The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[David Guyatt]

Tom, the argument here which you touched on but only very briefly in passing, is whether Wikileaks and Julian Assange are Russian fronts and knowingly laundered Russian hacked emails from the DNC to influence the election.

Would, you, therefore, please be kind enough to provide solid evidence that this charge has any merit whatsoever?

Thank you.

David, it seems to me that Assange is more defensive than he was 4-1/2 months ago. This is understandable if
he is being falsely accused by the most formidable intelligence and military force on the planet and more so if he
believed the U.S. democrat associated details he disclosed were a product of Russian government sponsored hacks.

Without a transparent investigation I do not know whether Assange was a witting tool of the Russian government. I want to think he was taken advantage of as he was simply doing what he always has; sharing
secrets of the powerful.

In my last post I did not intend to accuse Assange of supporting Russian interests as a primary or an intended
consequence of his disclosures. I think it likely he was indifferent about his disclosure having the effect of
helping the Trump campaign.

I already stated my misgivings about Trump's resistance to even the questions being asked.

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/29/acd.02.html
ANDERSON COOPER 360 DEGREES
Sources: FBI Investigating Hack of Clinton Campaign Data; Trump Campaigns In Denver; Trump: Now The Gloves Come Off; How Trump Voters Viewed Democratic Convention; Julian Assange On DNC Hack; Trump Ties Putin; Arrest Made In San Diego Police Shooting; Remembering Fallen Sheriff's Deputy. Aired 9-10p ET
Aired July 29, 2016 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


.....COOPER: There is word today of a new FBI investigation into an alleged cyberhack of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee server which is said to be similar to the hack of the DNC committee or Democratic National Committee. Do you have any knowledge of this latest hack or if you do, any intention to publish any information obtained from it?

ASSANGE: I can't comment on anything that might reflect on sourcing or even to rule things in or rule things out. But I will just say and this is public information. It's not coming from me privately that there has been multiple hacks of the DNC over the last two years.

The DNC and the RNC have been Swiss cheese in terms of their security. And the DNC had been notified quite some time ago that that is the case and it has legal responsibilities that must carry out to notify its donors to be aware that their confidentiality has been breached by a hack.

Now, the e-mails that we published are a separate question to the various hacks that they could in community and state. We have not connected those e-mails to a hack of the DNC and no one else has connected them. There are other documents that are published by the few smoking gun and gawker that have been connected to the hack.

COOPER: I'm not even going to go bother to ask you about your sources because obviously you're not going to reveal your sources. You don't do that. But U.S. officials have said that they have, I'm quoting a little doubt was the term that Russian hackers were behind this. They haven't said it definitively.

Do you know -- I mean, again, I'm not asking you who did it, but do you know who did the hacking of the DNC server that got you the information? Do you know who provided you with these e-mails?

ASSANGE: We just -- as a matter of policy we don't go anywhere near commenting on sources, ruling things in ruling things out because it provides extra information that might be used to track down sources. But I can say that yesterday, James Clapper, the head of the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, stated that there was a lot of media hyper ventilation and "They didn't know enough about to ascribe motivation regardless of who it might have been." So, I mean, those kinds of statements are coming out of the man responsible for overseeing all U.S. intelligence agencies.

COOPER: There is a question whether you have a personal animus toward Hillary Clinton. You criticized her on a number of national security front policy issues.

[21:30:00] Obviously, she is obviously made statements against WikiLeaks. You gave an interview to the British network ITV back in June. You're suggesting that you're more concerned about Clinton at least in terms of press freedom than Donald Trump. Do you stand by that? Is this based on a personal animus?

ASSANGE: It is false reporting. You can go back and look at ITV interview. I never said that I wanted to do harm to Hillary Clinton, anything like that. It was the presenter that used that word. And in New York Tmes, it's, you know, that this candidate in this race now. So it -- there's lots of facts. No one was trying to get us in and then out.

COOPER: You see the question of anger that you're interfering in the U.S. election, you say this is what you're -- that your readers are American and therefore it's OK?

ASSANGE: Well, it's what our readers demand. It is also our based on principles that the publication of the true information and thus an important qualifier. True information about modern human institutions allows us to understand what they're doing and therefore to reform them. If we don't understand what our institution is doing we have no hope to reform them whatsoever.

COOPER: Julian Assange, I appreciate your time. Thank you.

ASSANGE: Thank you, Anderson.

Thanks Tom. I think I can help you out here. There never will be a real or proper investigation. Not ever. Because the charges were all smoke and mirrors to begin with and everyone who was anyone knows it.

As you stated above, Assange and Wikileaks have, for the entire 10 years they've been in business, maintained a policy of never naming sources who release material to them. This is a thoroughly credible and hitherto standard policy of all reliable news outlets. Likewise (for Tracy), Murray would strictly adhere to the same policy. He is a whistleblower himself and understands how vital it is to protect sources from a malfunctioning and vindictive state apparatus.

Moving on to the kernel of the problem and its clear resolution: evidence.

When the original story broke claiming that Russia was responsible for the DNC email hack, the story was based on zero evidence. Zero. James Clapper's remarks at the time was, very clearly, an unsupported opinion (he quoted words to the effect that his opinion "was consistent with the scope and methodology of Russia" (I will find the exact form of words and a link if required - but I have posted that here before?).

Months later, Clapper said that after the US had accused Russia, that the latter had "curtailed it's election related cyberactivity" (HERE). He went on to define what he meant by "cyberactivity" -- that he was specifically repeat specifically referring to "cyber reconnaissance". In other words Russian cyber activity had been wholly passive not active. This is a cleverly cloaked admission that Russia had not been responsible for the hack.

Far more significantly, however, he went on to admit (HERE) during the same resignation presentation (after the election result was in) that "intelligence agencies don't have good insight on when or how Wikileaks obtained the hacked emails".

What could be clearer?

Other than arguing about his use of the word "hacked" instead of the probably more definitive and probably more accurate word "leaked" this is a clear statement that Clapper - and the entire US intelligence community - has no evidence... none whatsoever, about who was responsible for providing the material to Wikileaks, nor how nor when that occurred.

From the foregoing we can confidently conclude that Russia was conveniently and cynically chosen as the bogey-man to this episode of political chicanery because that obviously works with the US voter and is also in line with the existing Neocon foreign policy objective of initiating a major war against Russia. Besides that it was very good for Hilary's team because it deflected attention away from the content of the leaked material.

When we take together these foregoing facts and add them to the prior listed statements by various whistleblowers like Craig Murray and William Binney - plus statements repeatedly made by former CIA intelligence officer and whistleblower, Ray McGovern, about the burden of proof - it seems pretty clear that the material was leaked to Wikileaks by a disgruntled US intelligence source. Russia had nothing to do with it at all.

I have go into detail here because I feel it is necessary to put this story to bed once and for all.