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Russia’s Largest Bank Paid Podesta Group $170,000 During Election In Exchange For Washington Influence

Well well well… All of this Russophobic bullshit from the left turns out to be nothing more than hypocritical mudslinging.

“OMG! Trump is a Russian puppet! He’s colluding with Russia! My wife’s boyfriend was right!”

After spying on members of the Trump campaign’s communications and financial transactions – which the left is now attempting to deny – the Former NSA, CIA, and current FBI Director Comey have all confirmed that there’s ZERO evidence of collusion. Clean bill of health bitches.

Mean-fucking-while, turns out Russia’s largest bank – Sberbank – paid the Podesta group $170,000 over a 6 month period to lobby against 2014 economic sanctions put in place by the Obama administration:

Podesta’s efforts were a key part of under-the-radar lobbying during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign led mainly by veteran Democratic strategists to remove sanctions against Sberbank and VTB Capital, Russia’s second largest bank.

The two Russian banks spent more than $700,000 in 2016 on Washington lobbyists as they sought to end the U.S. sanctions, according to Senate lobbying disclosure forms and documents filed with the Department of Justice.

The Podesta Group charged Sberbank $20,000 per month, plus expenses, on a contract from March through September 2016.

Oh, and Podesta forgot to register as a “Foreign Agent” while doing so.

So let’s get this straight; White House regular and creepy art aficionado Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta (who would be Secretary of State today if Hillary had won), took money from the Russians during the US election in exchange for Washington influence.

took money from the Russians during the US election in exchange for Washington influence

took money from the Russians during the US election in exchange for Washington influence
took money from the Russians during the US election in exchange for Washington influence

Right.

Let’s add a bit more color and remember who has actual shady ties to Russia. From the NYT:

Between 2008 – 2010, Uranium One / UrAsia investors donated $8.65 Million to the Clinton Foundation.

June 2009, Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom (through a subsidiary) takes a 17% stake in Uranium One.

June 2010, Russian State Nuclear Agency Rosatom takes majority ownership of Uranium One, which Hillary Clinton’s State Department signed off on.

June 29th, 2010, Bill Clinton earns $500,000 for a speech in Moscow to a Russian Investment bank that assigned a “buy” rating to Uranium One stock.

January, 2013: Rosatom State Nuclear Agency now owns Uranium one and takes it private.

Wait, you say – that Uranium deal had to go through an adviiiisory committee (Michael Savage voice). Know what? That committee is a joke – a round table of cucks with rubber stamps.

“The committee almost never met, and when it deliberated it was usually at a fairly low bureaucratic level,” Richard Perle said. Perle, who has worked for the Reagan, Clinton and both Bush administrations added, “I think it’s a bit of a joke.” –CBS

Let’s talk transparency:

Clinton failed to disclose the $2.35 Million in donations (made in installments) from Uranium One chairman Ian Telfer to a nebulous slush fund subsidiary of the Clinton Foundation, set up by mining executive Frank Guistra (whose company merged with Uranium One). Guistra donated $31 Million to the Clinton Foundation. How charitable! (read more here in the New Yorker)

This is not the first time the Podesta group has taken Russian money:

The Podesta group made $180,000 lobbying for Uranium One (source – you have to add up the years). These donations were made over the same time period that the Clinton Foundation was receiving millions from UrAsia / U1 interests. Tony Podesta also sat on the board (along with senior Russian officials) of a small energy company called Joule. Two months after Podesta joined the board, Joule landed a sweet $35 Million contract from Vladimir Putin’s Rusnano investment fund – which Podesta failed to disclose as required by law. Oh, and before joining the Clinton Campaign, John Podesta transferred 75,000 shares of Joule to his daughter through a shell company with her address. Maybe the optics didn’t look good or something? 

BUT WAIT – ORANGE HITLER AND MUH RUSSIANS:

Donald Trump, evil incarnate, wants to get along with Russia! He held a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow! His incoming NSA director had a stint as a Russian TV commentator on the same channel as Larry King! Jeff Sessions spoke with the Russian Ambassador! THE HORROR.

I know a fair number of liberals read iBankCoin – so can you please try and absorb some of this? Can you reach back and use that childhood imagination of yours to picture a world in which Tony Podesta – Russian bank lobbyist – now has full access to the White House with his brother as SoS? Can you possibly apply the same kneejerk witch hunt mentality to the aforementioned facts?

I can hear it now as you mentally shitcan everything you just read:

“Dahnald’s goin’ down!”

“His impeachment over Russia is going to be GLORIOUS!”

“I once jerked off to Rachael Maddow and I’m fairly confused about my sexuality at this point. I need help.”

Now watch the logically challenged pivot to Trump’s caaaahnflicts of iiiihnterest or whatever the fuck else cow-eyed robots are being told to think by the Cuckington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and Stephen “Podesta Pal” Colbert.

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Liberal Propgandists Cling To Revisionist Lie That Trump Tower Wasn’t Wiretapped – Except The NYT Reported It In January

As liberal talking heads and smarmy Democrat legislators try to tell you the Trump campaign wasn’t surveilled – consider the fact that IT FUCKING WAS.

For four months, the mainstream press was very content to have Americans believe — indeed, they encouraged Americans to believe — that a vigorous national-security investigation of the Trump presidential campaign was ongoing. “A counterintelligence investigation,” the New York Times called it. National Review

And the NY Times found out through an illegal leak to the newspaper from the intelligence community. We know one of the targets was Mike Flynn – as acting Attorney General Sally Yates warned the Trump campaign to be weary of him because of transcripts of Flynn’s phone calls with Russians – obtained through FISA wiretaps and other investigatory methods (which the directors of the CIA, NSA, and FBI said revealed no collusion). The other two targets of surveillance were likely either Paul Manafort, Steve Miller or Roger Stone. And considering that any time Trump talked to any of these individuals via phone, he too was surveilled. But again – how do WE know any this? The intelligence community illegally leaked the whole thing to the media. Dicks!

Now the left is trying to suggest none of this happened. That the sitting US President may have helped the a Presidential candidate by surveilling their opposition.

If you want to get a better handle on the mental gymnastics and semantic arguments employed, read Michael Doran’s article (which I posted the other day), originally published in the paywalled Wall St Journal. Doran, a PhD from Princeton and a Stanford undergrad – is a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and an expert on international politics of the Middle East. He’s way fucking smaht: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Scott_Doran  You can also just click here and read his 30 tweet synopsis from last weekend.

And to add to it, the National Review puts the whole thing into perfect perspective:
Moreover, if such an investigation had involved national-security wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), that would suggest that the Obama Justice Department had alleged, in court, that Trump associates had acted as “agents of a foreign power” — in this case, Russia.
Get it? If there is no hacking conspiracy — and there manifestly is not — the big scandal here is not possible Trump-campaign collusion with Russia. It is that the Obama Justice Department may have used its legal authorities to investigate the Democrats’ top political adversary. And not to be overlooked: This would have been done at the very same time the same Obama Justice Department was bending over backwards to whitewash the extremely serious criminal case against the Democrats’ nominee, Hillary Clinton. It would have meant Obama had his thumb on the election scale. –National Review

I have to imagine a fair number of swing voters are massively turned off by all of this lying – though I look forward to the chorus soft-handed metrosexual liberals defending it.

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Counter-Coup Spookmaster Dr. Steve Pieczenik Discusses Destruction Of CIA And Game Changing Implications Of #Vault7

This is as close to a real life spy novel as you’re going to get…

Dr. Steve Pieczenik is a legend. For those of you who don’t know – he’s the guy Tom Clancy based Jack Ryan on. He’s served 5 U.S. Presidents (Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and the 1st Bush) and was co-founder of Delta Force. Pieczenik served as former Dep. Sec of State under Kissinger, Vance and Baker – and was instrumental in negotiating the 1978 Camp David Accords. He holds degrees from Cornell, M.I.T. and Harvard, and as a CIA expert in psychological warfare, he was the first psychiatrist ever to receive a PhD focusing on international relations. Steve can probably crush your larynx with his mind.

Shortly before the election, Pieczenik released a series of YouTube videos explaining just what in the hell was going on with all of the Wikileaks revelations – which, as he revealed, were part of a “counter-coup” by patriotic elements within the intelligence community – assisted by Julian Assange, to wrestle control out of the hands of the globalists by exposing Hillary Clinton and the deep-state apparatus she represented.

If you haven’t seen the original clips – check them out.

Last night, Pieczenik appeared on Infowars to discuss #Vault7, the counter-coup, Edward Snowden, Currencies, Steve Mnuchin the death of the DNC, and where we go from here. The entire interview is almost 50 minutes long, however here are some select clips (or scroll down for the entire thing):

The implications of Vault7, technology overreach, and the fact that the NSA has a mandate for cyber-command and cyber-warfare. The CIA never did, and it has committed “crimes against the state”

Dr. Pieczenik elaborates on why he was used as a mouthpiece by the good guys, as well as their mandate:

Second American Revolution, Snowden:

CIA a “Stupid, self-destructive entity” which has left a “legacy of ashes”

Structural problems in the EU – eventual dissolution, currency fluctuations – NWO does not exist anymore, Soros irrelevant, China technically insolvent:

Don’t want to eliminate enemies – instead, the goal is to discredit them. No violence. Trump has brought in Mnuchin to realign US Dollar with rest of the world to boost exports.

This is the third counter coup. CIA will be cleaned out – gives thanks Rand and Ron Paul for trying to clean out NeoCons:

We’ve won – but we need to have humility. Oh, and the left “is already in the cemetery. All we’ve got [to do] is put flowers on their graves and walk away”

ENTIRE INTERVIEW:

You have been briefed.

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Nordstrom BTFO – Ivanka Trump Clothing Line Sales Jump 346% In One Month While $JWN Lags Market

This is a perfect story for #InternationalWomensDay…

Ivanka Trump’s Eponymous women’s fashion line is in beast mode – with one month online sales exploding 346%, according to e-commerce aggregator Lyst. The massive growth comes in the same month that Nordstrom ($JWN) made a very public display of kicking Ivanka to the curb – along with boycotts from conservative-shunning Neiman Marcus, T.J. Maxx, and Marshalls.

Since the beginning of February, they were some of the best performing weeks in the history of the brand,” Abigail Klem, the president of the Ivanka Trump fashion brand, tells Refinery29 in an interview published Tuesday. “For several different retailers Ivanka Trump was a top performer online, and in some of the categories it was the [brand’s] best performance ever.” TheHill

Following Ivanka’s shameful treatment by an industry which loved her before the election, White House advisor Kellyanne Conway came under fire for urging Fox & Friends viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff.” And buy they did…

Nordstrom, on the other hand, isn’t doing so hot by investors – as shares have taken a nose-dive while the rest of the market skyrocketed since the election. Perhaps it wasn’t the wisest decision to cave in to pressure from pissed off Hillary voters. Instead, they should have told aggrieved liberal losers to put a sock in it while patriotically promoting Ivanka’s line. The influx of customers voting with their wallets might have done something to triage their sagging share price; and my suspicion is that Trump voters could have done far more for Nordstrom than bitter food stamp recipients who shop at The Rack.

Let’s take a quick peek in Exodus:

Based on technical indicators, Nordstrom is an “Extreme Underperformer,” sucking across the board.

And how has Nordstrom compared to the S&P 500 since the election?

 

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Trump Talks Healthcare While Swamp Resists – Dems Call Inhumane While Conservative Cucks Say It Falls Short

Earler today, Republican House leaders led by GOP speaker Paul Ryan unveiled their proposed replacement for Obamacare – the utterly failed assault on the middle class which was authored in large part by convicted felon, democrat operative, and White House regular Robert Creamer – who wrote 628 pages of it from prison.

You can check out the new GOP proposal here, as well as Trump’s comments from earlier today:

The basics are as follows:

  • Removes Obamacare taxes on drugs, health-insurance premiums, and medical devices.
  • Removes individual / employer mandate which was severely harming the middle class.
  • Prohibit health insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions.
  • Allow basement-dwelling neckbeards to remain on their parents’ plans until they are 26 (45% older than they were when they became grown ass legal adults).
  • Low income protections: provides states with $100 Billion to help low-income Americans afford healthcare.
  • Enhanced Health Savings Accounts – nearly doubling the amount people can contribute.
  • Provide a tax credit of up to $14,000 / year for low and middle-income individuals and families who don’t receive insurance through work or a government program.

While Paul Ryan says he can guarantee enough votes to win passage in the House, the American Health Care Act – also known as TrumpCare (and now RyanCare), key Democrats denounced the proposal – claiming it will deprive millions of Americans of health insurance. On the far right, lawmakers publicly condemned the plan as a lackluster repackaging of Obamacare. Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee called it “exactly the type of back-room dealing and rushed process that we criticized Democrats for,” with others echoing similar sentiment.

“We think you have to get rid of Obamacare completely” -Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

Outside of congress, conservative groups including the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, Heritage Action for America, and the Koch backed Freedom Partners claim that “RyanCare” doesn’t go far enough- with the Club for Growth calling it a “warmed-over substitute for government-run healthcare”

Secretary of Health and Human Services  Dr. Tom Price, M.D. (R-GA) the man hired to oversee the process calls it a “work in progress”

“You start at a starting point, people engage and they get involved in the process, sometimes to a greater degree,” Price said. “We’ll work through it. This is an important process to be had.”

Vice President Mike Pence calls the new proposal a “framework,” leaving the door open to modification – and even President Trump hedged:

Trump’s smart – he’s not taking credit for the new Healthcare Bill, while at the same time letting Paul Ryan do battle with the rest of the swamp. Perhaps this is why Ryan had such a curious sudden hard-on for Trump the other week…

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Wikileaks “Vault 7” Released – Exposes CIA Cyber Warfare And Surveillance Tools

Wikileaks just dumped the much tweeted about “Vault 7” on the world – entitled “Inside the CIA’s Global Hacking Force” and it exposes the CIA’s electronic surveillance apparatus. It appears that similar to previous Wikileaks releases – more will come out over time. Check it out on the Wikileaks website here.

Some highlights:

  • The CIA’s “Engineering Development Group” is responsible for creating all of their cyber-warfare tools.
  • The CIA can “spoof” it’s malware to appear as though it’s a foreign intel agency’s
  • iPads / iPhones / Android devices and Smart TV’s are all susceptible to hacks and malware. Samsung Smart TV’s for example can go into a “Fake Off” mode in which they appear to be powered down while eavesdropping.
    • The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.
  • The US Consulate in Frankfurt is a CIA hacker base.
  • The Obama administration promised to disclose all serious vulnerabilities they found to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers. They broke that promise.
  • The Frankfurt consulate is a major CIA hacking base of operations.
  • The CIA was looking into hacking into cars in late 2014
  • Instant messaging encryption is a joke.
  • The CIA laughs at Anti-Virus / Anti-Malware programs.
  • Imgur gallery of some of the various tools.

More below…

Press Release

Today, Tuesday 7 March 2017, WikiLeaks begins its new series of leaks on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. Code-named “Vault 7” by WikiLeaks, it is the largest ever publication of confidential documents on the agency.

The first full part of the series, “Year Zero”, comprises 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virgina. It follows an introductory disclosure last month of CIA targeting French political parties and candidates in the lead up to the 2012 presidential election.

Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized “zero day” exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive.

“Year Zero” introduces the scope and direction of the CIA’s global covert hacking program, its malware arsenal and dozens of “zero day” weaponized exploits against a wide range of U.S. and European company products, include Apple’s iPhone, Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows and even Samsung TVs, which are turned into covert microphones.

Since 2001 the CIA has gained political and budgetary preeminence over the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA found itself building not just its now infamous drone fleet, but a very different type of covert, globe-spanning force — its own substantial fleet of hackers. The agency’s hacking division freed it from having to disclose its often controversial operations to the NSA (its primary bureaucratic rival) in order to draw on the NSA’s hacking capacities.

By the end of 2016, the CIA’s hacking division, which formally falls under the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other “weaponized” malware. Such is the scale of the CIA’s undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook. The CIA had created, in effect, its “own NSA” with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified.

In a statement to WikiLeaks the source details policy questions that they say urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency. The source wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by rival states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor stated that “There is an extreme proliferation risk in the development of cyber ‘weapons’. Comparisons can be drawn between the uncontrolled proliferation of such ‘weapons’, which results from the inability to contain them combined with their high market value, and the global arms trade. But the significance of “Year Zero” goes well beyond the choice between cyberwar and cyberpeace. The disclosure is also exceptional from a political, legal and forensic perspective.”

Wikileaks has carefully reviewed the “Year Zero” disclosure and published substantive CIA documentation while avoiding the distribution of ‘armed’ cyberweapons until a consensus emerges on the technical and political nature of the CIA’s program and how such ‘weapons’ should analyzed, disarmed and published.

Wikileaks has also decided to redact and anonymise some identifying information in “Year Zero” for in depth analysis. These redactions include ten of thousands of CIA targets and attack machines throughout Latin America, Europe and the United States. While we are aware of the imperfect results of any approach chosen, we remain committed to our publishing model and note that the quantity of published pages in “Vault 7” part one (“Year Zero”) already eclipses the total number of pages published over the first three years of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks.

Analysis

CIA malware targets iPhone, Android, smart TVs

CIA malware and hacking tools are built by EDG (Engineering Development Group), a software development group within CCI (Center for Cyber Intelligence), a department belonging to the CIA’s DDI (Directorate for Digital Innovation). The DDI is one of the five major directorates of the CIA (see this organizational chart of the CIA for more details).

The EDG is responsible for the development, testing and operational support of all backdoors, exploits, malicious payloads, trojans, viruses and any other kind of malware used by the CIA in its covert operations world-wide.

The increasing sophistication of surveillance techniques has drawn comparisons with George Orwell’s 1984, but “Weeping Angel”, developed by the CIA’s Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), which infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones, is surely its most emblematic realization.

The attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the United Kingdom’s MI5/BTSS. After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a ‘Fake-Off’ mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on. In ‘Fake-Off’ mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the Internet to a covert CIA server.

As of October 2014 the CIA was also looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks. The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.

The CIA’s Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones. Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user’s geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone’s camera and microphone.

Despite iPhone’s minority share (14.5%) of the global smart phone market in 2016, a specialized unit in the CIA’s Mobile Development Branch produces malware to infest, control and exfiltrate data from iPhones and other Apple products running iOS, such as iPads. CIA’s arsenal includes numerous local and remote “zero days” developed by CIA or obtained from GCHQ, NSA, FBI or purchased from cyber arms contractors such as Baitshop. The disproportionate focus on iOS may be explained by the popularity of the iPhone among social, political, diplomatic and business elites.

A similar unit targets Google’s Android which is used to run the majority of the world’s smart phones (~85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year. “Year Zero” shows that as of 2016 the CIA had 24 “weaponized” Android “zero days” which it has developed itself and obtained from GCHQ, NSA and cyber arms contractors.

These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the “smart” phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.

CIA malware targets Windows, OSx, Linux, routers

The CIA also runs a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware. This includes multiple local and remote weaponized “zero days”, air gap jumping viruses such as “Hammer Drill” which infects software distributed on CD/DVDs, infectors for removable media such as USBs, systems to hide data in images or in covert disk areas ( “Brutal Kangaroo”) and to keep its malware infestations going.

Many of these infection efforts are pulled together by the CIA’s Automated Implant Branch (AIB), which has developed several attack systems for automated infestation and control of CIA malware, such as “Assassin” and “Medusa”.

Attacks against Internet infrastructure and webservers are developed by the CIA’s Network Devices Branch (NDB).

The CIA has developed automated multi-platform malware attack and control systems covering Windows, Mac OS X, Solaris, Linux and more, such as EDB’s “HIVE” and the related “Cutthroat” and “Swindle” tools, which are described in the examples section below.

CIA ‘hoarded’ vulnerabilities (“zero days”)

In the wake of Edward Snowden’s leaks about the NSA, the U.S. technology industry secured a commitment from the Obama administration that the executive would disclose on an ongoing basis — rather than hoard — serious vulnerabilities, exploits, bugs or “zero days” to Apple, Google, Microsoft, and other US-based manufacturers.

Serious vulnerabilities not disclosed to the manufacturers places huge swathes of the population and critical infrastructure at risk to foreign intelligence or cyber criminals who independently discover or hear rumors of the vulnerability. If the CIA can discover such vulnerabilities so can others.

The U.S. government’s commitment to the Vulnerabilities Equities Process came after significant lobbying by US technology companies, who risk losing their share of the global market over real and perceived hidden vulnerabilities. The government stated that it would disclose all pervasive vulnerabilities discovered after 2010 on an ongoing basis.

“Year Zero” documents show that the CIA breached the Obama administration’s commitments. Many of the vulnerabilities used in the CIA’s cyber arsenal are pervasive and some may already have been found by rival intelligence agencies or cyber criminals.

As an example, specific CIA malware revealed in “Year Zero” is able to penetrate, infest and control both the Android phone and iPhone software that runs or has run presidential Twitter accounts. The CIA attacks this software by using undisclosed security vulnerabilities (“zero days”) possessed by the CIA but if the CIA can hack these phones then so can everyone else who has obtained or discovered the vulnerability. As long as the CIA keeps these vulnerabilities concealed from Apple and Google (who make the phones) they will not be fixed, and the phones will remain hackable.

The same vulnerabilities exist for the population at large, including the U.S. Cabinet, Congress, top CEOs, system administrators, security officers and engineers. By hiding these security flaws from manufacturers like Apple and Google the CIA ensures that it can hack everyone &mdsh; at the expense of leaving everyone hackable.

‘Cyberwar’ programs are a serious proliferation risk

Cyber ‘weapons’ are not possible to keep under effective control.

While nuclear proliferation has been restrained by the enormous costs and visible infrastructure involved in assembling enough fissile material to produce a critical nuclear mass, cyber ‘weapons’, once developed, are very hard to retain.

Cyber ‘weapons’ are in fact just computer programs which can be pirated like any other. Since they are entirely comprised of information they can be copied quickly with no marginal cost.

Securing such ‘weapons’ is particularly difficult since the same people who develop and use them have the skills to exfiltrate copies without leaving traces — sometimes by using the very same ‘weapons’ against the organizations that contain them. There are substantial price incentives for government hackers and consultants to obtain copies since there is a global “vulnerability market” that will pay hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for copies of such ‘weapons’. Similarly, contractors and companies who obtain such ‘weapons’ sometimes use them for their own purposes, obtaining advantage over their competitors in selling ‘hacking’ services.

Over the last three years the United States intelligence sector, which consists of government agencies such as the CIA and NSA and their contractors, such as Booze Allan Hamilton, has been subject to unprecedented series of data exfiltrations by its own workers.

A number of intelligence community members not yet publicly named have been arrested or subject to federal criminal investigations in separate incidents.

Most visibly, on February 8, 2017 a U.S. federal grand jury indicted Harold T. Martin III with 20 counts of mishandling classified information. The Department of Justice alleged that it seized some 50,000 gigabytes of information from Harold T. Martin III that he had obtained from classified programs at NSA and CIA, including the source code for numerous hacking tools.

Once a single cyber ‘weapon’ is ‘loose’ it can spread around the world in seconds, to be used by peer states, cyber mafia and teenage hackers alike.

U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a covert CIA hacker base

In addition to its operations in Langley, Virginia the CIA also uses the U.S. consulate in Frankfurt as a covert base for its hackers covering Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

CIA hackers operating out of the Frankfurt consulate ( “Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe” or CCIE) are given diplomatic (“black”) passports and State Department cover. The instructions for incoming CIA hackersmake Germany’s counter-intelligence efforts appear inconsequential: “Breeze through German Customs because you have your cover-for-action story down pat, and all they did was stamp your passport”

Your Cover Story (for this trip)
Q: Why are you here?
A: Supporting technical consultations at the Consulate.

Two earlier WikiLeaks publications give further detail on CIA approaches to customs and secondary screening procedures.

Once in Frankfurt CIA hackers can travel without further border checks to the 25 European countries that are part of the Shengen open border area — including France, Italy and Switzerland.

A number of the CIA’s electronic attack methods are designed for physical proximity. These attack methods are able to penetrate high security networks that are disconnected from the internet, such as police record database. In these cases, a CIA officer, agent or allied intelligence officer acting under instructions, physically infiltrates the targeted workplace. The attacker is provided with a USB containing malware developed for the CIA for this purpose, which is inserted into the targeted computer. The attacker then infects and exfiltrates data to removable media. For example, the CIA attack system Fine Dining, provides 24 decoy applications for CIA spies to use. To witnesses, the spy appears to be running a program showing videos (e.g VLC), presenting slides (Prezi), playing a computer game (Breakout2, 2048) or even running a fake virus scanner (Kaspersky, McAfee, Sophos). But while the decoy application is on the screen, the underlaying system is automatically infected and ransacked.

How the CIA dramatically increased proliferation risks

In what is surely one of the most astounding intelligence own goals in living memory, the CIA structured its classification regime such that for the most market valuable part of “Vault 7” — the CIA’s weaponized malware (implants + zero days), Listening Posts (LP), and Command and Control (C2) systems — the agency has little legal recourse.

The CIA made these systems unclassified.

Why the CIA chose to make its cyberarsenal unclassified reveals how concepts developed for military use do not easily crossover to the ‘battlefield’ of cyber ‘war’.

To attack its targets, the CIA usually requires that its implants communicate with their control programs over the internet. If CIA implants, Command & Control and Listening Post software were classified, then CIA officers could be prosecuted or dismissed for violating rules that prohibit placing classified information onto the Internet. Consequently the CIA has secretly made most of its cyber spying/war code unclassified. The U.S. government is not able to assert copyright either, due to restrictions in the U.S. Constitution. This means that cyber ‘arms’ manufactures and computer hackers can freely “pirate” these ‘weapons’ if they are obtained. The CIA has primarily had to rely on obfuscation to protect its malware secrets.

Conventional weapons such as missiles may be fired at the enemy (i.e into an unsecured area). Proximity to or impact with the target detonates the ordnance including its classified parts. Hence military personnel do not violate classification rules by firing ordnance with classified parts. Ordnance will likely explode. If it does not, that is not the operator’s intent.

Over the last decade U.S. hacking operations have been increasingly dressed up in military jargon to tap into Department of Defense funding streams. For instance, attempted “malware injections” (commercial jargon) or “implant drops” (NSA jargon) are being called “fires” as if a weapon was being fired. However the analogy is questionable.

Unlike bullets, bombs or missiles, most CIA malware is designed to live for days or even years after it has reached its ‘target’. CIA malware does not “explode on impact” but rather permanently infests its target. In order to infect target’s device, copies of the malware must be placed on the target’s devices, giving physical possession of the malware to the target. To exfiltrate data back to the CIA or to await further instructions the malware must communicate with CIA Command & Control (C2) systems placed on internet connected servers. But such servers are typically not approved to hold classified information, so CIA command and control systems are also made unclassified.

A successful ‘attack’ on a target’s computer system is more like a series of complex stock maneuvers in a hostile take-over bid or the careful planting of rumors in order to gain control over an organization’s leadership rather than the firing of a weapons system. If there is a military analogy to be made, the infestation of a target is perhaps akin to the execution of a whole series of military maneuvers against the target’s territory including observation, infiltration, occupation and exploitation.

Evading forensics and anti-virus

A series of standards lay out CIA malware infestation patterns which are likely to assist forensic crime scene investigators as well as Apple, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Nokia, Blackberry, Siemens and anti-virus companies attribute and defend against attacks.

“Tradecraft DO’s and DON’Ts” contains CIA rules on how its malware should be written to avoid fingerprints implicating the “CIA, US government, or its witting partner companies” in “forensic review”. Similar secret standards cover the use of encryption to hide CIA hacker and malware communication (pdf), describing targets & exfiltrated data (pdf) as well as executing payloads (pdf) and persisting (pdf) in the target’s machines over time.

CIA hackers developed successful attacks against most well known anti-virus programs. These are documented in AV defeats, Personal Security Products, Detecting and defeating PSPs andPSP/Debugger/RE Avoidance. For example, Comodo was defeated by CIA malware placing itself in the Window’s “Recycle Bin”. While Comodo 6.x has a “Gaping Hole of DOOM”.

CIA hackers discussed what the NSA’s “Equation Group” hackers did wrong and how the CIA’s malware makers could avoid similar exposure.

Examples

The CIA’s Engineering Development Group (EDG) management system contains around 500 different projects (only some of which are documented by “Year Zero”) each with their own sub-projects, malware and hacker tools.

The majority of these projects relate to tools that are used for penetration, infestation (“implanting”), control, and exfiltration.

Another branch of development focuses on the development and operation of Listening Posts (LP) and Command and Control (C2) systems used to communicate with and control CIA implants; special projects are used to target specific hardware from routers to smart TVs.

Some example projects are described below, but see the table of contents for the full list of projects described by WikiLeaks’ “Year Zero”.

UMBRAGE

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.

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.

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.

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

Fine Dining

Fine Dining comes with a standardized questionnaire i.e menu that CIA case officers fill out. The questionnaire is used by the agency’s OSB (Operational Support Branch) to transform the requests of case officers into technical requirements for hacking attacks (typically “exfiltrating” information from computer systems) for specific operations. The questionnaire allows the OSB to identify how to adapt existing tools for the operation, and communicate this to CIA malware configuration staff. The OSB functions as the interface between CIA operational staff and the relevant technical support staff.

Among the list of possible targets of the collection are ‘Asset’, ‘Liason Asset’, ‘System Administrator’, ‘Foreign Information Operations’, ‘Foreign Intelligence Agencies’ and ‘Foreign Government Entities’. Notably absent is any reference to extremists or transnational criminals. The ‘Case Officer’ is also asked to specify the environment of the target like the type of computer, operating system used, Internet connectivity and installed anti-virus utilities (PSPs) as well as a list of file types to be exfiltrated like Office documents, audio, video, images or custom file types. The ‘menu’ also asks for information if recurring access to the target is possible and how long unobserved access to the computer can be maintained. This information is used by the CIA’s ‘JQJIMPROVISE’ software (see below) to configure a set of CIA malware suited to the specific needs of an operation.

Improvise (JQJIMPROVISE)

‘Improvise’ is a toolset for configuration, post-processing, payload setup and execution vector selection for survey/exfiltration tools supporting all major operating systems like Windows (Bartender), MacOS (JukeBox) and Linux (DanceFloor). Its configuration utilities like Margarita allows the NOC (Network Operation Center) to customize tools based on requirements from ‘Fine Dining’ questionairies.

HIVE

HIVE is a multi-platform CIA malware suite and its associated control software. The project provides customizable implants for Windows, Solaris, MikroTik (used in internet routers) and Linux platforms and a Listening Post (LP)/Command and Control (C2) infrastructure to communicate with these implants.

The implants are configured to communicate via HTTPS with the webserver of a cover domain; each operation utilizing these implants has a separate cover domain and the infrastructure can handle any number of cover domains.

Each cover domain resolves to an IP address that is located at a commercial VPS (Virtual Private Server) provider. The public-facing server forwards all incoming traffic via a VPN to a ‘Blot’ server that handles actual connection requests from clients. It is setup for optional SSL client authentication: if a client sends a valid client certificate (only implants can do that), the connection is forwarded to the ‘Honeycomb’ toolserver that communicates with the implant; if a valid certificate is missing (which is the case if someone tries to open the cover domain website by accident), the traffic is forwarded to a cover server that delivers an unsuspicious looking website.

The Honeycomb toolserver receives exfiltrated information from the implant; an operator can also task the implant to execute jobs on the target computer, so the toolserver acts as a C2 (command and control) server for the implant.

Similar functionality (though limited to Windows) is provided by the RickBobby project.

See the classified user and developer guides for HIVE.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why now?

WikiLeaks published as soon as its verification and analysis were ready.

In Febuary the Trump administration has issued an Executive Order calling for a “Cyberwar” review to be prepared within 30 days.

While the review increases the timeliness and relevance of the publication it did not play a role in setting the publication date.

Redactions

Names, email addresses and external IP addresses have been redacted in the released pages (70,875 redactions in total) until further analysis is complete.

  1. Over-redaction: Some items may have been redacted that are not employees, contractors, targets or otherwise related to the agency, but are, for example, authors of documentation for otherwise public projects that are used by the agency.
  2. Identity vs. person: the redacted names are replaced by user IDs (numbers) to allow readers to assign multiple pages to a single author. Given the redaction process used a single person may be represented by more than one assigned identifier but no identifier refers to more than one real person.
  3. Archive attachments (zip, tar.gz, …) are replaced with a PDF listing all the file names in the archive. As the archive content is assessed it may be made available; until then the archive is redacted.
  4. Attachments with other binary content are replaced by a hex dump of the content to prevent accidental invocation of binaries that may have been infected with weaponized CIA malware. As the content is assessed it may be made available; until then the content is redacted.
  5. The tens of thousands of routable IP addresses references (including more than 22 thousand within the United States) that correspond to possible targets, CIA covert listening post servers, intermediary and test systems, are redacted for further exclusive investigation.
  6. Binary files of non-public origin are only available as dumps to prevent accidental invocation of CIA malware infected binaries.

Organizational Chart

The organizational chart corresponds to the material published by WikiLeaks so far.

Since the organizational structure of the CIA below the level of Directorates is not public, the placement of the EDG and its branches within the org chart of the agency is reconstructed from information contained in the documents released so far. It is intended to be used as a rough outline of the internal organization; please be aware that the reconstructed org chart is incomplete and that internal reorganizations occur frequently.

Wiki pages

“Year Zero” contains 7818 web pages with 943 attachments from the internal development groupware. The software used for this purpose is called Confluence, a proprietary software from Atlassian. Webpages in this system (like in Wikipedia) have a version history that can provide interesting insights on how a document evolved over time; the 7818 documents include these page histories for 1136 latest versions.

The order of named pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first). Page content is not present if it was originally dynamically created by the Confluence software (as indicated on the re-constructed page).

What time period is covered?

The years 2013 to 2016. The sort order of the pages within each level is determined by date (oldest first).

WikiLeaks has obtained the CIA’s creation/last modification date for each page but these do not yet appear for technical reasons. Usually the date can be discerned or approximated from the content and the page order. If it is critical to know the exact time/date contact WikiLeaks.

What is “Vault 7”

“Vault 7” is a substantial collection of material about CIA activities obtained by WikiLeaks.

When was each part of “Vault 7” obtained?

Part one was obtained recently and covers through 2016. Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

Is each part of “Vault 7” from a different source?

Details on the other parts will be available at the time of publication.

What is the total size of “Vault 7”?

The series is the largest intelligence publication in history.

How did WikiLeaks obtain each part of “Vault 7”?

Sources trust WikiLeaks to not reveal information that might help identify them.

Isn’t WikiLeaks worried that the CIA will act against its staff to stop the series?

No. That would be certainly counter-productive.

Has WikiLeaks already ‘mined’ all the best stories?

No. WikiLeaks has intentionally not written up hundreds of impactful stories to encourage others to find them and so create expertise in the area for subsequent parts in the series. They’re there. Look. Those who demonstrate journalistic excellence may be considered for early access to future parts.

Won’t other journalists find all the best stories before me?

Unlikely. There are very considerably more stories than there are journalists or academics who are in a position to write them.

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Last Night On Tucker: House Intel Committee Member Jim Himes (D-CT) Justifies Spying On Trump Campaign

Last night, Tucker Carlson debated a rapidly blinking Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) – a member of the House Intelligence Committee, on claims that former President Obama ordered a wiretap of Donald Trump’s administration during the election. Tucker went into the interview giving Himes the respect of an unfurrowed brow, which did not last long. While the entire interview was an insightful sparring match (entire interview here), a particularly interesting moment came when Himes effectively laid out the legal mechanism which would justify spying on members of Trump’s campaign, including incoming NSA director Mike Flynn – the fruits of which led acting Attorney General (and Obama appointee) Sally Yates warning the Trump administration that Flynn had not been truthful about his conversations with Russia, and could possibly be blackmailed. This knowledge, and the leak of the story leading up to Flynn’s eventual resignation, could only have been obtained through covert surveillance.

In a response to Tucker – Himes suggested that since it’s routine for US Intelligence to monitor foreigners “like the Russian ambassador” who will sometimes “be talking to US persons,” it’s reasonable to expect that in the normal course of surveillance of foreigners, Americans might be monitored as well.

Quite frankly this was weak sauce considering the known scope and use of said surveillance as political weapons – leaked to various news organizations and spun into half-truths and wild accusations in an attempt to delegitimize Donald Trump. At the end of this political rabbit hole, the FBI, NSA, and the CIA have all said that there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.

On the topic of surveillance:

The Tucker interview goes hand in hand with a well reasoned series of tweets made over the weekend by Michael Doran – Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and an expert on international politics of the Middle East. Doran laid out quite an interesting scenario – suggesting that while Trump’s phone may not have specifically been targeted, the Intel community may have indirectly targeted him similar to a “dolphin “accidentally” caught in a tuna net.” (#15 in the list below). Doran also summed his tweets up in a WSJ article:

In mid-January both the BBC and McClatchy reported that on Oct. 15 a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court approved an investigation into Russian activities in the U.S. that focused on nameless Trump associates—three of them, according to the BBC. Also in mid-January, the New York Times reported on “a broad investigation into possible links between Russian officials and associates of [Mr.] Trump.”

Stipulating that they were, the government would find itself monitoring all of Mr. Trump’s calls with one of his political advisers, his lawyer and his national security adviser. Transcripts of those intercepts would be available to the Obama administration’s senior national-security officials. In this scenario, the tapping of Mr. Trump’s calls would be extensive –WSJ

Below is the first tweet in case you want to jump over to Twitter and follow along – or scroll down and keep reading:

  1. Why I Take Trump’s Claims of Wiretapping Seriously: An Essay in 30 Tweets
  2. All you bright bulbs say that Trump’s claim that Obama tapped his phone is “baseless.”
  3. He got the idea, you snicker, from an old Breitbart article—or from talk radio. Ha ha ha ha!
  4. I really do wish Trump hadn’t used a tweet storm to make his accusation. It’s grave & deserves a more solemn & judicious presentation.
  5. And I don’t know whether he’ll succeed in backing it up. But I bet he does, at least so as to win the political argument—and here’s why.
  6. You bright bulbs point to Clapper’s statement and coo, “No wiretapping of Trump took place!”
  7. This, however, is an overly literal interpretation of “wiretapping Trump.”
  8. The BBC reports that on 15 Oct a FISA court approved an investigation focusing on 3 Trump associates:
  9. Let’s speculate that this investigation allowed the NSA to monitor all calls of all 3 individuals.
  10. This allows us to build a scenario in which both Trump’s harsh accusation & Clapper’s categorical denial are true.
  11. Who might the 3 under investigation be? Candidate #1 would be Roger Stone, Trump’s informal political advisor:
  12. My 2nd candidate: Michael Cohen, Trump’s lawyer, who helped generate a pro-Russian peace plan for Ukraine.
  13. 3rd on my list: General Mike Flynn, who unwisely took money from the Russian government in 2015.
  14. All 3 had some connection or another w/Russia, so a request for a national security wiretap on them is a plausible possibility.
  15. As a result, Trump’s calls w/his pol advisor, lawyer, & Natsec advisor would be monitored. That’s many calls covering a lot of ground!
  16. Yet Clapper’s denial stands, b/c Trump’s phone wasn’t explicitly targeted. He was just a dolphin “accidentally” caught in a tuna net.
  17. You bright bulbs’ll stand your ground on the technical claim that Trump’s phone wasn’t tapped, but politically it’s a losing argument.
  18. And you’ll also say, “A cardinal rule of the Obama admin” was to leave FISA requests to the DOJ:
  19. Leave them to Loretta Lynch, you say? Someone about as divorced from politics as this video would suggest:
  20. Come on. It’s easy to imagine Obama winking & nodding to Lynch, or sending a trusted friend to whisper a few thoughts in her ear.
  21. “You have no evidence to back up that scurrilous claim!” you will scream.
  22. To which I must confess, you’re absolutely right. I don’t. I’m totally speculating. Point to you!
  23. And while I’m in retreat, let me also concede that Lynch’s meeting w/Bill Clinton was accidental & innocuous.
  24. But Trump still wins before the court of public opinion, b/c you just admitted 3 key things:
  25. (A) That Loretta Lynch got the NSA to tap hours and hours of Trump’s calls.
  26. (B) That she did so just 3 weeks before the election! And (C) That her “natsec investigation” turned up zero, zilch, nada & niente.
  27. But meanwhile, it “accidentally” generated copious leaks fueling the sinister accusation that Trump is Putin’s Manchurian candidate.
  28. I predict that if a Lynch “investigation” anything like this scenario did in fact occur, fair-minded people will side with Trump.
  29. Rachel Maddow will love your arguments, but they will only convince registered Dems, and not even all of them.
  30. This scenario is speculative. We don’t know the facts. They might yet prove you right. But the ground you’re on is weaker than you know.

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WikiLeaks Tweets Encrypted Torrent File – Set To Publish Password Tuesday (3/7/2017) At 9AM EST

It’s happening?

WikiLeaks just tweeted a torrent file after weeks of cryptic messages which many have interpreted to be an ultimatum to the deep state that they release files related to 9/11 and/or Hillary Clinton. Earlier this week, the FBI released a 42 page PDF entitled “Hillary R. Clinton Part 07 of 07” which contained several references to the “7th floor” (deep state), as well as the fact that the FBI was never meant to handle a case this large. Perhaps the release wasn’t exactly what Wikileaks wanted? Either way, looks like they’re set to release the password Tuesday at 9AM EST.

Perhaps a Costco run is in order?

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Washington Post Employee Arrested For Impersonating ICE Agent – Weapons And Tactical Gear Recovered At Home

Washington Post employee Itai Ozderman, 35, was arrested after his Gaithersburg, MD home was raided by Montgomery County Police on February 22nd at around 6 a.m, according to court documents. Ozderman is charged with impersonating an ICE officer on several occasions throughout Falls Church, VA.

When the warrant was served on Feb. 22 at Ozderman’s home in the 100 block of Elmira Lane, court documents say 10 weapons, including handguns, assault rifles, and a shotgun, were recovered.

Sources tell ABC7’s Kevin Lewis that Ozderman impersonated an ICE officer throughout Falls Church, Va. on more than one occasion. According to sources, Ozderman would ‘patrol’ while wearing a bullet proof vest with an ICE placard and a Baltimore County police badge. WJLA

Ozderman, an I.T. engineer at the Washington Post, is currently out on bond. No word on whether this alleged #FakeAgent is still employed with one of the original MSM outlets responsible for the term #FakeNews permeating the public lexicon.

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Mark Levin To CNN Mega-Choad Brian Stelter: You Are Thoroughly Dishonest

The unhinged left is in full damage control mode over the Obama wiretap scandal. We already know that the propagandists at CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, and their tentacle brethren across the MSM spectrum take marching orders from the left, so it comes as no surprise that the New York Times and CNN are madly scurrying to frame the wiretapping scandal as a “Conspiracy Theory.”

An aside: Did you know that the CIA invented the term in 1967 to discredit information outside the scope of the government’s carefully crafted narratives? It’s a form of propaganda – quite literally (as revealed in a 1976 FOIA request):

To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories

Today’s propaganda is brought to you, once again, by the letters C.N.N. after radio host (and former Chief of Staff to Reagan’s Attorney General) Mark Levin laid out an exceedingly compelling argument that Obama employed “police state tactics” against Trump, which he expounded on in an interview with Fox News:

In propagandistic response, CNN’s deep state dick rider Brian Stelter penned a lame response, attempting to frame the whole thing as a conspiracy theory – and specifically calling out Mark Levin:

An incendiary idea first put forward by right-wing radio host Mark Levin is now burning across Washington, fanned by President Trump’s tweets and a huge number of supportive commentators and websites — even though the facts don’t back up the conclusion. MegaChoad

In response, Levin roasts the shit out of Stelter:

OPEN LETTER TO CNN’S BRIAN STELTER, YOU ARE THOROUGHLY DISHONEST.

I simply put together the stories that YOUR profession reported, on the public record.  Do you deny there were two FISA applications?  Do you deny the first was turned down?  Do you deny the second was approved?  It’s called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  It is about surveillance.  The fact that we cannot discern all the details because of the secrecy, except for what the media have revealed and selective leaks by the government, should cause you to want to know more, not to trash those who point it out.

(full text here)

Stelter – in response, issued a pithy tweet:

Let’s review who we’re dealing with:

Mark Levin:

Mark Reed Levin (/ləˈvɪn/; born September 21, 1957) is an American lawyer, author, and the host of syndicated radio show The Mark Levin Show. Levin worked in the administration of President Ronald Reagan and was a chief of staff for Attorney General Edwin Meese. He is president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has authored six books, and contributes commentary to various media outlets such as National Review Online. On September 1, 2015, Levin was named Editor-in-Chief of Conservative Review.

Brian Stelter:

Brian Stelter (born September 3, 1985) is the senior media correspondent for CNN and the host of Reliable Sources. Previously he was a media reporter for The New York Times and the editor of TVNewser. Also a Gigantic choad.

Shall we review Mark Levin’s argument?

1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied.

2. July: Russia joke. Wikileaks releases emails from the Democratic National Committee that show an effort to prevent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) from winning the presidential nomination. In a press conference, Donald Trump refers to Hillary Clinton’s own missing emails, joking: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing.” That remark becomes the basis for accusations by Clinton and the media that Trump invited further hacking.

3. October: Podesta emails. In October, Wikileaks releases the emails of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, rolling out batches every day until the election, creating new mini-scandals. The Clinton campaign blames Trump and the Russians.

4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found — but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services.

5. January 2017: Buzzfeed/CNN dossier. Buzzfeed releases, and CNN reports, a supposed intelligence “dossier” compiled by a foreign former spy. It purports to show continuous contact between Russia and the Trump campaign, and says that the Russians have compromising information about Trump. None of the allegations can be verified and some are proven false. Several media outlets claim that they had been aware of the dossier for months and that it had been circulating in Washington.

6. January: Obama expands NSA sharing. As Michael Walsh later notes, and as the New York Times reports, the outgoing Obama administration “expanded the power of the National Security Agency to share globally intercepted personal communications with the government’s 16 other intelligence agencies before applying privacy protections.” The new powers, and reduced protections, could make it easier for intelligence on private citizens to be circulated improperly or leaked.

7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the exisentence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information.

8. February: Mike Flynn scandal. Reports emerge that the FBI intercepted a conversation in 2016 between future National Security Adviser Michael Flynn — then a private citizen — and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The intercept supposedly was part of routine spying on the ambassador, not monitoring of the Trump campaign. The FBI transcripts reportedly show the two discussing Obama’s newly-imposed sanctions on Russia, though Flynn earlier denied discussing them. Sally Yates, whom Trump would later fire as acting Attorney General for insubordination, is involved in the investigation. In the end, Flynn resigns over having misled Vice President Mike Pence (perhaps inadvertently) about the content of the conversation.

9. February: Times claims extensive Russian contacts. The New York Times cites “four current and former American officials” in reporting that the Trump campaign had “repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials. The Trump campaign denies the claims — and the Times admits that there is “no evidence” of coordination between the campaign and the Russians. The White House and some congressional Republicans begin to raise questions about illegal intelligence leaks.

10. March: the Washington Post targets Jeff Sessions. The Washington Post reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had contact twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign — once at a Heritage Foundation event and once at a meeting in Sessions’s Senate office. The Post suggests that the two meetings contradict Sessions’s testimony at his confirmation hearings that he had no contacts with the Russians, though in context (not presented by the Post) it was clear he meant in his capacity as a campaign surrogate, and that he was responding to claims in the “dossier” of ongoing contacts. The New York Times, in covering the story, adds that the Obama White House “rushed to preserve” intelligence related to alleged Russian links with the Trump campaign. By “preserve” it really means “disseminate”: officials spread evidence throughout other government agencies “to leave a clear trail of intelligence for government investigators” and perhaps the media as well.

Stelter’s piece is pissant yellow journalism, while Levin lays out a comprehensive timeline and a case for police state tactics. Can you spot the difference?

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