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Political Hacks, Our Intelligence Agencies & Putin

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President Trump spoke with pool press reporters aboard Air Force One while traveling to Hanoi, Vietnam.

His comments cause quite a stir with the liberal media.

Especially when President Trump answered some questions on Putin, Russian meddling and our Intelligence Agencies (transcript here):

Q: Did Russia’s attempts to meddle in U.S. elections come up in the conversation?

President Trump: He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times. But I just asked him again, and he said he absolutely did not meddle in our election.

Q Do you believe him?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, look, I can’t stand there and argue with him. I’d rather have him get out of Syria, to be honest with you. I’d rather have him — you know, work with him on the Ukraine than standing and arguing.

If we had a relationship with Russia, that would be a good thing. In fact, it would be a great thing, not a bad thing. Because he could really help us in North Korea.

Q (Inaudible) do you believe him

PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think that he is very, very strong in the fact that he didn’t do it. And then you look, and you look at what’s going on with Podesta, and you look at what’s going on with the server from the DNC and why didn’t the FBI take it, why did they leave it; why did a third party look at the server and not the FBI.

And then you hear it’s 17 agencies. Well, it’s three. And one is Brennan and one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks.

So you look at it — I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.

So you look at that, and you have President Putin very strongly, vehemently says he had nothing to do with that. Now, you’re not going to get into an argument. You’re going to start talking about Syria and the Ukraine.

I happen to agree with President Trump on his take with Putin:

You can only ask so many times. I can’t stand there and argue with him. I’d rather have him get out of Syria, work with him on the Ukraine, he could really help us in North Korea.

But it’s President Trump’s comments on our Intelligence Community that I’m going to focus on:

You look at what’s going on with the server from the DNC and why didn’t the FBI take it, why did they leave it; why did a third party look at the server and not the FBI.

And then you hear it’s 17 agencies. Well, it’s three. And one is Brennan and one is whatever. I mean, give me a break. They’re political hacks.

So you look at it — I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, and you have Comey. Comey is proven now to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.

Although he took a lot of heat for his comments, President Trump is 100% correct.

It was not 17 agencies. It was only three agencies.

Actually, it was only three people:

James Comey (FBI), John Brennan (CIA) and James Clapper (DNI).

And Comey, Brennan and Clapper ARE political hacks.

I have written about this several times before. You can find a run-through of our Intelligence Agencies along with their associated reports on Russian interference in, Russian Dolls – A NYT Correction & an Intelligence Fabrication.

The United States has 16 actual intelligence Agencies – not 17 as is commonly stated. And only six of agencies actually gather intelligence. The rest simply “process” and use the intelligence gathered by the primary agencies.

The “17th Agency”, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is really an intelligence oversight office – an information hub.

The DNI is not a true agency. It is an office.

A political one.

President Trump later made a clarifying comment on Putin while seeming to affirm our Intelligence Community.

But he was very careful with his choice of wording:

I believe that he [Putin] feels that he and Russia did not meddle in the election. What he believes is what he believes. As to whether I believe it or not, I’m with our agencies, especially as currently constituted, with their leadership.

At the time of the creation of the Russian “reports”, John Brennan was head of the CIA, James Comey was head of the FBI, James Clapper was the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Admiral Mike Rogers was the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA).

Rogers is the only one of the four men who still holds his position.

The assessment of Russian Intervention originally stemmed from a October 7, 2016, Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noting the Intelligence Community was confident of Russian involvement in our election.

Neither of these parties – one an agency, the other an office – is involved in any actual intelligence gathering.

Later testimony by our various Intelligence Directors confirmed that Russia is always involved in Presidential elections.

This October 2016 report was then followed up by a December 29, 2016, Joint Analysis by Homeland Security and the FBI discussing Russian Malicious Cyber Activity.

I strongly encourage you to read the report. Its lack of actual detail is eye-opening:

Both groups have historically targeted government organizations, think tanks, universities, and corporations around the world. APT29 has been observed crafting targeted spearphishing campaigns leveraging web links to a malicious dropper; once executed, the code delivers Remote Access Tools (RATs) and evades detection using a range of techniques.

APT28 is known for leveraging domains that closely mimic those of targeted organizations and tricking potential victims into entering legitimate credentials. APT28 actors relied heavily on shortened URLs in their spearphishing email campaigns. Once APT28 and APT29 have access to victims, both groups exfiltrate and analyze information to gain intelligence value.

These groups use this information to craft highly targeted spearphishing campaigns. These actors set up operational infrastructure to obfuscate their source infrastructure, host domains and malware for targeting organizations, establish command and control nodes, and harvest credentials and other valuable information from their targets.

This report is nothing more than a generalized description of ongoing hacking techniques.

Of the two parties who produced the “report”, only the FBI is actually involved in intelligence gathering.

On January 6, 2017, the DNI issued a much more press friendly report – utilizing data from the earlier two reports – and intelligence assessments from the heads of the CIA, FBI and NSA.

This report – Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections is highly generalized with very little in the way of substance.

James Clapper (DNI) wrote the report. The DNI is not involved in any actual gathering of intelligence. The FBI, CIA and the NSA are all intelligence gathering agencies.

NSA Director Mike Rogers publicly stated a differing confidence level in the report than the heads of the FBI (Comey) and CIA (Brennan). Rogers qualified the NSA assessment with only a “moderate” confidence.

NSA Director Mike Rogers reiterated this more strongly at a Senate Armed Services hearing:

“I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call.”…“it didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources.”

The first report established the Russians attempted to intervene in our election. By the DNI’s own acknowledgement, the Russians have historically done so. Their activities and efforts are not new.

The second report was meant to directly tie Russian hacking to the election. What the report actually did was use technical language to describe a generalized hacking process – and the means by which hacking and phishing can be generally prevented.

The third report – done by the DNI (Clapper) took data from the first two reports and then packaged it into a media friendly publication that used broad assertions, sweeping statements and very little factual data.

The DNI’s report was then subjected to assessments by the CIA (Brennan), FBI (Comey) and the NSA (Rogers). The NSA’s assessment differed markedly from the CIA and FBI – and the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper – who wrote the report.

This “report” was then used to push the entire Russian Narrative we have been subjected to as a nation.

All these Congressional hearings, all the media reports and hysteria – stemming from reports supposedly blessed by “all 17 intelligence agencies” – actually stem from reports constructed by just three men.

Former DNI Director Clapper, former CIA Director Brennan and former FBI Director Comey.

Three political hacks.

One last thing. About that DNC server. It was not hacked by the Russians. It was an inside leak.

Doubt me on this?

Give this article from The Nation – a very liberal publication – a read. It is fairly conclusive. And damning.

A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year’s DNC Hack.

While you are reading it, ponder this simple question:

In the midst of the all the hysteria and investigation over Russian hacking, why is it that no official U.S. agency – neither the FBI nor the CIA – seized and examined the DNC Servers for evidence?

And consider these two facts:

Marc Elias, a Perkins Coie lawyer, retained Fusion GPS – the firm responsible for the Trump Dossier – in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Perkins Coie also retained CrowdStrike in April 2016, after learning that the DNC servers had been compromised.

As Andrew McCarthy noted:

The conclusion that Russia is responsible for the invasion of the DNC servers rests on the forensic analysis conducted by CrowdStrike. Rather than do its own investigation, the FBI relied on a contractor retained by the DNC’s lawyers.

The FBI, rather than seizing and examining the DNC servers as part of its investigation, chose to rely on a contractor in the employ of the Democrat Party.

Political hacks indeed.

 

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