Top NSA Whistleblower Claims "Russiagate" A Fake To Increase War-Spending

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

William Binney is the mathematician and Russia-specialist, who quit the NSA in 2001 as its global Technical Director for geopolitical analysis, because of the lying about, and manipulations of, intelligence, that he saw — distortions of intelligence by the George W. Bush Administration — in order to ‘justify’ systematic, massive, and all-encompassing, Government snooping into all Americans’ private electronic communications. His, and some colleagues’, efforts to get the Inspector General of the US Department of Defense to investigate the matter, produced FBI raids into their homes, and seizures of their computers, so as to remove incriminating evidence they might have against higher-ups. According to Binney, NSA"s Director, Michael Hayden, had vetoed in August 2001 a far less intrusive and more effective system of signals-intelligence collection and analysis, which might have enabled the 9/11 attacks to be blocked — a more effective system that would have been less expensive, less intrusive, and not violated Americans’ Constitutional rights. Hayden went on to head the CIA, until the end of George W. Bush’s Presidency. Afterward, Hayden joined the Chertoff Group and other military-industrial-complex contractors of the US federal Government. There were no such rewards for any of the whistleblowers.

Binney viewed Hillary Clinton as continuing George W. Bush’s neoconservatism, and so, though reluctantly, voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 election.

On November 15th, an interview of Binney was published at the Washingtonsblog news-site, titled “How to Instantly Prove (Or Disprove) Russian Hacking of US Election”, in which Binney provides technical details to explain why he strongly believes that the Democratic Party’s allegations, which say that Russia was the source of the leaks of information from the computers of the Democratic National Committee and from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, are nothing more than intentional concoctions and distortions, which are backed and promoted by America’s military-industrial complex, whose stock-values rise accordingly with the lies. 

He believes,

there’s a huge part of the story that the entire mainstream media is missing …

Specifically, Binney says that the NSA has long had in its computers information which can prove exactly who hacked the DNC … or instead prove that the DNC emails were leaked by a Democratic insider. …

And he stressed:

If the idiots in the intelligence community expect us to believe them after all the crap they have told us (like WMD’s in Iraq and “no we don’t collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”) then they need to give clear proof of what they say. So far, they have failed to prove anything.

Which suggests they don’t have proof and just want to war-monger the US public into a second cold war with the Russians.

After all, there’s lots and lots of money in that for the military-industrial-intelligence-governmental complex of incestuous relationships.

His technical explanation of how he came to this conclusion, is provided in that Washingtonsblog article. He doesn"t think that the elements within the intelligence community which are promoting the Russiagate allegations can possibly be so stupid as to actually believe what they are saying. He claims that they know that what they are saying is false, because if it weren’t false, then they could provide, to the public, evidence that it is true, and do it without violating anyone’s rights, nor revealing any legitimate US national-security information.

Basically, he is saying that the keepers of the keys are blocking the public from the truth, because they know that the truth will expose the fact that they’ve been lying to the public, all along.

His technical explanation of the details employs a number of undefined terms, which aren’t understandable to persons who are not themselves technically knowledgeable about the field, such as his saying:

First, from deep packet inspection, they would have the originator and ultimate recipient (IP) of the packets plus packet series 32 bit number identifier and all the housekeeping data showing the network segments/path and time to go though the network. And, of course, the number of packet bits. With this they would know to where and when the data passed.

 

From the data collection, they would have all the data as it existed in the server taken from. That’s why I originally said if the FBI wanted Hillary’s email, all they have to do is ask NSA for them.

 

All this is done by the Narus collection equipment in real time at line rates (620 mbps [mega bits per second,] for the STA-6400 and 10 gbps [giga bits per second] for the Insight equipment).

Binney explained what these numbers mean: Each Narus Insight device can monitor and record around 1,250,000 emails each second … or more than 39 trillion emails per year.

However, no one who is promoting the Russiagate allegations is taking him on, to debate Binney’s allegations. Instead, all of the newsmedia are plastered with allegations of ‘Russia’s meddling in American democracy’.

There are people who know what the terms that Binney is using refer to. But, thus far, none of these people is saying that Binney is a liar. Instead, they’ve all just been ignoring him - and none of the major newsmedia have been inviting Binney and the promoters of the military-industrial-complex’s position onto their forums in order to debate these issues in public.

It’s just like the situation was about ‘Saddam’s WMD,’ in 2002 and 2003 prior to our invasion and destruction of Iraq as a supposed ‘response’ to the 9/11 attacks.

NSA Whistleblower Says Trump Pushed Meeting With Pompeo

As we reported yesterday, President Donald Trump is receiving flack from hysterical liberals for reportedly advising CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with former senior NSA official Bill Binney, whom the media has labeled a conspiracy theorist for his belief that Russia wasn’t responsible for hacking the DNC - or at least, if it was, it was the work of a deep-cover agent - because the files, according to Binney, were manually loaded onto a thumb drive, meaning the theft was likely the work of a disgruntled insider.

Binney discussed the meeting during an appearance on NBC, where he confirmed that Trump was probably made aware of his theory by watching one of his appearances on Fox News.

"He"s trying to find some factual evidence," said Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the National Security Agency.

Binney, a widely respected NSA whistleblower, left the agency in 2000 and has made claims that the NSA is capturing and storing nearly every US communication.

Binney told NBC News that Pompeo informed him that the CIA director took the meeting at the urging of the president.

Mike Pompeo

In a statement, a CIA spokeswoman did not dispute that, but declined to comment.

“The Director stands by and has always stood by the January 2017 intelligence community assessment," on Russian election interference, spokeswoman Nicole de Haay said.

She added, “The director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor."

The intelligence community released a multilateral report in January 2017 concluding that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 election, which was won by Trump in a historic upset. One of the tactics, the intelligence community alleged, was the hack of the DNC, which was a massive public relations embarrassment for Clinton and eventually led to the resignation of former DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Trump has repeatedly criticized the intelligence community and claimed its conclusion is unfounded. And Pompeo, a former Army officer and Harvard Law School graduate who gives Trump his intelligence briefing nearly every day, is suspected of kowtowing to Trump in his tepid approach to the issue.

Last month, the CIA had to correct Pompeo"s erroneous statement that the intelligence assessment found that the Russian interference campaign did not alter the outcome of the election. No such conclusion was made.

NBC pointed out that it is extremely unusual for a CIA director to meet with someone like Binney, who for years has accused US intelligence agencies of subverting the constitution and violating the civil rights of Americans. However, Binney - while a controversial figure in the US - has been praised abroad as a whistle blower and truth teller.

However, the meeting to discuss the narrative that directly contravenes the findings of the US intelligence community was so productive that Pompeo is already arranging further meetings between NSA and FBI officials and Binney to discuss his analysis. Binney said two unnamed CIA analysts accompanied Pompeo during the meeting at CIA headquarters.

Binney reportedly also raised the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich as a suspicious, given its proximity to the release of the hacked documents. There has been speculation that Rich was the one who leaked the emails.

Binney said he did not discuss with Pompeo his longstanding allegations that U.S. intelligence agencies have been acting illegally. Binney said he voted for Trump, because he considered Democrat Hillary Clinton "a war monger.

CIA Director Met With NSA Whistleblower Who Disputes Russia"s Role In DNC Hack

One year ago, we introduced readers to William Binney, a former high-ranking NSA official turned whistleblower with an interesting theory: Binney believes the intelligence community’s assessment that Russia-linked hackers stole emails from the DNC as they pushed to sway the election in Trump’s favor is bullshit.

The real story, he says, is that a DNC insider stole the emails by downloading them manually from the DNC’s server onto a hard drive. Binney says he arrived at this conclusion after conducting an independent analysis of the metadata from the emails with a particular eye toward timestamps that he says indicate a download speed consistent with loading the files onto a thumb drive.

Binney’s views have been vigorously rebutted by the intelligence community, which has accused him of cynically advancing his theory to benefit President Trump, whom he supported during the election.

But now, it appears Binney’s theory is being discussed at the highest levels within the CIA after the Intercept reported that CIA Director Mike Pompeo met with Binney late last month under the advisement of President Donald Trump.

Mike Pompeo

The meeting, as the Intercept noted, has caused something of a stir in the intelligence community, as several agents dished that they were worried Pompeo’s politics were superseding his interest in preserving our national security - an extremely serious charge to make under cover of anonymity.

However, given the Mueller probe’s recent turn toward investigating Trump associates’ alleged financial crimes and other allegations unrelated to the campaign, and the growing skepticism surrounding the Clinton’s and their conduct during the campaign and during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State, and investigators’ seeming reluctance to elaborate on how they know what they know (which one might expect them to do given the seriousness of the allegations) it’s unsurprising that Trump would get frustrated.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Pompeo has expressed skepticism about Russia’s involvement in the DNC hack, and in trying to influence the election more broadly...

More recently, at a Washington event in October, Pompeo said that U.S. intelligence had determined that Moscow’s intervention hadn’t impacted the outcome of the election. He was quickly criticized for the comments, and the CIA had to issue a clarification saying that the intelligence assessment on Russia hadn’t been altered.

 

Pompeo’s meeting with Binney came just days before the first charges from Mueller’s investigation were made public on October 30.

...Which in turn has alarmed some of his colleagues at the CIA.

However the meeting came about, the fact that Pompeo was apparently willing to follow Trump’s direction and invite Binney to discuss his analysis has alarmed some current and former intelligence officials.

“This is crazy. You’ve got all these intelligence agencies saying the Russians did the hack. To deny that is like coming out with the theory that the Japanese didn’t bomb Pearl Harbor,” said one former CIA officer.

Binney, for his part, is happy that the meeting occurred and eager to help Pompeo and Trump get to the bottom of the DNC email theft. As he points out, the intelligence community helped Bush justify the war in Iraq with intelligence they knew to be unreliable. Who’s to say - given the clues that initially sparked Binney’s doubt - that something similar isn’t happening with Russia.

One thing’s for sure: Trump’s support for warmer relations with Russia immediately alienated the intelligence agencies and foreign policy establishment, which have always been deeply suspicious of Russia.

“I was willing to meet Pompeo simply because it was clear to me the intelligence community wasn’t being honest here,” Binney said, referring to their assessment of the DNC email theft. “I am quite willing to help people who need the truth to find the truth and not simply have deceptive statements from the intelligence community."

Binney said that Pompeo asked whether he would be willing to meet with NSA and FBI officials to further discuss his analysis of the DNC data theft, suggesting that there may be some institutional follow-up.
 

Of course, the CIA’s comms department has insisted that Pompeo supports the community’s findings, which were laid out in a paper published in January.

“The Director stands by, and has always stood by, the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment,” Boyd, the CIA spokesperson, said.

Notably, the revelation that former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazile said she feared for her life after DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered certainly help cast Binney’s views in a new light. Some suspect that Rich wasn’t murdered in a robbery gone awry, like police said, but in a deliberate hit job organized by shadowy elements associated with the DNC and Clinton campaign. Binney said he mentioned the case of Seth Rich to Pompeo during their meeting.

And as the Intercept readily admits, Pompeo’s decision to meet with Binney breathes new life into narratives that were originally dismissed by the mainstream media as “right wing conspiracy theories." 

Pompeo’s decision to meet with Binney raises the possibility that right-wing theories aired on Fox News and in other conservative media can now move not just from conservative pundits to Trump, but also from Trump to Pompeo and into the bloodstream of the intelligence community.

 

Some senior CIA officials have grown upset that Pompeo, a former Republican representative from Kansas, has become so close to Trump that the CIA director regularly expresses skepticism about intelligence that doesn’t line up with the president’s views. Pompeo has also alienated some CIA managers by growing belligerent toward them in meetings, according to an intelligence official familiar with the matter.

 

The Director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor,” Boyd said in an email to The Intercept. “As he has stated repeatedly, when we deliver our assessments to policy makers, we must do so with complete candor. He has also pushed decision making down in the organization, giving officers greater ownership of their work and making them more accountable for the outcomes. These changes are designed to make CIA more agile, aggressive and responsive." 

This past summer, as the Mueller investigation was heating up, Binney co-authored a memo, published by members of a group of former intelligence officials called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, making the case that the DNC emails were not hacked by Russia, but stolen by an insider. The memo argued that the emails were likely downloaded directly from a DNC computer onto a thumb drive or some other external device.

“Forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer,” the memo states. The memo’s conclusions were based on analyses of metadata provided by the online persona Guccifer 2.0, who took credit for the alleged hack. “Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack."

 

The memo garnered attention on the right, but its claims have been disputed. It cited timestamps embedded in the Guccifer files showing when they’d been copied, and used this data to extrapolate how quickly they’d been copied from one computer to another. The analysis on which the VIPS memo was based, conducted by a blogger called “The Forensicator,” showed that the files were transferred at a speed roughly equivalent to the rate at which data can be downloaded to a USB thumb drive. VIPS claimed that speed was “much faster than what is physically possible with a hack,” and so the files had to have been stolen by an insider with direct access to the computer system.

Binney, who has serious health problems and is confined to a wheelchair, said he traveled to the CIA headquarters in Langley Virginia to meet with Pompeo, who was accompanied by two CIA analysts who didn’t reveal their names.

While the intelligence community has categorically disputed Binney’s theory, it has never provided a compelling explanation as to why.

However, we imagine now that the death of Rich is back in the news cycle and both the Mueller indictments plus the revelation that the ‘Trump dossier’ was financed by Democrats, the intelligence community is rapidly hurtling toward a Sophie’s choice of sorts: Admit they lied and acknowledged that Binney’s theory is at least plausible, or produce the evidence that will definitively prove that Russia-linked hackers were responsible for the DNC leaks - something we imagine might be difficult in the absence of any real conclusive evidence.

Like they say, being “mostly certain” is just an upside-down way of saying that doubts remain.  
 

“False Flags” Are So Common that U.S. Officials Commonly Discuss Them

Despite the attempt to marginalize the concept, "false flags" are so common that U.S. officials frequently use that phrase.

For example, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell:

Former Director for Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council, Roger Cressey:

Former CIA counterterrorism official Philip Mudd:

Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, a high ranking Air Force official:

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (and Neocon warmonger) John Bolton:

The Washington Post notes that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved as an acceptable interrogation method

A technique known as "false flag," or deceiving a detainee into believing he is being interrogated by someone from another country.

NBC News points out:

In another document taken from the NSA by Snowden and obtained by NBC News, a JTRIG official said the unit’s mission included computer network attacks, disruption, “Active Covert Internet Operations,” and “Covert Technical Operations.” Among the methods listed in the document were jamming phones, computers and email accounts and masquerading as an enemy in a “false flag” operation. The same document said GCHQ was increasing its emphasis on using cyber tools to attack adversaries.

Washington’s Blog asked high-level NSA official Bill Binney* if he had heard of the term “false flags” when he was with the NSA. Binney responded:

Sure, they were under deception and manipulation programs. I was not involved in doing them; but, I did have to figure out some that the other side was doing. The other side called them “dezsinformatsiya” and Manipulatsiya.” The Brits have been doing this for several hundred years and are quite good at it.

Washington’s Blog asked Philip Giraldi - a former counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer with the CIA - the same question with regards to his experience with the CIA. Giraldi responded:

Yes, of course. We did false flags, and called them that, frequently in the operations directorate using false documentation to indicated that we were nationals of a country that was not the United States. Almost every CIA officer had false third country identification when operating overseas....

We followed up by asking:

Is it fair to say some of the false flags were for the purpose (i.e. premeditated) of blaming another country or group ... not only just in case caught?

Giraldi replied:

Sometimes if it were a covert action attempting to do just that but more often just for cover reasons to make one appear to not be American...

Robert David Steele – a 20-year Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer, the second-ranking civilian in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence, and former CIA clandestine services case officer - said:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

***

In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI.

Steele has repeatedly and publicly said (and also confirmed to Washington"s Blog) that he personally carried out a "false flag" attack while working as a U.S. intelligence officer.

Indeed, false flags are so common that there are official rules of engagement prohibiting false flags in naval, air and land warfare.

* William Binney is the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history. Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Top NSA Whistleblower: Ransomware Hack Caused by “Swindle of the Taxpayers” by Intelligence Agencies

What should we make of the global ransomware attacks which happened today?

We’ve documented that the intelligence services intentionally create digital vulnerabilities, then intentionally leave them open … leaving us exposed and insecure.

Washington’s Blog asked the highest level NSA whistleblower ever* – Bill Binney – what he thinks of the attacks.

Binney told us:

This is what I called short sighted finite thinking on the part of the Intelligence Community managers.

This is also what I called (for some years now) a swindle of the tax payers. First, they find or create weaknesses then they don’t fix these weaknesses so we are all vulnerable to attack.

Then, when attacks occur, they say they need more money for cyber security — a total swindle!!! [Indeed.]

This is only the second swindle of the public. The first was terror efforts by saying we need to collect everything to stop terror — another lie. They said that because to collect everything takes lots and lots of money.

Then, when the terror attack occurs, they say they need more money, people and data to stop terror. Another swindle from the start. [The war on terror is a “self-licking ice cream cone”, because it creates many more terrorists than it stops.]

And, finally, the latest swindle “THE RUSSIANS DID IT.” This is an effort to start a new cold war which means another bigger swindle of US tax payers.

For cyber security, I would suggest the president order NSA, CIA and any others to fix the cyber problems they know about; then, maybe we will start to have some cyber security.

The bottom line is that our intelligence services should start concentrating on actually defending us, rather than focusing on offensive mischief.

* Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Binney is the real McCoy. As we noted in 2013, Binney has been interviewed by virtually all of the mainstream media, including CBS, ABC, CNN, New York Times, USA Today, Fox News, PBS and many others.

"They're Like The Praetorian Guard" - Whistleblower Confirms NSA Targeted Congress, The Supreme Court, & Trump

Authored by Chris Menahan via InformationLiberation.com,

NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House."

Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.

"They"re taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.

"That"s the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said. "Everything we"re doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it."

"Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower who witnessed some of this -- they"re inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House," Binney said.

"And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they"re looking at it. The idea is to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it actually happens," he said.

"I mean, that"s just East German," Tucker responded.

Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult.

"This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can"t stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.

"Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That"s what"s been going on. I mean they"ve consistently failed. When Alexander said they"d stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."

Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state...

"They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..."

Who"s going to stop them?

Top NSA Whistleblower: Intelligence Agencies DID Spy On Trump

Trump claims that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower before the election.

Sound nutty?

Perhaps ... but former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that Trump is probably right that Trump Tower was bugged (by the Justice Department, not Obama personally).

And chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen - who Obama"s Attorney General Eric Holder ordered be bugged ... like many other reporters for well over a decade - said he thought Trump might be right:

Washington"s Blog asked the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history - Bill Binney - whether he thought Trump had been bugged.

Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees.

He was a 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker.

Binney also mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

Binney told Washington"s Blog:

NSA has all the data through the Upstream programs (Fairview/Stormbrew/Blarney)  [background] and backed up by second and some third party country collection.

Plus the FBI and CIA plus others, as of the last month of the Obama administration, have direct access to all the NSA collection (metadata and content on phones,email and banking/credit cards etc.) with no attempt at oversight by anybody [background]. This is all done under Executive Order 12333 [the order which allows unlimited spying no matter what intelligence officials claim] ....

FBI would only ask for a warrant if they wanted to be able to take it into court at some point given they have something meaningful as evidence. This is clearly true given the fact the President Trump"s phone conversations with other country leaders were leaked to the mainstream media.

In other words, Binney is saying that Trumps phones were bugged by the NSA without a warrant - remember, top NSA whistleblowers have previously explained that the NSA is spying on virtually all of the digital communications of Americans. - and the NSA shared the raw data with the CIA, FBI and other agencies.

If the FBI obtained a warrant to tap Trump"s phone, it was a "parallel construction" to "launder" improperly-gained evidence through acceptable channels.

As we"ve previously explained:

The government is “laundering” information gained through mass surveillance through other agencies, with an agreement that the agencies will “recreate” the evidence in a “parallel construction” … so they don’t have to admit that the evidence came from unconstitutional spying. This data laundering is getting worse and worse.

So does it mean that the NSA spying on Trump Tower actually turned up some dirt?

Maybe ...

But history shows that mass surveillance has long been used to blackmail opponents ... including high-level officials.  And see this.

And the former NSA director admitted that the mass surveillance is a power grab.

So we won"t know until the intelligence agencies actually show their cards ... and reveal what evidence they"ve gathered.