Tag Archives: Spies

04/13/17

Just Who Was the Russian Agent After All?

Accuracy in Media

A Special Report from the Accuracy in Media Center for Investigative Journalism; Cliff Kincaid, Director.

Ever since President Trump’s missile strike on Syria on April 6, which angered Russia’s Vladimir Putin, The Washington Post has ever-so-subtly backed away from its robotic “Russian interference to help elect Trump” claims, asserted with absolute certainty. The Post now, on April 7, calls it the “alleged” Russian efforts to “interfere in the 2016 presidential race.” The Post no longer sounds so sure of itself and its anonymous anti-Trump intelligence agency sources.

The U.S. strike on a Syrian air base not only demonstrates that Trump will take decisive action against a Russian client state, but that his predecessor, President Barack Obama, is the real Russian dupe, for making an admittedly flawed agreement with Russia that allowed Syria to keep (and use) some of its chemical weapons.

With the narrative that Trump is/was a Russian agent fading fast, perhaps the media will now get serious about exploring the abundant evidence that the real scandal is the political surveillance of Trump and his associates by the outgoing Obama administration. What’s more, the direct evidence points to Obama’s personal role. The motive? Covering up Obama’s own deals with the Russians on Syria and Iran.

In Syria, Obama had armed one side of the Syrian civil war, through CIA arms shipments to the “rebels,” and had then struck a deal with Russia that gave the appearance of having removed all of the chemical weapons from the arsenal of the other side. The resulting civil war has cost 500,000 lives and left President Trump with a series of bad options. He decided to strike the Shayrat Syrian airbase when he was informed that aircraft from that base conducted the chemical weapons attack on April 4.

On top of this, Trump is also facing the prospect of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, supposedly limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons development, coming completely apart. In this case, Obama once again joined with the Russians in actually safeguarding a Russian client’s weapons arsenal through an agreement claiming to achieve the opposite.

As we noted in July 2015, Obama actually thanked Putin for bringing about the Iran deal. We said at the time, “This demonstrates something worse than the deal itself and the real nature of the Iranian threat. Putin should thank Obama because the U.S. is helping Iran, Russia’s client state, get tens of billions of dollars in international financial aid. Down the line, Russia gets U.S. approval to supply more weapons to the anti-American regime.”

The Smoking Gun

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) says that what he calls the “smoking gun” revelations about Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice unmasking Trump team names from NSA wiretap databases are “actually eerily similar to what President Trump accused them of” in tweets on March 4. (MSNBC, April 4.)

They point directly to President Obama. Rice surely must have informed her boss during the more than one year period of her “unmasking” Trump campaign and transition team names in NSA wiretap reports on numerous occasions.

Obama’s right-hand adviser Rice herself points to Obama. In the middle of a long MSNBC interview on April 4 discussing Rice’s “unmasking” of names in reports of intercepted Trump team-Russia communications and those communications with no connection to Russia, Rice was evasive but kept dragging Obama into the mix. She never says, for example, that she did unmasking on her own without ever informing Obama, or that she kept it all to herself.  She never says that.

Instead, Rice kept implicating Obama whenever she could, while minimizing her own role as somehow a passive one. Rice said that Obama ordered the compilation of intelligence reports on Russian hacking and election interference, which implied that the reports included the unmasked name of Trump adviser Gen. Michael Flynn in wiretap intercept reports of phone calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak. This is what MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell had been asking Rice about.

MSNBC kept pressing Rice about the NSA-intercepted Flynn conversations with the Russian ambassador in December 2016, which Rice kept trying to dodge until Andrea Mitchell brought up the intercepted Flynn/Russian ambassador “conversations” (plural) one last time, noting that it was after the Obama sanctions and expulsion of Russian spy-diplomats.

Rice finally replied by taking it back to August 2016, and confirming Obama knew about it and was “concerned,” saying:

“Well, Andrea, from basically August [2016] through the end of the [Obama] administration [in January 2017] we were hearing more and more—getting more and more information about Russian interference in our electoral process. It was of grave concern to all of us in the national security team of the President [Obama] and the President himself….

“So YES there was a pace of reporting that accelerated as the Intelligence Community got more and more information on that and shared it with U.S. [Obama] officials…I can say that from when this first came to light in intelligence channels to when the administration ended we got more and more information” (emphasis added except “YES” was Rice’s voice emphasis; bracketed [ ] clarifications added).

The Nature of the Spying

Senator Paul explained that today’s “wiretapping” mainly means “reverse targeting” of existing digital taps that already massively eavesdrop on everyone’s communications, then searching the databases of transcripts, not physically tapping wires to phones. (AIM made the same points in its Special Reports on March 18 and April 4.)

These were not wiretaps about Russia or “incidental collection” on legitimate foreign intelligence subjects, though they may have begun that way. It was clearly procured for partisan political purposes to spy on the Trump opposition using the full weight of the U.S. government’s NSA spying apparatus (or NSA facilities used by the British GCHQ.)

According to Rep. Peter King (R-NY) of the House Intelligence Committee—who was briefed on the contents of the wiretap reports on the Trump campaign and his associates obtained by Rice and other Obama officials—they were like a private investigator’s file, with nothing on Russia-type intelligence:

“This [NSA wiretap] is information about their everyday lives. Who they were talking with, who they were meeting, where they were going to eat… just trying to lay out a dossier on somebody. Sort of like in a divorce case where lawyers are hired, investigators are hired to just find out what a person is doing from morning until night and then you try to piece it together later on” (bracketed [ ] clarification added).

The former Obama defense official and Hillary campaign adviser, Evelyn Farkas, proudly admitted during an MSNBC interview on March 2 that she had urged her “former colleagues” to collect and spread the NSA wiretap intelligence on Russia and Trump and “that’s why you have the leaking!” She had been “getting winks and nods from inside” the Obama administration since last summer, she said in an earlier interview.

MSNBC queried Farkas in response to the just-breaking New York Times March 1 story on Obama officials spreading around the government all the wiretap surveillance data on Trump and associates such as Gen. Flynn, and MSNBC had the Times article up on the video screen.  President Trump then tweeted on March 4 that Obama had his “‘wires tapped’” (two words).

The fake news media have ridiculed Trump for claiming anyone “wiretapped” him, insinuating he had said Obama physically tapped his phone wires—when he said no such thing. He merely used simplified terminology in quotes for a short tweet, rather than a book-length definition. FISA law as it stands today talks about “wire” taps or interception, even though it is understood to apply to digital communications (50 U.S. Code 1801 et seq.).

Putin Had No Motive 

In an unnoticed piece in Politico on December 12, 2016, Evelyn Farkas, a Russia expert, inadvertently tripped up the entire leftist narrative on the (bogus) Trump-Russia plot, and in effect admitted that Putin had no motive to hack DNC emails and help Trump get elected to be a Russian ally.

This was just a month after the election, so it is fresh in terms of application to the campaign leading up to it. Farkas wrote in Politico:

“For domestic political reasons, Putin needs the United States as its public enemy, given Russia’s current and foreseeable economic situation, and Russian presidential elections are coming up in 2018” (emphasis added).

Farkas explained that any positive “reset” of U.S.-Russia relations by President Trump as a result of purported Putin blackmail of Trump, making Trump his “puppet,” would be “very temporary” because Putin needs the U.S. as his “public enemy,” domestically and internationally (Trump and U.S. make it “international”). Putin doesn’t want good relations with the U.S. even with Trump as its President, according to Farkas.

Farkas apparently still believes Trump may be Putin’s “puppet” but her Russia analysis contradicts her narrative and that of the Democrat/media/intelligence juggernaut against Trump, that it is all a plot to get a pro-Russian president into the Oval Office. President Trump’s missile strike against Russia’s ally, Syria, contradicts that narrative.

Other observers have also noticed a complete lack of any evidence that Putin wanted to interfere in the U.S. election to help Trump win. The New York Review of Books on January 9 published this analysis of the report of the U.S. Intelligence Community (actually only 3 to 5 out of 17 agencies that make up the IC) on Russian interference that had claimed without a shred of evidence that Putin “ordered” the intervention to help Trump get elected.

The author is a Russian-American journalist, Masha Gessen, a hostile anti-Trump ideologue. Yet she candidly admits (in January 9 and March 6 articles):

“…the entirety of the evidence the [U.S. Intelligence Community] report offers to support its estimation of Putin’s motives for allegedly working to elect Trump: [is] conjecture based on other politicians in other periods, on other continents—and also on misreported or mistranslated public statements.”

“…the joint intelligence report on Russian interference in the campaign…is, plainly, laughable…the protracted national game of connecting the Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking.”

“Both of these appointments [Gen. McMaster and Russia expert Fiona Hill]—and the fact that sanctions [against Russia] remain in place six weeks into Trump’s fast-moving presidency—contradict the ‘Putin’s puppet’ narrative (as does the fact that Russian domestic propaganda has already turned against Trump). But such is the nature of conspiracy thinking that facts can do nothing to change it.”

“If…[Trump is impeached], it will have resulted largely from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the [U.S.] intelligence community—setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted the public sphere and promoted paranoia” (emphasis added; bracketed [ ] clarifications added).

To sum up: No evidence, and no motive, is known for Russia hacking the DNC/Podesta emails to elect Trump or interfere with the election to defeat Hillary and support Trump. No smoking gun evidence, not even a whiff of smoke.

Surely such a “smoking gun” would have leaked by now—since Lt. General Flynn’s trivial conversation with Russian ambassador Kislyak on December 29, intercepted by NSA digital wiretap, leaked within weeks to David Ignatius of The Washington Post—and got Flynn fired. That was just a few words saying that the Trump administration will deal with Obama’s expulsion of 35 Russian “diplomats” (spies) later, with not a hint of any promises or relief, and no mention even of the word “sanctions” (evidently leading Flynn to forget the conversation).

The fact that no “smoking gun” has leaked or even been hinted at makes us suspect that in fact the unmasked NSA wiretap transcripts actually prove the opposite of the leftist Democrat Party narrative—that they record positive evidence that Trump and his associates were not colluding with Russia, that they had nothing to do with the hacking or leaking of the DNC or the Podesta/Hillary emails or any Russian interference in the election.

Obama’s Motive

It seems that the Trump-Putin conspiracy theory was designed to cover or excuse the illegal surveillance of Trump and his associates by the Obama administration. One of the motives may have been that Obama was fearful that the deals he struck with Putin on Syria and Iran would come unraveled. He had to know that he and his associates, including Susan Rice and former Secretary of State John Kerry, would look like dupes of the Russians for making such flawed agreements.

In order to brace for these developments, the idea was hatched to accuse Trump and his associates of being the Russian dupes, using their innocent contacts with Russian officials or businessmen as the excuse for surveillance. This made Trump look like the Russian dupe and Obama as the tough guy with Putin.

But the conversations captured in NSA digital wiretaps are turning out to be the opposite of the Democrat/media narrative. The remarks between Trump associates and Russian officials make it clear that no real relationship existed, that no insidious conspiracy was in play, that public events such as the WikiLeaks email releases were annoyances, that the “Trump dossier” was known to be fake, etc.

In fact, The New York Times has been forced to admit that the only thing anyone has turned up even in “intercepted calls” and “phone records” are benign “multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russians who serve in or are close to Mr. Putin’s government.”

Note in The New York Times quotes how the phony “Trump dossier” is always dragged in because the leaked NSA wiretaps show nothing, even on their face, that is incriminating or damaging to Trump, and only the “dossier” can (purportedly) supply that.

This was in The New York Times on March 3, the day before President Trump tweeted about the Obama “‘wire tapping’” against him, when it was still heroic in the left-wing narrative to admit to leaking highly classified NSA intelligence to try to destroy the President:

“Current and former American officials have said that phone records and [NSA-type] intercepted calls show that members of Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

“There have been courtesy calls, policy discussions and business contacts [in the intercepted phone calls of Trump campaign and associates], though nothing has emerged publicly indicating anything more sinister. A dossier of allegations on Trump-Russia contacts, compiled by a former British intelligence agent for Mr. Trump’s political opponents, includes unproven claims that his aides collaborated in Russia’s hacking of Democratic targets” (emphasis added; paras. reordered; bracketed [ ] clarification added).

“Former diplomats and Russia specialists say it would have been absurd and contrary to American interests for the Trump team to avoid meetings with Russians, either during or since the campaign.”

Intelligence agency officials have consistently denied finding any evidence for such Trump collusion with the Russians despite furious efforts to prove it in order to take down President Trump. The best anyone has come up with is the stupid claim that some internet “IP addresses” of attempted hackings trace back to Russian IP domains, when anyone with the slightest tech savvy knows that expert hackers cover their tracks to prevent such easy tracing, and even plant false trails (such as those pointing to, for example, Russian IP internet addresses).

No one has traced any specific hacking attempt to specifically attempt to capture the DNC emails, only alleged hacking attempts against the main DNC computer system. DNC emails are separated from the DNC computer system by the usual email client firewalls.

Trump himself pointed that out last year when these falsehoods first surfaced, that the supposed “Russian hackers” could be someone in New Jersey, etc., and that sophisticated hackers would not get caught digitally. Recently, the CIA’s hacker tools for planting false trails and the concealment of cybertraces were themselves leaked or hacked to WikiLeaks, causing worldwide consternation.

The pernicious misuse of the fake “Trump dossier” as an investigative “roadmap” by the FBI has been reported by The New York Times for months (with less dramatic prose than the BBC’s). (New York Times, January 20, February 14.) Instead, the Times should be investigating and exposing the “dossier’s” glaringly obvious fraudulent nature and the political motives behind its compilation and release. The NSA’s (and/or British GCHQ’s) “actively monitored” surveillance of Trump communications reportedly has been justified on the basis of this fake sex tape “dossier.”

Thus, the Obama digital Watergate burglary even invades the bedroom, albeit in the fictional narrative of the “dossier.”

04/1/17

State Department Official Provides Intel to the Chinese For Cash, iPhone and Vacations

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

This is treason… this right here… no doubt about it. And I’ll bet you didn’t even hear it on the news. Candace Marie Claiborne, 60, has been with the State Department since 1999. She has been charged with two felonies: “Obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI.” Both will land her in jail for a very long time… but why was she not charged with treason? She sold information and data to the communist Chinese. The last time I looked, they were our enemies. She kept it secret all these years, while receiving tens of thousands in cash, an iPhone and vacations. She has a Top Secret security clearance and had full knowledge that what she was doing was betraying her country and national security.

Claiborne was an office management specialist. She was posted at the headquarters in Washington, as well as U.S. diplomatic posts in Beijing and Shanghai, along with posts in Baghdad and Khartoum, Sudan. Let that sink in for a moment on just how bad this is. A criminal complaint in the case said she conspired with two Chinese intelligence agents working for the Shanghai State Security Bureau. She also worked with a fourth person who is a male U.S. citizen and a relative of Claiborne’s, who was not identified by name but labeled “Co-conspirator A” in court papers. And stunningly, this case is one of the very first Chinese espionage-related operations involving a U.S. citizen to come to light in nearly ten years. Believe me, our agencies are simply lousy with Chinese spies and operatives like this.

From Truth Revolt:

The FBI’s Washington Field Office announced Wednesday that sixty-year-old Candace Marie Claiborne, a U.S. Department of State employee, was charged with two felonies: “obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements to the FBI.” Allegedly she had numerous contacts with foreign agents that she kept secret. According to the Department of Justice:

“Candace Marie Claiborne is a U.S. State Department employee who possesses a Top Secret security clearance and allegedly failed to report her contacts with Chinese foreign intelligence agents who provided her with thousands of dollars of gifts and benefits,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General McCord. “Claiborne used her position and her access to sensitive diplomatic data for personal profit. Pursuing those who imperil our national security for personal gain will remain a key priority of the National Security Division.”

But wait, there’s more!

“Candace Claiborne is charged with obstructing an official proceeding and making false statements in connection with her alleged concealment and failure to report her improper connections to foreign contacts along with the tens of thousands of dollars in gifts and benefits they provided,” said U.S. Attorney Phillips. “As a State Department employee with a Top Secret clearance, she received training and briefing about the need for caution and transparency. This case demonstrates that U.S. government employees will be held accountable for failing to honor the trust placed in them when they take on such sensitive assignments”

“Candace Claiborne is accused of violating her oath of office as a State Department employee, who was entrusted with Top Secret information when she purposefully mislead federal investigators about her significant and repeated interactions with foreign contacts,” said Assistant Director in Charge Vale. “The FBI will continue to investigate individuals who, though required by law, fail to report foreign contacts, which is a key indicator of potential insider threats posed by those in positions of public trust.”

Other recent illegal intelligence activity by the Chinese government has primarily involved illicit acquisition of U.S. technology. This reminds me of the Bill Clinton years. The charges against Claiborne were filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. She pleaded not guilty on Wednesday during a hearing before Magistrate Judge Robin M. Meriweather. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for April 18th. If convicted, Claiborne faces a maximum of 20 years in prison for obstruction of justice and five years in prison for making false statements to the FBI. Silly me, I thought treason was a death sentence. Not anymore evidently.

Here are some of the ‘gifts’ Claiborne received: Tens of thousands of dollars, jewelry, slippers, an iPhone, an Apple laptop computer, Chinese New Year’s gifts, meals, international travel and vacations, tuition at a Chinese fashion school, a fully furnished apartment and a monthly stipend. She also bragged that she could earn $20k a year by working for one particular agent. This is a Clinton-era person and she’s learned treason from the very best. There is no doubt about her dealings here.

The FBI counterintelligence investigation revealed that Claiborne was co-opted into working with Chinese intelligence in 2010 in exchange for cash and gifts. That’s smack dab in the middle of the Obama administration where things were more than loosy-goosy with national security. Claiborne was first posted to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 1999. She remained there until June 2003 when she moved to Shanghai. The person identified as “Co-conspirator A” lived with Claiborne when she was posted to Shanghai. After a stint in Baghdad, Claiborne returned to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in November of 2009 and remained there until 2012.

From the Washington Free Beacon:

The complaint states that Claiborne received a task from one of the Chinese intelligence agents in May 2011 and failed to report it as required under security rules.

The task came a month after the Chinese spy wired $2,500 to Claiborne’s bank account in the United States.

The agent sought information from Claiborne on “internal United States government positions on matters of U.S.-Sino relations,” specifically the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, high-level U.S.-China talks launched by the Obama administration, the complaint said.

Chinese intelligence also sought information from Claiborne on what pressure the U.S. government planned to put on China and the “internal attitudes” of senior U.S. officials, according to the complaint.

Claiborne held meetings with the Chinese agents and used a Chinese social media application to communicate covertly with the agents.

In 2014, an FBI undercover agent posing as a Chinese intelligence officer contacted Claiborne and told her that the Ministry of State Security, China’s civilian spy service, considered her one of the agency’s “highest regarded” friends. A search of Claiborne’s journal in 2015 revealed the contacts with Chinese intelligence and the payments. The FBI questioned Claiborne in August 2016 when she denied having any foreign government contacts while in China and also made other statements that led to the false statement charges. In January, an ethnically Chinese FBI undercover agent talked to Claiborne while posing as a Chinese spy.

On Tuesday, she returned to the FBI office in Washington and acknowledged the relationship with the two Chinese intelligence officers, the complaint says. “Claiborne admitted to passing information to [the two Chinese agents], both orally and in writing but insisted she always provided unclassified information.” This is classic espionage. The woman was cultivated as a source for Chinese intelligence and flipped. So, while we are digging on the Russians, we might want to dig a bit on the Chinese. Just sayin’.

11/1/16

Spy Scandals, Globalism and the Betrayal of America

By: Cliff Kincaid | Accuracy in Media

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Our top educators like to think that worthwhile social movements only come from the left, such as Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter. But the movement backing Donald J. Trump for president rejects most of what the left is preaching. These people see America losing its greatness, unique identity and national sovereignty. Hillary Clinton uses the campaign slogan “Stronger Together,” which has a patriotic appeal. But she also termed half of Trump’s supporters “deplorable” and “irredeemable.” She prefers the artificial George Soros-funded “social movements” that back her campaign.

By any objective measure, it can be argued that the stench of globalism is starting to affect everything, even perceptions of our founding documents. It may also invite foreign penetration into the highest levels of our government.

Visitors to Independence Hall in Philadelphia are surprised to learn that the site of the adoption of our Declaration of Independence is now a World Heritage Site designated by the United Nations. A big plaque with the designation faces you after you get a lecture from the U.S. Park Service and prepare to enter the historic building. Referring to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, the United Nations declares, “The universal principles of freedom and democracy set forth in these documents are of fundamental importance to American history and have also had a profound impact on law-makers around the world.” These are nice thoughts. But the U.N. is hardly a tribute to freedom and democracy. Ordinary patriotic Americans don’t like the idea of the corrupt United Nations claiming some form of jurisdiction over Independence Hall.

What’s more, visitors to the Liberty Bell see a big picture of Nelson Mandela raising a clenched fist salute. The Mandela quotation that the Liberty Bell is “a very significant symbol for the entire democratic world” is featured next to the photograph. These, too, are nice thoughts. But while Mandela presided over a democratic transition that turned the whites out of power in South Africa, revelations after his death proved that he was a secret memberof the South African Communist Party. He had concealed his true motives and allegiances from those who elected him. South Africa is a member of the Russian orbit of nations, known as BRICS, and some of the remaining whites are fleeing.

The “Citizenship in the World” merit badge is now required for the highest rank in Scouting, Eagle Scout, with one of the requirements being, “Explain what citizenship in the world means to you and what you think it takes to be a good world citizen.”

What Hillary Clinton is trying to carry forward is something that her husband talked openly about in 2003. In his “Global Challenges” speech, former President Clinton outlined a form of world government. “We cannot continue to live in a world where we grow more and more and more interdependence, and we have no over-arching system to have the positive elements of interdependence outweigh the negative ones,” he said. He went on to say, “…I think the great mission of 21st Century world is to make it a genuine global community. To move from mere interdependence to integration, to a community that has three characteristics: shared responsibilities, shared benefits, and shared values.”

That “over-arching system” includes strengthening the United Nations, a process still underway, and currently using the alleged threat of “climate change” to build up the power of this world body and move toward a “genuine global community.”

As president, Clinton had sent a June 22, 1993 letter congratulating the members of the World Federalist Association for meeting to give Strobe Talbott the annual Norman Cousins Global Governance Award. “Norman Cousins worked for world peace and world government,” Clinton said. Talbott, a former Time magazine columnist and U.S. diplomat who served in Clinton’s administration, was a “voice for global harmony,” Clinton said. As a Time magazine writer, Talbott had written a column openly calling for world government. Now the head of the Brookings Institution, Talbott had direct but confidential contacts with Hillary Clinton when she was secretary of state, according to recent WikiLeaks disclosures. The book, Comrade J: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America After the End of the Cold War, documents questionable contacts between Talbott and the Russian intelligence service. Mrs. Clinton spoke to the same World Federalist group in 1999, congratulating former CBS Evening News anchorman Walter Cronkite upon his receipt of the Norman Cousins award.

Yet, Talbott’s continuing relationship with Hillary Clinton is not a subject that alarms the major media.

However, the disclosure that the FBI discovered some of Hillary Clinton’s emails on the Huma Abedin/Anthony Weiner computer could also have national security implications. Were these emails shared with or hacked by our foreign adversaries? Tragically, the American people may not have the answer to this question by Election Day, November 8. But the carelessness of the arrangement is such that we have to suspect the worst, and that Hillary Clinton and her top aide, Huma Abedin, are at the very least, security risks. It could become the biggest spy scandal since Alger Hiss, the former State Department official who was exposed as a Soviet spy. He happened to be a founder of the United Nations.

Cliff Kincaid

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism and can be contacted at [email protected] View the complete archives from Cliff Kincaid.

08/25/16

Skolkovo: Hillary Clinton’s Treasonous Russian Connections

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

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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.

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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.

Read: FROM RUSSIA WITH MONEY

07/30/16

The U.S. has had a Russian Problem of Espionage for Decades

By: Denise Simon | FoundersCode.com

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.

But back to Russia….before the hacking, to sway and or interfere with U.S. elections.

Related reading: Hey FBI, the Investigation into the DNC Hacking is Over Here

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.

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Let’s begin with Anna Chapman, the Russian spy.

DailyNews: Sultry former Russian secret agent Anna Chapman ended an exchange with NBC News almost before it began when she was pressed about her playful Twitter marriage proposal to NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Here is the official criminal complaint and summary of how the FBI tracked her actions filed in 2010. The file also includes an additional spy Mikhail Sememko. This actually began in 1990….yes 1990.

But actually there were 8 more Russian spies and this is the criminal complaint for that case. What is fascinating here is the many stopovers in Latin America…..

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.

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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.

07/28/16

Cold War 2.0 – Russian Trolls and Cybersecurity

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton
Hat Tips: Trevor Loudon, Renee Nal and Denise Simon

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Cyberwarfare is Cold War 2.0 and the Russians are masters at it. There is no doubt now that Russia has used Internet troll factories to spread propaganda out there to promote Donald Trump for president. Putin would own Trump if he became president, but he would also control Clinton as he has tons of blackmail material on her. Behind all of this. whispering in Putin’s ear is Aleksandr Dugin, who wants chaos, power and the downfall of the US. Dugin is probably the most dangerous character in geopolitics today.

Freelance journalist Adrian Chen, now a staff writer at The New Yorker, did an expose on Russian trolls in 2015, entitled The Agency. In it, he lays out that there is a veritable army of well-paid trolls seeding the Internet with this propaganda and it has been going on for some time. These trolls have telltale signs… messages will be off by one misspelled word or the structure of their comments and writing won’t be quite right. Their arguments are scripted and sound identical. They have select sites that they visit over and over. Trevor Loudon’s New Zeal is one of those sites… Glenn Beck’s TheBlaze is another.

From Business Insider:

“A very interesting thing happened,” Chen told Longform’s Max Linsky in a podcast in December.

“I created this list of Russian trolls when I was researching. And I check on it once in a while, still. And a lot of them have turned into conservative accounts, like fake conservatives. I don’t know what’s going on, but they’re all tweeting about Donald Trump and stuff,” he said.

Linsky then asked Chen who he thought “was paying for that.”

“I don’t know,” Chen replied. “I feel like it’s some kind of really opaque strategy of electing Donald Trump to undermine the US or something. Like false-flag kind of thing. You know, that’s how I started thinking about all this stuff after being in Russia.”

These trolls have been behind a number of highly coordinated campaigns to deceive Americans. It’s a brand of information warfare, known as “dezinformatsiya,” that has been used by the Russians since at least the Cold War. The disinformation campaigns are only one “active measure” tool used by Russian intelligence to “sow discord among,” and within, allies perceived hostile to Russia.

“It is designed, as retired KGB General Oleg Kalugin once defined it, ‘to drive wedges in the Western community alliances of all sorts, particularly NATO, to sow discord among allies, to weaken the United States in the eyes of the people in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and thus to prepare ground in case the war really occurs.’ The most common subcategory of active measures is dezinformatsiya, or disinformation: feverish, if believable lies cooked up by Moscow Centre and planted in friendly media outlets to make democratic nations look sinister.”

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Putin is not hiding the fact that he wants Donald Trump in the White House. Trump does not support NATO or the Ukraine and he is very friendly with Putin. He also has business dealings with a number of wealthy Russians. It would not surprise me if at some point money had flowed to Trump out of Russia and Putin is now calling in his marker.

The hack of the DNC, which went on for a year and was discovered last month, has been traced back to Russian military intelligence by the cybersecurity firm, CrowdStrike. This is just the kind of cyberwarfare Russia would use for maximum effect here in the US. “The DNC hack and dump is what cyberwar looks like,” Dave Aitel, a cybersecurity specialist, a former NSA employee and the founder of cybersecurity firm Immunity Inc., wrote for Ars Technica last week.

With talented hackers for sale to the highest bidder out there, Russia has been on a shopping spree for digital talent. They are weaponizing information with the goal of bringing down the US. I’m just surprised they haven’t used it in other ways… against our power grid for instance.

There is no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump is a useful tool to the Russians.

Per Ars Technica:

What occurred with the recently disclosed breach of the Democratic National Committee servers, and the dumping of stolen data on a WordPress site, is more than an act of cyber espionage or harmless mischief. It meets the definition of an act of cyberwar, and the US government should respond as such.

I could not agree more. This has stepped out of the league of simple espionage and right into an act of war. The US needs to take this very seriously and address it for what it is. If Trump does not do an about face on this, the Republicans are going to have an intelligence disaster on their hands.

Trump has surrounded himself with numerous individuals who are far too cozy with the Kremlin and that have financial interests intertwined with Russia. People such as Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. There are others as well, but his inner circle is shaping up to be a national security nightmare when it comes to the Russians.

Two separate agencies of the Russian spy services, the domestic FSB and the military GRU, gained access, independently of each other and without the other’s cognizance, to the DNC correspondence beginning in the summer of 2015 (the FSB) and followed by an intrusion registered in April of this year (the GRU). If this had happened during the Reagan era, it would have been viewed as an act of war and would not have gone unanswered.

I give you the Gerasimov Doctrine. Denise Simone explains:

General Valery Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Federation’s military, developed The Gerasimov Doctrine in recent years. The doctrine posits that the rules of war have changed, that there is a “blurring of the lines between war and peace,” and that “nonmilitary means of achieving military and strategic goals has grown and, in many cases, exceeded the power of weapons in their effectiveness.” Gerasimov argues for asymmetrical actions that combine the use of special forces and information warfare that create “a permanently operating front through the entire territory of the enemy state.”

An overview of Russian activity in Latin America shows an adherence to Gerasimov’s doctrine of waging constant asymmetrical warfare against one’s enemies through a combination of means. These include military or hard power as well as shaping and controlling the narrative in public opinion, diplomatic outreach, military sales, intelligence operations, and strategic offerings of intelligence and military technology. All are essential components of the Russian presence and Gerasimov’s view that the lines between war and peace are blurred, and that non-military means of achieving power and influence can be as effective or more effective than military force. Read more here.

From The Daily Beast:

If Moscow Centre is indeed behind this bit of cyber skulduggery, then it represents the boldest intrusion ever by a past and present Cold War adversary into America’s political decision-making.

Indeed, the style and purpose of this intrusion bears an uncanny resemblance to old Cold War tradecraft.

I have said for many years, the Cold War never ended… it shifted and this is the result of that.

This Russian KGB propaganda model is cultivating widespread troll operations. It has hit many of the most popular websites in America. You see it in the comments over and over. Even more pervasive, you find them on Facebook in postings and comments all over the place. Once you know what to look for, they are not hard to find. They are spreading propaganda with ease and most just believe what they read. Big mistake.

There are whole media outlets who do the dirty work for the Russians in addition to their troll sweatshops: Alex Jones, Russia Today (RT), WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden are just a few of these. Through cyberespionage and cyberwarfare, those who are first to control the widespread use of digital propaganda are far ahead on an entirely new warfront. The Russians and the Chinese are spanking our butts in this field. A field that could easily be life and death for America. Welcome to Cold War 2.0.

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06/17/16

The Denise Simon Experience – 06/16/16 – Trevor Loudon / Pete Turner

The Denise Simon Experience

Hosted by DENISE SIMON, the Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for numerous flag officers and intelligence organizations.

HOUR 1:  TREVOR LOUDON

Trevor Loudon spoke about his upcoming movie, the Enemies Within, spoke about Russian propaganda influence in media, government and policy and predictions for the near future for America.

HOUR 2:  PETE TURNER

Pete Turner, Army intelligence and spy, expert on Middle East culture explained the rules and conditions of handling classified material on computers, mobile devices and phones with particular regard to Hillary Clinton and those of her inner circle at the State Dept.  Don’t miss this fact based interview.

BROADCAST WORLDWIDE:  –  WDDQ – TALK 92.1FM, WJHC – TALK 107.5FMand on iCRN – The Internet’s Conservative Radio Network

01/22/16

Did Putin Strike in the Heart of Washington, D.C.?

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

With the release of the British report into the role of the Russian government in the death of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London, some attention is returning to how President Vladimir Putin murders his perceived enemies. Last November, in one of the most sensational cases, the Russian creator of the propaganda channel, Russia Today (RT), Mikhail Lesin, was found dead in a Washington D.C. hotel room.

Former FBI agent John Whiteside, who handled Russian espionage cases, told me in an interview that it wouldn’t surprise him if Putin had engineered the death of Lesin. “Putin is a KGB guy through and through,” he noted. Since the evidence implicates the Putin regime in the murder by poisoning of former KGB agent Litvinenko, Whiteside found it reasonable to assume that he could do the same in America. He said, “Could Putin reach out to the United States? Absolutely. I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute.”

The KGB is now called the FSB.

The speculation in the media is that Lesin was in Washington, D.C. to cooperate with the FBI, and expose corruption and other misdeeds by the Putin regime.

A one-time Putin ally, Lesin had served as Russia’s Minister for Communications and Mass Media from 1999 to 2004. He had also been Director-General of Gazprom Media Holding, Russia’s largest media group that includes television, radio, printing press, cinema production, advertising, movie theaters and Internet assets. Gazprom Media was owned by Gazprombank, the financial arm of the Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom.

Litvinenko, a former Russian intelligence agent, was targeted for death because he had blown the lid off one of the KGB’s most closely-guarded secrets—the Russian hand in global Islamic terrorism. Litvinenko revealed that al-Qaeda terrorist leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had been trained by the KGB and was an agent of the Russian security services. Litvinenko died in 2006 in London—where he had fled from the Russian regime—after being poisoned by a Russian official. A film, “Poisoned by Polonium,” examines how the highly radioactive substance Polonium was used to kill him.

Robert van Voren, Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania) and Ilia State University in Tbilisi (Georgia), has written an article on the poisoning of Russian journalists and political figures. When poisoning doesn’t work, the perceived political enemies of the Putin regime are usually shot and killed, such as the case with journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Van Voren notes that she was hospitalized after drinking tea on a Russian flight, but the toxin was never identified because the medical staff was instructed to destroy her blood tests. She survived, but in 2006 she was assassinated in the doorway of her Moscow apartment. Among other things, she had been investigating human rights violations in Russia and Putin’s war in Chechnya.

However, GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump says he is not convinced that Putin murders journalists or political opponents.

Van Voren tells me an increasing number of people from Russia “are dying under rather suspicious circumstances,” noting that “Recently two top generals died at a relatively young age, even for Russian standards, one of them being the head of the GRU—the military intelligence service. Both had been involved in military operations in the Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and thus had detailed, inside knowledge of what happened and how.” The head of the GRU was Igor Sergun. His and other deaths are usually called “unexpected.”

“At the same time,” he adds, “I am very hesitant to ascribe everything that happens to opponents to the FSB [as the work of the Putin regime]. People do die or wind up in car accidents, and do have terminal illnesses or sudden deaths—even when Putin doesn’t like them.”

RT is carried in the U.S. by such giant media companies as Comcast and DISH Network, and uses Americans such as former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) chief Michael T. Flynn in its propaganda broadcasts.

“Russia has reorganized and intensified its international propaganda machine so effectively over the past decade that some Western lawmakers and diplomats say Washington now is badly losing a global messaging war to the increasingly modernized blitz of anti-U.S. content from Moscow-backed news operations,”reported Guy Taylor of The Washington Times. “As of this year, RT claimed to be available to an audience of some 700 million across more than 100 nations, where viewers can soak in its Fox News-style 24-hour television content in English, Arabic and Spanish.”

But in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the channel is not carried in the U.S. with disclaimers identifying the material as foreign propaganda. Hence, it is disguised as real “news,” on the same level as privately-funded U.S. media properties, but with the benefit of foreign state funding.

RT immediately called Lesin’s death a “heart attack,” a dubious assertion. This claim came from the Russian embassy, which sent an official to identify him, before an autopsy was conducted.

The death followed revelations that he was under investigation by the Department of Justice, based on allegations that Lesin may have engaged in money laundering and corruption.

In a letter to the Justice Department, Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS) said that he understood that Lesin had “acquired multimillion dollar assets in Europe, including an estate reportedly purchased through a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, during his tenure as a Russian civil servant.” Wicker added, “I also understand that following his government service, Mr. Lesin moved his immediate family to Los Angeles, California, where he acquired multiple residences at a cost of over $28 million. That a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain these assets in Europe and the United States raises serious questions.”

Van Voren told me that the Lesin case is also “rather suspicious, and one has increasingly the feeling that Putin is getting rid of people who know too much.” He added, “It is not unusual behavior: being the Al Capone of a gangster state, he must be constantly worried about everything people know about him, his past and his corrupt businesses.”

01/14/16

A Russian Spy in the NSA: A True Story of Espionage

By: Cliff Kincaid
America’s Survival

Before Edward Snowden, there was Robert Lipka. He spied for the Russians at the NSA. Rather than flee to Moscow, Lipka moved to Pennsylvania and used the money he was paid by the Russians to bet on horse races. It took 32 years to bring Lipka to justice, and we may never know all of the state secrets he betrayed. Former FBI agent John Whiteside, discusses his book about the case, Fool’s Mate. He also addresses current security measures in the federal government and whether Barack Obama could pass an FBI background check.

Fools Mate