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RussiaGate

New York Times Deploys Heavy Gun to Back ‘Intel’ on Russian Bounties

July 4, 2020 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. , , ,
Intelligence analysts must pay close attention, of course, to provenance. What is this or that source’s record for accuracy, for reliability? What kind of trough might this or that source be feeding from; and what agenda might she or he have? Discriminating readers of the corporate media — and especially the Times — should do the same with respect to journalists. When they see the byline of David Sanger they need to examine his record. Those who look back to before the U.S./UK attack on Iraq will discover that Sanger was heavily promoting the existence of WMD in Iraq as a certainty. In a July 29, 2002 article co-written with Thom Shanker, for example, Iraq’s (non-existent) “weapons of mass destruction” appear no fewer than seven times as flat fact. This Sanger/Shanker article, apparently fed by intelligence sources, came just nine days after the head of British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove, was briefed by CIA chief Tenet at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Three days later, on July 23, Dearlove told then Prime Minister Tony Blair that the coming attack on Iraq was a done deal.

Anti-Russia War Fever Spreads On Capitol Hill

July 2, 2020 Patrick Martin, WSWS. , , ,
Groups of congressional Republicans and Democrats have visited the White House over the past two days for briefings on allegations that the Russian military intelligence agency GRU offered bounties to Taliban fighters who killed American soldiers in Afghanistan. They have emerged bristling with demands for retaliation, with one Republican senator declaring, “I want to hear their plan for Taliban and GRU agents in body bags”—in other words, for military action by the United States against Russia, possessor of the world’s second largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. The “Russian bounties” campaign is a fabrication by the US military-intelligence apparatus and its preferred mouthpiece, the New York Times, which signaled the kickoff of the current campaign with a front-page article Saturday that provided no evidence either of bounties paid or American soldiers killed...

To Keep Russiagate Alive ‘Officials’ Make New Claims Without Evidence

July 2, 2020 Moon of Alabama. , , ,
There were allegations about emails that someone exfiltrated from the DNC and provided to Wikileaks. Russia must have done it. The FBI and other intelligence services were all over it. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims. There were allegations that Trump did not really win the elections. Russia must have done it. The various U.S. intelligence service, together with their British friends, provided all kinds of sinister leaks about the alleged case. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims. A British double agent, Sergej Skirpal, was allegedly injured in a Russian attack on him. The intelligence services told all kind of contradicting nonsense about the case. In the end no evidence was provided to support the claims.

Serving The Bottomless Kool-Aid: ‘Blame Russia’ Rides Again!

July 1, 2020 Dany Sjursen, Antiwar.com. , , ,
Two decades of military stalemate teetering towards outright defeat; a highly corrupt and perceptibly illegitimate imposed "partner" Kabul-cabal that still lacks sufficient GDP to pay its own soldier-cops; an indelible adversary that won’t quit; plus 2,219 dead American troops and who knows how many – well, at least 147,000 – vanquished Afghans? Yep, apparently Putin was behind all – or, forgive me, much – of it. Forget Arendt-ian "banality” – that’s the beauty of "evil," especially the utility gift of eternal Russian evil: exceptional America is thereby never culpable, need never self-assess, nor reform its systems. Because, because…Russia. It seems there’s no limit to the almighty power of that nuclear petrostate with its Italy-sized economy.

How An Internet ‘Persona’ Helped Birth Russiagate

June 17, 2020 By Ray McGovern, Consortium News. , , ,
Four years ago today, on June 15, 2016, a shadowy Internet persona calling itself “Guccifer 2.0” appeared out of nowhere to claim credit for hacking emails from the Democratic National Committee on behalf of WikiLeaks and implicate Russia by dropping “telltale” but synthetically produced Russian “breadcrumbs” in his metadata. Thanks largely to the corporate media, the highly damaging story actually found in those DNC emails — namely, that the DNC had stacked the cards against Bernie Sanders in the party’s 2016 primary— was successfully obscured. The media was the message; and the message was that Russia had used G-2.0 to hack into the DNC, interfering in the November 2016 election to help Donald Trump win.

More On Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings

June 7, 2020 Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, Consortium News. , , ,
At the time of our Memo, it was already clear that Mueller’s findings would be fatally incomplete. We were virtually certain that Mueller’s report would lack the forensic findings that we VIPS had arrived at through the kind of rigorous investigation that the FBI avoided doing. So we gave our Memo to you with the title: “Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings”. Sans forensics, Mueller’s report fell far short of Rosenstein’s earlier commitment “to ensure a full and thorough investigation”. It was also clear to us that relying for forensics on CrowdStrike, a private cyber-security firm of checkered reputation, picked and paid for by the Democratic National Committee, would signal a conflict of interest on this controversial issue. Now we know a lot more as a result of testimony released last month (but widely ignored in Establishment media).

Turn Out The Lights, Russiagate Is Over

May 25, 2020 Ray McGovern, Consortium News. , , ,
Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks. The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”) But that was then. This is now.

The ‘See-No-Evil’ Phase Of Russiagate

May 20, 2020 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. , , ,
The long, destructive conspiracy theory known as Russiagate, the mother of them all, at last evaporates into thin air. No shred of it remains as of back-to-back disclosures over the past couple of weeks. Where does this leave us? What is to come of this momentous turn of events? Among those not inclined toward hysteria or copious quaffs of Democratic Party Kool–Aid, it has long been a question how those who concocted and sustained the tales of Russian “meddling,” “collusion,” and mail hackery would manage their embarrassment — not to mention their potential legal liabilities — once their edifice-built-on-sand collapsed, as it was destined from the first to do. The early signs are as some predicted: They will slither quietly off the stage without comment, they will deny their incessant, ever-vehement accusations, they will profess to weariness, they will insist there are more important things to think about now.

Pushback: Crowdstrike Admits ‘No Evidence’ Russia Stole Emails From DNC Server

May 12, 2020 Aaron Maté, The Grayzone. , ,
Crowdstrike, the firm behind the Russian email hacking allegation at the core of Russiagate, makes a bombshell admission: “We did not have concrete evidence.” In newly released Congressional testimony, Crowdstrike president Shawn Henry said that “we did not have concrete evidence” that alleged Russian hackers actually took the emails from DNC servers. “There’s circumstantial evidence, but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated,” Henry said. Aaron Maté breaks down Henry’s testimony and why it adds new doubt about the core allegation at the heart of Russiagate.

Pushback: US Elites Use Russiagate Playbook To Blame China And Promote Hostility

May 3, 2020 Aaron Maté, The Grayzone. , , ,
The US establishment is demonizing China over the COVID-19 crisis with a familiar Russiagate playbook of specious claims, fear-mongering, and deflecting responsibility for homegrown dysfunction. The bipartisan US establishment has coalesced around increased hostility to China in response to the coronavirus pandemic. China has faced numerous allegations including that it covered up the pandemic at the world’s expense, developed the virus in a lab, and has spread disinformation. Journalist and attorney Ajit Singh debunks some of the most widespread claims lodged against China and analyzes the parallels between the current climate and Russiagate.

NSA Whistleblower: ‘Mueller Report Based On Fabricated Evidence’

December 25, 2019 By Eric Zuesse, Off-Guardian , ,
BILL BINNEY: I basically have always been saying that all of this Russian hack never happened, but we have some more evidence coming out recently. We haven’t published it yet, but what we have seen is that there are at least five items that we’ve found that were produced by Guccifer 2.0 back on June 15th, where they had the Russian fingerprints in them, suggesting the Russians made the hack. Well, we found the same five items published by Wikileaks in the Podesta emails. Those items do not have the Russian fingerprints, which directly implies that Guccifer 2.0 was inserting these into the files to make it look like the Russians did this hack. Taking that into account with all the other evidence we have; like the download speeds from Guccifer 2.0 were too fast, and they couldn’t be managed by the web.

New Study: “Russian Trolls” Did Not “Sow Discord” – They Influenced No One

December 1, 2019 Moon of Alabama ,
The Internet Research Agency based in Russia spent a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spent before the election. It was 0.000007 cents for every election dollar that was spent during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election. The IRA ran a marketing machine and not a political operation was also obvious when one analyzed the content that those sock puppet accounts posted. Most of it was apolitical. Where it was political it covered both sides. A recently published study that looked at Twitter users who followed IRA sock puppet accounts and their content confirms that. It found that the IRA sock puppets had no influence on the opinions of their followers.

Exploiting Russiagate Coma, Democrats Raped Climate Movement

August 19, 2019 Patrick Walker, Popular Resistance , ,
Climate activists’ failure to connect these crucial dots has made Russiagate analogous to a coma-inducing, rape-permitting drug. But on the topic of splitting the truth difference between Kavanagh and Inslee (whom I brought up mainly to further illustrate how deeply Democrats’ Russiagate fixation has screwed climate activists), I’ve left some loose ends hanging. I’ll briefly try to tie them up before proceeding to my Russiagate-damning conclusion.

U.S. States: We Weren’t Hacked By Russians In 2016

August 18, 2019 Gareth Porter, The American Conservative. , ,
A “bombshell” Senate Intelligence Committee report released in July repeated the familiar claim that Russia targeted the electoral websites of at least 21 states—but statements from the states themselves effectively undermine that narrative. It turns out the reality is dramatically different from the headlines. The states’ own summary responses contained in the report show that, with one exception, they found either no effort to penetrate any of their election-related sites or merely found scanning and probing associated with an IP address that the FBI had warned about ahead of the 2016 election. Hardly a slam dunk. Federal authorities, including Independent Counsel Robert Mueller, later claimed that the Russians used that IP address to hack into the Illinois state election systems and access some 200,000 voter records, though Mueller provided no additional evidence for that in his report.

​​​​​​​Russiagate Fanatic Michael Isikoff’s Curious Project

August 2, 2019 Ann Garrison, Blackagendareport.com ,
Russiagate fanatic Michael Isikoff, co-author of “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” has been producing a series of “Conspiracyland ” podcasts for Yahoo News so as to put an end to any suspicion that Democratic or Clinton operatives murdered Seth Rich, the young Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer who was shot dead on his way home from work on July 25, 2016, in Washington, D.C. Curious project—Isikoff’s—because the best way to bury inconvenient suspicions, expressions, or even truths is to ignore them...
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