Sat, Aug 5, 2017 | 7231 Comments
A series of extraordinary interviews
Congress passed its beloved Russia sanctions last
week by a vote of 419-3! The Senate followed with a vote of 98-2!! I guess
‘American Exceptionalism' includes the vast stupidity inherent in having
two giant oceans to distance us from the rest of humanity.
With all the Apples and Microsofts and computer
geniuses we have in our country, can we not even accept the possibility that
perhaps our intelligence agencies are not doing their job, and maybe, just
maybe, are deliberately misleading us to continue their false-flag war against
Russia? Or for that matter, that Russia itself may not be that invested in
screwing up our vaunted democracy with such sloppy malware as claimed?
Especially in view of the strong statement put out
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of reform-minded
veterans throwing a dose of acid on the infamous ‘Brennan-Clapper Report’ of
January 6, 2017. With this report alone (see below), much less the overt lying
and leaking that’s been going on, both James Clapper (‘We don’t do surveillance
on our own citizens’) and John Brennan (‘Drones and torture? None of our
business') should be investigated as thoroughly as Michael Flynn, Jared
Kushner, Trump’s son, etc.
What’s happened to Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Lee,
or any of the people who’ve displayed some independent thinking in the past?
Have they actually read this report? Somebody out there in DC, please explain to
me this omission of common sense. Are the Washington Post and the New York
Times so powerful that no one bothers to read or think beyond them? It seems
the TV stations in this country take their copy from them.
I accept the US decline. That’s a given -- after
all, compare our broken-down New York subway system with Moscow’s, as well as
many other cities’ pristine and impeccable services. These sanctions, which I
pray Europe can independently judge and discard, are as dumb as giving out medals
to Generals who keep losing wars. I still have this image burned in my brain of
Petraeus with his 11/12(?) rows of ribbons, many looking like Boy Scout badges,
surrounded by adoring Congressmen as he lied his way through his foreign policy
testimony.
Never mind that any moment now a Dr.
Strangelove-type incident can occur -- with less reaction time, say 15 minutes,
compared to the 1960s 2/3 hours. We are truly at the edge as Mr. P pointed out
in the documentary I made. Such Roman arrogance, such blindness, calls out for
another Vietnam, another Iraq. We’re screaming for some Karmic Boot up the ass.
Destroying our pride would be a favor that the gods could do us.
I can go on -- but I’m angry as you can tell. So
what’s the point of going to the windows and screaming, even if I were on
television? Read the report below from Sanity Inc. and pray another August
(1914) passes without the war Congress, Media, and the Military-Industrial
Complex are literally dying for. I now fully realize how World War I started. People
in power never really thought it would happen, and when it did, thought it’d be
over in weeks. You should know the rest of that history.
It doesn’t end well.
“Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence,”
Consortiumnews, http://bit.ly/2uRJuct
July 24, 2017
In a memo to President Trump, a group of former
U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic
studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia
“hacked” Democratic emails last year.
Editor’s Note: This
VIPS Memo included two mistaken dates. Neither affected the Memo’s main
conclusion; i.e., that the July 5, 2016 intrusion into DNC emails that was
blamed on Russia could not have been a hack – by Russia or anyone else. The
portions of the Memo affected by the mistaken dates have been corrected.
A short explanation of the corrections:
-(1) June 14, 2016 (not the 15th, as the
VIPS memo erroneously stated) was the day Crowdstrike said malware had been
found on the DNC server and claimed there was evidence the malware was injected
by Russians. (On the following day – the 15th) – “Guccifer 2.0”
claimed responsibility for the “hack” and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source.)
-(2) Although the VIPS Memo indicated, correctly,
that on June 15, 2016, “Guccifer 2.0” … posts a document that the forensics
show was synthetically tainted with ‘Russian fingerprints,’” other language in
the Memo was mistaken in indicating that evidence of such tainting was also found
in the “Guccifer 2.0” metadata from the copying event on July 5.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The
President
FROM: Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Was
the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?
Executive
Summary
Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into
Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016,
data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical
access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5,
2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have
concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.
Then-Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John
Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of
Director of National Intelligence)
Key among the findings of the independent forensic
investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage
device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a
remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the
copying was performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream
media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].
Independent analyst Skip Folden, who retired after
25 years as the IBM Program Manager for Information Technology, US, who
examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He
has drafted a more detailed technical report titled “Cyber-Forensic
Investigation of ‘Russian Hack’ and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers,”
and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney
General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the
National Security Agency, and other senior NSA “alumni” in VIPS attest to the
professionalism of the independent forensic findings.
The recent forensic studies fill in a critical
gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the
original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any
sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the
“Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention
to forensics.
NOTE:
There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make
very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on
the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 “hack” of the DNC server. In earlier
VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer
2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to
disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the
Russians [see here and here].
Addressing this point at his last press conference
(January 18), he described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as
“not conclusive,” even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January
6 expressed “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it
acquired from the DNC … to WikiLeaks.”
Obama’s admission came as no surprise to us. It has
long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive
evidence of a transfer of a “Russian hack” to WikiLeaks is because there was no
such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical
experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that
the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost
certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).
From the information available, we conclude that
the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two
different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different
purposes:
-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian
Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to
publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose
strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and
-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to
pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came
from a “Russian hack.”
* * *
Mr. President:
This is our first VIPS Memorandum for you, but we
have a history of letting U.S. Presidents know when we think our former
intelligence colleagues have gotten something important wrong, and why. For
example, our first such memorandum,
a same-day commentary for President George W. Bush on Colin Powell’s U.N.
speech on February 5, 2003, warned that the “unintended consequences were
likely to be catastrophic,” should the U.S. attack Iraq and “justify” the war
on intelligence that we retired intelligence officers could readily see as
fraudulent and driven by a war agenda.
Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the
United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which supposedly proved
that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus.
The January 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment”
by “hand-picked” analysts from the FBI, CIA, and NSA seems to fit into the same
agenda-driven category. It is largely based on an “assessment,” not supported
by any apparent evidence, that a shadowy entity with the moniker “Guccifer 2.0”
hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to
WikiLeaks.
The recent forensic findings mentioned above have
put a huge dent in that assessment and cast serious doubt on the underpinnings
of the extraordinarily successful campaign to blame the Russian government for
hacking. The pundits and politicians who have led the charge against
Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election can be expected to try to cast doubt on
the forensic findings, if they ever do bubble up into the mainstream
media. But the technical limitations of today’s Internet are widely
understood. We are prepared to answer any substantive challenges on their
merits.
You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what
he knows about this. Our own lengthy intelligence community experience
suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor
the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their
new director regarding how this all went down.
Copied, Not Hacked
As indicated above, the independent forensic work
just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a
shadowy persona named “Guccifer 2.0.” The forensics reflect what seems to
have been a desperate effort to “blame the Russians” for publishing highly
embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last
July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her
campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance
– as in, who “hacked” those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically
supported by compliant “mainstream” media; they are still on a roll.
“The Russians” were the ideal culprit. And,
after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, “We have
emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” her campaign
had more than a month before the convention to insert its own “forensic facts”
and prime the media pump to put the blame on “Russian meddling.” Mrs.
Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to
make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that
her “mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult
to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from
the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary
Clinton.”
Independent cyber-investigators have now completed
the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not
do. Oddly, the “hand-picked” intelligence analysts contented themselves with
“assessing” this and “assessing” that. In contrast, the investigators dug
deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of
the alleged Russian hack.
They found that the purported “hack” of the DNC by
Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it
originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for
example) by an insider. The data was leaked to implicate Russia. We do not
know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.
The Time Sequence
June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about
to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”
June 14, 2016: DNC
contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple
conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server
and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.
June 15, 2016: “Guccifer
2.0” affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the “hack;” claims to
be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was
synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”
We do not think that the June 12, 14, & 15
timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive
move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to
publish and to “show” that it came from a Russian hack.
The Key Event
July 5, 2016: In
the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone
with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network,
copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage
device. That speed is much faster than what is physically possible
with a hack.
It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the
DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by
Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external
storage device.
“Obfuscation & De-obfuscation”
Mr. President, the disclosure described below may
be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made
aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to
publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled “Vault
7.” WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA
contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the
information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at
the third debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump. (Photo credit:
hillaryclinton.com)
No one has challenged the authenticity of the
original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare
tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA’s Engineering Development
Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital
Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015.
Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take
control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable
remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York
Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on
March 31 that exposed the “Marble Framework” program apparently was judged too
delicate to qualify as “news fit to print” and was kept out of the Times.
The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, it seems,
“did not get the memo” in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching
(and accurate) headline: “WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could
blow the cover on agency hacking operations.”
The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was
designed for flexible and easy-to-use “obfuscation,” and that Marble source
code includes a “deobfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.
More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble
during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but
did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the
obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a “forensic attribution double game”
or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian,
Korean, Arabic and Farsi.
The CIA’s reaction was neuralgic. Director Mike
Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates “demons,”
and insisting; “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a
non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like
Russia.”
Mr. President, we do not know if CIA’s Marble
Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame
Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of
CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director
Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review.
Putin and the Technology
We also do not know if you have discussed cyber
issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC’s
Megyn Kelly, he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues
related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only
to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today’s
technology enables hacking to be “masked and camouflaged
to an extent that no one can understand the origin” [of the
hack] … And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any
individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source
of that attack.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a media
conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. (Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter
Erichsen)
“Hackers may be anywhere,” he said. “There may be
hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily
and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine
such a scenario? … I can.”
Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence
profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis
is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which
applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our
sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our
former intelligence colleagues.
We speak and write without fear or favor.
Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents,
politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is
necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly
politicized times. This is our 50th VIPS Memorandum since
the afternoon of Powell’s speech at the UN. Live links to the 49 past memos can
be found at https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/.
FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS
FOR SANITY
William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for
World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals
Intelligence Automation Research Center
Skip Folden, independent analyst, retired IBM
Program Manager for Information Technology US (Associate VIPS)
Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign
Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)
Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)
Michael S. Kearns, Air Force Intelligence Officer
(Ret.), Master SERE Resistance to Interrogation Instructor
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer
and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA
(ret.)
Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Edward Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director
for the Office of Signals Processing
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council
(ret.)
Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army
Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence
Officer for Middle East, CIA
Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former
Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
Cian Westmoreland, former USAF Radio
Frequency Transmission Systems Technician and Unmanned Aircraft
Systems whistleblower (Associate VIPS)
Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT
Automation Research Center, NSA
Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.);
Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)
Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and
former U.S. Diplomat
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