Congressman Says Assange Has “Physical Proof” Russia Did Not Hack DNC

(TIM) — In a recent interview with Breitbart Radio, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who reportedly visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London in August 2017 and met with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, said that Assange has physical evidence to prove that Russia did not provide WikiLeaks with Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails during the 2016 US presidential campaign. “By now, everybody […]

As the Media Focuses on Russia, Govt’s Own Data Shows US Interfered in 81 Elections

Ask an average American who makes a habit of following government-mouthpiece corporate media about interference in national elections and you’ll likely elicit a nebulous response concerning Russian hackers and a plan to install Donald Trump in the White House — but you probably won’t hear a single syllable pertaining to United States government’s actual attempts to do the same.

On Monday, FBI Director James Comey confirmed for the first time publicly the bureau is officially investigating hotly contentious allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election — but, even if proven true, such geopolitical escapades better characterize the routine behavior of accuser than of accused.

“The F.B.I., as part of our counterintelligence effort, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 president election,” the director announced, adding the bureau would conduct a probe to discern whether Trump’s associates had contact with Russian officials.

Despite that the U.S. has hypocritically exerted influence over foreign elections in all corners of the globe — in fact, it has arrogantly done so a whopping 81 times between 1946 and 2000, alone — with just one-third of those operations undertaken overtly.

For months, mainstream media parroted murky accusations hurled by politicians — keen to point a finger of blame for the apparently stultifying victory of a former reality television host on someone — that The Russians had somehow surreptitiously undermined the election-centric foundation of American Democracy.

While that has yet to prove true, this new Red Scare constitutes a duplicitous attempt by the pot to call the kettle … an election meddler.

Researcher Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy — an expert on the topic at hand — discussed the lengthy but incomplete list of times the U.S. government has interfered in other nations’ elections with NPR’s Ari Shapiro.

Asked for examples where this tampering tangibly altered results, Levin stated,

“One example of that was our intervention in Serbia, Yugoslavia in the 2000 election there. Slobodan Milosevic was running for re-election, and we didn’t want him to stay in power there due to his tendency, you know, to disrupts the Balkans and his human rights violations.

“So we intervened in various ways for the opposition candidate, Vojislav Kostunica. And we gave funding to the opposition, and we gave them training and campaigning aide. And according to my estimate, that assistance was crucial in enabling the opposition to win.”

Levin reiterated the more blatant methods with which the U.S. asserts dominance — through the overt coups or all-out regime changes branding the nation a notorious interventionist — are not among the list of the 80-plus attempts to manipulate the electoral outcome.

As for the issue of pot versus kettle, Levin explained that — although Russia and other powerful nations indisputably employ similar tactics — the United States has been quite prodigious in its effort.

“Well, for my dataset, the United States is the most common user of this technique. Russia or the Soviet Union since 1945 has used it half as much. My estimate has been 36 cases between 1946 to 2000. We know also that the Chinese have used this technique and the Venezuelans when the late Hugo Chavez was still in power in Venezuela and other countries.”

As sanctimoniously as U.S. politicians cry foul about The Russians, it would behoove the new McCarthyites to reflect on the nation’s sticky imperialist fingerprints around the globe — like that time in 1996, when the United States undertook an extensive, secret operation to ensure the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

That is, of course, former President Boris Yeltsin — of the Russian Federation.

Deep State Coup Exposed: Wikileaks Shows How CIA Can Stage Russian Hacking

Wikileaks’ Vault 7 publication of a massive cache of CIA documents now reveals one of the most crucial bits of information yet — the government cannot possibly prove its crackpot Russian hackers theory about the U.S. election, because the CIA has all the tools to make it appear as if The Russians Did It, whether or not they did.

Further, the CIA, itself  — not The Russians, as officials have alleged — might be responsible for putative electronic ‘fingerprints’ left upon purported hacks into various official U.S. systems, since the agency keeps a voluminous ‘library’ of malware deployed by foreign nations.

Wikileaks reports:

“The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.”

This means the CIA in essence maintains a veritable wardrobe from which it can choose to don the cloak of another country whenever a mission would deem that necessary — even if the target of the deception were other agencies within the United States government.

Wikileaks continues:

“The CIA’s hand crafted hacking techniques pose a problem for the agency. Each technique it has created forms a ‘fingerprint’ that can be used by forensic investigators to attribute multiple different attacks to the same entity.

“This is analogous to finding the same distinctive knife wound on multiple separate murder victims. The unique wounding style creates suspicion that a single murderer is responsible. As soon one murder in the set is solved then the other murders also find likely attribution.”

Of course, this would be a false attribution planted by the agency to throw off anyone hunting evidence hackers have compromised a system. Meaning, in short, officials with the NSA and other Intelligence agencies likely did detect the electronic markings of the Russian government — but they could easily have been instead left by the CIA.

Indeed, as Jerome Corsi writes, this presents the “possibility that the Obama administration obtained FISA permission to conduct electronic surveillance on Russians believed to be coordinating with the Trump campaign based on intelligence the CIA planted to deceive the NSA into thinking there was actual contact between Russian agents and the Trump campaign.”

And if any doubt exists the CIA would be that duplicitous in its methods, another revelation from Vault 7, in a document Codex, is how to thwart any investigative efforts.

“With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from,” Wikileaks continues.

“UMBRAGE components cover keyloggers, password collection, webcam capture, data destruction, persistence, privilege escalation, stealth, anti-virus (PSP) avoidance and survey techniques.”

Incidentally, the Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary lists as the first definition for the word, umbrage, “an area of comparative darkness,”or “an overshadowing influence or power.”

Wikileaks’ tweeted with a link to the Codex document, “CIA classifies hacking document to avoid ‘law enforcement’ attributing CIA attacks to the CIA” — and included an excerpt stating,

“This specification is classified SECRET//ORCON/NOFORN to avoid hostile Foreign Intelligence Operations, Law Enforcement, Incident Response, Reverse Engineering, or any other investigation of captured tools or techniques resulting in attribution to the United States Government or the Central Intelligence Agency. …”

CIA classifies hacking document to avoid "law enforcement" attributing CIA attacks to the CIA (pdf) https://t.co/13Bw3xOnN9 pic.twitter.com/PgxVftI3HV

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

Further still, the Democratic National Committee and former presidential candidate and secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, sought to smear Republican politicians by inflating purported pro-Russia sentiment to tarnish candidate Donald Trump.

In a communique dated April 27, 2016, two DNC insiders discuss Rand Paul’s former foreign policy adviser, Dmitri Simes, and alleged recently-discovered ties to the Russian government, stating, in part,

“We don’t have a ton on Simes, but the pro-Russia stuff ties in pretty well to idea that Trump is too friendly with Putin/weak on Russia.”

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While these documents don’t provide unassailable evidence the CIA actually planted Russian Federation electronic fingerprints in government systems, they do prove the agency not only has the capability, but the foresight to insert an impenetrable shield against probing investigative agents.

A last point to consider in the Russian Hackers conspiracy so beloved by politicians and mainstream presstitutes, alike — months have passed without proof any agent or associate of the Russian Federation penetrated any U.S. computer system in a manner departing typical State hacks.

Indeed, the only significant evidence provided by officials clamoring loudest about Russian hacking has been the exact fingerprints Vault 7 proves the CIA can surreptitiously insert.

It now seems apparent that if we’ve been duped, as a nation, the actor has been under our noses — not thousands of miles away — all along.

Snopes Conveniently Silent on WaPost’s Dangerous Fake Story About Russia Hacking US Power Grid

Snopes, one of the new arbiters of Fake News for Facebook, has been utterly remiss in its fact-checking duties by failing to report the false allegation The Russians hacked into Vermont’s power grid — perhaps because the original claim appeared in the Washington Post. 

But for whatever reason, Snopes — whose CEO David Mikkelson stands accused by ex-wife Barbara Mikkelson of embezzling company money to hire prostitutes — simply didn’t bother to report on the Post’s dangerous assertion Russian state actors had tampered with critical infrastructure.

Now emblazoned with an editor’s note essentially stating its original article amounted to Fake News, the Post declared on New Year’s Eve, “Russian operation hacked a Vermont utility, showing risk to U.S. electrical grid security, officials say” — but, as harrowing as that seems, the Department of Homeland Security begs to differ.

In fact, it simply isn’t true.

“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 after the Post’s article justifiably garnered national attention.

Snopes, however, apparently didn’t deem the claim significantly influential to report as false, despite its perilous underlying suggestion — given attacks on the critical infrastructure are considered worthy of forceful response by the U.S. government — Russia should be targeted for military retribution.

Indeed, President Obama just expelled 35 Russian diplomats over as-yet unproven allegations The Russians hacked the presidential election — the theoretical hack of the nation’s power grid would present far more treacherous consequences.

But Snopes remained mum on the subject. Labeling the Post’s latest Fake News about Russia as ‘false’ should be plastered on the fact-checker’s front page — it not only isn’t there, keyword searches for anything related to Vermont, Russian hackers, the power grid, Washington Post, and more find no results for this particular story.

According to the Post’s editor’s note,

“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.”

But Snopes — who will soon be part of a team tasked with deciding whether or not news items should bear the Scarlet Letter term, ‘disputed,’ on the world’s largest social media platform — is completely derelict of duty.

Tasked along with Politifact, FactCheck.org, the Associated Press, and ABC News with vetting the veracity of news items posted to Facebook in the near future, Snopes and the others have been repeatedly accused of liberal bias. This has understandably raised alarm that accurate but right-leaning news items — or any articles not in tandem with the political left establishment — will be unjustly branded as Fake News, punished by Facebook’s unforgiving algorithms, and, thus, have a chilling effect on dissenting opinion.

Beyond basic bias, however, Snopes not excoriating the Washington Post’s egregiously fake story on The Russians Hacking Vermont shows the organization has no tangible interest in actual fact-checking — rather, the outlet appears to spend its time attacking independent, alternative, and right-leaning media organizations.

And it does so even when the information published is accurate and verifiable — or flagrantly and intentionally false.

To wit, Snopes has even ‘debunked’ an obviously fake meme, which had been intended to be a joke amongst friends — and multiple other items — without so much as contacting the people involved.

Snopes also attempted to ‘debunk’ the story of a man given a DUI, who had only caffeine in his system, by claiming that the Free Thought Project “(implied) his legal troubles were the result of merely drinking too much coffee.”

However, that is not at all what was reported. In fact, the Free Thought Project simply covered the police department’s own admission that Schwab was charged with a DUI and the only drug in his system at the time was caffeine. These two facts are indisputable. However, the supposed arbiter of ‘fake news’ insisted on slandering the Free Thought Project anyway.

Make no mistake, a fact-checker who doesn’t take the time to debunk a viral claim of Russia hacking the U.S. electrical grid — that has since been retracted for being Fake News — has no business being tasked as Facebook’s arbiter of Fake News.

Instead, Snopes’ grievously deficient debunking of the McCarthyite corporate press proves the dangers of planned soft censorship — and the need to maintain an open platform for all opinion — one where alternative media can continue unhindered in calling out corporate media’s lack of journalistic credibility.

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.