The attempted Clinton-CIA coup against Donald Trump

[Paul Rigby]

Hats off to Petri Krohn for his powers of prediction:

COLOR REVOLUTION USA! (...or why Trump can't win.)

6 September 2016

https://www.facebook.com/petri.krohn/pos...cation=ufi

Three weeks ago I wrote about the prospect of a Trump win in the U.S. elections. Even if Trump gets a majority of the votes the chances of him actually becoming President are slim. Here are some of the tactics and tricks the Hillary camp could use to block his election. I cannot say what is the probability of these options, but they have all been tested in previous US sponsored color revolutions.

1) Massive propaganda campaign will pressure the electorate to vote against their favorite candidate.

2) If Trump still gets over 50% of the vote, the vote count will be falsified. (Something similar seems to have happened in the Austrian presidential election.)

3) If the election results actually show a victory for Trump, the results will be annulled. DNC will claim that "Putin" hacked the voting machines. The Supreme Court will declare Hillary the winner.

4) If all else fails, Hillary will call for a Maidan-style occupation of Washington DC. The revolutionaries will take over the Capitol and the White House -- with the support of pro-Hillary officials.

This article appeared in the Washington Post today. This seems like preparation for scenario 3: if Trump wins, then Putin hacked the voting machines!

U.S. investigating potential covert Russian plan to disrupt November elections

By Dana Priest, Ellen Nakashima and Tom Hamburger

September 5

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat...story.html

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the upcoming presidential election and in U.S. political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.

The aim is to understand the scope and intent of the Russian campaign, which incorporates *cyber-tools to hack systems used in the political process, enhancing Russia's ability to spread disinformation.

The effort to better understand Russia's covert influence operations is being coordinated by James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence. "This is something of concern for the DNI," said Charles Allen, a former longtime CIA officer who has been briefed on some of these issues. "It is being addressed."

A Russian influence operation in the United States "is something we're looking very closely at," said one senior intelligence official who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter. Officials also are examining potential disruptions to the election process, and the FBI has alerted state and local officials to potential cyberthreats.

The official cautioned that the intelligence community is not saying it has "definitive proof" of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so. "But even the hint of something impacting the security of our election system would be of significant concern," the official said. "It's the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system."

The Kremlin's intent may not be to sway the election in one direction or another, officials said, but to cause chaos and provide propaganda fodder to attack U.S. democracy-building policies around the world, particularly in the countries of the former Soviet Union.

[Russia's anti-American fever goes beyond the Soviet era's]

U.S. intelligence officials described the covert influence campaign here as "ambitious" and said it is also designed to counter U.S. leadership and influence in international affairs.

Their comments came just before President Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin talked privately about cyberspying and other matters on the sidelines of the Group of 20 talks in China. After their meeting Monday, Obama acknowledged tensions over digital espionage and said the United States had strong capability in this area. "Our goal is not to suddenly, in the cyber arena, duplicate the cycle of escalation we saw when it comes to other arms races in the past," Obama said.

One congressional official, who has been briefed recently on the matter, said "Russian active measures' or covert influence or ma*nipu*la*tion efforts, whether it's in Eastern Europe or in the United States," are worrisome.

It "seems to be a global campaign," the aide said. As a result, the issue has "moved up as a priority" for the intelligence agencies, which include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security as well as the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Some congressional leaders briefed recently by the intelligence agencies on Russian influence operations in Europe, and how they may serve as a template for activities in the United States, were disturbed by what they heard.

After Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) ended a secure 30-minute phone briefing given by a top intelligence official recently, he was "deeply shaken," according to an aide who was with Reid when he left the secure room at the FBI's Las Vegas office.

The Russian government hack of the Democratic National Committee, disclosed by the DNC in June but not yet officially ascribed by the U.S. government to Russia, and the subsequent release of 20,000 hacked DNC emails by WikiLeaks, shocked officials. Cyber analysts traced its digital markings to known Russian government hacking groups.

[Cyber researchers confirm Russian hack of DNC]

"We've seen an unprecedented intrusion and an attempt to influence or disrupt our political process," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, speaking about the DNC hack and the WikiLeaks release on the eve of the Democratic convention. The disclosures, which included a number of embarrassing internal emails, forced the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Members of both parties are urging the president to take the Russians to task publicly.

Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) in a statement urged Obama to publicly name Russia as responsible for the DNC hack and apparent meddling in the electoral process. "Free and legitimate elections are non-negotiable. It's clear that Russia thinks the reward outweighs any consequences," he wrote. "That calculation must be changed. . . . This is going to take a cross-domain response diplomatic, political and economic that turns the screws on Putin and his cronies."

Another Republican, Sen. Daniel Coats of Indiana, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that if Moscow is indeed trying to influence the U.S. election, "such actions would be an outrageous violation of international rules of behavior and cannot be tolerated."

Administration officials said they are still weighing their response.

Russia has denied that it carried out any cyber-intrusions in the United States. Putin called the accusations against Russia by U.S. officials and politicians an attempt to "distract the public's attention."

"It doesn't really matter who hacked this data from Mrs. Clinton's campaign headquarters," Putin said in an interview with Bloomberg News, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. "The important thing is the content was given to the public."

[Russian hackers targeted Arizona election system]

The Department of Homeland Security has offered local and state election officials help to prevent or deal with Election Day cyber disruptions, including vulnerability scans, regular actionable information and alerts, and access to other tools for improving cybersecurity at the local level. It will also have a cyber team ready at the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center to alert jurisdictions if attacks are detected.

Last month, the FBI issued an unprecedented warning to state election officials urging them to be on the lookout for intrusions into their election systems and to take steps to upgrade security measures across the voting process, including voter registration, voter rolls and election-related websites. The confidential "flash" alert said investigators had detected attempts to penetrate election systems in several states.

Arizona, Illinois and both the Democratic and Republican parties, as well as the DNC, have been the victims of either attempted or successful cyberattacks that FBI agents with expertise in Russian government hacking are investigating.

Federal law enforcement and local election officials say the decentralized nature of the voting process, which is run by states and counties, makes it impossible to ensure a high level of security in each district.

"I have a lot of concern" about this year's election, said Ion Sancho, the longtime supervisor of elections in Leon County, Fla. "America doesn't have its act together." Sancho, who has authorized red-team attacks on his voting system to identify its vulnerabilities, added: "We need a plan."

Sancho and others are particularly concerned about electronic balloting from overseas that travels on vulnerable networks before landing in the United States, and about efforts to use cyberattacks to disrupt vote tabulations being transmitted to state-level offices. Encryption, secure paper backups and secure backup computers are critical, he said.

Tom Hicks, chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, an agency set up by Congress after the 2000 Florida recount to maintain election integrity, said he is confident that states have sufficient safeguards in place to ward off intrusions. He noted that electronic balloting from overseas is conducted by email, not through online voting machines. The overseas voter "waives their right of privacy" by emailing the ballot, which is tabulated by election officials. The email may still be hacked, but it is not a systemic risk, he said.

Recently, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said he favors designating the voting systems used in the country's 9,000 polling places as "critical infrastructure" in other words, as vital to the nation's safe functioning as nuclear power plants and electrical power grids.

[Readout of Secretary Jeh Johnson's call with state election officials on cybersecurity]

Such a designation could mean increased DHS funding to localities to help ensure that voter registration, ballots and ballot tabulation remain free from interference. But it won't happen before the November elections, federal and local officials said.

Russia has been in the vanguard of a growing global movement to use propaganda on the Internet to influence people and political events, especially since the political revolt in Ukraine, the subsequent annexation of Crimea by Russia, and the imposition of sanctions on Russia by the United States and the European Union.

The Baltic states, Georgia and Ukraine have been subject to Russian cyberattacks and other hidden influence operations meant to disrupt those countries, officials said.

"Our studies show that it is very likely that [the influence] operations are centrally run," said Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence, a research organization based in Riga, Latvia.

He also said there is "a coordinated effort involving [groups using] Twitter and Facebook and networks of bots to amplify their message. The main themes seem to be orchestrated rather high up in the hierarchy of the Russian state, and then there are individual endeavors by people to exploit specific themes."

Sarts said the Russian propaganda effort has been "successful in exploiting the vulnerabilities within societies." In Western Europe, for instance, such Russian information operations have focused on the politically divisive refugee crisis.

On the eve of a crucial post-revolution presidential vote in Ukraine in 2014, a digital assault nearly crippled the country's Central Election Commission's website. Pro-Moscow hackers calling themselves the CyberBerkut claimed responsibility, saying they were not state-affiliated, but the authorities in Kiev blamed Moscow. The Russians used a "denial of service" technique, flooding the commission's Web server with a high volume of requests, which was meant to slow down or disable the network.

Ellen Nakashima is a national security reporter for The Washington Post. She focuses on issues relating to intelligence, technology and civil liberties. Follow @nakashimae
Tom Hamburger covers the intersection of money and politics for The Washington Post. Follow @thamburger

[Paul Rigby]

Russia Rigged Election, Killed JFK And Hid Saddam's WMDs, Confirms CIA

December 10, 2016

http://waterfordwhispersnews.com/2016/12...firms-cia/

RUSSIAN'S helped Donald Trump win this years US election, assassinated John F. Kennedy in 1963 and hid Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) confirmed today.

President Barack Obama ordered intelligence agencies to review cyber attacks and foreign intervention into the 2016 US election and deliver a report before he left office, and was astounded at what the civilian foreign intelligence service of the United States federal government found.

"The Russians are to blame for everything wrong with America today," Mr. Obama pointed out, reading from a ten page report into the CIA findings, "We didn't know until now how much the Russian's have influenced this whole planet over the last 50 years. Thankfully the CIA have accumulated all this evidence in just a matter of weeks, which is an incredible feat considering how long they took to find Osama Bin Laden, who we now believe was also backed by Russia".

Furthermore, the intelligence agency also found that Russia was also responsible for several coups around the world, including Libya, Venezuela and may have orchestrated the 911 attacks on New York, the Pentagon and probably created the Zika virus while it was at it.

"Russia is really, really bad and they support Donald Trump," a CIA spokesman confirmed in a brief statement, "Don't ask us how we know all this because we can't tell you as it's very, very top secret; you will just have to trust us and take our word for it," adding "We would never deliver fake news… not even once".

[Paul Rigby]

The CIA's Absence of Conviction

Craig Murray

11 December 2016

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/...onviction/

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

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

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of "Russia", while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was "directing" the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up."

"I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

"If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA's statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
"America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it's not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever."

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming incredibly that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven't they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes "Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump." Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a "credible source"? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the "credible sources" Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It's the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as "credible" give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland's mind, "credible" is 100% synonymous with "establishment". When he says "credible sources" he means "establishment sources". That is the truth of the "fake news" meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This games kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

[Tracy Riddle]

You have to be pretty blind, and almost a closet Trump supporter (Zero Hedge has been in bed with Trump all year) to not see the extent of his ties to Putin and Russian oligarchs, the pro-Russian people he has surrounded himself with and is appointing, and the way Wikileaks was used to attack only one candidate this year. You certainly don't need to be a CIA analyst to figure it out.

Anyone defending Wikileaks/Assange needs to explain why they never released any hacked emails from the Republicans. Either wittingly or unwittingly, they allowed themselves to be used as a Russian intelligence asset to interfere in a US election.

Some people here would say, "Oh, the US deserves it and is just getting a dose of its own medicine." Fine, fair enough. Doesn't mean I have to like what's coming. Trump is surrounding himself with generals, Goldman Sachs banksters, oil company executives, and people who want to dismantle the few good things the federal government does. He is a dangerous and ugly, vile person and needs to be opposed on all fronts.

[Magda Hassan]

Anyone defending Wikileaks/Assange needs to explain why they never released any hacked emails from the Republicans. Either wittingly or unwittingly, they allowed themselves to be used as a Russian intelligence asset to interfere in a US election.

Because they don't have any.
Wikileaks depends on others to upload documents to them. One day a disgruntled Trump insider might do that the same way that some Democrat insider did. Wikileaks would be more than happy to publish those documents when they come. No Russians needed.

[Tracy Riddle]

Anyone defending Wikileaks/Assange needs to explain why they never released any hacked emails from the Republicans. Either wittingly or unwittingly, they allowed themselves to be used as a Russian intelligence asset to interfere in a US election.

Because they don't have any.
Wikileaks depends on others to upload documents to them. One day a disgruntled Trump insider might do that the same way that some Democrat insider did. Wikileaks would be more than happy to publish those documents when they come. No Russians needed.

Sorry, I think that's just B.S. The NYT reported that the RNC was hacked as well (according to the CIA, though the pro-Trump faction in the FBI denies that - the two agencies have never shared information well, or even trust each other). The hacked RNC emails were never released, except for the ones from Colin Powell and Condi Rice saying unflattering things about the Clintons (Hillary's email server and Bill's bimbos).

It's basic spycraft to use third party cutouts to pass along information to a group like Wikileaks. They can easily represent themselves as "disgruntled insiders," when in fact they are acting on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Maybe you didn't notice the Exxon CEO who is going to be Secretary of State, even though he received a personal award from Putin? This isn't cold war paranoia. Putin doesn't like Hillary and didn't want her to win. Anyone who doesn't believe that the Russians hacked both parties is naive. They are holding the Republican emails as future blackmail material to influence Trump, which may be one reason the GOP and its right-wing media allies are curiously afraid all of a sudden to criticize Russia anymore.

As a side note, we have Trump and his people trying to argue that Russian Hacking=WMDs, so there's no story folks, don't believe what the CIA says. Never mind that the cooked intelligence on WMDs actually came from Dick Cheney's personal intelligence unit (Office of Special Plans) staffed by neo-cons, while many people at CIA actually argued that Cheney's intelligence was wrong.

[Tracy Riddle]

[URL="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/11/intelligence-agencies-cia-donald-trump-russia"]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/11/intelligence-agencies-cia-donald-trump-russia

[/URL]"There is not just smoke here. There is a blazing 10-alarm fire, the sirens are wailing, the Russians provided the lighter fluid, and Trump is standing half-burnt and holding a match," said Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer and interrogator..."Look, in my professional assessment as an intelligence officer, Trump has a reflexive, defensive, monumentally narcissistic personality, for whom the facts and national interest are irrelevant, and the only thing that counts is whatever gives personal advantage and directs attention to himself. "He is about the juiciest intelligence target an intelligence office could imagine. He groans with vulnerabilities. He will only work with individuals or entities that agree with him and build him up, and he is a shockingly easy intelligence target' to manipulate."

[Tom Scully]

Anyone defending Wikileaks/Assange needs to explain why they never released any hacked emails from the Republicans. Either wittingly or unwittingly, they allowed themselves to be used as a Russian intelligence asset to interfere in a US election.

Because they don't have any.
Wikileaks depends on others to upload documents to them. One day a disgruntled Trump insider might do that the same way that some Democrat insider did. Wikileaks would be more than happy to publish those documents when they come. No Russians needed.

Sorry, I think that's just B.S. The NYT reported that the RNC was hacked as well (according to the CIA, though the pro-Trump faction in the FBI denies that - the two agencies have never shared information well, or even trust each other). The hacked RNC emails were never released, except for the ones from Colin Powell and Condi Rice saying unflattering things about the Clintons (Hillary's email server and Bill's bimbos).

It's basic spycraft to use third party cutouts to pass along information to a group like Wikileaks. They can easily represent themselves as "disgruntled insiders," when in fact they are acting on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Maybe you didn't notice the Exxon CEO who is going to be Secretary of State, even though he received a personal award from Putin? This isn't cold war paranoia. Putin doesn't like Hillary and didn't want her to win. Anyone who doesn't believe that the Russians hacked both parties is naive. They are holding the Republican emails as future blackmail material to influence Trump, which may be one reason the GOP and its right-wing media allies are curiously afraid all of a sudden to criticize Russia anymore.

As a side note, we have Trump and his people trying to argue that Russian Hacking=WMDs, so there's no story folks, don't believe what the CIA says. Never mind that the cooked intelligence on WMDs actually came from Dick Cheney's personal intelligence unit (Office of Special Plans) staffed by neo-cons, while many people at CIA actually argued that Cheney's intelligence was wrong.

Tracy, as far as discussion in the U.S. criticizing the Trump phenomena only makes it stronger. I am inclined to
think this is a condition beyond U.S. borders, since the reaction to reasonable criticism of Trump is so pervasive and predictable in the U.S.

So, who are your posts directed at? Mine is directed at you.....save your key strokes. You're confined to preaching to the choir. The rest indicate they are unreachable. Trumpism is bullet proof, hyper resistant to reality rooted fact, as needed to maintain the faith.

This was released Friday, and the source has received praise for accuracy and criticism for being too slanted to both the democratic and the republican party.

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2...120916.pdf
..........
Over the course of the campaign we found there was a cult like aspect to Trump's support, where any idea he put forth a substantial share of his supporters would go along with. We see that trend continuing post election. 60% of Trump voters think that Hillary Clinton received millions of illegal votes to only 18% who disagree with that concept and 22% who aren't sure either way.
A couple other findings related to the vote in this year's election:
-40% of Trump voters insist that he won the national popular vote to only 49% who grant that Clinton won it and 11% who aren't sure.
-Only 53% of Trump voters think that California's votes should be allowed to count in the national popular vote. 29% don't think they should be allowed to count, and another 18% are unsure.
.....
There's been a lot of attention to the way fake news has spread and been believed especially by Trump supporters and that's borne out in our polling:
-73% of Trump voters think that George Soros is paying protesters against Trump to only 6% who think that's not true, and 21% who aren't sure one way or the other.
-14% of Trump supporters think Hillary Clinton is connected to a child sex ring run out of a Washington DC pizzeria. Another 32% aren't sure one way or another, much as the North Carolinian who went to Washington to check it out last weekend said was the case for him. Only 54% of Trump voters expressly say they don't think #Pizzagate is real.
There's also been a lot of discussion recently about how we might be in a post-fact world and we see some evidence of that coming through in our polling:
-67% of Trump voters say that unemployment increased during the Obama administration, to only 20% who say it decreased.
-Only 41% of Trump voters say that the stock market went up during the Obama administration. 39% say it went down, and another 19% say they're not sure.
Trump's been in a variety of fights with the media recently, and he's losing all of them:
-By a 49/40 spread, voters say the New York Times has more credibility than Trump.
-By a 48/41 spread, voters say CNN has more credibility than Trump.
-While Trump's favorability rating is negative at 43/51, Saturday Night Live's is positive at 48/33.
Trump's certainly been effective at turning his voters against the various entities he's feuding with though. Among Trump voters the Times has a 7/71 favorability spread, CNN has an 11/76 favorability spread, and SNL has a 17/61 favorability spread. The musical Hamilton has an 11/45 favorability with Trump voters, compared to 61/3 with Clinton voters.
Other notes from our national poll:

-There's still a strong national consensus that Trump needs to release his tax returns. 59% say he needs to do that, to only 29% who say it's not necessary.
-Voters are pretty split on who they'd like to see as the next Secretary of State with 20% each wanting Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, 13% for John Bolton, 11% for David Petraeus, and 7% for Jon Huntsman. Among Trump voters the preference is strongly for Giuliani who gets 32% to 21% for Bolton, 14% for Petraeus, and 10% for Romney. Among Clinton voters support is strong for Romney at 28%, followed by Huntsman at 10% with no one else in double digits.
-Steven Bannon is unpopular among voters who are familiar with him, with 18% rating him positively to 33% with a negative opinion. The good news for Trump is that only 51% of voters are actually familiar with Bannon though. Kellyanne Conway is much better known, with 66% name recognition, and she has a narrowly positive image among voters nationally at 34/32.
-Congress is about as unpopular as ever, with only 10% of voters approving of it to 75% who disapprove. Paul Ryan has a 37/49 approval rating as Speaker and that makes him look positively popular next to Mitch McConnell who has a 16/56 approval rating nationally and is the least popular politician nationally in the country.
-Finally in these divided times we find there are some issues that Clinton and Trump supporter do agree on:
*There's 89/8 support nationally for expanded background checks on gun purchases, including support from 96% of Clinton voters and 81% of Trump voters.
*There's 84/8 support nationally for barring those on the Terror Watch List from buying guns, including support from 90% of Clinton voters and 80% of Trump voters.
*There's 76% support nationally for increasing the minimum wage to at least $10 an hour, including support from 95% of Clinton voters and 54% of Trump voters.
Public Policy Polling surveyed 1,224 registered voters on December 6th and 7th. The margin of error is +/2.8%. 80% of participants, selected through a list based sample, responded via the phone, while 20% of respondents who did not have landlines conducted the survey over the internet through an opt-in internet panel.

[Magda Hassan]

Sorry, I think that's just B.S.

You may well think that but you have no evidence. Neither does the NYT. Neither does any one. No arrests. No names. No proof. No calling the ambassador in. No kicking out the First Secretary. Or Second or Third Secretary even. Nothing.

It's basic spycraft to use third party cutouts to pass along information to a group like Wikileaks. They can easily represent themselves as "disgruntled insiders," when in fact they are acting on behalf of Russian intelligence.

Sure. And yes Russia may benefit, as many do, from not having Clinton as President. However, the source of the leak is known and it is not Russia or a Russian. It is a Yanky Doodle.

Maybe you didn't notice the Exxon CEO who is going to be Secretary of State, even though he received a personal award from Putin? This isn't cold war paranoia.

Yes, Arctic exploration and exploitation will be disastrous for the planet. Must be stopped.

Putin doesn't like Hillary and didn't want her to win.

Not the only one apparently. Plenty in the US didn't like her either. And Putin has good reason not to like her and her coterie of regime changing chaos causing neo con sociopaths. Do not take that as an endorsement of Trump.

Anyone who doesn't believe that the Russians hacked both parties is naive. They are holding the Republican emails as future blackmail material to influence Trump, which may be one reason the GOP and its right-wing media allies are curiously afraid all of a sudden to criticize Russia anymore.

And why wouldn't others besides Russia also have these republican emails to use for future blackmail of Trump? The Republicans have them for a start. Many of them despise Trump more than Hilary. I'm sure they would love to have him do their bidding or otherwise neutralise him.

As a side note, we have Trump and his people trying to argue that Russian Hacking=WMDs, so there's no story folks, don't believe what the CIA says. Never mind that the cooked intelligence on WMDs actually came from Dick Cheney's personal intelligence unit (Office of Special Plans) staffed by neo-cons, while many people at CIA actually argued that Cheney's intelligence was wrong.

I wouldn't believe what the CIA says either. But not because there is no story there. Lots of stories need investigation, and never were by the Dems when they had the chance, but the Russian Hack is not one of them.

[David Guyatt]

To repeat Paul's post above by former UK Ambassador, Craig Murray, on Wikileaks and the DNC hack.

The CIA's Absence of Conviction

160

11 Dec, 2016 in Uncategorized by craig

---

I have watched incredulous as the CIA's blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton's corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.
A little simple logic demolishes the CIA's claims. The CIA claim they "know the individuals" involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of "We know who it was, it was the Russians" are beneath contempt.
As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.
The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of "Russia", while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.
I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was "directing" the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.
Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims "bullshit", adding: "They are absolutely making it up."
"I know who leaked them," Murray said. "I've met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it's an insider. It's a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.
"If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA's statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.
"America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it's not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever."

But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming incredibly that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven't they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.
It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.
In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes "Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump." Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a "credible source"? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?
Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.
Contrast this to the "credible sources" Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It's the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.
In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as "credible" give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland's mind, "credible" is 100% synonymous with "establishment". When he says "credible sources" he means "establishment sources". That is the truth of the "fake news" meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.
The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

Source

Murray has met the person who leaked the hacked emails to Wikileaks. The same way that former senior NSA cryptanalyst turned whistleblower, William Binney, has stated on the record that the DNC email was hacked by a disgruntled USA intelligence worker who was concerned over Hilary's lying over, and use of, the home server (HERE). Ditto Edward Snowden (HERE). Or one may also go and read any number of articles on this subject at Robert Parry's Consortium News.

It simply is beyond credulous that all these whistleblowers are lying and/or are subject to a Russian operation.