Intel Chief: Truthful Reporting on US Corruption is Part of Russian Conspiracy — Hints at ‘Act of War’

Outgoing Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee  the campaign to sway the election in favor of Donald Trump did, in fact, involve Russian government-coordinated hacks, but,

“Hacking was only part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, and fake news.”

This heavy-handed and “multifaceted Russian campaign” attempted to undermine the United States, Clapper asserted, and — although these Russian hackers to not manage to infiltrate any voting machines or tamper with the vote count — there would be no way for the U.S. Intelligence Community to assess the total impact on the election. Stopping a hair’s breadth from calling this campaign an act of war, Clapper posited,

“Whether or not that constitutes an act of war. I think, is a very heavy policy call that I don’t think the intelligence community should make” — and then added, “It certainly — would carry, in my view, great gravity.”

NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers and undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Marcel Lettre also testified on reports of Russian interference in the election — but testimony by Clapper, and questions from the committee, eerily echoed sessions with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the first Red Scare in the 1950s.

Acknowledging the United States and other allies routinely engage in espionage, Clapper explained of Russia’s operation,

“I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we’ve seen in this case.”

For all of this posturing about Russian meddling with computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, among others, intelligence officials have not aligned behind the allegation — a fact which has garnered condemnation and outright ridicule.

Indeed, several current and former intelligence officials — as well as Wikileaks founder Julian Assange — have vehemently denigrated the theory documents provided to the publishing organization had been attained by hackers at all. Rather, agreeing with Assange no State actor forked over the damning documents, some in the intelligence community believe evidence points to a disgruntled insider.

To wit, Clapper’s testimony spoke to report forthcoming next week purported to evince the Russian campaign theory, but will only show the conclusions reached by the NSA, FBI, and CIA — not every agency said to comprise the entirety of the intelligence community.

“I think the public should know as much about this as possible,” he said of the report. “We will be as forthcoming as we can, but there are some sensitive and fragile sources and methods here.”

Clapper, the outgoing Obama administration, and the corporate press have conflated independent, right-leaning, and alternative media outlets with both Russian propaganda and Fake News — without evidence to back the claims — a tactic surmised by many to eschew blame for the lost election and distract from enmity and corruption revealed in the contents of the leaks.

Particularly targeted for reporting the truth by this anti-Russia propagandizing has been state-run outlet RT, about which Clapper contended,

“RT was very active in promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, etc. Whatever crack, fissure they could find in our tapestry, they would exploit it.”

Of course, as a U.S. official, Clapper is duly obligated not to admit to governmental wrongdoing; however, his seething admonishment of RT and surreptitious allegation independent media outlets published only fake reports and purposely-slanted misinformation is not only wholly false, it dangerously portends a crackdown on America’s free press.

In fact, Clapper went so far as to call for a return to the official U.S. propaganda machine, the United States Information Agency, which churned out pro-American news items from 1953, during the fury of the Red Scare, through 1999, when it transformed into the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

“We could do with having a USIA on steroids to fight this information war a lot more aggressively than we’re doing right now,” Clapper ironically lamented, or perhaps addressing that Obama signed measures similar to the agency’s mission into law in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act.

Notably, the intelligence director tellingly described the Russian interference as an “activist” effort to subvert American democracy — suggesting the press might not be the only target the government has in its sights.

But the fact the U.S. intelligence communities have painted truthful, accurate reporting by independent media with the broad Red Scare brush — simply because egregious nastiness revealed in authentic documents is too unpleasant to acknowledge — proves why the fictitious narrative of Fake News threatens dissent, itself.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist notoriously but accurately stated. “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”

Facts Force WaPost to Retract Viral Story on Russia Hacking US Power Grid — It was All Lies

Yet again, corporate media has been caught delivering Fake News, as the Washington Post — responsible for deeming the entirety of alternative media Russian propagandists and falsely claiming the U.S. Intelligence Community found Russian hackers responsible for meddling in the presidential election — boldly declared The Russians hacked Vermont’s power grid, putting the nation in peril.

But it just didn’t happen, the Department of Homeland Security says.

“While our analysis continues, we currently have no information that indicates that the power grid was penetrated in this cyber incident,” DHS assistant for public affairs J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement cited by Politico.

Although the Washington Post sounded the alarm with an article titled, “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say,” suggesting the nation’s power supply stood at risk to be taken down, the outlet has since been forced to retract the claim — because, literally no evidence supports the assertion.

A note from the editor now graces the article, clarifying that, “An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.”

City-owned utility Burlington Electric Department raised concerns after ostensibly discovering malware on a laptop — the same variety of malware listed as possibly linked to Russia in a disclaimer-laden report from DHS and the FBI — but the utility and DHS have since explained the computer was not connected in any way to the power system.

“A code associated with the Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe by the Obama administration has been detected within the system of a Vermont utility, according to U.S. officials,” the Washington Post claimed, boldly adding, “it raises fears in the U.S. government that Russian government hackers are actively trying to penetrate the grid to carry out potential attacks.”

As seems to have become audacious routine for the Post, only threadbare evidence was provided to back up the claims, and the article’s hysterical content could have easily taken an unaware public by surprise — perhaps exactly as it was designed to do. But as Breasseale noted,

“The laptop was not connected to the affected organization’s grid systems. In fact, the organization performed immediate action to isolate the laptop and alerted federal partner authorities,” but the department’s “analysis remains ongoing.”

Even before the addition of the Post’s editor’s note, The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald and a few independent media outlets immediately called out the article’s reckless yellow journalism as pure Red Scaremongering — apparently a decided trend the outlet has championed in recent months.

In fact, the Post has published a number of wholly false claims, beginning on November 24 with an article underhandedly maligning some 200 alternative and independent media organizations as intentional or hapless agents of the Russian government for printing pro-Russia propaganda to subvert the election in favor of Donald Trump.

After going viral, that article — citing a nascent and seemingly prepubescent website, PropOrNot — subsequently bore an editor’s note essentially claiming plausible deniability since the outlet didn’t bother including a link to its source. Considering the lack of due diligence on the part of the Post and other mainstream media organizations who parroted the piece, its contents — bearing literally no evidence of the Russian propaganda claim — constituted an attempt to libel independent journalism.

When that attempt to conflate alternative media — and basically any outlet who had dared not lionize Hillary Clinton — with The Russians backfired, the Post went a step further and published an article asserting the CIA had found evidence Russian hackers had penetrated systems to throw the election for Trump.

However, this piece also lacked evidence save for the statements of unnamed and thus unverifiable CIA officials — the article, itself, contradicted the boldness of the claim, noting the 17 agencies comprising the Intelligence Community disagreed and therefore no official report would be forthcoming.

“Time after time after time, we are seeing this fake news coming out in the Washington Post,” former British MI5 intelligence agent, Annie Machon, told state-run outlet RT. “And every time they put these fake stories out they have to put [out] a disclaimer afterwards. But of course, the seed is then sown.”

Given the current atmosphere from the outgoing Obama administration, and its dual agenda to smear The Russians and shirk blame for Clinton losing the election, the Post’s Chicken Little-ism hardly comes as a shock.

As The Free Thought Project previously reported on the laughable claims of Russia hacking the Vermont power grid, the Washington Post’s parent company, Time Warner, has donated significantly to Clinton’s political campaigns.

Perhaps even more telling, the Post’s current owner, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, landed a $600 million contract with the CIA the same year he purchased the media outlet, albeit for an ostensively separate project.

Incidentally, after Obama signed into law the creation of what, in essence, amounts to an official government propaganda arm, the Post made the stunning announcement that — despite the scorned, habitual penchant for publishing Fake News — the outlet had turned so “profitable” in 2016, it would be hiring five dozen additional journalists.

Whether the aforementioned constitute coincidence or not, the Washington Post’s continued foray into McCarthyism — with little or no proof to back its claims — embodies dangerous, irresponsible writing devoid of journalistic integrity on which it is supposed to adhere.

Simply put, one of the most vocal critics of Fake News is guiltiest of publishing the sort of Fake News that could have serious consequences.

What do They Know? CFR Just Deemed Russia-NATO as Top “Conflict” Risk of 2017

A “serious military confrontation” between Russia and NATO nations ranks at the top of the Council on Foreign Relations list of conflict risks for 2017 — and judging by the new McCarthyite, Red Scare hysteria gripping the nation, it seems the United States is hell bent on making that a reality.

For its ninth annual Preventive Priorities Survey, CFR’s Center for Preventive Action (CPA) “asked foreign policy experts to rank conflicts based on their likelihood of occurring or escalating and their potential impact on U.S. national interests.”

A military conflict between Russia and a NATO member nation would stem “from assertive Russian behavior in Eastern Europe,” according to the survey.

Other “top tier” risks with a “high” impact and moderate likelihood of occurring include a nuclear crisis with North Korea; a cyberattack on critical U.S. infrastructure; and a “mass casualty terrorist attack,” either in the United States or another NATO ally nation.

Additionally, three conflicts with a “high” likelihood which would have a “moderate” impact include “increased violence and instability in Afghanistan resulting from a continued strengthening of the Taliban insurgency and potential government collapse; the intensification of violence between Turkey and various Kurdish armed groups within Turkey and in neighboring countries; and the intensification of the civil war in Syria resulting from increased external support for warring parties, including military intervention by outside powers.”

CFR analysts did not deem any conflict both highly likely and highly impactful to U.S. interests, “a change from last year when an intensification of Syria’s civil war was considered the most urgent threat. Respondents still considered a worsening of Syria’s civil war to be highly likely in 2017, but downgraded its impact on U.S. interests from high to moderate.”

Analysts did, however, view President-Elect Donald Trump as a substantial wild card, as Paul B. Stares, CPA director and General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention, explained:

“With a new presidential administration assuming office, it is important to help policymakers anticipate and avert potential crises that could arise and threaten U.S. interests. Our annual survey aims to highlight the most likely sources of instability and conflict around the world so that the government can prioritize its efforts appropriately.”

What the survey unsurprisingly fails to mention is the role the United States and NATO have actively played in a potential military conflict with Russia.

As recently as late June, Russian aggression remained a subject of debate — even within NATO. General Petr Pavel, chairman of the NATO Military Committee, explained rather bluntly,

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

But a number of Balkan states, paranoid about the possibility Russia would invade as it had in Crimea, requested support in the form of military protection from NATO — and the subsequent buildup of alliance forces along Russia’s border has been viewed by many as the true aggression in this scenario.

First deploying between 3,000 and 4,000 troops, Pavel initially claimed troop buildup would remain limited in scope due to the lack of substantive threat from Russia — but numbers quickly ballooned to at least 40,000, and it’s unclear at this point precisely how many NATO troops are stationed along the Russian border.

Further, on the eve of the U.S. presidential election, NATO put 300,000 troops on high alert over fears of Russian hackers. Since then, anti-Russian hysteria has gripped the American political establishment, and though no unassailable proof has yet surfaced, the CIA, various politicians, and mainstream outlets claim Russia did, indeed, interfere in the election.

That claim, though plastered in a constant string of headlines, has been disputed by the FBI and, more recently, a Wikileaks insider. Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan and known ally of Julian Assange, told the Daily Mail on Tuesday,

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians. The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”

Murray also penned in a blog post:

“I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

“A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they ‘know the individuals’ involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of ‘We know who it was, it was the Russians’ are beneath contempt.”

What, exactly, is the ultimate goal with this Red Scare, McCarthyite scaremongering isn’t yet clear, but the tactic has certainly furthered the cleft between the U.S. and Russia — making CFR’s conflict assessment of the situation all the more believable.

Whether the incoming Trump administration will heed the warning — and end the unnecessary, absurdly dangerous provocation — is still an open question.