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Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160009
01/06/2017 09:38 AM
01/06/2017 09:38 AM
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Tulsa
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Here it is. 25 pages in PDF format. Note that this is the unclassified version.

Onward and upward,
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Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160010
01/06/2017 12:53 PM
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Much of the "evidence" cited seems to the that Russia Today spent a lot of time interviewing Jill Stein and Gary Johnson during the campaign. Those dastardly Russians!

Of course, none of the classified stuff has been released. But if that's what their evidence is, well...

Onward and upward,
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Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160011
01/06/2017 03:34 PM
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I heard that there may be a shakeup in intelligence under Trump today. Maybe "You're Fired!" is something we need to hear to drain the swamp?


"Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always Bad Men." Lord Actin 1887

I fear we live in evil times...
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160012
01/06/2017 04:09 PM
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There's been some talk about revamping the CIA. It probably wouldn't hurt.

I never did have much faith that Trump would drain the swamp. Maybe he's bail it out a little bit. At least that would be something.

Onward and upward,
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Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160013
01/06/2017 04:59 PM
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I know what will be done, but it will take a while and the question right now is who it will be done to and if Trump can weather out the retaliation.

Chances are, some but not all of the bad players who do know everyone will get picked up, squeezed hard, then be kept on ice while Trump's people scare the living shit out of the rest as a means of keeping them in line. Them Trump's people are going to reel everything in, play real cautious on everything and blame every mistake out there on Obama, because Trump's main thing on international policy will be either inaction, or some short surgical public strike stuff.

The danger is that the US will be caught flat footed on a big attack, but I think they will go back to the old Bush era standing that "so what if it is a big attack, if they do it we will hit them back harder".

They will embrace dumb and brutal more than all the sophisticated stuff, but minus the costly spying that Bush had started with Cheney.

I don't see a lot of pre-emptive strikes, but a "hit back harder" policy. I also don't think he or his supporters are going to take much bullshit off any alphabet agencies. What they lack in sophistication, they can and will make up for in numbers and brute force.


Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.

Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160014
01/07/2017 04:45 AM
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"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160015
01/09/2017 04:24 PM
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Ex-CIA: Clinton Doesn’t Need Putin’s Help to Discredit Herself

NSA would have only evidence of "Russian hacking," yet backed off from claim

RT - January 7, 2017

The main goal of the whole “Russian hacking” US election narrative is a propaganda stunt aimed discrediting Trump by claiming that Russia’s Vladimir Putin personally intervened to discredit Hillary Clinton, retired CIA analyst has told RT.

“It’s designed to smear Trump. Because even the language that developed the notion that Vladimir Putin took it upon himself and instructed the intelligence organs in Russia to go out and discredit Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton didn’t need any help being discredited, she was quite effective at it herself,” Larry Johnson said.

“It was not Vladimir Putin that put the email server in her bathroom,” Johnson added.

“It was not Vladimir Putin who told Hillary Clinton to use a private email account and conduct US-government business over that account and to share classified information. And her repeated lying about it. The fact that you would just focus a story on it somehow makes you an agent of Vladimir Putin. This thing is so ridiculous. It’s amusing we have talk about, but it’s so serious because it shows just the level that the intelligence community in the United States has fallen to. They are playing and interfering in domestic policies,” he said.

The report lacks any factual evidence, because the intelligence services apparently don’t have any, Larry Johnson believes. “I don’t think they’re hiding anything because they don’t have anything. These are ‘or and how’ intelligence estimates as opposed to an intelligence analysis based on fact. There’s no fact underlying this. There are analytical assumptions,” Johnson said.

“You can tell that because whenever they use the language like ‘we assess that’ or ‘we believe that’ or ‘it’s likely that.’ That means they don’t know, because if you knew, you could say … in public ‘according to multiple sources we know that.’ You state facts,” he explained.

“This thing it’s a joke. If I’m a Russian intelligence analyst, with one of your intelligence services, I would be suspicious and think ‘What are the Americans up to? They really can’t be this stupid.’ And let me just reassure the folks on your side of the ledger – yeah, they actually are,” he added.

When the intelligence community raises such assumptions, it should be really confident and unanimous about them. It was, however, only somewhat coordinated within three of the agencies, namely FBI, CIA and NSA, according to Johnson.

It was only CIA and FBI that ‘strongly agree’ but the NSA, who’s the only one in that group that would actually have the physical evidence of the hacking, if that existed… took a middle of the road position,” Johnson told RT.

The whole situation around the “hacking” report gives an impression of a well-staged spectacle, Johnson believes.

Yesterday, the Arms Services Committee in the Senate holds a hearing alleging Russian hacking, about when hacks took place domestically in the United States and that Arms Services has no jurisdiction over intel side. That was entirely a propaganda ploy, and not a single journalist in the major outlets over here raised questions about that, it was an observed performance,” Johnson said.

The attack on Russian media and RT specifically, undertaken in the report despite its theme supposedly being the “hacking,” is quite understandable, according to Johnson, and emanates from hostility toward actually objective news coverage and jealousy towards RT being capable of such journalism.

“Because you’re actually a more objective news channel than Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the main stream media here in this country. I say that sincerely. I was a Fox New analyst, I’ve been on ABC, CBS, NBC, all of the cable channels … and I discovered that the kind of bias and propaganda they’ re accusing RT of engaging in is in fact what they themselves are doing.”


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160016
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‘Witch hunt’: Kremlin slams ODNI report claiming Russia hacked US elections

Moscow is “seriously tired of these accusations.”

RT - January 9, 2017

Moscow has slammed the recent ODNI report which claims Russia hacked the US elections. The Kremlin spokesman said it was “reminiscent of a witch hunt,” adding that Moscow is “tired” of “amateurish” US hacking intelligence.

Moscow is “seriously tired of these accusations,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Monday. “It truly is reminiscent of a witch hunt.”

“This publication has not added any substance for comment. From our point of view, groundless accusations backed by nothing sound, fairly amateur, on an emotional level, which can hardly apply to highly-professional work of truly highly-qualified intelligence agencies,” Peskov told reporters.

Last week, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a report titled ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.’ The unclassified version of the report did not provide any concrete evidence of Russian interference.

The US intelligence community has accused Russia of aiding the victory of Donald Trump, at the same time acknowledging that “Russian intervention” did not in the end affect the outcome of the elections.

“We understand that our American counterparts throughout different stages of history went through such phases of ‘witch hunting.’ We remember those periods of history. We know also that they are replaced by more sober experts, a more sober approach, based on dialogue rather than emotional fits,” he concluded.


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160017
01/18/2017 12:14 PM
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Russia Snaps, Accuses UK, Germany And France Of “Grossly Interfering” In The US Election

'US allies have grossly interfered in America’s internal affairs, in the election campaign'

Zero Hedge - January 18, 2017

Having listened stoically for the past two months to accusations without evidence that Moscow “hacked the US election”, and that Hillary’s loss was indirectly due to Putin’s alleged meddling, which resulted in Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats, on Wednesday Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov finally snapped, and lashed out at the ongoing US election scapegoating fiasco, saying that leaders and top officials from the UK, Germany, and France have “grossly interfered” in US internal affairs, “campaigned” for Hillary Clinton, and openly “demonized” Donald Trump.

Unlike US accusations of Russian interference, at least Lavrov’s claim can be substantiated with a simple google search of news event in mid to late 2016.

Speaking during a press conference following a meeting with his Austrian counterpart Sebastian Kurz, Lavrov said his angry outburst was because Moscow “is tired” of accusations it meddled in the US election. In fact, Lavrov said, it is time to “acknowledge the fact” that it was the other way around.

“US allies have grossly interfered in America’s internal affairs, in the election campaign,” Lavrov said, quoted by RT.

“We noticed that Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande, Theresa May, and other European leaders” did so. He added that official representatives of some of the European countries did not mince words, and essentially “demonized” Donald Trump during the election campaign.

Among the more vivid examples, last August German Foreign Minister Frank Walther Steinmeier called Trump a “hate preacher.” Reacting to Trump’s statement that parts of London are ‘no-go areas,’ UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in December that Trump is “unfit” to be US president. Later on, however, Johnson said that Trump’s presidency might be a “moment of opportunity.”

On the other hand, the Russian government has expressed its willingness to work with the US under Donald Trump, Lavrov said. “Trump says that if the promotion of US national interests would lead to a chance of working with Russia, it would be foolish not to do that.”

“Our approach is the same: where our interests coincide, we should be and are ready to work together with the US as well as the EU and NATO,” the minister stressed.

Over the past year, Russia has been repeatedly accused by Washington of meddling in the US election. In January, the US Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) issued a report allegedly proving Moscow had its fingers in the US election campaign. The public was only provided, however, with a declassified part of the paper, which contained no solid evidence. Trump’s advisor on foreign policy during the campaign, Carter Page said that the paper was “speculative” and served “certain political theories.” The US media, citing CIA sources and unverified reports, even alleged that Moscow tried to aid Trump directly to secure his victory. Trump has rebuffed the allegations, saying it was simply another “excuse” by the Democrats to explain the defeat of Hillary Clinton.

The demonization campaign culminated with last week’s release of a dossier, according to which Russia had “compromising” materials on Trump, suggesting the president-elect is a puppet for the Kremlin.

In response, yesterday Putin warned that he sees attempts in the United States to “delegitimize” Trump using “Maidan-style” methods previously used in Ukraine, and slammed the creators of the Trump report, saying “people who order fakes of the type now circulating against the U.S. president-elect, who concoct them and use them in a political battle, are worse than prostitutes because they don’t have any moral boundaries at all.”


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160018
01/18/2017 12:39 PM
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People are forgetting how much Great Britain helped Roosevelt in the 1940 campaign. It wasn't even a secret.

Onward and upward,
airforce

Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160019
01/18/2017 02:47 PM
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They are really on to something with the U.K., in fact it might spell legal trouble for a whole bunch of issues related to the "five eyes" spy network because of that mobilization of foreign spy apparatus to attack political factions in the United States.

The legal premise had been established as an anti-terrorism initiative, but that requires an active terriorism component to a political movement. For example the model having been the relationship between Sinn Fein the IRA. That's why you had the trolls and pundits going through forums and trying hard to troll for talk of attacks on Obama.

I sure tried to back that stuff off and talk people out of it, and look how much membership we lost. What little goes on Facebook, I try to put some warnings out to a few people when some stuff comes up, I suddenly lose "friends".

Hence my decision to just build a survival retreat that is capable out weathering out the first waves of conflict when it all goes serious, because nobody is really going to be able to tell in the early stages who is really on what side. Too many of the highest profile leaders have ulterior motives and loyalties.

Look what gets attacked and shut down...


Life liberty, and the pursuit of those who threaten them.

Trump: not the president America needs, but the president America deserves.
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160020
03/30/2017 03:31 AM
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Top Obama official admits to spying on President Trump

March 29, 2017

Is this the Smoking Gun? Top #Obama official admits to spying on @POTUS #Trump https://t.co/YWzm1ROxf6 pic.twitter.com/b3YLeQgHiz
— TRUNEWS™ (@TRUNEWS) March 29, 2017

A top Obama administration official has acknowledged that government agents spied on President Trump prior to his inauguration and attempted to conceal the evidence

(VERO BEACH, FLA) On Wednesday Evelyn Farkas, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Obama administration, told MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski admitted that efforts were taken by her former colleagues to gather intelligence on President Trump’s transition team and then later conceal the sources of that intelligence from the incoming administration.

Evelyn Farkas, who currently serves as a senior follow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington based think tank, said:

“I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill, it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”

“Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left, so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy ... that the Trump folks – if they found out how we knew what we knew about their ... the Trump staff dealing with Russians – that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.”

Evelyn Farkas also discussed the rush to widely disperse the information gathered on President Trump’s team to political operatives, lawmakers, and congressional staffers on Capitol Hill prior to January 20th.

"So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia," she said. "So then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were trying to also help get information to the Hill."

On the March 28th edition of TRUNEWS, host Rick Wiles spoke with Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman about the emerging ‘Smoking Guns’ proving President Trump’s assertion that he was illegal spied upon by officials in the U.S. intelligence community, potentially at the behest of officials in the Obama administration.

Like Evelyn Farkas, Dimitri Alperovitch is also a senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and heads their “Cyber Statecraft Initiative”.

Dimitri Alperovitch is the founder and CTO of CrowdStrike, the organization that initially claimed to have evidence the Russian government was connected to the Trump organization. They have subsequently walked back this claim in a retraction published on Voice of America.


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
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Breaking: NY Times Outs Nunes, Cites Sources

Criminal leaks fuel mainstream media attacks against Trump

Kit Daniels | Infowars.com - March 30, 2017

Two White House officials provided Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with intelligence reports showing that President Trump and his team were swept up in foreign surveillance by US spy agencies, claims the New York Times.

“Several current American officials identified the White House officials as Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and formerly worked on the staff of the House Intelligence Committee,” the Times reported on Thursday. “A White House spokesperson declined to comment.”

The Times said Nunes was asked to meet the officials in a secure location at the White House where people with security clearances could view classified reports.

“The real issue, Mr. Nunes has said, was that he could figure out the identities of Trump associates from reading reports about intercepted communications that were shared among Obama administration officials with top security clearances.” the report added. “He said some Trump associates were also identified by name in the reports.”

“Normally, intelligence agencies mask the identities of American citizens who are incidentally present in intercepted communications.”

The Times likely got their information from moles leaking information from inside the White House which President Trump has described as a criminal act.

And the mainstream media has been targeting Nunes ever since he pointed out there was “no evidence of collusion” between President Trump’s team and Russia on the night of the presidential election, which of course went against the establishment narrative of “Russian election meddling” being used to undermine Trump’s presidency.

“Nunes’ acknowledgement of the lack of any proof appears believable, as the intelligence community did not even produce a solid piece evidence of the ‘hacking’ itself let alone the vague ‘Russian involvement,'” said former MI5 intelligence officer Anny Machon.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealKitDaniels

Twitter: Follow @KitDaniels1776


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160022
03/31/2017 02:17 AM
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Flynn lawyer: Client wants assurances against 'witch-hunt' prosecution

Kevin Johnson , USA TODAY March 30, 2017

WASHINGTON — The attorney representing President Trump's former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn said late Thursday that his client would not submit to questioning in the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 election without protection against possible prosecution.

"No reasonable person, who has the benefit of advice from counsel, would submit to questioning in such a highly politicized, witch-hunt environment without assurances against unfair prosecution,'' attorney Robert Kelner said in a written statement.

Describing his client as the target of "unsubstantiated public demands by members of congress and other political critics that he be criminally investigated,'' Kelner confirmed that there have been "discussions'' regarding Flynn's possible appearances before the House and Senate Intelligence committees now conducting formal inquires into Russia's attempts to disrupt the American political system.

"Gen. Flynn certainly has a story to tell, and he very much wants to tell it, should the circumstances permit,'' Kelner said. "Out of respect for the committees, we will not comment right now on the details of discussions between counsel for Gen. Flynn and the . . . committees.''

Jack Langer, spokesman for the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., said a deal for immunity has not been discussed. An aide to California Rep. Adam Schiff, the panel’s ranking Democrat, also said there had been no discussions about an immunity deal for Flynn.

Earlier this week, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., signaled that the committee was seeking testimony from Flynn.

“You would think less of us if Gen. Flynn wasn’t on that list’’ of potential witnesses, Burr told reporters Wednesday.

Flynn was dismissed last month after misleading Vice President Pence about his pre-inaugural contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn repeatedly maintained that he had not discussed Obama admininstration sanctions against Russia during his conversations with Kislyak. But former acting Attorney General Sally Yates, fearing that Flynn could be vulnerable to possible blackmail, later presented intercepts of Kislyak's conversations to the White House, indicating that sanctions were indeed part of the discussions.

"Gen. Flynn is a highly decorated 33-year veteran of the U.S. Army,'' Kelner said. "He devoted most of his life to serving his country, spending many years away from his family fighting this nation’s battles around the world . . . Notwithstanding his life of national service, the media are awash with unfounded allegations, outrageous claims of treason, and vicious innuendo directed against him.''

Yates was scheduled to testify before the House panel earlier this week, along with former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, before the hearing was abruptly canceled by Nunes.

The decision followed a flurry of communications between an attorney for Yates and Trump administration lawyers in which the former acting attorney general was warned that much of her testimony could contain privileged communications and may be barred.

On the day Yates’ lawyer informed the White House counsel that she still intended to testify, Nunes canceled Tuesday’s hearing.

CONTRIBUTING: David Jackson


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160023
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Trump calls critics' bluff: Will share intel on Obama spying

[Linked Image]

Spicer: 'The smart move was to make all the materials available'

Garth Kant

WASHINGTON – It didn’t take long for a buzz of electricity to crackle through the glorified shoebox that is the White House press briefing room.

It was the news they’d all been waiting to hear.

Network reporters jumped on boxes to do live reports breathlessly passing on the news: The New York Times had just dropped a bombshell.

And then they all proceeded to miss the lead.

That was likely because the Times itself had buried the lead 10 paragraphs below the headline, which read: “2 White House Officials Helped Give Nunes Intelligence Reports.”

However, the tenth paragraph read: “But the officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s own characterization of the material.”

new_york_times

In other words, the New York Times’ own sources confirmed that the way House Intelligence Committee chair Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had described the information in key classified documents was accurate.

And what Nunes had seen may prove President Trump’s claim that former President Obama spied on him and his transition team.

Still, the media remained fixated on how Nunes got the information, and whether it was improperly obtained, rather than what the information actually said. And why he wasn’t sharing it with other key lawmakers, including the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

So, on Thursday afternoon, the White House dropped a bombshell of its own, and announced at the start of the daily press briefing that it had invited leaders of congressional intelligence committees to review the documents Nunes has seen.

In that one fell swoop, President Trump totally changed the dynamic in the hottest controversy in Washington, by:

Defusing much of the criticism of chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif. for not sharing the information with other congressional leaders;

Providing congressional leaders access to evidence that may show President Obama spied on the Trump transition team;

Forcing the media to focus on the message instead of the messenger.

To recap, Nunes had announced on March 22, as WND reported, he had learned from intelligence sources that “on numerous occasions, the intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”

And details about those people “were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting” even though they had “little or no apparent foreign intelligence value.”

Then it was reported that on March 21, the day before Nunes made his announcement, he had come to the White House to meet a source and review dozens of intelligence reports on the Trump transition team acquired via government spying.

The next day, Nunes discussed the intelligence reports with President Trump but said he hasn’t been able to share the contents with others because he wants to protect his sources, who he described as whistle-blowers taking great risks to expose wrongdoing.

Essentially, the chairman has been waiting for the FBI, CIA and NSA to provide information to the Intelligence committee which could corroborate the information his sources provided. Then the committee would know what Nunes knows and see what he’s seen.

On March 15, Nunes and Intelligence committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., sent a letter to the heads of the FBI, CIA and NSA, asking for a full account of surveillance activities by the Obama administration on the Trump transition team.

WND has learned the committee has received a little information back but is waiting for much more from all three agencies. If the agencies fully comply with the request, they believe the documents will shed a lot of light on the issue.

Nunes has said the NSA has been complying with the request, but the FBI has not.

However, those three spy agencies were not the only ones to whom the March 15 letter was addressed.

The letter was also CC’d to acting Director of National Intelligence Michael Dempsey. The DNI is a member of the White House staff, as the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters related to national security.

So, White House Counsel Donald McGahn responded to the March 15 request by inviting intelligence committee leaders to look at the documents for themselves, and “determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked.”

The White House letter also asks the committees to determine if the intelligence collection was proper, whether names were revealed improperly, and “to the extent that U.S. citizens were subject to such surveillance, were civil liberties violated?”

“Our view was that the smart move was to make all the materials available to the chairman and the ranking member of the relevant committees,” said White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer.

He added, “We want them to look into this, as we have maintained all along – that I think there’s a belief that the president has maintained – that there was surveillance that occurred during the 2016 election that was improper.”

Before the start of the press briefing Spicer read from the White House letter to the ranking members and chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees that said:

“In the ordinary course of business, national security staff discovered documents that we believe are in response to your March 15, 2017 letter to the intelligence community seeking ‘documents necessary to determine whether information collected on U.S. persons was mishandled and leaked.'”

Spicer then said, “We have and will invite the Senate and House ranking members and Chairman up to the White House to view that material in accordance with their schedule.”

As WND reported on Thursday, a former Obama official appears to have inadvertently confirmed the former president’s administration spied on then President-elect Trump’s transition team for political purposes.

Speaking on MSNBC March 2, Evelyn Farkas, deputy assistant secretary of defense under Obama, confirmed that not only was the previous administration collecting intelligence on the Trump team, it was attempting to share it as far and wide as possible.

Farkas said the reason for that was, “We have very good intelligence on Russia,” and she “very worried because not enough was coming out into the open.”

However, since then, intelligence chiefs who have seen the classified information in question, including Obama’s own former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as well as former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, have said they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and the Russian government.

That would appear to indicate the real reason the Obama administration was feverishly collecting and sharing the classified information was not for national security purposes, but for political reasons.

obama-spying-magnifying-glass-600

For weeks, reporters have demanded to know: Where is the evidence to back up President Trump’s claim that the Obama administration spied on him?

Then reporters demanded to know details about how Nunes got the intelligence information showing the Obama administration spied on the Trump team and where he got it.

Nunes said he went to the White House to meet a source and review dozens of intelligence reports because that was simply the most convenient secure location that had a computer connected to the system that housed the reports.

The chairman told Bloomberg News, “We don’t have networked access to these kinds of reports in Congress.”

Nunes also said his source was an intelligence official and not a member of the White House staff.

But when the Times story broke Thursday morning, claiming that a pair of White House officials “helped” Nunes get the intelligence reports, reporters thought they had a smoking gun proving the administration colluded with the chairman in some nefarious way to obtain the information.

However, a close look at the Times story shows that it said only that a pair of White House officials “played a role” in providing the reports to Nunes and “assisted” in the disclosure.

Those vague descriptions did not indicate the Trump White House played any role in shaping the content of the reports.

Ever since Nunes made his March 22 announcement that he had seen the intelligence information, Spicer has accused the reporters of attacking the messenger and ignoring the message, and the Times story added gasoline to the fire.

Spicer’s sentiments were perhaps best summed up by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who said earlier in the week, “Whether it was the White House or Waffle House, what difference does it make if the information is reliable and authentic?”


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160024
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Report: Susan Rice Requested Unmasking of Incoming Trump Administration Officials

The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests

Mike Cernovich | Medium - April 3, 2017

Susan Rice, who served as the National Security Adviser under President Obama, has been identified as the official who requested unmasking of incoming Trump officials, Cernovich Media can exclusively report.

The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests. The reports Rice requested to see are kept under tightly-controlled conditions. Each person must log her name before being granted access to them.

Upon learning of Rice’s actions, H. R. McMaster dispatched his close aide Derek Harvey to Capitol Hill to brief Chairman Nunes.

“Unmasking” is the process of identifying individuals whose communications were caught in the dragnet of intelligence gathering. While conducting investigations into terrorism and other related crimes, intelligence analysts incidentally capture conversations about parties not subject to the search warrant. The identities of individuals who are not under investigation are kept confidential, for legal and moral reasons.

Under President Obama, the unmasking rules were changed. Circa originally reported:

As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama’s top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency’s incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats, Circa has learned.

Three people close to President Obama, including his “fall guy” for Benghazi (Susan Rice), had authorization to unmask.

Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

Not even mainstream outlets denied that some Trump officials had been spied on, with the NY Times reporting:

WASHINGTON — A pair of White House officials helped provide Representative Devin Nunes of California, a Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, with the intelligence reports that showed that President Trump and his associates were incidentally swept up in foreign surveillance by American spy agencies.

According to WaPo, there were three sources for the reports, with Michael Ellis ultimately being blamed by WaPo and AP.

What’s striking about the Times story is the spin it took. Trump had previously claimed he had been “wire tapped” (quotation marks in his original Tweet), leading to media screams that he prove it. The Times’ own reporting proves that President Trump and his associates were spied on.

The Times, rather than admit Trump had been vindicated, instead focused its attention on the question of who leaked the reports to Nunes:

Since disclosing the existence of the intelligence reports, Mr. Nunes has refused to identify his sources, saying he needed to protect them so others would feel safe going to the committee with sensitive information. In his public comments, he has described his sources as whistle-blowers trying to expose wrongdoing at great risk to themselves.

Since when did journalists attempt to unmask sources? The Times, WaPo, and other outlets rely on anonymous sources in nearly every article about national security. It’s clear they have an agenda — that agenda is not telling the truth.

This reporter has been informed that Maggie Haberman has had this story about Susan Rice for at least 48 hours, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
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Sources: Susan Rice behind unmasking of Trump officials White House counsel reportedly ID'd former national security adviser

Garth Kant, WND


WASHINGTON – Multiple reports indicate former National Security Adviser Susan Rice was the Obama administration official who requested the unmasking of incoming Trump administration officials.

Mike Cernovich broke the story in an article in Medium on Sunday that said, “The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests.”

Unmasking is the revealing of names within the intelligence community of U.S. citizens whose communications were monitored during foreign surveillance.

According to Fox News, the unmasked names of people associated with Donald Trump were sent widely to top officials in the Obama administration.

That is a potential felony.

The unmasked names were reportedly sent to every member of the National Security Council, former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-CIA Director John Brennan and some officials at the Defense Department.

The NSA is required to remove the names of Americans incidentally collected during foreign surveillance before sharing intelligence with other agencies unless there is an issue of national security, but Rice reportedly requested the unmasking of the identities of Trump associates.

Sources said some identities of those who were not unmasked were easy to discern because of telling details in the intelligence reports.

What do YOU think? Is it time to drop the Russia scam? Sound off in today’s WND poll!

Cernovich also reported that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman has had the information about Rice for at least two days, but “has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.”

Sources described as U.S. officials familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that White House lawyers discovered last month that Rice “requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign.”

The information reportedly came to light during a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on unmasking the identities of people not targeted for electronic monitoring but whose communications were intercepted incidentally.

Two sources told Bloomberg the review was conducted by the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick.

The sources told Bloomberg that “Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities.”

One source said the reports “contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.”

Circa News reported that National Security Council staff in the Trump administration discovered evidence of Rice’s involvement in the unmasking in computer logs left behind by the Obama administration.

Intelligence sources told Circa News that the logs indicated Rice began to show interest in NSA materials that included unmasked Americans’ identities last July when Trump became the GOP presidential nominee, then accelerated after he won the election in November.

Circa News also reported that “most if not all” of the surveillance information collected on the Trump team had nothing to do with any of the alleged election interference by Russia.

Investigators will now want to determine if President Obama was aware of the unmasking, or perhaps even requested it.

Rice and Obama were particularly close.

In a Newsweek profile of Rice in 2014, a member of the National Security Council said she was “like a sister” to Obama.

Last month on PBS, Rice denied knowing anything about reports that information on Trump and his associates was incidentally collected.

However, Rice’s credibility previously has come under question.

She went on all the major Sunday talk shows in September 2012 after the terrorist attack on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, to blame the incident on a spontaneous protest over an Internet video defaming Islam, even though evidence has since shown the Obama administration knew that not to be true at the time.

As someone both in the intelligence community and in the White House, Rice would seem to fit the profile of whoever it was who sought to discredit the then-incoming Trump administration by claiming it had ties to the Russian government.

However, as WND reported, in early March, intelligence chiefs who have seen the classified information in question, including Obama’s own former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as well as former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, have said they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and the Russian government.

That would appear to indicate the real reason the Obama administration was feverishly collecting and sharing the classified information was not for national security purposes but for political reasons.

The new information on Rice comes on top of bombshell revelations Friday that the spying by the Obama administration on then-presidential candidate Trump reportedly was even worse than what he has alleged.

And it had nothing to do with Russia but everything to do with politics.

Sources in the intelligence community claimed the unmasking of people in the Trump camp who were under surveillance was done purely “for political purposes” to “hurt and embarrass (candidate) Trump and his team.”

The revelations came from rank-and-file members of the intelligence community who are fighting back against a stonewall by the leaders at the nation’s spy agencies, according to Fox News.

Reporter Adam Housley said the sources were “not Trump” people but are “frustrated with the politics that is taking place in these (intelligence) agencies.”

Here is what they told Fox:

1) Surveillance targeting the Trump team during the Obama administration began months ago, even before the president had become the GOP nominee in July.

2) The spying on the Trump team had nothing to do with the collection of foreign intelligence or an investigation into Russia election interference.

3) The spying was done purely “for political purposes” that “have nothing to do with national security and everything to do with hurting and embarrassing Trump and his team.”

4) The person who did the unmasking was someone “very well known, very high up, very senior in the intelligence world, and is not in the FBI.”

5) Congressional investigators know the name of at least one person who was unmasking names.

6) The initial surveillance on the Trump team led to “a number of names” being unmasked.

7) House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., has known about the unmasking since January.

8) Two sources in the intelligence community told Nunes who did the unmasking and told him at least one of the names of someone in the Trump team who was unmasked. The sources also gave Nunes the serial numbers of the classified reports that documented the unmasking.

9) It took Nunes a number of weeks to figure out how to see those intelligence reports because the intelligence agencies were stonewalling him and not allowing the chairman or other people to see them.

10) There were only two places Nunes could have seen the information: where the sources work, which would have blown their cover; and the Eisenhower Executive Office building on the White House grounds, which houses the National Security Council and has computers linked to the secure system containing the reports he sought.

11) Nunes got access to that system on March 21 with the help of two Trump administration officials.

The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel reported the documents Nunes saw confirming the Obama administration spied on the Trump team for months “aren’t easily obtainable, since they aren’t the ‘finished’ intelligence products that Congress gets to see.”

She said there were “dozens of documents with information about Trump officials.”

Strassel also reported there was a stonewall against the Intelligence committee chairman because, “for weeks Mr. Nunes has been demanding intelligence agencies turn over said documents—with no luck, so far.”

She also learned that, along with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, one other Trump official was unmasked.

(Flynn resigned after his unmasking was leaked to the press as part of reports that he spoke on the phone with the Russian ambassador before the new administration took office. President Trump said the two discussed nothing inappropriate and Flynn was just doing his job, but the president asked for the aide’s resignation because he was not completely honest in his initial account of the conversation.)

But even the reports that did not unmask identities “were written in ways that made clear which Trump officials were being discussed.”

And, importantly, the documents were “circulated at the highest levels of government.”

Strassel concluded, “To sum up, Team Obama was spying broadly on the incoming administration.”

Fox News also reports the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into whether leaks of information targeting the Trump team could have come from the FBI, because it requested Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warrants that led to the acquisition of some of the foreign surveillance.

Nunes has said the FBI has not responded to his requests for information, and a source told Fox the agency is refusing to cooperate with the House investigation.

Fox also reported the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into “whether the FBI wrongly included political opposition research from Trump’s opponents in its probe.”

The panel also is probing whether the FBI paid a former British spy who wrote a sensational and discredited report alleging wild improprieties by Trump and his aides.

On Friday, Press Secretary Sean Spicer noted the day before the president tweeted his accusation that Obama had spied on him, comments were made by “a senior administration official, foreign policy expert, Dr. Evelyn Farkas, (which) together with previous reports that have been out, raised serious concerns on whether or not there was an organized and widespread effort by the Obama administration to use and leak highly sensitive intelligence information for political purposes.”

As WND reported in depth, Farkas appeared to have inadvertently confirmed the former president’s administration spied on Trump’s transition team for political purposes.

Speaking on MSNBC March 2, she confirmed that not only was the previous administration collecting intelligence on the Trump team, it was attempting to share it as far and wide as possible.

Farkas claimed the information was about Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, but just days later, intelligence chiefs who had seen the classified information in question, including Obama’s own former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper as well as former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, said they have seen no evidence of collusion between the Trump team and the Russian government.

That would appear to add more credence to the assertion that the real reason the Obama administration was feverishly collecting and sharing the classified information was not for national security purposes but for political reasons.

On Friday, Spicer said, “Dr. Farkas’s admissions alone are devastating.”

He said that “in the ordinary course of their work, NSC – National Security Council – staff discovered information that may support the questions raised by the president and Dr. Farkas’ claim.”

“These are serious issues. They raise serious concerns. And if true, the issues would be devastating,” Spicer said.

Spicer then lectured reporters for ignoring the Farkas story and growing evidence that Obama did indeed spy on the Trump team.

“[I]f everyone was treating the president and the administration fairly, you’d ask a series of much different questions,” he said.


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160026
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Maybe this will change Trump's mind about government surveillance. If the government can snoop on presidential candidates, who can't they snoop on? But I'm not holding my breath on that one.

Onward and upward,
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"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861
Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160028
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"Rand Paul is my new hero."

Quote
...How do we rein in our intelligence agencies -- make it impossible for the government to exploit them for domestic purposes -- while still allowing them to do their work? Can this even be done? Don't we have to give the agencies at least some room to operate? This is where I usually parted ways with Rand Paul and, for that matter, Julian Assange. Now I am not so certain.

Of one thing, however, I am sure. The entire use of intelligence agencies by the government needs a thorough airing, as do the agencies themselves. This will be extremely difficult. Threatened, the agencies, like any bureaucracy, but even more by their nature, will clam up. Getting at the truth will take a thousand crowbars and twice as much patience.

Further, normally strong advocates of civil liberties (at least they said they were), the Democratic side will do anything in their power to avoid the subject, lest the reputation of Barack Obama be shattered, which is of course a possibility. In the current hyper-partisan climate, they will go to extraordinary lengths to prevent that. This very night I saw a MSNBC video clip of an editor of Mother Jones, a man I have known for some time, saying -- with a straight face -- that the reason Susan Rice's veracity was being questioned by conservatives was because she is black. With people thinking like that, this country is a deep trouble. Or more precisely, it's gone off the deep end.
Onward and upward,
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Re: Official Report on "Russian" Hacking #160029
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New NSA Expert’s Report Says There Was “No Russian Hack” of DNC Computers – It Was a “Leak”

Jim Hoft Aug 10th, 2017

IT WAS ALL A LIE!

Former NSA agents say it wasn’t a hack at all, but a leak—an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system.

This is an amazing article by The Nation — please take time to read it.

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack via @thenation https://t.co/9319JKpIuI

— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) August 10, 2017

Read the whole thing.

Here are a few stunning admissions from the report:

There was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year—not by the Russians, not by anyone else. Hard science now demonstrates it was a leak—a download executed locally with a memory key or a similarly portable data-storage device. In short, it was an inside job by someone with access to the DNC’s system. This casts serious doubt on the initial “hack,” as alleged, that led to the very consequential publication of a large store of documents on WikiLeaks last summer.

Forensic investigations of documents made public two weeks prior to the July 5 leak by the person or entity known as Guccifer 2.0 show that they were fraudulent: Before Guccifer posted them they were adulterated by cutting and pasting them into a blank template that had Russian as its default language. Guccifer took responsibility on June 15 for an intrusion the DNC reported on June 14 and professed to be a WikiLeaks source—claims essential to the official narrative implicating Russia in what was soon cast as an extensive hacking operation. To put the point simply, forensic science now devastates this narrative.

No wonder the DNC would not turn their servers over to the FBI!


"The time for war has not yet come, but it will come and that soon, and when it does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard." Gen. T.J. Jackson, March 1861

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