One of the most pressing questions we should be demanding of Hillary Clinton is an explanation of Skolkovo and how she profited from making deals over it. Because it looks suspiciously like she helped fund the Russians to develop cyber technology that could be used against us in a time of war, while profiting from what amounts to treason. In essence, Hillary Clinton has allowed trade secrets and professional Russian espionage within the United States.
As I have stated previously, I now believe that whoever wins in this election will bring Russia into the White House. Putin wins no matter what now. In a way, you have to admire the evil machinations that have taken place to make this the case and I’m simply dumbstruck by the utter foolishness of America in allowing it to happen.
The Podesta Group has been neck deep in it with the Russians for fun and profit. John Podesta is Clinton’s campaign chair and his brother is the head of The Podesta Group. Hillary’s entanglement with Putin and the Kremlin go far deeper than that. She’s taken huge donations and made deals with our biggest enemy… she’s also covered it up nicely.
Peter Schweizer has written a report that is stunning: FROM RUSSIA WITH MONEY. It is 40 pages long and a definite must read for national security experts and those that want an insight into Clinton corruption with Russia in mind. It’s in-depth… Schweizer has spent years looking into Clinton’s finances and connections. This one all by itself should keep her out of the White House, but sadly, I doubt it will in today’s Russia-embracing insanity. The uranium deal comes to mind.
John Podesta sat on the board of a Dutch-registered company that had lucrative shadowy dealings with the Kremlin, to the tune of $35 million. It was an obvious Russian front and there is no way to know currently just how much Podesta himself was paid, or what for. But come on… we are not naive here. It can’t be good if it’s the Russians. Podesta broke federal law when he did not disclose his position on that board to the federal government. By law, he is required to. Last time I checked, he’s free as a bird and still making dirty deals.
Clinton and her holdings have profited greatly from her little “Russian reset.” Yep, that was a disaster, but not for her personally. She made a killing in more ways than one, if you get my drift. It resulted in the Russians invading the Ukraine, something that is being lauded on both sides of the political aisle now. The Russians have even had their mitts in the Republican convention plank to soften support for the Ukraine.
Hillary Clinton was instrumental in getting American firms to heavily invest in Russia – specifically our high-tech firms. I give you the Skolkovo Innovation Center. It’s a sprawling complex in Moscow’s western suburbs and was built in 2009. It is their version of Silicon Valley, with an espionage, intelligence and military twist. With the blessings of Clinton’s State Department, Cisco pledge $1 billion in 2010 to Skolkovo. Google and Intel then came on board with heavy investments. I’m sure you will be shocked to know that all three of those tech titans just happen to be major investors in the Clinton Foundation.
28 US companies participated in Skolkovo. 17 of those were Clinton Foundation donors or they had at one time hired Bill Clinton to give speeches. It partially explains the millions in speech fees the Clintons have declared on their tax returns. That and the Chinese and other enemies of the US. There is no way to know exactly how much the Clintons made out of Skolkovo, but Schweizer estimates that it is somewhere between $6.5 million and $23.5 million. Once the Clinton Foundation reveals all its donors, it could be much, much more and I’m betting it is.
In reality, Skolkovo is only like Silicon Valley in appearance. On the inside, you have a Kremlin-driven company that answers directly to Putin and is of high value to the country’s defense and security sector. Largely funded thanks to Hillary Clinton. It is an extension of Russia’s military-industrial complex and their intelligence services. In July 2013, an unclassified study by US European Command that surveyed Skolkovo activities suggested that Russia’s Silicon Valley is “an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.” This time they didn’t really have to steal our high-tech secrets as they have in the past… we literally handed them over.
In 2014, the FBI made a blunt, public statement warning American firms about dealings with Russian entities, naming the Skolkovo Foundation as a particular source of concern. They called it, “a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial applications.” That seems pretty damn straightforward to me. Skolkovo also has commercial contracts with Kamaz, a Russian defense firm. Their specialty… armored vehicles. “The FBI fears that Kamaz will provide Russia’s military with innovative research obtained from the Foundation’s US partners,” warned the Bureau.
And it gets worse. Skolkovo has deep links to the FSB (Russian Intelligence). It’s the modern day version of the KGB. Schweizer stats, “Skolkovo happens to be the site of the FSB’s security centers 16 and 18, which are in charge of information warfare for the Russian government.” See where this is going? Nowhere good for Clinton. That place ironically houses the hackers that hacked the DNC and stole Hillary’s emails. They turned on her after doling out millions.
None of this is classified information. Neither are assessments by the Pentagon or the FBI and they are being candid about it for those that will listen. “It’s an obvious Kremlin front,” explained a Pentagon intelligence official about Skolkovo. “In the old days, the KGB had to recruit spies to steal Western technology, now they do deals with you. The theft is the same.” A European intelligence official said that they had concluded that several top Skolkovo officials are actually FSB officers: “We’ve seen guys from Skolkovo acting like intelligence collectors, not tech entrepreneurs,” he elaborated.
None of this should ever have been allowed, especially by a sitting US high-profile Secretary of State. The damage done here is immeasurable and deadly. I have absolutely no doubt that the technology provided by Clinton to the Russians will be used in cyberwarfare against us. In layman’s terms… I call that treason.
Congress should demand an accountability from Clinton on her Russian dealings immediately. It’s a matter of national security. Americans have a right to know before they vote in November.
What is terrifying and pathetic is the Obama White House and both Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry have been stooges of Putin….groveling for normalcy just as they have with the regime of Iran. This is an administration that is normalizing relations with all terror regimes across the globe that include North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Hillary said thatBashir al Assad of Syria was a reformer when 400,000 Syrians are dead and 4-5 million have left their homes. Then, we all remember that the Obama White House negotiated with Qatar to released 5 Taliban commanders in exchange for one Army deserter. Talks have been ongoing with the Taliban for years until just recently.
No one is admitting that Russian in cadence with WikiLeaks has hacked Hillary’s campaign systems, DCC and the DNC as well as other government systems. Why? Perhaps diplomacy due to talks continued talks with Iran and ending the civil war in Syria. Remember that ‘red-line’ on chemical weapons use.
So, let’s go back a way, like over a decade and up to just a couple of years ago when it came to Russian spies in the United States, shall we? This is for perspective and how the Obama administration including his National Security Council and the State Department continue to ‘omit’ history…
Espionage continues and tactics have not changed for Russia where cyber intrusions have replaced in country operatives, however a look at those operatives’ skills and missions must not be overlooked or dismissed.
The spying spree finally came to its end in the summer of 2014, when the trio were propositioned by a self-described investor who wanted to develop casinos in Russia. The scheme immediately drew red flags among the group, with Sporyshev offering that the proposal felt “like some sort of set-up.”
But despite his misgivings, Sporyshev didn’t stop Buryakov from meeting with the supposed investor, who was, in fact, an FBI informant.
For six hours on Aug. 28, Buryakov and the informant met in the anemic gambling metropolis Atlantic City. The informant, who claimed he had a well-placed source in the U.S. government, handed Buryakov documents that were labeled “Internal Treasury Use Only” and contained a list of Russians who were essentially blacklisted from doing business with the United States.
The valuable document earned the informant another meeting that day, when he offered Buryakov another official document that contained “a list of Russian banks… on which to impose sanctions,” according to the criminal complaint. More from DailyBeast.
Then there was a dead Russian, Mikhail Lesin. found in a hotel in Dupont Circle, Washington DC. A story that came and went real fast.
Mr. Lesin was a major figure in Russian media after the fall of the Soviet Union, first as an advertising executive and later as a top government official and media executive.
He had deep connections to the Russian state at the time Mr. Putin was reasserting his authority over the country’s rambunctious and freewheeling media. He was a crucial figure in that process, which began with the takeover of Russia’s first independent television channel, NTV, in the early 2000s, and was viewed with bitterness by many Russian journalists at that time.
He was Russian press minister between 1999 and 2004 — a time of increasing government pressure on independent journalists and media outlets in the country — and later served as a presidential adviser, spearheading the development of the government’s growing media and technology apparatus.
More recently, Mr. Lesin became head of Gazprom-Media, the country’s largest media holding company, in 2013, but resigned from that position in late 2014.
While still with the company in 2014, Mr. Lesin’s personal wealth attracted suspicion in the United States. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, called for a Justice Department investigation, raising the possibility of corruption and money-laundering charges based on what he alleged were millions of dollars in assets, including $28 million worth of real estate in Los Angeles, controlled by the former civil servant. It is unclear whether such an investigation occurred. More here from the NewYorkTimes.
(Note: Three former U.S. officials said that a trip Flynn took last December to Moscow—where he was filmed sitting at the head table next to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a formal dinner—set off alarms within military and intelligence circles over whether Flynn had notified the U.S. government about his foreign travel, as his security clearance requires.
The Defense Intelligence Agency spokesman said that Flynn had given the proper notices. But a current senior defense official said that word of Flynn’s travel didn’t reach the office of Defense Secretary Ash Carter, and that Pentagon brass were taken by surprise that he didn’t notify the department.
That he would be working with the Trump campaign or pushing for better U.S.-Russian relations, even as the two nations are battling each other on the behalf of proxy forces in Syria, was less surprising, the official said.
“He’s always been a bit of a wild card,” he concluded.
Another former senior U.S. intelligence official who knows Flynn said that he recently praised Trump as a “skilled negotiator” during a meeting of security leaders and experts in Washington. This person said the pair had become so close that, were Trump to win the presidency, he would likely nominate Flynn as the next Director of National Intelligence, the top intelligence official in the government. Via DailyBeast)
Bill Gertz at the Washington Free Beacon has written a fascinating piece on the CIA being fooled by scores of double agents who pledged their loyalty to the agency, but instead reported back to the communists during the Cold War right on up into the present day. As I have said for years… the Cold War never ended, it shifted. Now Benjamin B. Fischer, the CIA’s former chief historian, analyst and operations officer, is verifying what I have long said. That is cold comfort, I assure you.
The duping of the CIA included at least 100 fake recruits in East Germany, Cuba and Russia. For decades, these double agents supplied false intelligence to senior U.S. policymakers that ranged all the way to the presidency. And it’s still happening. Fischer writes, “During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency bucked the law of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was hoodwinked not a few but many times.” Is anyone surprised by this? Trevor Loudon and I have both said for years that the agencies and our governmental leaders couldn’t pass a background check to clean a toilet. It was true then and it is true today. These double agents weren’t thoroughly vetted. They were hurriedly turned and because of sloppiness, we invited the enemy into the midst of our intelligence agencies. It’s mind boggling. In an article last week, Fischer stated, “The result was a massive but largely ignored intelligence failure.” How’s that for national security? Feeling warm and fuzzy yet?
Fischer wrote in the International Journal of Intelligence that this wreaked havoc within the agency. I’ll bet. What’s worse is that the CIA dismissed the infiltration by communists and the disinformation as insignificant. No one, including congressional oversight committees, pushed for reform in the agency when this was uncovered either. Their vetting processes still suck and they aren’t listening to the likes of Fischer. The man was a career CIA officer. He joined in 1973 and worked in the Soviet affairs division during the Cold War. He sued the CIA in 1996, charging he was mistreated for criticizing the agency for mishandling the 1994 case of CIA officer Aldrich Ames, a counterintelligence official, who was unmasked as a long time KGB plant. It was a case of blaming the messenger instead of the spy. This was during the Clinton Administration, so it does not come as a surprise.
From Bill Gertz:
Critics have charged the agency with harboring an aversion to counterintelligence — the practice of countering foreign spies and the vetting of the legitimacy of both agents and career officers. Beginning in the 1970s, many in the CIA criticized counter-spying, which often involved questioning the loyalties of intelligence personnel, as “sickthink.”
The agency’s ability to discern false agents turned deadly in 2009 when a Jordanian recruit pretending to work for [the] CIA killed a group of seven CIA officers and contractors in a suicide bombing at a camp in Afghanistan.
Double agents are foreign nationals recruited by a spy service that are secretly loyal to another spy agency. They are used to feed[ing] false disinformation for intelligence and policy purposes and to extract secrets while pretending to be loyal agents.
Double agents are different than foreign penetration agents, or moles, who spy from within agencies while posing as career intelligence officers.
Lord only knows how many moles we have within our agencies.
Predictably, the first major double agent failure was in Cuba. The Cubans are notorious for using a variety of traps for agents from honey traps to straight up blackmail. Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga revealed a massive failure when he defected to the CIA in 1987. No less than four dozen recruits over 40 years had been secretly working for communist Cuba while on the dole of the CIA. They easily supplied disinformation to the CIA, endangering agents and scuttled operations left and right. This is the same government – Castro’s government – that Obama just reinstated relations with. Now, instead of being made fools by the communists, we just crawl into bed with them. It’s the other definition of coming in from the cold. Then came the revelation on Cuban state television which confirmed the existence of 27 fake CIA agents. You would think that would have set off alarms in the agency and caused them to adjust their vetting procedures. But you’d be wrong. Instead, the intelligence failure was covered up by congressional intelligence committees. You see, the enemies within go way back. We willingly let the enemy in our doors and let them set up shop in our intelligence agencies and abroad. Is it any wonder we now have a Marxist in power who colludes with communist dictators and tyrants, as well as Islamists?
In East Germany, all the recruited CIA agents working there were found to be double agents working secretly for the Ministry of State Security spy service, also known as the Stasi. All. Of. Them. Noodle that for a moment. According to Stasi officers, they failed at placing agents in the CIA. But there wasn’t a single CIA op on their turf that they weren’t able to detect using double agents and counterespionage operations. Fischer said the controlled East German assets “rendered U.S. intelligence deaf, dumb and blind.”
Markus Wolf was an East German spymaster. He wrote in the late 1980’s: “We were in the enviable position of knowing that not a single CIA agent had worked in East Germany without having been turned into a double agent or working for us from the start.” Wolf brashly claimed that, “On our orders they were all delivering carefully selected information and disinformation to the Americans.” He tagged a CIA officer working in West Germany and then dispatched double agents for him to recruit. Nifty.
Evidently this double agent snafu spanned move than 20 years and I contend, it is still occurring. Fischer said that former intelligence officials such as Bobby Ray Inman, who was a CIA director, confirmed the intelligence failure as did former CIA Director Robert Gates. He came right out and said that the CIA was “duped by double agents in Cuba and East Germany.” Wolf had complete control from 1961 to 1989 on the intelligence that the CIA garnered from the communists there. He played us.
And then there was the Russian double agent screw-up. The last one took place after the Soviet Union collapse in 1991. This came to light after the 1994 arrest of CIA counterintelligence officer Aldrich Ames, who spied for the Ruskies from the 1980’s until he was caught. He actively assisted the KGB and made fools of the CIA by exposing all Soviet and Eastern European intelligence operations. The Russians passed a mixture of false and accurate data through a series of double agents. Ames’ operation began in 1986 and went on until 1993.
While that was going on, the KGB sent a false defector to the CIA named Aleksandr Zhomov. He easily hoodwinked the CIA into thinking he could give them information on how the KGB had unmasked and arrested almost all CIA recruited agents during the mid-1980’s. We paid this plant an estimated $1 million. The whole front played out by Zhomov was to protect Ames from being discovered.
More from Bill Gertz:
In 1995, the CIA admitted that for eight years since 1986, it produced highly classified intelligence reports derived from “bogus” and “tainted” sources, including 35 reports that were based on data from double agents, and 60 reports compiled using sources that were suspected of being controlled by Moscow.
The false information reached the highest levels of government, including three presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.
The CIA’s inspector general urged reprimands for several senior CIA officers and directors William H. Webster, Robert M. Gates, and R. James Woolsey.
The three former directors claimed they should not be blamed for the compromises because they were unaware of them.
Fischer said the CIA defended its recruitment of bogus agents by asserting that even while controlled the doubles provided some good intelligence.
Are you beginning to see why I say you cannot trust the Russians or the Cubans? And you can’t trust those who form alliances with them such as Barack Obama. The CIA has been broken for some time. There are good people there even now. But the bureaucratic policies in place are strangling them and keeping them from doing competent work. To survive as a nation, we must have spies and we must have verifiable and trustworthy intelligence. Otherwise, we become sitting ducks for our enemies. You’d think we would have learned that by now, but some of these people are so stupid, they have reached rock-bottom and have started to dig.
One of the problems for the CIA concerning their Soviet operations was that they could not recruit agents to work for the agency. They had to take walk-ins and volunteers. They compounded this by not vetting them thoroughly. It was a prime opportunity for moles and double agents to infiltrate and they did. It’s bad enough this was taking place during the “Cold War,” but it is still going on. That’s unforgivable.
It gets worse… the CIA knew these agents were fraudulent and they allowed the division in charge of Soviet affairs to cover up the loss of all its bona fide agents. No one was held accountable either. No real inquiry was conducted.
“Mitigating the dismay at the total corruption — moral, intellectual, and political — of the agency is my surprise that a man in Fischer’s position saw the reality so very clearly and so reports it,” said Angelo Codevilla, senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and professor emeritus of International Relations at Boston University.
Kenneth E. deGraffenreid, a former senior White House intelligence official during the Reagan administration, said Fischer and other former intelligence officials have revealed that large-scale communist intelligence service operations to undermine the CIA show “the story of Soviet-era espionage operations that we’ve understood to this point is probably deeply flawed.” Ya think? Many of us have been screaming this for years. They should read Trevor Loudon, Diana West, Cliff Kincaid and James Simpson’s works.
“What we thought was true from the Cold War spy wars was largely wrong, and that says that the counterintelligence model we had was wrong,” said deGraffenreid. “And therefore because we’ve not corrected that problem we’re in bad shape to deal with the current challenges posed by terrorists and spies from Iran, Russia, China and others.”
Bill Gertz should be applauded for bringing this travesty to light and exposing it. He’s done incredible work here.
Take it from the CIA themselves: “Intelligence officers have a saying that the only thing worse than knowing there is a mole in your organization is finding the mole.” The same goes for leadership. How can we defend our country if we can’t even police our own intelligence agencies? And it goes far beyond them as well. All our government agencies and the federal government itself are infiltrated with communists and Islamists… from NASA, to our universities, to our military, to the seats of power in Congress… the U.S. is facing an existential problematic threat from within. The CIA is not the only one that has been duped here. The whole nation has been by Barack Obama and his comrades.
Some of our media, including the publication Politico, seem totally confused about the role of NSA defector Edward Snowden in the crimes of the terrorists who murdered and maimed hundreds of people in the Paris attacks. The verdict is in: he has bloody hands.
In a November 16 story, “Blaming Snowden for Paris,” David Perera of Politico insisted that no evidence had surfaced that the “revelations” of NSA defector Edward Snowden had “made a difference” in the case of the Paris terrorist attacks, and there was no evidence the perpetrators had “used encrypted communications to conceal their activities.”
Once again, the publication had gotten ahead of the facts in this story, prejudging the case in order to get Snowden off the hook for facilitating the activities of the Islamic State, or ISIS.
Politico is the same publication that alleged that GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson had admitted fabricating an offer of a West Point scholarship, only to reverse course and drop the claim in a rewritten version of the same story.
Only 24 hours later, after exonerating Snowden, the publication again reversed itself, running an interview with Michael Morell, the former acting head of the CIA, who said the Snowden revelations not only helped the Islamic State but probably contributed to the Paris attacks.
Morell stated, “First, ISIS went to school on how we were collecting intelligence on terrorist organizations by using telecommunications technologies. And when they learned that from the Snowden disclosures, they were able to adapt to it and essentially go silent…And so, part of their rise was understanding what our capabilities were, adjusting to them so we couldn’t see them. No doubt in my mind. And the people who say otherwise are just trying to defend Edward Snowden.”
As embarrassing as this was, the original Politico story had referred to “journalist Glenn Greenwald” as “a Snowden ally” who was arguing “that U.S. officials had complained of difficulty tracking terrorist communications long before the NSA whistleblower emerged.”
It’s true that the terrorists had been evading the NSA before Snowden went to Russia, but that was beside the point. What Morell and others were pointing out is that Snowden had made it easier for the terrorists to plot to kill Europeans and Americans.
Rather than being a “journalist,” Greenwald is a political extremist who speaks before Islamist, Marxist and libertarian groups. He has, for example, been afeatured speaker at conferences sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Cato Institute and the International Socialist Organization. At one of these conferences he declared that al Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist attacks on America were “very minimal in scope compared to the level of deaths that the United States has been bringing to the world for decades—from Vietnam to illegal wars in Central America…”
He is more than a “Snowden ally.” He is a mouthpiece for Snowden’s illegal disclosures and an accomplice in his alleged espionage activities.
A former gay pornography executive, Greenwald was the recipient of the first annual I.F. Stone Award, named in honor of the left-wing journalist identified as an agent of influence for Soviet intelligence. At the awards ceremony, Greenwald said that Soviet agent Stone “pioneered what modern journalism ought to be.”
Snowden is supposedly a “whistleblower,” but that is a false designation considering that he illegally leaked classified information and fled to Russia rather than face up to the authorities and take his punishment. He is specifically charged with espionage.
Despite the claim about encrypted communications not playing a role in the attacks, Politico had itself reported on November 16 in a separate article that “Terrorists linked to the so-called Islamic State are employing encrypted Internet services—including a new generation of mobile messaging apps—that the authorities do not have the technological capability to break, according to intelligence sources, public comments by senior officials, and evidence disclosed in recent criminal trials.”
By November 18, Cory Bennett of The Hill newspaper had identified and cited a 34-page ISIS manual on how to conceal communications from the NSA and other intelligence agencies. Bennett noted that the Arabic document was translated and released by analysts at the Combating Terrorism Center, an independent research group at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.
“It includes warnings to avoid Instagram because it is owned by Facebook, and Dropbox because former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sits on its board of investors. Famous government leaker Edward Snowden has also criticized Dropbox over its privacy, the document notes,” added Bennett.
In other words, the Islamic State is taking Snowden’s advice and openly citing the NSA defector’s expertise on planning terrorism against the West. The reference to Snowden is clear in the translation.
This means that no honest journalist can claim that Snowden’s activities have not helped the terrorists who want to kill us.
Bennett wrote a separate story noting evidence first developed by NBC News that ISIS had set up a 24-hour “help desk” to advise terrorists about encrypting their communications in order to evade authorities.
In the NBC News story, Josh Meyer quoted counterterrorism analysts affiliated with the U.S. Army as saying that the ISIS help desk is “manned by a half-dozen senior operatives around the clock” for the specific purpose of “helping would-be jihadists use encryption and other secure communications in order to evade detection by law enforcement and intelligence authorities.”
Now that it has been definitively proven that Snowden’s disclosures have aided ISIS in planning acts of terror, it is time for the media to start examining the Snowden network that AIM has been exposing for several years now. All of his apologists, including such figures as Fox News contributor Andrew Napolitano, should apologize to the world for rushing to the defense of this despicable character, who now clearly has blood on his hands.
It was Napolitano who had declared, “I would describe this man [Snowden] an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history.”
The evil genius of Snowden’s collaborators was to frame his defection in terms of alleging that he was a “whistleblower.”
He didn’t risk his life or limb but has given up his liberty in return for KGB protection in Moscow.
Citizens of France and possibly the United States, however, will be giving up their lives and limbs so that Snowden can be honored as a hero by Napolitano and his ilk.
Glenn Woodell, a NASA supervisor who pled guilty to violating U.S. espionage laws involving a Chinese NASA contractor was given a slap on the wrist with six months’ probation and a $250 fine, the Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.
Daniel Jobson, a Woodell colleague and fellow NASA supervisor, had his espionage charges reduced to a misdemeanor and was released without any penalty.
The lenient plea deals were quietly delivered October 26 in U.S. District Court in Newport News, Virginia. The U.S. Attorneys office did not to issue a press release about the deals and declined comment when contacted by the DCNF.
Woodell was charged under Title 18 of the nation’s espionage laws and faced a maximum penalty of one-year imprisonment and a fine of $100,000.
“It’s like a traffic ticket or something for littering,” commented former U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf in an interview with the DCNF. A former Virginia Republican congressman who was chairman of a House appropriations oversight subcommittee for NASA, worked to expose Bo Jiang, the Chinese NASA contractor at the heart of the espionage case.
Woodell permitted Bo Jiang “complete and unrestricted access” to the NASA Langley Research Center in Virginia, according to the indictment filed October 20. The indictment stated that he had violated NASA’s security and IT regulations over a two-year period, from Spring 2011 to January 2013.
The Obama administration’s lenient treatment of Woodell drew immediate criticism of what is viewed as a too-permissive attitude toward foreign nationals working at government facilities containing national security assets.
House Space Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican, told the DCNF, “This punishment is inadequate and sends the wrong signal to our adversaries and those entrusted with protecting America’s most sensitive information.”
Rep. John Culberson, who succeeded Wolf as chairman of the NASA appropriations subcommittee, also deplored the plea deal.
“It is intolerable that espionage is not taken more seriously by the administration,” Culberson, also a Texas Republican, told the DCNF.
Culberson vowed to seek changes in the law concerning foreign nationals with access to NASA confidential activities. “I will do what I can to change the law and put conditions on NASA’s receipt of our hard-earned tax dollars to ensure they keep the Chinese government as far away from our space program as possible,” he said.
FBI Director James Comey told the House Homeland Security Committee October 20 that the administration must “get smarter” about foreign citizens with green cards who “wander around” sensitive U.S. facilities like NASA.
“This is the weakest administration. They are afraid of China,” Wolf charged.
“The Chinese are stealing us blind. Look at their new commercial airline,” Wolf said. “Almost everything on that airplane is from Airbus and Boeing,” he charged.
Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly promised President Obama in his September 25 visit to the White House that there would be no more Chinese cyberespionage.
According to Woodell’s admission of facts published by the U.S. Attorneys office during the plea deal, a NASA security plan for Bo Jiang “required Woodell to ensure that Jiang’s access to information was limited to information that was unclassified, non-sensitive, non-export controlled that was directly applicable to the tasks assigned to Jiang.”
Instead, Woodell had given Bo Jiang unfettered access. “At no time did Woodell ever act to secure, protect or fully restrict Jiang’s access to the information,” the U.S. Attorneys office wrote.
Working with NASA Langley whistleblowers who were alarmed at Bo Jiang’s activity, Rep. Wolf publicly announced his concern in a March 2013 news conference.
Shortly after Wolf’s press conference Bo Jiang sought to flee the United States and was intercepted by federal agents at Dulles Airport on March 16, 2013. He had purchased a one-way ticket to his homeland in China.
The Chinese had in his possession a laptop with a Seagate External Hard Drive “that contained the NASA unauthorized, unrestricted access information,” from NASA Langley, according to the U.S. Attorneys office.
NASA headquarters did not respond to a request for comment.
The Wall Street Journal has a great article out on cyber warfare and the weapons it entails. In recent years, countries across the globe have spent billions on facilities that house the means to wage war electronically. You can be a major player on the geopolitical scene even without nuclear weapons. Joining the cyberweapons club is easy, cheap and open to anyone with a computer and money.
Digital warfare was brought to life when numerous countries carried out successful computer raids… the US was one of those countries. Now, a digital arms race is in full swing with countries all over the globe amassing huge troves of malicious code and nasty methods of breaching networks. You’ve got everything from the simplest of programs that use emails that have a single word misspelled, that ask for a password or for you to open an attachment, to more advanced code that utilizes Twitter handles.
In what I consider to be a faux agreement that means about as much as the Iranian deal, the US and China just signed a limited agreement to not conduct various forms of cyber attacks against each other. These have to do with corporate raids and domestic companies. But government espionage is still on the table and fair game. What a joke.
We’ve already seen a great deal of movement in this arena. Take Pakistan and India for example. They are nuclear rivals and hack each other all the time. Estonia and Belarus fear Russia and are working feverishly to build some kind of defense against the Russians. Good luck with that. Denmark, the Netherlands, Argentina and France are all developing offensive computer weapons. Everyone is getting ready for a new frontier on the battlefield.
There are now over 29 nations who have units dedicated to hacking other countries. 50 countries or so have actually purchased canned hacking software that they use for domestic or international surveillance. The US is said to have one of the most advanced operations out there. I’m not so sure of that. I believe that Russia, China, Iran and North Korea all have us beat hands down. As do the Israelis.
Invasive digital attacks are used to mine data and steal information. Computers can be erased at will. Whole networks can be disabled. In one instance, nuclear centrifuges were destroyed. These techniques are used for good and bad reasons. But it’s like Pandora’s box… now that it is out there and growing, nations must not only be defensive, they have to be offensive on this front.
More worrisome attacks are coming our way. Cyberweapons that take down electrical grids, disable domestic airline networks, jam Internet connectivity, erase money from bank accounts and confuse radar systems are being developed. Instances of probing in these areas have already occurred in the US and it is only a matter of time before a major attack comes in these areas. Many of our enemies already have their software on systems throughout the US, quietly lurking until they are triggered for whatever reason. It’s a ticking time bomb.
Our military strategies and tactics will have to change with these new developments if we are to survive. Attacks like these are almost impossible to entirely stop or to trace. To face off against these new threats, we will have to have highly trained units that fight this battle 24 hours a day. Many are already in place and working the issue. I’m just not convinced they will be fast or good enough.
Dozens of countries are now armed to the teeth with cyberweapons. Some Defense Department officials compare the current moment to the lull between the World Wars when militaries realized the potential of armed planes. I believe we are already in World War III and just don’t seem to grasp it yet.
Speaking of war, Syrian hackers have been at it already in that country, looking into the doings of the rebel militias, stealing tactical information and then using that intelligence to attack them. It’s been effective and efficient. With the aid and advice of the Russians, the Syrian government is using high tech as well as on the ground military maneuvers to annihilate their enemies.
As for the US, we know what some countries are up to, but as for many of them, we have no clue. I would say we are in the dark as to a great deal that our enemies have accomplished in the cyber arena. That’s a deadly mistake. In fact, I don’t think anyone, other than the new Axis of Evil (Iran, Russia and China) know exactly how skilled our enemies are in cyber espionage and warfare. You would think that the NSA, CIA and FBI would have a better grasp on all of this, but they don’t.
The new battlefields out there will be comprised of hard military assets, intelligence services and cyber armies. You already see this in the big boys out there: the US, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Israel.
The Chinese are masters at hacking. They are infamous for low-tech phishing schemes that trick people into granting them access to their networks. That’s probably how they hacked the Office of Personnel Management. A contractor fell for an innocuous looking email and presto! The Chinese cracked the network and gained access to more than 21 million people’s information. China of course lied. That’s one thing about all these spying nation states… they all lie.
The Chinese army has whole divisions that are devoted to cyber warfare. They believe in unconventional warfare and have been very busy at pushing boundaries abroad. They are very good and very covert. In fact, they even fix what they break on the way in. You never even know they are among you.
China opposes the militarization of cyberspace or a cyber arms race, said Zhu Haiquan, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, adding China “firmly opposes and combats all forms of cyber attacks in accordance with law.” Yeah, well… it depends on what “law” means. And once again, they lie.
On to the Russians… they are very good as well and have just as many units dedicated to cyber warfare as the Chinese. The Russians love to go after diplomatic and political data. They are very good at tailored emails that ensnare their victims. They have dug into the networks at the Pentagon, State Department and White House, also using emails laced with malware, according to security researchers and US officials. The Russian’s have stolen Obama’s daily schedule and his diplomatic correspondence. The Russians say nyet, but of course, they lie.
“Russia has never waged cyber warfare against anyone,” Andrey Akulchev, a spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said in a written statement Friday. “Russia believes that the cybersphere should be used exclusively for peaceful purposes.” They always deny – lying is second nature to the Russkies.
US spies and security researchers say Russia is particularly adept at developing hacking tools. Some malicious software linked to Russia by security researchers has a feature meant to help it target computers on classified government networks usually not connected to the Internet. They have a virus that literally jumps onto USB thumb drives, just waiting for a user to plug it in on a classified network. It’s ingenious and evil.
The Russians are subtle. They will hide stolen data in a whole host of ways. They’ll mix it into normal network traffic. They know just how to fool most cyber security defenses. For instance, they have a piece of malware that hides its communications in consumer web services. The code downloads its instructions from a set of Twitter accounts. It then exports the data to a commercial storage service. Since corporate cyber security systems don’t block traffic to and from these sites, this can be very effective.
But the Iranians go even further. They aren’t content with just stealing information… they use cyberweapons to destroy computers. They’ve done it at least twice. Government investigators believe Iranian hackers implanted the Shamoon virus on computers at Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest energy firm, in 2012. The Aramco attack erased 75% of the company’s computers and replaced screen images with burning American flags. The attack didn’t affect oil production, but it rattled the company as it gave away the extent of Iran’s cyber capabilities. Ostensibly, the move was in retaliation for the alleged US-Israeli attack on Iran’s centrifuges utilizing the Stuxnet computer worm.
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has said that the Iranians used malware to destroy computers last year at the Las Vegas Sands Corp. The owner, Sheldon Adelson, is a major critic of the Iranian government.
The US also contends that Iranian hackers have taken down websites of numerous US banks in DOS attacks. This was in response to a YouTube video on the Prophet Mohammed supposedly. More likely, it had to do with economic sanctions and the Stuxnet attack.
In 2012, Iran announced the creation of the Supreme Council of Cyberspace charged to oversee the defense of Iran’s computer networks and develop “new ways of infiltrating or attacking the computer networks of its enemies.” Since Obama has inked the suicidal nuclear deal with Iran, cyber attacks have slowed somewhat, but that won’t last long. There are no illusions that Iran is in any way an ally to the US. They have aligned with Russia and China to eventually war with us. Tehran appears “fully committed” to using cyber attacks as part of its national strategy.
Let’s peek at the NoKos, shall we? Of course, their latest claim to fame is the Sony hack. It was in retaliation for the movie, “The Interview,” which portrayed their trollish leader in a less-than-favorable light. In it, Kim Jong Un gets offed. No big loss. The retaliatory hack was arguably one of the most successful nation-state breaches ever. Many suspect an inside job since the malware was implanted directly on Sony computers. This allowed the NoKos to steal and destroy data at will. South Korea has also said that the North Koreans have attempted to hack one of their nuclear reactors, as well as a television network and a major bank. The NoKos haven’t denied anything. They don’t care who knows or accuses them.
Looking for work? Defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. has advertised for a “cyber operations planner” to “facilitate” offensive computer attacks with the South Korean and US governments, according to a job posting listed online. The scope is undisclosed and probably above all of our pay grades.
I keep hearing the US has the most advanced operations. But as I said before, I highly doubt that. The NSA is touting itself as the “crown creator of cyberespionage.”
In a spectacularly treasonous move, former National Security Agency contractor, Edward Snowden. leaked documents that showed the NSA had implanted malware on tens of thousands of foreign computers. That allowed the US government secret access to data and potentially the industrial control systems behind power plants and pipelines. Color me skeptical, but who knows?
US Cyber Command now has nine “National Mission Teams” with plans to build four more. Each are comprised of 60 military personnel that will “conduct full-spectrum cyberspace operations to provide cyber options to senior policy makers in response to attacks against our nation,” a Pentagon spokesperson said. The Navy, Army, and Air Force will each build four teams, with the Marines building a single unit. Each will have a “separate mission with a specific focus area,” though these have so far remained secret.
In 2014, the Netherlands announced it would begin training its own Internet troops through a domestic cyber security company, called Fox-IT. The head of the Dutch armed forces, Major Gen. Tom Middendorp, said in a symposium the group should be prepared to carry out attacks, not just block them, according to a Dutch media report. The Netherlands’ military strategy, laid out in various documents, refers to hacking as a “force multiplier.”
In 2013, Denmark’s Defense Ministry began allocating about $10 million a year for “computer network operations,” which include “defensive and offensive military operations,” according to government budget documents. That amount is just 0.24% of the Danish defense budget.
There are a lot of software engineers out there producing canned systems for private parties. It’s a seller’s market out there and countries are paying top dollar for cyber warfare software. A document leak on the Italian firm Hacking Team revealed the company had sold its surveillance tools to dozens of countries, including Sudan, Egypt, Ethiopia and Azerbaijan. Money is king and everyone has a price. Our own FBI is evidently a customer of the Hacking Team who promotes their product as “the hacking suite for governmental interception.” It’s the perfect tool for exploiting holes in software to gain access to computers and mobile devices.
States aren’t the only players. About 30 Arabic-fluent hackers in the Palestinian territories, Egypt and Turkey are building their own tools to hit targets in Egypt, Israel and the US, according to researchers.
In August, the US used a drone to kill Islamic State hacker Junaid Hussain in Raqqa, Syria, showing the extent to which digital warfare has upset the balance of power on the modern battlefield. The British citizen had used inexpensive tools to hack more than 1,000 US military personnel and published personal and financial details online for others to exploit. He helped sharpen the terror group’s defenses against Western surveillance and built hacking tools to penetrate computer systems as well.
All this cyber warfare and espionage is making national security and cyberweapons experts very nervous. A really big and debilitating attack could come at any time and we would pretty much be powerless to stop it. We just have no idea what the bad guys are capable of. “What we can do, we can expect done back to us,” said Howard Schmidt, who was the White House’s cyber security coordinator until 2012. The US is thinking, “Yeah, I don’t want to pull that trigger because it’s going to be more than a single shot that goes off.”
The jokes on us… that trigger has already been pulled. Let’s just hope the US isn’t home to the walking dead because of it. Because the cyberweapons club is so easy, cheap and available… we are watching a new arms race take off. The US is not in the forefront of this race and we had better hustle to catch up and overtake our enemies. Cyberspace is the new battlefront.
Donald Trump has gotten popular, in part, by challenging the media. But he has praised journalists on occasion. His 2011 book, Time to Get Tough, said David Gregory was “doing a fine job filling some awfully big shoes over at Meet the Press.” It was a reference to legendary and highly respected host Tim Russert, who had passed away.
So-called “Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd,” who replaced Gregory, is a favorite Trump target. “The thing I find most offensive about Chuck Todd is the fact that he pretends to be an objective journalist,” Trump writes, “when in reality the guy is a partisan hack.”
In many ways, as Trump said, David Gregory was doing a fine job. Some of the criticism of Gregory’s performance as “Meet the Press” host missed the mark, such as when he interviewed Edward Snowden collaborator Glenn Greenwald. As we noted at the time, some in the media were aghast that Gregory asked Greenwald a perfectly reasonable question on “Meet the Press:” “To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?”
Snowden, the NSA leaker, has been charged with espionage and still resides in Russia.
In his book, Trump takes on Jon Stewart, the host of “The Daily Show” on the Comedy Central network who is quitting after years of service to President Obama and the liberal-left. Stewart’s strategy is spewing curse words and invective toward conservatives and Republicans.
Trump recognized Stewart as Obama’s tool before it was recently revealed that Stewart was secretly meeting with people in the Obama White House, including President Obama, in efforts “by the president and his communications team to tap into Mr. Stewart’s influence with younger voters,” as The New York Times put it.
“I actually enjoy the guy,” Trump’s book says of Stewart, “but when he did a segment mocking presidential candidate Herman Cain, and used a very racist and degrading tone that was insulting to the African American community, did he get booted off the air like Don Imus? No. Where was the Reverend Jesse Jackson? Where was the Reverend Al Sharpton? Where was Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd to provide hard-hitting journalistic ‘analysis?’ Nowhere. Stewart should have lost his job—at least temporarily. But he didn’t and he won’t because liberals in the media always get a free pass, no matter how bad their behavior.”
Cain himself had noted that Stewart had mocked him using the racially-charged “Amos & Andy” dialect. He concluded that Stewart has a problem with black conservatives.
In other comments in his book, Trump discussed the journalists “who are obsessed with protecting Obama,” noting that ABC’s George Stephanopoulos is among the “big Obama fans.” He added that “it was incredible to see how overprotective reporters got toward Obama when I simply said what everyone in America was thinking: ‘Where’s the birth certificate?’”
While he praises Fox News and Roger Ailes, the executive behind the popular channel, Trump faults the “disappointing behavior by people in the press” which “occurs on both sides of the aisle,” and singles out Charles Krauthammer of Fox News for special criticism. Trump said Krauthammer had attacked him on the air as a joke candidate, and that he was not given any rebuttal time.
Discussing a speech he gave to Republicans, during which he had used “strong language,” Trump admits, “I’m not a big curser but it did take place” and the controversial remarks were reported by the media. But Trump counters: “Of course, Joe Biden dropped the f-word in front of the entire media on a stage with the president. But Biden gets a pass because he’s with Obama, and as we all know, Obama can do no wrong in the media’s eyes.”
Other quotable comments from his book include the observation that The New York Times is Obama’s “favorite newspaper,” and that “The press constantly maligns, ridicules, and mocks the Tea Party folks.”
During the current campaign, Trump has not shied away from putting reporters on the spot.
Asked a question by Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart, who distorted his position on illegal immigration, Trump fired back, “You know what, that’s a typical case. Wait. That’s a typical case of the press with misinterpretation. They take a half a sentence, then they take a quarter of a sentence, they put it all together. It’s a typical thing. And you’re with Telemundo, and Telemundo should be ashamed.”
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he said, “Anderson, you are not a baby, okay. You are not a baby.”
Asked by NBC’s Katy Tur if he had a gun and used it, he responded, “It is none of your business, it is really none of your business. I have a license to have a gun.”
After The Wall Street Journal attacked Trump and his conservative supporters in the media, the businessman responded by saying the paper had a “dwindling” readership and “is worth about one-tenth of what it was purchased for…”
After Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard said he was “finished” with Trump, he responded, “Bill, your small and slightly failing magazine will be a giant success when you finally back Trump.”
Fox News media reporter Howard Kurtz notes, “Look, Trump thrives on being attacked. He’s a great counterpuncher. He particularly relishes doing battle with the media. And this latest story hands him a big fat gift to do just that.”
That “latest story” was in The Daily Beast and concerned some allegations about alleged marital rape from Trump’s divorce proceedings. Trump’s ex-wife Ivana responded, “I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit.”
She added, “Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign.”
Since then, a story has surfaced about Trump criticizing an opposing attorney who wanted to breast-pump in front of him. Trump told CNN he may have said to her that it was “disgusting.” He added, “Bottom line. I beat her.” He said the judge had even awarded him legal fees.
For turning the tables on the media, Trump deserves the praise of those who are sick and tired of the liberal media setting the national agenda and demonizing conservatives.
I have a feeling that the Donald Trump hit parade will continue.
This is a rather prophetic lecture, if you ask me, by Don McAlvany on the false demise of Communism. It was recorded 25 years ago, in 1990, shortly following the fall of the Berlin Wall, which marked the beginning of the Weidervereinigung des Deutschlands (Reunification of Germany).
What I find particularly fascinating about McAlvany’s presentation are his references to KGB defector Anatoliy Golytsin’s book New Lies for Old. I have written previously (see here) about Anatoliy’s Golytsin’s startlingly accurate predictions concerning Soviet plans to deceive the West into believing Communism was dead, and that the Soviet Union was a thing of the past. Golytsin went on to write his second book entitled The Perestroika Deception in 1995.
Most of Golytsin’s predictions have proven true in hindsight. In 1984, when New Lies for Old first hit the bookshelves, Golytsin predicted that the Berlin Wall would be torn down in order to fool the West into believing that the Soviet Union was shattered. What makes Golytsin’s prediction even more eye-opening is the fact he had written the manuscript years before New Lies for Old reached publication.
The Soviets were masters at disinformation and deception. The sophistication of their subversive techniques are breathtaking in scope and audacity. Many in the West have failed to grasp the incredible lengths the Soviets and the KGB were willing to go to in order to deceive and subvert their enemies—namely, the United States and the entire Western world.
Many of the strategies and tactics employed by the Soviets—such as the dialectical and the “two steps forward, one step” back strategies—are foreign to many Western minds. But a thorough understanding of these strategies is paramount if one hopes to counter them. (You might’ve noticed I’ve switched to the present tense. I’ll get to that.)
Take the dialectical strategy, for example. Without getting into a dissertation on Marxist dialectics, the dialectical strategy entails the manipulation of friend and foe alike—playing both sides of the fence, so to speak. Communists are known for setting up “false opposition” groups in order to control and herd their opposition. Vladimir I. Lenin once said, “The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” Leading the opposition requires infiltration, also referred to as “controlled opposition.”
Communists are willing to take “one step back” in order to “move two steps forward”; giving a false impression they are in a position of weakness; when, in fact, they are strong. Such a strategy can provide an opportunity to offer “concessions” to the enemy—but only “concessions” that provide the ability to move “two steps forward.” The goal is to goad the enemy into offering real concessions (i.e. compromise), while only offering token concessions that have no real lasting consequences on the long-range strategy of crushing the enemy.
“We advance through retreat … when we are weak, we boast of strength. and when we are strong, we feign weakness.”
—V.I. Lenin
The strategy of feigning weakness in order to lull the enemy into complacency is a rather Machiavellian concept; but it also is derived from the ancient Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu’s maxims on war.
… Amid the turmoil and tumult of battle, there may be seeming disorder and yet no real disorder at all; amid confusion and chaos, your array may be without head or tail, yet it will be proof against defeat…. Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline, simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength….Hiding order beneath the cloak of disorder is simply a question of subdivision; concealing courage under a show of timidity presupposes a fund of latent energy; masking strength with weakness is to be effected by tactical dispositions….Thus one who is skillful at keeping the enemy on the move maintains deceitful appearances, according to which the enemy will act. He sacrifices something, that the enemy may snatch at it…. [“two steps forward, one step back”] By holding out baits, he keeps him on the march; then with a body of picked men he lies in wait for him.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Back in February of 2014, I had the opportunity to sit down with world-renown researcher Trevor Loudon, author of the book Barack Obama and the Enemy Within. He relayed a story to me that left me incredulous, and it ties right into the whole Soviet strategy of feigning weakness.
An ex-Communist friend of Trevor’s from New Zealand actually attended Lenin’s Institute for Higher Learning in Moscow. Promising members of the Communist Party, from all over the world, were sometimes offered the opportunity to travel to Russia for further training at the International Lenin Institute, where they learned things like racial agitation, trade union building, every facet of Russian history (albeit selective Russian history)—even training in explosive devices, small arms and guerrilla warfare tactics. Trevor’s friend said that a Soviet official at the Moscow institute told the students the reason the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan was that the Soviet Union needed “their own Vietnam.”
Yes, you read that correctly.
But, if you ever listen to former Soviet officials speak about the Russian experience in Afghanistan, they often times make the comparison to the U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. According to Trevor’s friend, it was all done to feign weakness and lull the West into thinking the Soviet Union wasn’t the military force they purported themselves to be. The fact of the matter is the Soviets could’ve wiped Afghanistan off the map, had they so chosen to do so.
As I drove home from my meeting with Trevor, I could scarcely believe what he had told me. But I began to ponder my own knowledge of Soviet history. The more I thought about what Trevor had told me, the less incredible it seemed.
For example, in the late 30s, the Soviet regime under Josef Stalin was systematically liquidating thousands of Russian citizens every single day. It was known as the “Great Purge.” Stalin’s depraved and blood-thirsty executioner, Lavrenti Beria, oversaw the murder of millions of Russians, and even participated on countless occasions in the executions of his own people.
After war broke out between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, there were numerous incidents of Soviet units being ordered to attack German positions and strongholds in suicidal frontal assaults that resulted in horrific casualties, often numbering in the hundreds or thousands. There are accounts of the dog tags being stripped from the dead in order to cover up the crimes of the Soviet regime. Rarely has there been an example in history of a nation that treated its own war dead with such utter contempt.
So, as I thought more and more about what Trevor had told me, it started to seem quite plausible—if not to be expected from such a morally bankrupt regime. When President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire,” it was not unwarranted hyperbole. For it is not possible, in words, to describe the horrors and terrors that have been visited upon the Russian people under the Soviet system—and, more than likely, are still being visited upon the Russian people … albeit not at the astonishing levels as was experienced during Stalin’s merciless and bloody reign.
As Don McAlvany points out in his lecture, there had been six periods of “glasnost” dating back to the 20s prior to 1990. During all of the so-called glasnost periods, the United States and the West were duped into believing the Soviets were changing their tune—only to watch the Soviets return to their oppressive and tyrannical ways after securing concessions from the United States. The old dialectical doctrine of “two steps forward, one step back” has proved wildly successful against the United States and its allies, helping to further the Russian strategy for international rule and subversion.
The Soviets (i.e. Communists) employ long-range strategies. Like a master chess player, they think ten steps ahead. Stalin’s henchman Lavrenti Beria said in the early 50s, “Capitalism’s short-term view can never envisage the lengths across which we can plan.” Sadly, the United States has never really formulated long-term strategic goals to counter such threats.
Golytsin predicted the Soviets would put a “happy face” on Communism by calling for “democratic reforms” in Russia, and in the former Soviet republics and Eastern Bloc countries.
Many in the West viewed the chummy meetings between Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan as a clear sign the Cold War was over, and that Soviet-style Communism had been defeated. Talk of glasnost (“openness” or “publicity”) and perestroika (i.e. restructuring, remaking, reforming, regrouping) filled the airwaves and Western press at the time.
Did Mikhail Gorbachev ever renounce Communism? Was he really a reformer who only wished to move Russia toward “democracy”?
During the 70th anniversary of the Marxist revolution [in October 1987], Gorbachev reaffirmed his country’s expansionist desires: “In October of 1917, we parted with the Old World, rejecting it once and for all. We are moving toward a New World, the World of Communism. We shall never turn off that road.”
“We are for a Lenin who is alive! In building our future we are basing ourselves upon the gigantic intellectual and moral potential of the socialist idea linked with the theory of Marxism-Leninism. We see no rational grounds to give up the spiritual[sic!!!]richness contained in Marxism.Through restructuring [i.e. ‘perestroika’], we want to give socialism a second wind and unveil in all its plenitude [meaning: globally!] the vast humanist potential of the socialist system.” – “In order to achieve this, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union returnsto the origins and principles of the Bolshevik Revolution, to the Leninist ideas about the construction of a new society… Our Party was and remainsthe Party of Lenin… In short, we are for a Lenin who is alive.” – “We must seek these answers guided by the spirit of Leninism, the style of Lenin’s thinking, and the method of dialectical cognition.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking to a group of Russian students, Nov. 15, 1989
“Gentlemen, Comrades, do not be concerned about all that you hear about ‘glasnost’ and ‘perestroika’ and democracy in the coming years. These are primarily for outward consumption. There will be no significant change within the Soviet Union, other than for cosmetic purposes. Our purpose is to disarm the Americans, and to let them fall asleep.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev, early in his tenure, speaking before the Politburo
The Party has made “specific decisions on how to update our political system”. – “Thus we shall give a fresh impetus to our revolutionary restructuring. We shall maintain our quiet [i.e. Leninist] creativity and daring in an efficient and responsible fashion in a Leninist Bolshevik manner.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking at the 27th CPSU Congress, March 1986
“Adopting a bold, realistic, mobilising and inspiring strategy, one that is Leninist in spirit, the struggle for the triumph of Communist ideals, of peace and progress, the 27th Congress of the CPSU expresses the Party’s firm determination to honourably follow our great road, and open up new vistas for the creative energy and revolutionary initiative of the… people’s intelligentsia. The Congress calls on all Soviet people to dedicate all their strength, knowledge, ability, and creative enthusiasm to the great goals of Communist construction, and to worthily continue Lenin’s victorious revolutionary cause, the cause of the October Revolution!”
—Mikhail Gorbachev, closing address to the 27th CPSU Congress, March 6, 1986
“Perestroika is a revolutionary process for it is a leap forward in the development of socialism, in the realization of its crucial characteristics.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev: ‘Perestroika’, 1987
“What is meant [by the term ‘revolution from above’] is profound and essentially revolutionary changes implemented on the initiative of the authorities themselves but necessitated by objective changes in the situation. It may seem that our current perestroika could be called ‘revolution from above’. True, the perestroika drive started on the Communist Party’s initiative, and the Party leads it. I spoke frankly about it at the meeting with Party activists in Khabarovsk [already!!!] in the summer of 1986. We began at the top of the pyramid and went down to its base, as it were. Yes, the Party leadership started it. The highest Party and state bodies elaborated and adopted the program. True, perestroika is not a spontaneous but a governed process.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev: “Perestroika,” 1987
“We openly confess that we refuse the hegemonial endeavours and globalist claims of the United States. We are not pleased by some aspects of American policy and of the American Way of Life. But we respect the right of the American people, just as the right of all other peoples, to live along its own rules and laws, its own morals and inclinations.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev: “Perestroika,” 1987
“Those who hope that we shall move away from the socialist path will be greatly disappointed.”
—Mikhail Gorbachev: “Perestroika,” 1987
“We see that confusion has arisen in some people’s minds: aren’t we retreating from the positions of socialism, especially when we introduce new and unaccustomed forms of economic management and public life, and aren’t we subjecting the Marxist-Leninist teaching itself to revision? … No, we are not retreating a single step from socialism, from Marxism-Leninism …”
—Mikhail Gorbachev, 1988
Many in the West are also of the belief that the KGB no longer exists. But nothing could be farther from the truth. While no longer called the KGB, the secretive security agency merely restructured (i.e. perestroika), and is now known as the FSB (Russian Federal Security Forces). The FSB is still headquartered in the infamous Lubyanka building in Moscow. The FSB is the KGB.
A little while back, I visited the official FSB website (fsb.ru). I used Google translation services to translate the pages. One link titled “Our Leaders” lists the names of such notorious figures as Felix Dzerzhinsky, Yakov Peters, Genrikh Yagoda, Nikolai Yezhov, Lavrenti Beria, Yuri Andropov … and Vladimir Putin. Remember, the official FSB website lists these individuals as their “leaders.” It doesn’t look like anything has changed to me, as far as the old KGB is concerned, except for the name.
One of the main goals of the Soviets was to eliminate NATO. With the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the dialectical application of their “two steps forward, one step” back strategy, Moscow hoped to gain concessions from the United States—namely, the dissolution of NATO. But the United States was resistant to the idea of breaking apart the NATO alliance. So, like the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”—NATO, that is. Once again … infiltrate and take over from within.
“Russian membership of the Council of Europe will open up intensified new cooperation between Russia and Europe and will assist us in reaching our objectives of achieving membership of the European Union and of NATO.”
—Then Russian Foreign Minister, Andrei Kozyrev, after Russia’s admission to the Council of Europe by February 8, 1996
Perhaps one of the most important predictions Anatoliy Golytsin made was his repeated insistence that the purpose of all these subversive tactics was “the establishment of a neutral, socialist Europe” (New Lies for Old, pg. 334).
Enter the European Union.
“The collective security model … should pave the way for a gradual evolutionary synthesis of several processes: integration within the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] and the EU [European Union], strengthening and increasing the role of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, transforming NATO [and] working together to prevent or resolve conflicts.”
—Yuriy Ushakov, Director of the Directorate for European Cooperation at the Russian Foreign Ministry, in International Affairs, Vol. 4, #5 (1995): “Europe: Towards a New Security Model”
Of particular note in the above quote is the reference to “transforming NATO.”
For those who may still be of the opinion that talk of a “one-world government” (i.e. “new world order”) is strictly relegated to the realm of crackpots and so-called “conspiracy theorists,” consider the words of the unelected full-time President of the EU, Herman Van Rompuy, who has openly referenced the agenda for “global governance” on more than one occasion. Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has referred to the European Union as a “pale version of the Soviet Union.”
In 2009, Van Rompuy said:
“2009 is also the first year of global governance with the establishment of the G20 in the middle of the financial crisis. The climate conference in Copenhagen, is another step towards the global management of our planet.”
Van Rompuy has also stated his desire to work closely with Russia in order to further the agenda of global governance:
“By working together, the EU and Russia can make a decisive contribution to global governance … to global economic governance in the G8 and the G20.”
The ongoing conflict in Ukraine shows the “Russian Bear” still has its claws. Just today there was a report Russia was reviewing the “legality” of Baltic states’ independence. The level of disinformation coming from Putin’s state-run media machine has reached fever pitch within Russia. The Russian people are being fed a steady and constant diet of hyper-nationalistic and intensely anti-American rhetoric; it resembles a war-time footing.
Ex-Communist turned vocal anti-Communist, Dr. Bella V. Dodd (1904-1969), author of the book School of Darkness, pointed out there are three concepts that are important to differentiate concerning Communism, i.e., the Communist Conspiracy (i.e. “world conspiracy”), the Communist Party (political arm), and the Communist Movement (“social action,” i.e. praxis).
At the heart of Communism lies conspiracy. In order to subvert and deceive, conspiracy is a vital and necessary component. Communists are taught to lie … the predetermined ends always justify the means. Period.
The one thing Communists and their ilk cannot withstand is their strategy and process being exposed. Communism is a form of psychological warfare (i.e. psyops) based on deception. Psyops only work if the party who is being deceived and manipulated is unaware of the tactics being employed against them. In essence, it’s a mind game. This is why it absolutely crucial to understand the dialectic process when it comes to Marxism-Leninism, if one wishes to have any success at countering such subversive and deceitful tactics.
Unfortunately, for many Americans and Westerners, it is still inconceivable that such a conspiracy is, and has been, employed against them. As one long-time and well-known researcher on Russian (i.e. Communist) strategy and tactics, J.R. Nyquist, recently wrote:
This last point is not to be made in polite society, and few are well-informed enough to know something of its validity. For 99 out of 100 persons, it is preferable to believe a lie. As a former British MP once said within my hearing; “Reagan and Thatcher saved the West from socialism.” But a former Russian GRU colonel, sitting across the table, whispered in my ear, “But America is the Marxist paradise.”
If you still find it hard to believe that the U.S.A. is already a “Marxist paradise,” and the world is moving toward global governance (i.e. worldwide socialism), I would encourage you to read the Communist Manifesto. Pay particular note to what has been referred to as the “10 planks of the Communist Manifesto” in Chapter Two. And then ask yourself, how many of these 10 points have already been implemented in the United States? I think, if you’re intellectually honest with yourself, the answer will shock you. And if it’s still too hard to digest and believe, just apply the scientific method: observe, make predictions, test your predictions, and then draw your own conclusion.
The black scholar who previously revealed Obama’s personal relationship with Communist Party operative Frank Marshall Davis is now speaking in detail on the record. Professor Gerald Horne says that while the relationship is noteworthy and should have been uncovered by the press, there is no evidence that Davis turned Obama “into some sort of Manchurian candidate.”
However, Professor Paul Kengor’s book about Davis, The Communist, argues that Davis had a significant influence on the formation of Obama’s Marxist views and policies as President.
Horne, who holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, is a contributor to Communist Party USA publications such as Political Affairs magazine. He spoke at a March 23, 2007, event at New York University’s Tamiment Library to celebrate the donation of Communist Party materials to the library.
It was at that event that Horne, speaking before an audience that included Communist Party leaders, discussed then-Senator Barack Obama’s relationship with a Communist Party figure in Hawaii, Davis, who died in 1987.
The revelation that a U.S. senator preparing to run for president was linked to a high-level official of the Communist Party, a party which had been funded by Moscow and used to infiltrate the U.S. government, seemed like big news. Yet, despite coverage of Horne’s remarks by blogger Trevor Loudon and Accuracy in Media before Obama won his first presidential term in 2008, the major U.S. media ignored the relationship and the matter of whether Davis had influenced Obama’s politics, and even had recruited him to the Marxist cause. It was apparent that the media did not want to publicize anything that might inhibit the election of the first black president in the U.S.
“So as I was reading about Frank Marshall Davis there was the simultaneous ascension to influence of then-Senator Barack Obama and I read his memoir [Dreams from My Father], where he talks about a character by the name of Frank and I just put two and two together,” Horne told me. “I don’t think it took a great logical leap.” He added, “The press should have uncovered this, not some obscure professor in Houston.”
In that 2007 speech at Tamiment Library, entitled, “Rethinking the History and Future of the Communist Party,” Horne had referred to Davis as “an African-American poet and journalist” who was “certainly in the orbit of the CP—if not a member …” and had become a friend to Barack Obama and his family in Hawaii.
Horne also noted that Obama, in his memoir, spoke “warmly of an older black poet, he identifies simply as ‘Frank’ as being a decisive influence in helping him to find his present identity as an African-American…”
The Horne speech was subsequently published in the Communist Party newspaper People’s World.
New Zealand researcher Trevor Loudon, who has written two books on Marxist influence in the Obama administration and Congress, discovered the Horne speech identifying “Frank” as Frank Marshall Davis and treated the revelation as a significant fact regarding Obama’s presidential run. We confirmed the information in a February 18, 2008, column, “Obama’s Communist Mentor.” Later that year we obtained the 600-page FBI file on Davis, confirming his actual membership in the CPUSA and raising suspicions that Davis was a Soviet espionage agent.
But the major media refused to treat the information as a serious impediment to Obama’s fitness for office. The Obama campaign lied about Davis, portraying him as just a civil rights activist.
I argued in the interview with Horne that the failure of the press to uncover or publicize the evidence of the Obama-Davis connection was the result of liberals or “progressives” thinking that the relationship would hurt Obama’s chances to be president.
Horne said he wasn’t convinced that was the case, at least in terms of how the black community would react, since Davis had a reputation as a noted black literary figure who had been an associate of the prominent black novelist Richard Wright, a former CPUSA member. Horne said membership in the CPUSA did not “carry as much opprobrium” in the black community “as it might carry in other communities.” In addition, he argued, “if you start digging deep in terms of the public and published record about Obama and Davis, you quickly find there’s not much there. I mean we know that Obama mentioned him. We know that Davis was a radical. But we’re not able to make the link that Davis turned Obama into some sort of Manchurian candidate.”
In fact, however, Obama makes at least 22 explicit references to “Frank” in his memoir, talks about how Davis influenced his thinking on race and other matters during eight years in Hawaii, and in a recently discovered 1995 speech promoting his book acknowledged that Davis had “schooled” him on the subject of white racism.
Horne countered, “Some of my friends on the left who are quite hostile to Obama would say that if Davis schooled Obama, he didn’t do a very good job.”
Back in 2007, however, Horne had predicted that Obama, then a somewhat obscure political figure, would go down in history.
Horne said, “At some point in the future, a teacher will add to her syllabus Barack’s memoir and instruct her students to read it alongside Frank Marshall Davis’ equally affecting memoir, ‘Living the Blues’ and when that day comes, I’m sure a future student will not only examine critically the Frankenstein monsters that U.S. imperialism created in order to subdue Communist parties but will also be moved to come to this historic and wonderful archive in order to gain insight on what has befallen this complex and intriguing planet on which we reside.”
The role of Communist parties here and abroad is a favorite subject of Horne, who has written more than 30 books. These books include:
Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (2014).
Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African-American Freedom Struggle (2014).
From the Barrel of a Gun: The U.S. and the War Against Zimbabwe (2001).
The Final Victim of the Blacklist: John Howard Lawson, Dean of the Hollywood Ten (2005).
The Communist Party USA backed Obama for president in 2008, and in 2012 said his re-election was “absolutely essential.”
Current policies and programs of the CPUSA include support for Obamacare, rights for homosexuals, and Pope Francis’ encyclical on climate change.
In an extraordinary judgment that throws U.S. policy in the Middle East into complete turmoil, strategic analyst Michael Ledeen has concluded, in regard to the activities of the Islamic State, “I think the Russians are involved, in tandem with the Iranians, who have had their own troops on the Syrian battlefield for years.”
This means that a U.S. congressional declaration of war on the Islamic State would miss the point, and that the Russians and the Iranians are the bigger threat.
“It’s part of the global war, of which Syria is only one killing field, and IS [Islamic State] is one of the band of killers,” says Ledeen.
The analysis of Ledeen, who previously served as a consultant to the National Security Council, the State Department, and the Defense Department, should serve as an opportunity to review what is really happening in the Middle East, and to examine whether the Islamic State is a Russian creation that is designed to pave the way for Iranian expansion.
Ledeen notes evidence that the top IS military commander, Abu Omar al-Shishani, is a Russian asset, and that “the Russians are exploiting their strategic position in Ukraine to set up transit facilities for IS.” He adds that Ukrainian security forces recently arrested five IS volunteers coming from Russia or the former Soviet republics.
Last September we reported on some of this evidence, noting, “We have heard repeatedly about Americans and Europeans fighting for ISIL [the Islamic state], but little attention is being devoted to the Russian-speaking foreign fighters that make up the group. Their numbers are estimated at 500 or more. Omar al-Shishani is usually described as a prominent Islamic State fighter who is Chechen. In fact, he was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and was trained there.”
Those who believe the Russians are incapable of such deception and misdirection have conveniently forgotten about the history of the old Soviet intelligence service, the KGB. It is represented in the Kremlin today by Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer once based in East Germany.
In another area of global affairs that reveals a hidden Russian role, The New York Times has taken note in a June 7 story of evidence that the Russians under Putin are financing conservative movements and political parties around the world. The Times reports, “Not only is it [the Kremlin] aligning itself with the leftists traditionally affiliated with Moscow since the Cold War, but it is making common cause with far-right forces rebelling against the rise of the European Union that are sympathetic to Mr. Putin’s attack on what he calls the West’s moral decline.”
This is actually an old story. We have been reporting for more than a year about Putin acquiring agents of influence or dupes in the West, even in the United States. Perhaps the most prominent name associated with this pro-Moscow trend is veteran conservative columnist Patrick J. Buchanan. The World Congress of Families is the most prominent organization to embrace Moscow’s alleged devotion to Christian values.
It is quite natural for conservatives in favor of traditional values to abhor the Obama administration’s embrace of the so-called LGBT agenda, here and abroad. But to adore Putin in reaction to this trend is a major miscalculation that assumes Moscow is genuinely interested in preserving Western values.
It is a welcome development that The New York Times has finally taken note of Moscow’s hand in right-wing political movements.
But there’s more. The paper added, “American and European officials have accused Moscow of financing green movements in Europe to encourage protests against hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, a move intended to defend Russia’s gas industry. And a shadowy ‘troll farm’ in St. Petersburg uses Twitter to plant fake stories about chemical spills or Ebola outbreaks in the West.”
Another example of how Putin is deceiving the world lies in his exploitation of Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee still being hailed as a whistleblower in the United States.
Buchanan’s magazine, The American Conservative, has written about how figures on the U.S. political right such as Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley have rallied to Snowden’s defense. In a recent column, Shirley condemned “the senior GOP leadership’s embrace of the National Security Agency’s enveloping surveillance activities.”
What Shirley and other Snowden supporters ignore is the fact that the NSA’s surveillance activities rely mostly on a Ronald Reagan Executive Order (12333) and that funding and manpower for the NSA increased dramatically under Reagan.
In fact, President Reagan used the NSA to undermine America’s enemies, especially the old USSR.
The history notes that “the best known exposure of SIGINT [signals intelligence] since the Pearl Harbor hearings of 1945 had actually come in 1983, when the Reagan administration played the intercepted cockpit conversations of the Soviet pilot as he shot down KAL-007. The SIGINT gave the administration a tremendous foreign policy coup.”
On September 1, 1983, the Soviet Union shot down the civilian airliner KAL-007, killing 269 people.
In 1986, the document states, Reagan became the first American president to visit the NSA, as he gave the official dedication speech for the NSA’s two new buildings. He wanted to loosen “the legal reins governing intelligence,” the document says, giving rise to Reagan executive order 12333. It gave the NSA latitude in SIGINT collection that the agency had not had during the disastrous Carter years.
This executive order remains in effect. Not even Obama has tried to revoke it.
Based on this history, one would have to conclude that President Reagan would defend the NSA, just as the GOP leadership in the U.S. Senate has done. Leaders like Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) defended the NSA against the Obama administration, liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans.
The tragedy is that, with Obama in office rather than a conservative like Reagan, some conservatives decided to join the campaign to undermine the agency that Reagan considered absolutely essential to America’s security and survival.
Could it be just a coincidence that the Islamic state, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and aggressive Chinese cyber-warfare against the U.S. have emerged as major problems in the wake of Snowden’s arrival in Moscow?
Those who blame Obama alone for all of our foreign policy setbacks should examine the evidence that Putin and the Russians may ultimately be pulling the strings. At the same time, the NSA can’t be blamed for Obama’s failure or unwillingness to use the agency effectively against our enemies.
When the next president takes office, he will need an NSA capable of gathering the intelligence information the nation needs to defend itself. The next administration will have to consider apprehending and then prosecuting Snowden for operating as a Russian/Chinese agent of influence and committing espionage against the United States.
Hopefully, those who defended or praised Snowden will one day have to answer for their foolishness.
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