7" series, which includes the latest and last week leaks, along with the following batches: ELSA – the alleged CIA malware that tracks geo-location of targeted PCs and laptops running the Microsoft Windows operating system. Brutal Kangaroo – A tool suite for Microsoft Windows used by the agency to targets closed networks or air-gapped computer systems within an organization or enterprise without requiring any direct access. Cherry Blossom – An agency's framework, basically a remotely controllable firmware-based implant, used for spying on the Internet activity of the targeted systems by exploiting flaws in WiFi devices. Pandemic – The agency's project that let it turn Windows file servers into covert attack machines that can silently infect other computers of interest inside a targeted network. Athena – A spyware framework that has been designed by CIA to take full control over the infected Windows machines remotely, and works against every version of Windows OS, from Windows XP to Windows 10. AfterMidnight and Assassin – Two alleged CIA malware frameworks for the Microsoft Windows platform that has been designed to monitor actions on the infected remote host computer and execute malicious actions. Archimedes – Man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack tool allegedly created by the CIA to target computers inside a Local Area Network (LAN). Scribbles – Software allegedly designed to embed 'web beacons' into confidential documents, allowing the spying agency to track insiders and whistleblowers. Grasshopper – Framework which allowed the agency to easily create custom malware for breaking into Microsoft's Windows and bypassing antivirus protection. Marble – Source code of a secret anti-forensic framework used by the agency to hide the actual source of its malware. Dark Matter – Hacking exploits the agency designed to target iPhones and Macs. Weeping Angel – Spying tool used by the agency to infiltrate smart TV's, transforming them into covert microphones. Year Zero – Alleged CIA hacking exploits for popular hardware and software.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Fri Jul 07, 2017 11:14 am

Carol

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Post n°486

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Fri Jul 07, 2017 11:14 am

Loretta Lynch Plot Thickens As New Details Emerge Of Her Dealings With The Hillary Campaign
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-07/loretta-lynch-plot-thickens-new-details-emerge-her-dealings-hillary-campaign

Last night we asked a very simple question about why the DNC has failed to cooperate with Russia investigators by handing over their infamous email server to either the FBI or Robert Mueller's team (see: DNC Server: Most Critical Evidence To Proving "Russian Hacking" Is Being Withheld From Mueller, Why?). Afterall, if Russia did "hack the election", as we've been told 24/7 by CNN going on 8 months now, then the evidence could very well be on that server. Which prompted us to ask this very simple question:

All of which brings us back to our original question: If the DNC is in possession of actual tangible evidence that could prove once and for all that Russians hacked their servers and attempted to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton, why not share that evidence with investigators and enjoy the blissful vindication that its public release would provide?
We concluded by wondering whether the stonewalling from the DNC just might have something to do with this "purely coincidental' meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Phoenix and/or Loretta Lynch's 'assurances' to members of the Clinton campaign that the FBI's investigation (or, "matter" if you prefer) of Hillary Clinton "wouldn't go too far"? Afterall, if evidence of "Russian hacking" were on that server, so to would there be evidence of Lynch's transgressions...if they existed, of course.

But we're not the only ones wondering whether there's more to the Lynch story. According to an article in the New York Post, some testimony that Lynch offered under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year could come back to haunt her. In that testimony, Lynch said that she had "not spoken to anyone on either the campaign or transition or any staff members affiliated with them."

That said, and as we've reported before, that statement seems to contradict reports that Lynch personally assured members of Clinton's campaign, potentially Amanda Renteria, that the FBI's investigation "wouldn't go too far"...more from the Post:

When former Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified last year about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, she swore she never talked to “anyone” on the Clinton campaign. That categorical denial, though made in response to a series of questions about whether she spoke with Clintonworld about remaining attorney general if Hillary won the election, could come back to haunt her.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has launched a bipartisan investigation into Lynch for possible obstruction of justice, recently learned of the existence of a document indicating Lynch assured the political director of Clinton’s campaign she wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far” in probing the former secretary of state.

Lynch’s lawyer says she is cooperating with committee investigators, who are seeking answers to several questions, as well as relevant documents. Among other things, they want to know if she or any of her Justice Department staff “ever communicated with Amanda Renteria,” who headed Clinton’s political operations during the campaign. Renteria, who has been identified in the document as the senior Clinton campaign aide with whom Lynch privately communicated, has also been asked to testify.

And then there is that inconvenient Comey testimony in which the former FBI director says that he was instructed by Lynch to refer to the Clinton investigation as a "matter" rather than what it actually was, an investigation.

Now, as The Post points out, there are new developments which would suggest that Comey confronted Lynch about the alleged communication with Amanda Renteria and promptly asked to leave.

And it will press her to explain the discrepancy — along with why she reportedly asked former FBI Director James Comey to leave her office when he confronted her with the document.

And then there is that meeting with Bill Clinton on that Phoenix tarmac that just happened to get noticed by a local reporter who just happened to be on scene.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRWDP-PWunE

After all the drama around the Clinton email investigation, which included multiple people being offered immunity and the revelation of what appeared to be numerous federal crimes committed by several people on Clinton's staff, wouldn't it be ironic if Obama's Attorney General were the only one to take the fall? Scandal free administration indeed...

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Fri Jul 07, 2017 3:20 pm

Carol

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Post n°487

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Fri Jul 07, 2017 3:20 pm

This is very disturbing as Soros is transporting these US domestic terrorists from country to country to create mayhem. They should have all of the passports confiscated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vpJwfTYtJ0

Independent Journalists Attacked by Antifa at G20
After Fake News Tweeted Photos Calling Them “Fascists” (VIDEO)
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/independent-journalists-attacked-antifa-g20-fake-news-tweeted-photos-calling-fascists/

Independent journalists Luke Rudkowski and Max Bachmann were attacked, stalked, and threatened with murder by left-wing Antifa terrorists in Germany early Friday outside of the G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. Rudkowski, the founder of the nonpartisan news outlet We Are Change, posted a video of the event, and explained that German journalist Soren Kohlhuber tweeted photos of Rudkowksi, Bachmann, and independent journalists Tim Pool and Lauren Southern walking around at the G20 protest.

Rudkowski and Bachmann were then accosted by “ten men” according to Rudkowski, Bachmann was punched, and then both were chased and thrown to the ground by the group of Antifa/anticapitalist terrorists. Rudkowski and Bachmann drove 30 minutes outside the city of Hamburg, and were followed and confronted by other Antifa terrorists who told them they would be seriously injured or killed if they did not leave town.

The biggest question here may be what is more disturbing: Is it that Antifa is now effectively an international terrorist network that attacks and threatens to murder even nonpartisan journalists for recording them? Or that they are getting their intel from fake news journalists who refuse to cover the violence they cause?

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sat Jul 08, 2017 1:46 pm

Carol

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Post n°488

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sat Jul 08, 2017 1:46 pm

Still Report: Deep State is Self Destructing, 1690

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxDxf7Op5qI
Still Report: Anti Trump is Collapsing, 1686

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK09mzabUAU
The Still Report: The Fruits of the Invasion, 1700

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:44 pm

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Post n°489

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:44 pm

Former NSC Senior Director: ‘Coordinated Attack’ on President Trump by Media, Obama Loyalists
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/07/former-nsc-senior-director-coordinated-attack-trump-media-obama-loyalists/

A former senior director of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush said on Thursday that the liberal media and Obama loyalists inside and outside of the federal government had executed a “coordinated attack” on President Donald Trump since he was elected.

Michael Doran made the remarks at the Hudson Institute in Washington, DC, where he is a senior fellow on Middle East security and was a panelist for a discussion at the institute on Russian meddling in the U.S. 2016 presidential election. The conversation quickly shifted to Trump and his campaign’s relationship with the Russians and the ongoing investigation into it.

“What we have is a coordinated attack between elements of the press, elements in the bureaucracy and then sitting — during the transition — and now former Obama officials weaving this vast Trump-Putin conspiracy theory, which doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.”

Panelist David Tafuri, former State Department legal counsel, argued that, although there is no evidence of collusion between Trump and the Russians, evidence could be unearthed by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was named by the Department of Justice to look into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.

But Doran said that Russians meddling into U.S. elections and government has been going on for years, including the eight years that President Barack Obama was in charge of protecting the nation from its enemies.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:47 pm

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Post n°490

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sat Jul 08, 2017 8:47 pm

Report: National Security Leakers Now Paranoid About Being Caught Leaking
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/07/leakers-now-paranoid-caught/

National security officials across the government are becoming increasingly paranoid about a crackdown on leaking, according to a report by Politico. The anonymous officials said they are seeing “new restrictions” on their access to sensitive information, “fueling fears in the intelligence and security community that the Trump administration has stepped up a stealthy operation to smoke out leakers.”

A “half dozen officials across the national security community” told Politico they are concerned that the administration is:

— “carefully tracking what they’re doing and who they’re talking to — then plotting to use them as a scapegoat or accuse them of leaks”;

— “tracking what they printed, to keep tabs on what information they were accessing” (National Security Agency contractor Reality Winner was caught printing out a classified report and sending it to The Intercept);

— “limiting the number of people involved in certain sensitive matters, so that if something leaks, the suspects are obvious”;

— keeping information “so ‘choked down’ that if something comes out in the press, ‘it’s either a bogus leak’ or… the relevant agency will know exactly where it came from”;

— sending a “‘crimes report’ to the National Security Division at the Justice Department, which will review the incident. If the incident is determined to be serious enough, the Justice Department will send it to the FBI to formally investigate.”

The report notes there are rumors of private eyes being hired to run “rogue operations” to catch leakers, even enlisting “amenable employees”:

Rumors have ricocheted among national security officials and journalists in recent weeks that Trump- or GOP-related operatives have hired private eyes to try and intimidate reporters, or run rogue operations to find their sources. Some U.S. officials voiced concern to POLITICO that the White House could be seeking out amenable employees in different agencies to do its bidding, effectively sanctioning its own, parallel — and informal — intimidation measures.

The report said these feared restrictions have had a chilling effect on officials.

“I’m just trying to keep my head down,” a U.S. intelligence official told Politico.

The report noted several times the White House’s “obsession” with leaks. However, a new study by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released Thursday showed that Trump has faced seven times as many leaks as his two predecessors.

The study showed that the Trump administration faced 125 separate leaks potentially damaging to national security in 126 days — a “conservative estimate,” it noted.

When the leaks were narrowed down to five outlets, the report showed the Trump White House faced 62 leaks, compared to eight under the Obama administration and nine under the George W. Bush administration.

The Senate study noted that arguments often used to justify leaks — that they are intended to bring light to potential illegality, unwise policies, or concerns about the president’s temperament — have no legal basis.

No accused leaker has ever been acquitted based on an argument that the public interest was so great that it justified a leak, the report said.

The report said a review of the sources cited in news reports containing those leaks indicates they are “coming from across the government” — with some “clearly from within the intelligence community.”

One official complained about the “feeling of fundamental unfairness” that the Trump administration can leak, but they can’t.

“They don’t mind the leaking as long as they control it,” the official said.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:37 am

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Post n°491

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:37 am

BOOM! Democratic Group Behind Fake Trump Dossier Organized Mtg with Trump Officials
and Russian Lawyers Last Year
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/boom-democratic-group-behind-fake-trump-dossier-organized-mtg-trump-officials-russian-lawyers-last-year/

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/07/08/reports-donald-trump-jr-jared-kushner-met-with-kremlin-linked-lawyer/

On Saturday The New York Times published another hit piece on the Trump Campaign and a meeting with Russia.

The bottom feeders at The New York Times got another anonymous tip from deep state officials that revealed Trump insiders met with a Russian lawyer to discuss adoptions from Russia.

–And Deep State officials leaked this to the NY Times.

Now this…
The group that organized the meeting with Trump advisers and the Russian lawyers was the same Democratic group Fusion GPS that was behind the discredited Trump dossier.

Circa reported:

The president’s legal team said Saturday they believe the entire meeting may have been part of a larger election-year opposition effort aimed at creating the appearance of improper connections between Trump family members and Russia that also included a now-discredited intelligence dossier produced by a former British intelligence agent named Christopher Steele who worked for a U.S. political firm known as Fusion GPS.

“We have learned from both our own investigation and public reports that the participants in the meeting misrepresented who they were and who they worked for,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for President Trump’s legal team. “Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier. ”

“These developments raise serious issues as to exactly who authorized and participated in any effort by Russian nationals to influence our election in any manner,” Corallo said…

…(Senator) Grassley has asked the Justice Department to look at all the connections and is seeking information from Fusion GPS on whether opponents of Trump funded the creation of a salacious intelligence dossier to hurt his presidential bid. The FBI has said it has been unable to corroborate many of the allegations in the dossier that involved Trump.

Here is more background on the now-discredited Trump Dossier.

With just ten days to go before he was sworn in as America’s forty-fifth president, the political establishment went nuclear on President-elect Donald Trump with a double-barreled blast of “leaked” “intelligence” reports by CNN and BuzzFeed.
oops-russia-trump

The documents contained explosive, but unverified, opposition research that alleged intel ties between Russia and Trump and also claims Russia holds sexual blackmail material over Trump.

One of the most outrageous unconfirmed allegations in the report claims the Russians recorded Trump watching Russian prostitutes urinate on each other in a Moscow hotel room previously occupied by President and Mrs. Barack Obama.

According to the “leaked” “intelligence” documents: Trump disliked Obama so much that he hired two Russian hookers to piss on a bed that Obama slept on in Russia.

And the liberal media and Secret Service and John McCain believed this nonsense?
Seriously?

The original story was reportedly created by a 4Chan user.
4-chan-punk-cnn-buzzfeed

According to 4Chan these documents were created by a 4Chan user and sent to anti-Trumper Republican Rick Wilson knowing he would act on this tip:

4Chan discussed this:

** Political hacks emailed documents to #NeverTrump jackass Rick Wilson about Trump making people piss on a bed.
** Rick Wilson thought it was real and gave it to leftists at the CIA
** The CIA of the USA put this in their official classified intelligence report on Russian involvement in the US election
** Donald Trump and Obama were both given private sessions with the CIA to discuss this.
** The CIA concluded that the Russians plan to blackmail Trump with this story we made up

The 4Chan users then linked to this:

So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it.

They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly Xxxxxxxx desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.

It looks like the liberal mainstream media got punked —- again.

Last edited by Carol on Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:09 am; edited 1 time in total

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:50 am

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Post n°492

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sun Jul 09, 2017 9:50 am

International Network of 87,000 Pedophiles Dismantled - American Mass Media Silent
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=78859

Date: Saturday, 8-Jul-2017 12:36:20
By Jay Syrmopoulos

Berlin — The largely unrecognized global pandemic of child pornography has once again been thrust into the glare of the public spotlight after a massive child porn network with over 87,000 members was dismantled by German police.

A web platform called “Elysium” was utilized by the pedophile network, which existed since the end of 2016 and was accessible only through the Darknet, a hidden part of the Internet uncatalogued by search engines. The site was used to facilitate the exchange of videos and images of children, as young as toddler age, being physically and sexually abused.

According to German international broadcaster Deutsche Welle:

Investigators said the site had been in operation since the end of 2016 and that it was accessible only via the darknet, a part of the World Wide Web that cannot be found using conventional search engines but requires the use of encrypting software.

According to the authorities in Frankfurt, there were also recordings of “the most serious sexual abuse of children”, such as violence against children and abuse of “the youngest.” The platform was also used to schedule appointments to exploit and abuse children.

Most of the suspects were arrested in the countries of Germany and Austria.

A German police spokesman said that Dutch authorities were also involved in the case:

We are certainly expecting things that are important to the Netherlands, but at the moment it is not yet possible to indicate to what extent.

Surprisingly, the network of nearly 90,000 individuals is not the largest bust in history, as another online Darknet pedophile platform called Playpen was dismantled earlier this year, and 58-year-old American Steven Chase sentenced to 30 years in federal prison. Chase was held responsible for the existence of Playpen, a child pornography network established in 2014, which had 150,000 active pedophiles on the site.

The Playpen case was extremely controversial, as the U.S. Department of Justice acknowledged in court filings that the FBI actually operated the site, themselves, from Feb. 20 to March 4, 2015.

Moreover, in a move that left many in dismay, the Department of Justice filed a motion in Washington State federal court to dismiss an indictment against the child porn site.

According to a report in Wired:

It wasn’t for lack of evidence; it was because the FBI didn’t want to disclose details of a hacking tool to the defense as part of discovery. Evidence in United States v. Jay Michaud hinged at least in part on information federal investigators had gathered by exploiting a vulnerability in the Tor anonymity network.

“Because the government remains unwilling to disclose certain discovery related to the FBI’s deployment of a ‘Network Investigative Technique’ (‘NIT’) as part of its investigation into the Playpen child pornography site, the government has no choice but to seek dismissal of the indictment,” federal prosecutor Annette Hayes wrote in the court filing on Friday.

The federal prosecutor pointed out that the DoJ’s work to resist disclosing the NIT was part of “an effort to balance the many competing interests that are at play when sensitive law enforcement technology becomes the subject of a request for criminal discovery.”

To make a long story short, the feds decided to let an alleged child pornographer go to keep secret, and illegal, the methods they use to catch criminals on the dark web.

In regard to the “Elysium” network, public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt said that the suspected operator of the site, a 39-year-old man from the central German state of Hesse, had already been arrested on June 12.

The suspected operator of the platform was arrested after his apartment was searched and the server seized, according to DW. Numerous other suspects have also been arrested, according to police officials.

German and Austrian police said they will hold a press conference on Friday to provide further details about the investigation.

Jay Syrmopoulos is an geopolitical analyst, freethinker, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at the University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs and holds a BA in International Relations. Jay’s writing has been featured on both mainstream and independent media – and has been viewed tens of millions of times. You can follow him on Twitter @SirMetropolis and on Facebook at SirMetropolis.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:01 am

Carol

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Post n°493

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:01 am

New Details of Loretta Lynch’s Dealings with Hillary Clinton Campaign
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2017/07/08/new-details-of-loretta-lynchs-dealings-with-hillary-clinton-campaign/
Posted by Tim Brown

It looks like we might be getting more information on the Loretta Lynch/Hillary Clinton campaign conspiracy after all.

Zero Hedge asked on Thursday evening, “If the DNC is in possession of actual tangible evidence that could prove once and for all that Russians hacked their servers and attempted to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton, why not share that evidence with investigators and enjoy the blissful vindication that its public release would provide?”

Tyler Durden then wrote in a post on Friday, “We concluded by wondering whether the stonewalling from the DNC just might have something to do with this “purely coincidental’ meeting between Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton on a tarmac in Phoenix and/or Loretta Lynch’s ‘assurances’ to members of the Clinton campaign that the FBI’s investigation (or, “matter” if you prefer) of Hillary Clinton “wouldn’t go too far“? Afterall, if evidence of “Russian hacking” were on that server, so to would there be evidence of Lynch’s transgressions…if they existed, of course.”

“But we’re not the only ones wondering whether there’s more to the Lynch story.,” he added. “According to an article in the New York Post, some testimony that Lynch offered under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year could come back to haunt her. In that testimony, Lynch said that she had ‘not spoken to anyone on either the campaign or transition or any staff members affiliated with them.'”

Then there was the infamous tarmac meeting between Bill Clinton and Loretta Lynch in 2016, and we’ve been told that the NSA will not release the tapes of that meeting claiming “national security,” even though the two said they only talked grandkids and golf.

We also have the issue of James Comey’s testimony in which he said that when he was investigating Hillary’s email crimes that Lynch told him to refer to the investigation as a “matter,” a term that was being put out by the Clinton campaign at the time.

Donald Trump has said that Lynch gave Clinton a free pass and protection concerning the matter, and it seems that a report from the Washington Post confirms that.

When former Attorney General Loretta Lynch testified last year about her decision not to prosecute Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information, she swore she never talked to “anyone” on the Clinton campaign. That categorical denial, though made in response to a series of questions about whether she spoke with Clintonworld about remaining attorney general if Hillary won the election, could come back to haunt her.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has launched a bipartisan investigation into Lynch for possible obstruction of justice, recently learned of the existence of a document indicating Lynch assured the political director of Clinton’s campaign she wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far” in probing the former secretary of state.

Lynch’s lawyer says she is cooperating with committee investigators, who are seeking answers to several questions, as well as relevant documents. Among other things, they want to know if she or any of her Justice Department staff “ever communicated with Amanda Renteria,” who headed Clinton’s political operations during the campaign. Renteria, who has been identified in the document as the senior Clinton campaign aide with whom Lynch privately communicated, has also been asked to testify.

Whoa! Lynch wouldn’t let FBI agents “go too far”? She was definitely covering for Crooked Hillary, there can be no doubt. That’s because, as we have pointed out before, Lynch is just as crooked as she is.

However, Trump promised the American people to have his attorney general appoint a special investigator, something that has not yet occurred. So, I must ask, is the Trump administration going to give her another free pass and protection just like the Obama DOJ?

All of this led Durden to draw final conclusion in the matter.

“After all the drama around the Clinton email investigation, which included multiple people being offered immunity and the revelation of what appeared to be numerous federal crimes committed by several people on Clinton’s staff, wouldn’t it be ironic if Obama’s Attorney General were the only one to take the fall?” he wrote. “Scandal free administration indeed…”

Courtesy of Freedom Outpost

Tim Brown is an author and Editor at FreedomOutpost.com, SonsOfLibertyMedia.com, GunsInTheNews.com and TheWashingtonStandard.com. He is husband to his “more precious than rubies” wife, father of 10 “mighty arrows”, jack of all trades, Christian and lover of liberty. He resides in the U.S. occupied Great State of South Carolina. Tim is also an affiliate for the Joshua Mark 5 AR/AK hybrid semi-automatic rifle. Follow Tim on Twitter.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:59 am

Carol

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Post n°494

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Sun Jul 09, 2017 10:59 am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NROKoP9zaaA
Greg Hunter - Weekly News Wrap-Up 7.7.17

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Dont-trust-the-media

Trump Keeps Winning!! Media In Denial Keeps Losing!!!
Posted by: Jim Clayton in Opinion, Trending Commentary July 9, 2017

It has been nine months since the election and the media and Democrats still can’t get over the fact that they are out of power and lost the election.

They are still in deep, psychological denial and have to make things up in order to justify their belief that President Donald Trump stole the election and that Hillary Clinton should be sitting upon her Oval Office throne. They are stuck on the fake Russian meddling story that was completely made up and when they are questioned they claim anonymous sources told them which to me means there are NO sources.

As far as Russia meddling in our elections goes, what meddling? Were they somehow responsible for leaking John Podesta`s emails that put Hillary in a negative light and actually told truth about her… big deal.

What else besides that? Did Russia provide canvassers to go door to door in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan?

The whole thing is ridiculous, Obama administration tried to oust Benjamin Netanyahu, this stuff has been going on for years
The fake Trump-Russia conspiracy theory was made up overnight for 3 major reasons by John Podesta and Robby Mook the night Hilary lost.

In order to cover up Barack Obama’s and Susan Rice’s spying on the presidential campaigns of two or more Republican candidates.

To shield Hillary Clinton for failing to win the election.

To give all the Obama-Communist goose-steppers and Obama-Nazis an excuse to continue their violent revolution to overthrow Constitutional government in the United States.

America dodged a huge bullet when Hillary lost. Amongst her plans were: To open the borders and let a million Muslims in, raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, raise the small business tax to 43% and inheritance tax to 63% and those were just for starters.

CNN which has now lost all credibility is being mocked (again), this time for their amazing anonymous source that said that Trump would absolutely NOT bring up the Russians meddling in our election in his meeting with Putin. Trump said he did ask Putin about it and was satisfied with his answer that there was no meddling.

The more truth comes out it’s more likely that our own intelligence agencies were the ones trying to influence the election. Because Trump won which no one could conceive they quickly had to push a Russian narrative to hide their own actions. Trying to tie Trump and his team to Russia has proven to be a harder task then they thought thanks to some true Americans who continue to drop bits of truth, ruining Obama and the attempts by the Deep State to ruin President Trumps Presidency.

The media is so hung up on this Russian narrative that they can’t get out of it and have to constantly look for new things to justify it. The latest is with Trump’s son Donald Jr. They are claiming Donald Jr. got members of his father’s campaign to meet with Russian officials last summer.

Via Circa.com:
‘Shortly before his father was formally nominated for president last summer, Donald Trump Jr. was approached by a Russian lawyer who set up a meeting to discuss a Russian policy, according to interviews with Trump family lawyers.
President Trump’s eldest son briefly gathered others for the meeting, including his brother-in-law Jared Kushner, as well as then-presidential campaign manager Paul Manafort for the meeting at Trump Tower in New York City with the lawyer, identified by Trump family lawyers as Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Veselnitskaya used the meeting in June 2016 to have a conversation about a U.S. law called the Magnitsky Act that Russia leader Vladimir Putin reviles and has retaliated against by blocking U.S. adoptions of Russian children.

The encounter was short and the Trump team had no further contact with the woman or the policy issue, lawyers said.’

So what? Big deal. So he met with Russian officials over something that had nothing to do with his election. What crime was committed? How is “meeting with a Russian attorney to discuss a Russian policy” a crime???

The commenters on the NYT are losing their minds about this. I firmly believe that this whole idea is an attempt by the Clinton campaign to make it appear as if there were impropriety between Trump’s campaign and the Russians. They are that desperate. Polls show that the American people don’t care about Russia meddling anymore. They want job security, an economy that is working and border security and leadership once again.

When I see remarks in the comment sections, liberal readers keep asking what has Trump done? He’s signed 34 pieces of legislation Campaign and opened up coal mines so miners can work again, by getting rid of Obama’s regulations he’s been able to open up jobs and so far 500,000 new jobs have been created, 250,000 this month alone when 179,000 were expected. He got rid of TPP the Trans-Pacific Partnership that Obama signed so that now jobs will not be going overseas and he got the Dakota pipeline up and running without interfering with the environment so we can produce oil and gas here thus bringing prices down.

And this is just the beginning. The reason people don’t know about these things is that the mainstream media doesn’t report them and doesn’t want to report them. They are so filled with hate and rage and jealousy that all they do is negative bashing of Trump. It’s no wonder their ratings are going way down and people are turning away from stations like CNN and papers like the New York Times and Washington Post and their affiliates.

They are so filled with hate and rage and jealousy that all they do is negative bashing of Trump. It’s no wonder their ratings are going way down and people are turning away from stations like CNN and papers like the New York Times and Washington Post and their affiliates.

Trump haters like to portray Trump as some cold, calculating bully, but nothing can be further from the truth.

He has a big heart and recently offered to bring little Charlie Gard the terminally ill infant fighting for his life in England, to the United States for treatment. This is very typical of Trump. In the past, Trump has done similar things such as when a young boy in New Mexico was hooked up to machines and had to get to New York for a procedure no plane could take him because they couldn’t fit his machines on the plane. Trump offered his jet to fly the boy and flew him to New York and paid for his procedure. When Miss Wisconsin in one of his pageants revealed she was dying and had a five-year-old son she worried about, Trump set up a trust fund for her son to be taken care of until he was 18.

Trump has also paid for people’s operations in hospitals, paid off people’s mortgages for them that couldn’t afford it and other acts of philanthropy. He also paid his female executives more than his male executives while Hilary paid her male executives at the Clinton Foundation $10,000 more than her female employees.

Yes you will never read about any of this in the media today because they are in such denial and can dish it out but can’t take it. They are digging their own graves as their credibility and ratings fall and will lay in it. As the old folk song says, “When will they ever learn?”

As the old folk song says, “When will they ever learn?”

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Mon Jul 10, 2017 9:58 am

Carol

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Post n°495

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Mon Jul 10, 2017 9:58 am

New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally - DNC Not "Hacked By Russians"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/new-research-shows-guccifer-20-files-were-copied-locally-dnc-not-hacked-russians
http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/07/new-research-shows-guccifer-2-0-files-were-copied-locally-not-hacked/

"What is suggested is that the files were copied by someone with access to a system connected to the DNC internal network, and that this action had no bearing on the files submitted to Wikileaks and were most likely unassociated with Seth Rich, and definitively not remotely "hacked" from Russia."

New meta-analysis has emerged from a document published today by an independent researcher known as The Forensicator, which suggests that files eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona were likely initially downloaded by a person with physical access to a computer possibly connected to the internal DNC network. The individual most likely used a USB drive to copy the information. The groundbreaking new analysis irrevocably destroys the Russian hacking narrative, and calls the actions of Crowdstrike and the DNC into question.

The document supplied to Disobedient Media via Adam Carter was authored by an individual known as The Forensicator. The full document referenced here has been published on their blog. Their analysis indicates the data was almost certainly not accessed initially by a remote hacker, much less one in Russia. If true, this analysis obliterates the Russian hacking narrative completely.

The Forensicator specifically discusses the data that was eventually published by Guccifer 2.0 under the title "NGP-VAN." This should not be confused with the separate publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks. This article focuses solely on evidence stemming from the files published by Guccifer 2.0, which were previously discussed in depth by Adam Carter.

Related Video: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/new-research-shows-guccifer-20-files-were-copied-locally-dnc-not-hacked-russians

Who Are the Alleged Russian Hackers Behind DNC Breach?

Disobedient Media previously reported that Crowdstrike is the only group that has directly analyzed the DNC servers. Other groups including Threat Connect have used the information provided by Crowdstrike to claim that Russians hacked the DNC. However, their evaluation was based solely on information ultimately provided by Crowdstrike; this places the company in the unique position of being the only direct source of evidence that a hack occurred.

The group’s President Shawn Henry is a retired executive assistant director of the FBI while their co-founder and CTO, Dmitri Alperovitch, is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, which as we have reported, is linked to George Soros. Carter has stated on his website that “At present, it looks a LOT like Shawn Henry & Dmitri Alperovitch (CrowdStrike executives), working for either the HRC campaign or DNC leadership were very likely to have been behind the Guccifer 2.0 operation.” Carter’s website was described by Wikileaks as a useful source of primary information specifically regarding Guccifer 2.0.

Carter recently spoke to Disobedient Media, explaining that he had been contacted by The Forensicator, who had published a document which contained a detailed analysis of the data published by Guccifer 2.0 as "NGP-VAN."

The document states that the files that eventually published as "NGP-VAN" by Guccifer 2.0 were first copied to a system located in the Eastern Time Zone, with this conclusion supported by the observation that "the .7z file times, after adjustment to East Coast time fall into the range of the file times in the .rar files." This constitutes the first of a number of points of analysis which suggests that the information eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona was not obtained by a Russian hacker.

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Guc2-7z-vs-rar-times

The Forensicator stated in their analysis that a USB drive was most likely used to boot Linux OS onto a computer that either contained the alleged DNC files or had direct access to them. They also explained to us that in this situation one would simply plug a USB drive with the LinuxOS into a computer and reboot it; after restarting, the computer would boot from the USB drive and load Linux instead of its normal OS. A large amount of data would then be copied to this same USB drive.

In this case, additional files would have been copied en masse, to be "pruned" heavily at a later time when the 7zip archive now known as NGP-VAN was built. The Forensicator wrote that if 1.98 GB of data had been copied at a rate of 22.6 MB/s and time gaps t were noticed at the top level of the NGP-VAN 7zip file were attributed to additional file copying, then approximately 19.3 GB in total would have been copied. In this scenario, the 7zip archive (NGP-VAN) would represent only about 10% of the total amount of data that was collected.

The very small proportion of files eventually selected for use in the creation of the "NGP-VAN" files were later published by the creators of the Guccifer 2.0 persona. This point is especially significant, as it suggests the possibility that up to 90% of the information initially copied was never published.

The use of a USB drive would suggest that the person first accessing the data could not have been a Russian hacker. In this case, the person who copied the files must have physically interacted with a computer that had access to what Guccifer 2.0 called the DNC files. A less likely explanation for this data pattern where large time gaps were observed between top level files and directories in the 7zip file, can be explained by the use of 'think time' to select and copy 1.9 GB of individual files, copied in small batches with think time interspersed. In either scenario, Linux would have been booted from a USB drive, which fundamentally necessitates physical access to a computer with the alleged DNC files.

The Forensicator believed that using the possible 'think-time' explanation to explain the time-gaps was a less likely explanation for the data pattern available, with a large amount of data most likely copied instantaneously, later "pruned" in the production of the Guccifer 2.0's publication of the NGP-VAN files.

Both the most likely explanation and the less likely scenario provided by The Forensicator's analysis virtually exclude the possibility of a Russian or remote hacker gaining external access to the files later published as "NGP-VAN." In both cases, the physical presence of a person accessing a containing DNC information would be required.

Importantly, The Forensicator concluded that the chance that the files had been accessed and downloaded remotely over the internet were too small to give this idea any serious consideration. He explained that the calculated transfer speeds for the initial copy were much faster than can be supported by an internet connection. This is extremely significant and completely discredits allegations of Russian hacking made by both Guccifer 2.0 and Crowdstrike.

This conclusion is further supported by analysis of the overall transfer rate of 23 MB/s. The Forensicator described this as "possible when copying over a LAN, but too fast to support the hypothetical scenario that the alleged DNC data was initially copied over the Internet (esp. to Romania)." Guccifer 2.0 had claimed to originate in Romania. So in other words, this rate indicates that the data was downloaded locally, possibly using the local DNC network. The importance of this finding in regards to destroying the Russian hacking narrative cannot be overstated.

If the data is correct, then the files could not have been copied over a remote connection and so therefore cannot have been "hacked by Russia."

The use of a USB drive would also strongly suggest that the person copying the files had physical access to a computer most likely connected to the local DNC network. Indications that the individual used a USB drive to access the information over an internal connection, with time stamps placing the creation of the copies in the East Coast Time Zone, suggest that the individual responsible for initially copying what was eventually published by the Guccifer 2.0 persona under the title "NGP-VAN" was located in the Eastern United States, not Russia.

The implications of The Forensicator's analysis in combination with Adam Carter's work, suggest that at the very least, the Russian hacking narrative is patently false. Adam Carter has a strong grasp on the NGP-VAN files and Guccifer 2.0, with his website on the subject called a "good source" by Wikileaks via twitter. Carter told Disobedient Media that in his opinion the analysis provided by The Forensicator was accurate, but added that if changes are made to the work in future, any new conclusions would require further vetting.

On the heels of recent retractions by legacy media outlets like CNN and The New York Times, this could have serious consequences, if months of investigation into the matter by authorities are proven to have been based on gross misinformation based solely on the false word of Crowdstrike.

Assange recently lamented widespread ignorance about the DNC Leak via Twitter, specifically naming Hillary Clinton, the DNC, the Whitehouse and mainstream media as having “reason” to suppress the truth of the matter. As one of the only individuals who would have been aware of the source of the DNC Leaks, Assange’s statement corroborates a scenario where the DNC and parties described in Adam Carter's work likely to have included Crowdstrike, may have participated in “suppressing knowledge" of the true origins and evidence surrounding the leak of the DNC emails by confusing them with the publication of the Guccifer 2.0 persona.

Despite Guccifer 2.0's conflicting reports of having both been a Russian hacker and having contact with Seth Rich, the work of The Forensicator indicates that neither of these scenarios is likely true.

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 Screen-Shot-2017-06-26-at-10.02.08-PM

What is suggested is that the files now known as "NGP-VAN" were copied by someone with access to a system connected to the DNC internal network, and that this action had no bearing on the files submitted to Wikileaks and were most likely unassociated with Seth Rich, and definitively not remotely "hacked" from Russia.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:05 am

Carol

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Post n°496

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:05 am

Assange Compiles Media Figures, Establishment Democrats Calling For His Death[/b]
Wikileaks editor accuses establishment Liberals of becoming enamored with “censorship and death” [/size]
http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/07/assange-compiles-media-figures-establishment-democrats-calling-for-his-death/
July 1, 2017 Elizabeth Vos

Wikileaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange tweeted extensively overnight regarding what he labeled tolerant liberals who have called for his assassination and torture. Assange called such media figures “blue-ticks.” It is not clear at this time what may have prompted the series of tweets. Assange also referenced the torture and murder of what he called “alleged sources” during the series of tweets. He also implicated Hillary Clinton in some of the references. Some understood this to be a reference to the upcoming anniversary of Seth Rich’s murder, but it is not clear at this time who Assange may have been specifically referring to.

Assange tweeted on the subject of the torture of his staff and sources. His reference to the assassination of sources as well as threats to his own life was understood by some to be a reference to the killing of Seth Rich, a DNC staffer and data analyst whose still-unsolved murder took place almost a year ago.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:20 am

Carol

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Post n°497

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Mon Jul 10, 2017 10:20 am

Trump: "Comey Leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION To The Media. This Is So Illegal"
"James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-10/trump-comey-leaked-classified-information-media-so-illegal

When we discussed late Sunday's blockbuster report by The Hill, according to which as part of his leak of personal recollections of his conversations with Trump in hopes of (successfully) launching a special probe into the president's alleged Russian collusion, former FBI director James Comey also allegedly disclosed classified information in direct violation of FBI rules and regulations, we said "for an appetizer of what's to come, look closely at Trump's twitter feed once the president learns the news of Comey's alleged transgressions."

Roughly 8 hours later Trump finally caught up, and around 6am slammed Comey tweeting "James Comey leaked CLASSIFIED INFORMATION to the media. That is so illegal!"

Trump also retweeted a Fox News report on The Hill’s article: https://twitter.com/foxandfriends/status/884359746639220736?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fnews%2F2017-07-10%2Ftrump-comey-leaked-classified-information-media-so-illegal

For those who missed it, officials familiar with the memos told The Hill that more than half of the documents contained classified information, raising the possibility that Comey broke FBI rules and ignored a security protocol in the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Even more ironic is that Comey allegedl violated the same protocol which Hillary Clinton was accused of breaching, and one which James Comey was tasked with investigating last summer, and ultimately found to be a non-event.

Judging by Trump's tweet, as we expected, this is just the start of the next round of recriminations between the president and Comey. We look forward to an official statement from the former FBI chief next.

~~~~~~~

Comey Bombshell: FBI Director's Leaked Trump Memos Contained Classified Information
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-09/comey-bombshell-fbi-directors-leaked-trump-memos-contained-classified-information

More than half of the memos former FBI chief James Comey wrote as personal recollections of his conversations with President Trump about the Russia probe have been found to contain classified information, which as the now retired former Chair of the House Oversight Committee said "if true this is bombshell news."

Amid the constant media outrage over everything Trump, Trump, Trump, some might have forgotten that in the political rollercoaster over the past 12 months, there were numerous other high-profile individuals involved, including not only former DOJ head Loretta Lynch, whose every interaction with the Clinton campaign is about to be probed under a Congressional microscope, but the man who some say started it all: former FBI Director James Comey.

First loved by the Democrats when he personally absolved Hillary Clinton of any sins regarding her (ab)use of her personal email server, then furiously loathed when he reopened the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton one week before the election, then finally getting into a feud with President Trump which cost his him job, Comey ultimately admitted to leaking at least one memo which contained personal recollections of his conversations with the president, in hopes of launching a special probe into the president's alleged Russian collusion.

There was just one problem: according to a blockbuster report from The Hill, in addition to the leaked memos, Comey also leaked classified information in gross and direct violation of FBI rules and regulations. And just like that Comey finds himself in trouble. Only not just any trouble, but the virtually same trouble that Hillary Clinton was in in the summer of 2016... and which James Comey was tasked to investigate.

We'll repeat the above because it bears repeating: in the purest definition of irony, James Comey is about to be investigated for the exact same thing which he absolved Hillary Clinton of doing last summer. Almost as if neither Comey nor Clinton were aware of - or willing to abide by - the security protocol of the agency they were in charge of.

Aside from once again confirming that Trump may have been right all along in his accusation of the ex-FBI chief's motives, this shocking revelation raises the possibility that Comey broke his own agency’s rules - by putting his own interests above those of his country - but far more grotesquely, ignored the same security protocol that he publicly criticized Hillary Clinton for in the waning days of the 2016 presidential election, in order to settle his vendetta with President Trump.

Amusingly, Comey's alleged flagrant disregard for FBI regulations would explain why he also found Clinton's email server transgressions to not be a material concern, contrary to what most Republicans claimed at the time. After all, if it was good - or rather not bad enough for Clinton, maybe it was the same with Comey's own abuse of confidential data? The only problem is that while Comey was generous enough to let Hillary go, now that the ex-FBI chief is facing the president of the US as his adversary, he may not be quite so lucky.

Upon hearing of Comey's alleged transgressions, the now former Chair of the House Oversight Committee said simply that "IF true, this is bombshell news."

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 XCncK9Ijl1

Incidentally, the first to warn of Comey's imminent headaches, was Breitbart News, which on Friday reported that a new Senate report said recent leaks by former FBI Director James Comey’s leaking of memos could “potentially harm national security.” The report, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Thursday, found that there were 125 separate leaks in President Trump’s first 126 days that were potentially damaging to national security. The report said it included Comey’s leaking of his memos after he was fired by Trump in May.

* * *

Comey's troubles started when he testified under oath last month that he considered the memos he prepared to be personal documents and that he shared at least one of them with a Columbia University lawyer friend. As Comey later disclosed, he asked that lawyer to leak information from one memo to the news media in hopes of increasing pressure to get a special prosecutor named in the Russia case after Comey was fired as FBI director.

The Hill recounts that particular exchange with Senator Roy Blunt:

“So you didn’t consider your memo or your sense of that conversation to be a government document?,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) asked Comey on June 8. “You considered it to be, somehow, your own personal document that you could share to the media as you wanted through a friend?”

“Correct,” Comey answered. “I understood this to be my recollection recorded of my conversation with the president. As a private citizen, I thought it important to get it out.”

Comey insisted in his testimony he believed his personal memos were unclassified, though he hinted one or two documents he created might have been contained classified information. “I immediately prepared an unclassified memo of the conversation about Flynn and discussed the matter with FBI senior leadership,” he testified about the one memo he later leaked about former national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Additionally, he added, “My view was that the content of those unclassified, memorialization of those conversations was my recollection recorded.”

That's when the problems escalated, because according to The Hill - which for the first time disclosed that the total number of memos linked to Comey's nine conversations with Trump - when the seven memos Comey wrote regarding his nine conversations with Trump about Russia earlier this year were shown to Congress in recent days, the FBI claimed all were, in fact, deemed to be government documents.

Oops. As The Hill reveals, four, or more than half, of the seven memos had markings making clear they contained information classified at the “secret” or “confidential” level, according to officials directly familiar with the matter.

This is a major problem for Comey because FBI policy forbids any agent from releasing classified information or any information from ongoing investigations or sensitive operations without prior written permission, and mandates that all records created during official duties are considered to be government property.

“Unauthorized disclosure, misuse, or negligent handling of information contained in the files, electronic or paper, of the FBI or which I may acquire as an employee of the FBI could impair national security, place human life in jeopardy, result in the denial of due process, prevent the FBI from effectively discharging its responsibilities, or violate federal law,” states the agreement all FBI agents sign.

FBI policy further adds that “all information acquired by me in connection with my official duties with the FBI and all official material to which I have access remain the property of the United States of America” and that an agent “will not reveal, by any means, any information or material from or related to FBI files or any other information acquired by virtue of my official employment to any unauthorized recipient without prior official written authorization by the FBI.”

Comey indicated in his testimony the memos were in his possession when he left the bureau, leaving him in a position to leak one of them through his lawyer friend to the media. But he testified that he has since turned them over to Robert Mueller, a former FBI chief and now spearheading the investigation about possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. It is not clear whether Comey as director signed the same agreement as his agents, but the contract is considered the official policy of the bureau. It was also unclear when the documents were shown to Congress whether the information deemed "secret" or "confidential" was classified at the time Comey wrote the memos or determined so afterwards, the sources said.

Meanwhile, Congressional investigators have already begun examining whether Comey’s creation, storage and sharing of the memos violated FBI rules, but the revelation that four of the seven memos included some sort of classified information opens a new door of inquiry into whether classified information was mishandled, improperly stored or improperly shared.

Where things get especially ironic, is that this was the same issue the FBI - under Comey - investigated in 2015-16 about Clinton’s private email server, at the time the most sensitive and controversial issue of the Clinton campaign, where as secretary of State she and top aides moved classified information through insecure channels.

Ultimately, Comey concluded in July 2016 that Clinton’s email practices were reckless, but that he could not recommend prosecution because FBI agents had failed to find enough evidence that she intended to violate felony statutes prohibiting the transmission of classified information through insecure practices. While the news initially was loved by Democrats as it let Hillary get off scott-free from any potential criminal probe, Comey's subsequent decision to restart the FBI probe into Clinton's email server one week before the election is what eventually prompted both Hillary and John Podesta to claim that James Comey was one of the two factors that cost Clinton the presidency... along with the "Russian hacking" of course.

The only problem is that while there is yet no evidence of Russian hacking, suddenly with the factual emergence of Comey's transgression, questions may emerge not only into the ex-FBI chief's actions and motives, but whether the FBI's clearance of Clinton's use of an email server under Comey was proper after all...

* * *

So what happens next? According to The Hill, congressional investigators are likely to turn their attention to the same issues to determine if Comey mishandled any classified information in his personal memos.

In order to make an assessment, congressional investigators will have to tackle key questions, such as:

* Where and how were the memos were created, such as whether they were written on an insecure computer or notepad.
* Where and how the memos were stored, such as inside his home, his briefcase or an insecure laptop.
* Were any memos shown to private individuals without a security clearance and did those memos contain any classified information
* When was it determined by the government that the memos contained classified information, before Comey took them and shared one or after.

One avenue for answering those questions is for a panel like Senate Intelligence, House Intelligence or Senate Judiciary to refer the matter to the Justice Department’s internal watchdog, the inspector general, or to the Director of National Intelligence and its inspector general. One thing is certain: the near-future will see many more of Comey's sworn Congressional testimonies, and the vendetta between Trump and Comey is about to not only be rekindled but escalate to previously unseen levels. For an appetizer of what's to come, look closely at Trump's twitter feed once the president learns the news of Comey's alleged transgressions.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Mon Jul 10, 2017 7:15 pm

Carol

Carol: Admin; Posts : 31674
Join date : 2010-04-07
Location : Hawaii

Post n°498

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Mon Jul 10, 2017 7:15 pm

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 1f834605

Breaking=> Anon Twitter Acct ‘White Rabbit’ Just Dropped 28,000 Hillary Private Emails Online

Importantly, The Forensicator concluded that the chance that the files had been accessed and downloaded remotely over the internet were too small to give this idea any serious consideration. He explained that the calculated transfer speeds for the initial copy were much faster than can be supported by an internet connection.

This is extremely significant and completely discredits allegations of Russian hacking made by both Guccifer 2.0 and Crowdstrike.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/breaking-anon-twitter-acct-white-rabbit-just-dropped-28000-hillary-private-emails-online/

Now this—

This afternoon we received an email with the following message:

First, I must remain anonymous for now. I would like to forward links to files that were sent to President Trump this morning & may be a big smoking Gun re: DNC hack/Russia, etc.

I am not the originator of these files and cannot vouch for their authenticity, just passing them along. They can be found here:
https://twitter.com/W4BB17/status/884390817732984832

The tweet links to 28.882 Hillary Clinton emails in three different formats.
We are currently analyzing this huge document dump.

OHHHH LORDY!!!

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 1c70959b7e

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Mon Jul 10, 2017 8:10 pm

Carol

Carol: Admin; Posts : 31674
Join date : 2010-04-07
Location : Hawaii

Post n°499

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Mon Jul 10, 2017 8:10 pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsPVDFGH1Bk&feature=youtu.be
Deep State Panics, CIA Calls Mike Cernovich Dangerous
Published on Jul 10, 2017
The CIA has come out and states that Mike Cernovich is dangerous to them and their globalist agenda.

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

**Carol** Tue Jul 11, 2017 9:59 am

Carol

Carol: Admin; Posts : 31674
Join date : 2010-04-07
Location : Hawaii

Post n°500

Re: SPIES & LIES - PART 1

Carol Tue Jul 11, 2017 9:59 am

SPIES & LIES - PART 1 - Page 20 AP_17185443801727

John McCain faces questions in Trump-Russia dossier case
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160622854.html

WASHINGTON

Sen. John McCain faces questions in a defamation lawsuit about leaks leading to publication of the now-infamous dossier that alleged Donald Trump’s campaign had connections to Russian operatives, McClatchy has learned.

The dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele and his London firm, Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., amounted to a collection of uncorroborated reports of collusion gathered as political research for sale to Trump’s opponents. It proved explosive when published by online news site BuzzFeed on Jan. 10.

Now, two lawsuits — one in the United States and a second in the U.K. — are being brought by lawyers for Aleksej Gubarev, a Cyprus-based Internet entrepreneur whom Steele’s Russian sources accused of cyber spying against the Democratic Party leadership.

According to a new court document in the British lawsuit, counsel for defendants Steele and Orbis repeatedly point to McCain, R-Ariz., a vocal Trump critic, and a former State Department official as two in a handful of people known to have had copies of the full document before it circulated among journalists and was published by BuzzFeed.

The court document obtained by McClatchy confirms that Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and a Russia adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, discussed the 35-page dossier with McCain.

“The Defendants considered that the issues were self-evidently relevant to the national security of the US, UK and their allies,” the document says, explaining why Steele and his partner, Christopher Burrows, felt it necessary to share the dossier’s findings.

Wood had told Britain’s The Guardian in January that McCain had reached out to him about the dossier, and had obtained it through other means. The court document confirms that Wood, Steele and former State Department official David Kramer decided together that new information gathered after the election should be shared with authorities in Britain and the United

A McCain spokesperson declined to comment Monday on the new court document, pointing instead to a Jan. 11 statement from the veteran senator about the dossier. “Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the director of the FBI,” McCain had said then. “That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue.”

In recent congressional testimony, ex-FBI Director James Comey[b][/b], fired by Trump amid a widening probe, acknowledged receiving the dossier from McCain on Jan. 6. Kramer, a former State Department official who until recently served as a senior director at Arizona State University’s McCain Institute for International Leadership, declined comment.

The British court documents are legal responses in the British suit and do not reflect the entire docket. The British suit is related to a similar lawsuit in the United States against online news site BuzzFeed.

At least a dozen national media organizations had a copy of the Steele dossier before it became public but hadn’t published details because much of the information had not been corroborated.

McClatchy was among them and subsequently published numerous reports on people named in the dossier, including a Russian diplomat and a supposed hacker who apparently is an imprisoned pedophile.

The dossier, without substantiation, said Gubarev’s U.S.-based global web-hosting companies, XBT and Webzilla, planted digital bugs, transmitted viruses and conducted altering operations against the Democratic Party leadership.

While one key name in the dossier was blackened out by BuzzFeed, Gubarev’s was not. He alleges that he was never contacted for comment, suffering reputational harm in the process.

In the court document, Steele’s barrister, Nicola Cain, argued that the portion of the dossier dealing with Gubarev, which came in weeks after Trump’s election and after Steele was no longer paid by his client for research, amounted to raw intelligence and was advertised as such. She did not return a call or email requests for comment.

Val Gurvits, an attorney leading the U.S. suit against BuzzFeed, dismissed the idea that Gubarev was just caught up in raw intelligence.

“The value of this document (dossier) is only if it is published,” said Gurvits. “It is absolutely of no value to anybody unless it is published. Slander is slander when you say it to one person.”

In a recent development in the U.S. lawsuit, BuzzFeed attorneys subpoenaed the former heads of the FBI, CIA and the Directorate of National Intelligence, seeking information about the dossier. Politico reported on June 30 that the demand for documents and testimony was aimed at learning the existence and scope of any federal investigation into Steele’s dossier.

Similarly, Gubarev’s attorney hopes to soon put Steele under oath, particularly about how the accusations about XBT and Webzilla came about.

“I plan to take the necessary steps to depose him as an important witness to my case,” Guvarits said, dismissing the chances of a settlement. “We have not had any serious settlement discussions in quite some time. My client certainly wants to take the case to trial. He wants his reputation back.”

The British court document also confirmed that Washington research firm Fusion GPS, co-founded by former Wall Street Journal reporter Glenn Simpson, had been hired to conduct opposition research by one of Trump’s GOP primary opponents. Later, Democrats paid for the same research on Trump’s past and alleged Russian ties.

Fusion GPS contracted with Steele, who had once worked as an undercover spy in Moscow. The court document lifted a veil on Washington’s inner workings, with Steele laying out how Fusion briefed select reporters on the material for which it and Steele had been paid to gather.

“The journalists initially briefed at the end of September 2016 by the Second Defendant (Steele) and Fusion at Fusion’s instruction were from the New York Times, the Washington Post, Yahoo News, the New Yorker and CNN,” Steele’s lawyers said, adding that he “verbally and in person” briefed the first three organizations in mid-October and a reporter from Mother Jones via Skype.

These reporters were not shown the dossier, the lawyers noted, and received instead a “disclosure of limited intelligence regarding indications of Russian interference” in the campaign. The information was off the record, meaning it could be used for further research but not published nor attributed.

Simpson declined comment. Steele declined past attempts to discuss his dossier with McClatchy.

--Greg Gordon and special correspondent Peter Stone contributed.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article160622854.html#storylink=cpy

_________________
What is life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night, the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
With deepest respect ~ Aloha & Mahalo, Carol

tMoA

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