FTR #943 The Gehlen Gang, the High-Profile Hacks and the New Cold War

With a new Cold War gaining momentum and charges of Russian interference in the U.S. election, this program takes stock of information pointing in the other direction. After reviewing previous discussion of why the DNC, John Podesta and NSA “hacks” do not withstand scrutiny, the broadcast sets forth information indicating that Ukrainian fascists and related elements may well be the authors of a “cyber false-flag” operation.

Not only is the so-called “evidence” characteristic of a relatively clumsy false-flag operation–albeit one conducted on the internet–but the so-called “experts,” link to the milieu of the Reinhard Gehlen “Org.”

The joint CIA/FBI/NSA declassified version of the Intelligence Report on Russian hacking came out. There is no substantive detail in the report:“ . . . . To summarize, the report says that the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency believe that Russian hackers—directed ultimately by Vladimir Putin—hacked email accounts belonging to the Democratic National Committee and to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and then passed the material they obtained on to WikiLeaks through a third party. This was done, the report asserts, because the Russians believed that Donald Trump would be friendlier to their country’s interests, as president, than Hillary Clinton. And … that’s about it. Not counting intro pages or appendices, the report is five pages long and does not include any description of the actual evidence that Russian actors were responsible for the DNC/Podesta hacks (an assertion that’s supported by publicly available evidence analyzed by third parties) or the assertion that Putin ultimately directed the release of hacked material in order to help elect Donald Trump (an assertion that’s harder to verify independently). . . . .”

The Bitly technology used in the hacks enabled the entire world to see what was going on! This strongly indicates a cyber-false flag operation: ” . . . . Using Bitly allowed ‘third parties to see their entire campaign including all their targets— something you’d want to keep secret,’ Tom Finney, a researcher at SecureWorks, told Motherboard. It was one of Fancy Bear’s ‘gravest mistakes,’ as Thomas Rid, a professor at King’s College who has closely studied the case, put it in a new piece published on Thursday in Esquire, as it gave researchers unprecedented visibility into the activities of Fancy Bear, linking different parts of its larger campaign together. . . .”

It should be noted that while this report is signed off on by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the FBI never examined the DNC’s hacked server. Instead, according to the DNC, the job was outsourced to CrowdStrike! Neither the FBI, nor any other U.S. government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system! ” . . . Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News. . . .The FBI has instead relied on computer forensics from a third-party tech security company, CrowdStrike, which first determined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infiltrated by Russia-linked hackers, the U.S. intelligence official told BuzzFeed News. . .’CrowdStrike is pretty good. There’s no reason to believe that anything that they have concluded is not accurate,’ the intelligence official said, adding they were confident Russia was behind the widespread hacks. . . It’s unclear why the FBI didn’t request access to the DNC servers, and whether it’s common practice when the bureau investigates the cyberattacks against private entities by state actors, like when the Sony Corporation was hacked by North Korea in 2014. BuzzFeed News spoke to three cybersecurity companies who have worked on major breaches in the last 15 months, who said that it was “par for the course” for the FBI to do their own forensic research into the hacks. None wanted to comment on the record on another cybersecurity company’s work, or the work being done by a national security agency. . . .”

The FBI claims that the DNC denied them access to the servers! Right! Note the prominence of CrowdStrike in this imbroglio. More about them below. ” . . . . The FBI struck back at the Democratic National Committee on Thursday, accusing it of denying federal investigators access to its computer systems and hamstringing its investigation into the infiltration of DNC servers by Russia-backed hackers. ‘The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information,’ a senior law enforcement official told BuzzFeed News in a statement. ‘These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.’ . . . The warring statements are the latest twists in an extraordinary standoff between the Democrats and federal investigators that reached a fever pitch over the bureau’s probe into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s private email server. . . . The FBI announced it was investigating the hack of the DNC’s servers in July, after a third-party computer security firm, Crowdstrike, said it had evidence of Kremlin-backed hackers infiltrating its system. . . .”

The DNC responded to the FBI’s counter-assertion by reasserting that it’s giving the FBI full access to whatever it requested. If there’s a problem with the FBI getting access to that server, it’s a problem between the FBI and Crowdstrike: ” . . . The FBI had previously told lawmakers on the Hill that the DNC had not allowed federal investigators to access their servers. After BuzzFeed News reported on Wednesday that the DNC claimed FBI agents had never asked for the servers, congressional officials pressured the FBI for answers. A senior law enforcement official issued a public statement on the matter Thursday night. ‘Someone is lying their ass off,’ a US intelligence official said of the warring statements. But officials with the DNC still assert they’ve ‘cooperated with the FBI 150%.They’ve had access to anything they want. Anything that they desire. Anything they’ve asked, we’ve cooperated,’ the DNC official said. ‘If anybody contradicts that it’s between Crowdstrike and the FBI.’ . . .Without direct access to the computer network, another US intelligence official told BuzzFeed, federal investigators had been forced to rely on the findings of the private cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike for computer forensics. From May through August of 2016, the Democratic National Committee paid Crowdstrike $267,807 dollars for maintenance, data services and consulting, among other things, according to federal records. . . .”

An important article underscores that many tech experts disagree with the government’s so-called analysis: ” . . . . Yet despite the scores of breathless media pieces that assert that Russia’s interference in the election is ‘case closed,’might some skepticism be in order? Some cyber experts say ‘yes.’ . . . Cyber-security experts have also weighed in. The security editor at Ars Technica observed that ‘Instead of providing smoking guns that the Russian government was behind specific hacks,’ the government report ‘largely restates previous private sector claims without providing any support for their validity.’ Robert M. Lee of the cyber-security company Dragos noted that the report ‘reads like a poorly done vendor intelligence report stringing together various aspects of attribution without evidence.’ Cybersecurity consultant Jeffrey Carr noted that the report ‘merely listed every threat group ever reported on by a commercial cybersecurity company that is suspected of being Russian-made and lumped them under the heading of Russian Intelligence Services (RIS) without providing any supporting evidence that such a connection exists.’ . . .”

CrowdStrike–at the epicenter of the supposed Russian hacking controversy is noteworthy. Its co-founder and chief technology officer, Dmitry Alperovitch is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, financed by elements that are at the foundation of fanning the flames of the New Cold War: “In this respect, it is worth noting that one of the commercial cybersecurity companies the government has relied on is Crowdstrike, which was one of the companies initially brought in by the DNC to investigate the alleged hacks. . . . Dmitri Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. . . . The connection between [Crowdstrike co-founder and chief technology officer Dmitri] Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council—which is is funded in part by the US State Department, NATO, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk—has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia. As I pointed out in the pages of The Nation in November, the Atlantic Council has spent the past several years producing some of the most virulent specimens of the new Cold War propaganda. . . . ”

There was an update back in December from the German government regarding its assessment of the 2015 Bundgestag hacks (attributed to “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” as mentioned in the Sandro Gaycken post above) that it attributed to APT28 and Russia: while it asserts the hacks did indeed take place, the leaked documents were later determined to be an insider leak (via Google translate). “ . . . . According to the report, federal security authorities are convinced that not hackers had stolen the 2420 documents published by the Internet platform Wikileaks in early December. There was certainly no evidence that the material had been stolen in the cyber attack on the Bundestag in 2015, it was called into security crises. . . . ”

Another article details at length the skepticism and outright scorn many cybersecurity experts feel concerning the report. ” . . . . Did the Russian government hack the DNC and feed documents to WikiLeaks? There are really two questions here: who hacked the DNC, and who released the DNC documents? These are not necessarily the same. An earlier intrusion into German parliament servers was blamed on the Russians, yet the release of documents to WikiLeaks is thought to have originated from an insider. [35] Had the Russians hacked into the DNC, it may have been to gather intelligence, while another actor released the documents. But it is far from certain that Russian intelligence services had anything to do with the intrusions. Julian Assange says that he did not receive the DNC documents from a nation-state. It has been pointed out that Russia could have used a third party to pass along the material. Fair enough, but former UK diplomat Craig Murray asserts: ‘I know who the source is… It’s from a Washington insider. It’s not from Russia.’ [We wonder if it might have been Tulsi Gabbard–D.E.] [36] . . . .”

Exemplifying some of the points of dissension in the above-linked story: ” . . . . Cybersecurity analyst Robert Graham was particularly blistering in his assessment of the government’s report, characterizing it as “full of garbage.” The report fails to tie the indicators of compromise to the Russian government. ‘It contains signatures of viruses that are publicly available, used by hackers around the world, not just Russia. It contains a long list of IP addresses from perfectly normal services, like Tor, Google, Dropbox, Yahoo, and so forth. Yes, hackers use Yahoo for phishing and maladvertising. It doesn’t mean every access of Yahoo is an ‘indicator of compromise’.’ Graham compared the list of IP addresses against those accessed by his web browser, and found two matches. ‘No,’ he continues. ‘This doesn’t mean I’ve been hacked. It means I just had a normal interaction with Yahoo. It means the Grizzly Steppe IoCs are garbage. . . .”

The source code used in the attacks traces back to Ukraine! ” . . . . In conjunction with the report, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security provided a list of IP addresses it identified with Russian intelligence services. [22] Wordfence analyzed the IP addresses as well as a PHP malware script provided by the Department of Homeland Security. In analyzing the source code, Wordfence discovered that the software used was P.A.S., version 3.1.0. It then found that the website that manufactures the malware had a site country code indicating that it is Ukrainian. [Note this!–D.E.] The current version of the P.A.S. software is 4.1.1, which is much newer than that used in the DNC hack, and the latest version has changed ‘quite substantially.’ Wordfence notes that not only is the software ‘commonly available,’ but also that it would be reasonable to expect ‘Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources.’ To put it plainly, Wordfence concludes that the malware sample ‘has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence.’ . . .”

The program concludes with a frightening piece of legislation signed into law by Barack Obama in December. It is an ominous portent of the use of government and military power to suppress dissenting views as being “Russian” propaganda tools! “. . . . The new law is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthyism about purported dissemination of Russian ‘propaganda’ on the Internet with a new Orwellianism by creating a kind of Ministry of Truth – or Global Engagement Center – to protect the American people from ‘foreign propaganda and disinformation.’ . . . As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwanted narratives, the law authorizes the Center to: ‘Facilitate the use of a wide range of technologies and techniques by sharing expertise among Federal departments and agencies, seeking expertise from external sources, and implementing best practices.’ (This section is an apparent reference to proposals that Google, Facebook and other technology companies find ways to block or brand certain Internet sites as purveyors of ‘Russian propaganda’ or ‘fake news.’) . . .”

Program Highlights Include: review of information from previous programs linking the disinformation about the high-profile hacks to the milieu of Ukrainian fascism; review of Alexandra Chalupa’s role in disseminating the “Russia did it” meme; review of “Eddie the Friendly Spook” Snowden’s role in the disinformation about the high-profile hacks; the implementation of a frightening new law authorizing the Pentagon and other government agencies to act to counter any information seen as “Russian propaganda.”

FTR #939 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 13: Unsettling In (German Ostpolitik, Part 4)

Continuing discussion of the Trump administration as the transformation of the Underground Reich into an above-ground mass movement, we return to the subject of the supposed Russian “hacks” during the election, German Ostpolitik and an apparent struggle between the American “Deep State” and the Trumpenkampfverbande.

Citing the extensive capabilities of the NSA, a group of veteran intelligence officers has concluded that the “evidence” of Russia having hacked the DNC is not credible: ” . . . The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like ‘our best guess’ or ‘our opinion’ or ‘our estimate’ etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been ‘hacked’ cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked. The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC. . . .”

In the context of the high-profile hacks, the program reviews information from previous discussions in FTR #’s 917, 923, 924, 925, 926 dealing with WikiLeaks, Trump’s dirty tricks operative Roger Stone, Edward Snowden, the DNC hack and the Shadow Brokers “non-hack;” and the “painting of Oswald Red,” including:The fact that Trump’s dirty tricks operative Roger Stone was in direct contact with Julian Assange prior to, and during, WikiLeaks’ publishing of the e-mails from DNC and John De Podesta;The fact that Stone promised an “October Surprise” from WikiLeaks that would affect the campaign; The fact that available evidence does NOT implicate the Russians in the DNC hack at all; The fact that the Shadow Brokers accessing of NSA hacking technologies was probably not a hack at all, but a leak by an insider using a thumb drive; Edward Snowden’s suspicious and, frankly, damning support for the untenable “the Russians did it” interpretation of the DNC penetration and the Shadow Brokers “non-hack;” Snowden’s curious tweet issued after the DNC hack and just before the Shadow Brokers surfaced–Snowden said “It’s time,” which has never been explained (we suspect that it may have been a signal to release the ANT/TAO material;) the fact that WikiLeaks associate Jacob Applebaum, who appears to have assisted Snowden’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong, is seen as a suspect in the Shadow Brokers “non-hack;” Applebaum’s and Snowden’s affiliation with the CIA.

Next, the program highlights the allegation that a DNC insider leaked the e-mails to WikiLeaks: “. . . . And, even though The New York Times and other big news outlets are reporting as flat fact that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts and gave the information to WikiLeaks, former British Ambassador Craig Murray, a close associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, told the London Daily Mail that he personally received the email data from a “disgusted” Democrat. [Might that have been Tulsi Gabbard?–D.E.] . . . Murray added that his meeting was with an intermediary for the Democratic leaker, not the leaker directly. [Might that have been Roger Stone?–D.E.]. . .”

In the context of a possible Trump mole inside the DNC, possibly assisting the “hacks,” we highlight Trumenkampfverbande links to the former DNC Deputy Chairperson Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and to Narendra Modi’s BJP, a political front and cat’s paw for the Hindu nationalist/fascist RSS. The salient points include:

Trump’s business links with members of Modi’s BJP. “. . . . Mr. Trump’s partner in the Trump Tower Mumbai is the Lodha Group, founded by Mangal Prabhat Lodha, vice president of the Bharatiya Janata Party — currently the governing party in Parliament — in Maharashtra State. . . . His partner in an office complex in Gurgaon, near New Delhi, is IREO, whose managing director, Lalit Goyal, is the brother-in-law of a Bharatiya Janata member of Parliament, Sudhanshu Mittal. . . .”

a) Trump’s interview of Gabbard for a possible cabinet position.
b) Steven K. Bannon’s affinity for Gabbard: ” . . . . Stephen Bannon, Trump’s chief strategist, reportedly likes Gabbard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islamic extremism . . .”
c) Bannon’s strong affinity for Modi: ” . . . The campaign’s chief executive, Stephen K. Bannon, is a student of nationalist movements. Mr. Bannon is close to Nigel Farage, a central figure in Britain’s movement to leave the European Union, and he is an admirer of India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, a Hindu nationalist Mr. Bannon has called ‘the Reagan of India.’ It may be pure coincidence that some of Mr. Trump’s words channel the nationalistic and, some argue, anti-Muslim sentiments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to power. But it is certainly not coincidental that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hindu supporters are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent backers. . . .”
d) Gabbard’s association with Modi and the BJP: “. . . . Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu American in the US Congress, called on visiting Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi here Sunday and presented him with a ginger flower garland from Hawaii. Gabbard, a strong supporter of Modi, is a Democrat Congresswoman from Hawaii. . . . She has also been involved in the planning of Modi’s US visit and had last month met two BJP leaders Vijay Jolly and MP Rajyavardhan Rathore in that connection. . . .”
e) Gabbard’s association with the RSS: ” . . . As she hobnobbed with the Indian prime minister and foreign minister among others, The Telegraph, a Kolkata-based newspaper, called her “the Sangh’s mascot” in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hindutva organisation and the ideological guardian of the BJP party that rules India now. . . .”

The FBI has weighed in on the “hacks,” opining that it was Russia trying to elevate Trump. If so, that would place the FBI and Russia on the same page, as the bureau’s nakedly partisan behavior during the campaign is quite obvious at this point. When the FBI supposedly detected Russia hacking the DNC, it called the IT “Help Desk” and the call was treated by the receptionist as a prank call. ” . . . So I was surprised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI discovered the Russian attack in September 2015, it failed to send even a single agent to warn senior Democratic National Committee officials. Instead, messages were left with the DNC IT ‘help desk.’ As a former head of the FBI cyber division told the Times, this is a baffling decision: ‘We are not talking about an office that is in the middle of the woods of Montana.’ . . . ”

VICE News has filed a lawsuit against the FBI requesting information about a number of subjects which could prove very explosive IF the bureau divulges the full extent of the information it has on the subjects. “ . . . The suit also seeks all FBI emails mentioning Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, former Clinton campaign vice chair Huma Abedin, Abedin’s estranged husband Anthony Weiner, Trump, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, Trump advisers Corey Lewandowski, Roger Stone and Kellyanne Conway, CNN commentator Jeffrey Lord, Fox News host Sean Hannity, or Fox News anchor Bret Baier, among others. . . . ”

The latter part of the program highlights a number of topics that will be covered at greater length in FTR #940.

Program Highlights Include:

a) Trump’s appointment of another “Alt-Right” figure (Stephen Miller) as a top adviser.
b) The apparent role of Ukrainian fascists in generating the “Russia did it” disinformation about the DNC hack.
d) The Austrian Freedom Party’s networking with Trump National Security Adviser-designate Michael Flynn and their support for lifting Russian sanctions.
e) Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson’s opposition to sanctions against Russia.
f) The Bormann capital network’s massive holdings in Standard Oil of New Jersey (Exxon, now Exxon Mobil.)
g) Indications that Ukrainian fascist networks may be involved with the “Russia did it” meme on the high-profile hacks.

FTR #938 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 12: Settling In, Part 2 (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 5)

In FTR #’s 891 and 895, we highlighted the Broadcasting Board of Governors, a Congressional fig leaf instituted to dilute CIA control over American foreign broadcast outlets such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia. In addition to the broadcast outlets discussed in the story that follows, we note that the change from a “board of governors” to a “CEO” to be appointed by Trump also gives the nominee power over Radio Free Asia’s Open Technology Fund, developer of numerous apps and other technological methodologies favored by the so-called “privacy advocates.”

The replacement of the governors is seen as a potential boon to the Trump administration. “ . . . . ‘There’s some fear among the folks here, that the firewall will get diminished and attacked and this could fall victim to propaganda,’ the Republican official said. ‘They will hire the person they want, the current CEO does not stand a chance. This will pop up on Steve Bannon’s radar quickly. They are going to put a friendly person in that job.’ . . . . ”

The change will affect domestic broadcast media as well. ” . . . . Because of the modification of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2013, the BBG can now broadcast in the U.S., too. But the influence on the domestic market could be even more subtle, the Republican official warned. A BBG CEO influenced by the administration could penetrate established media outlets with packages, series or other news products produced by the BBG’s networks but picked up and aired by traditional media like Fox News or Breitbart. Many U.S. outlets currently use content from VOA. ‘No money would even change hands, you’ve had no effect on the budget,’ the official said. ‘But it will denigrate the product. . . . ‘ ”

In the context of the changes made to the BBG, we review the political inclinations of Bannon: ” . . . The late Andrew Breitbart, founder of the website Bannon went on to lead, called Bannon the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement”—a reference to the infamous creator of Nazi propaganda films. While insisting to a Wall Street Journal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t propaganda, Bannon went on to cite Riefenstahl among his main influences . . . ”

Next, we turn to the subject of free trade, on which Trump has had much to say, bashing China and Mexico as countries the U.S. should “put right” in their trade relations with the U.S. It’s worth noting we haven’t heard Trump mention a trade war with Germany despite all his tirades against China and Mexico. It raises the question of why, since Germany’s unprecedented and damaging surpluses make it such an obvious trade war target.

” . . . . There is one potential trade war, however, that few people have so far noticed — but which could soon be his easiest target. Germany. Given the size of its population, it runs a far larger trade surplus than China — and a massive surplus with the U.S. in particular. Even better, the industries to pick off are relatively simple to identify, and would actually have a chance of creating well-paid American jobs. . . .

“. . . . Germany’s trade surplus is absolutely massive, and unprecedented in modern industrial history. Last year it hit 8.9% of gross domestic product, and it is likely to break through 9% before the end of 2016. Globally, it is second in size only to China’s, but given that Germany is a far smaller country, it is only fair to measure it on a per capita basis — and when you look at it that way, Germany’s surplus is seven times bigger than China’s. . . . Much of Germany’s trade surplus is clearly the result of currency manipulation. The euro has depressed the real value of the country’s exports, allowing it rack up those huge exports. You can argue about whether China’s currency is really at its fair value or not — but no one can really dispute that Germany’s currency is way, way below what it would be if it still had the deutschemark. . . .”

Obviously, part of the answer lies in the fact that Deutsche Bank–a key element of the Bormann capital network and the Underground Reich–is owed hundreds of millions of dollars by Trump. Trump’s other connections run in the direction of the Underground Reich as well. (The Trump/Deutsche Bank connection is discussed, in among other programs, FTR #’s 920, 921, 922 and 927.)

We note in passing that Germany is preparing for a trade war with the U.S.–we don’t think one will really take place, but we may be treated to Trumpian “fake news” and/or propaganda. Germany is asserting that the factors behind its enormous trade surplus can not be altered, because it is due to naturally occurring circumstances like a rapidly aging population.

” . . . There are plenty of reasons for that. Germany’s current account surplus has never been as high as it is this year and never before has that surplus represented such a significant share of the country’s gross domestic product. Making matters worse is the fact that the US is the largest consumer of German exports. . . .

“. . . . As high as it is, though, the current surplus is likely to continue growing. The recent fall in the euro’s value relative to the dollar following Trump’s election makes German products and services even more competitive. And many economists believe that the value of the dollar will continue to climb, which means that the value of the euro against the dollar will shrink correspondingly. Their predictions are based on recent indications that Trump’s announced economic stimulus policies will push up both America’s sovereign debt load and its interest rates. . . .”

The program concludes with analysis of how Trump’s continued involvement in his business empire (through his children) leaves him open to manipulation. The Philippines is a good example: “ . . . . So, under the deal, Trump’s children will be paid millions of dollars throughout their father’s presidency by Jose E.B. Antonio, the head of Century Properties.

“Duterte recently named Antonio the special government envoy to the United States. The conflicts here could not be more troubling or more blatant: President Trump will be discussing U.S. policy in Southeast Asia with one of his (or his children’s) business partners, a man who is the official representative of a foreign leader who likens himself to Hitler. Also note that the Trump family has an enormous financial interest in Duterte’s deadly campaign: Rooting out crime in the Philippines is good for the real estate values. . . . Duterte recently named Antonio the special government envoy to the United States. The conflicts here could not be more troubling or more blatant: President Trump will be discussing U.S. policy in Southeast Asia with one of his (or his children’s) business partners, a man who is the official representative of a foreign leader who likens himself to Hitler. Also note that the Trump family has an enormous financial interest in Duterte’s deadly campaign: Rooting out crime in the Philippines is good for the real estate values. . . . .”

Program Highlights Include: Trump’s business dealings in India, where members of the BJP party figure in the disposition of the operations in that country; Trump’s consideration of Bernie Sanders supporter Tulsi Gabbard for a cabinet position; “Alt-Right” kingpin Steve Bannon’s high regard for Gabbard; Gabbard’s strong support for Modi and networking with the BJP; Gabbard’s networking with the RSS, the Indian fascist organization for which the BJP serves as a front.

John Perry Barlow (Grateful Dead Lyricist, Dick Cheney Campaign Manager, George Wallace Voter), the CIA, and the Genesis of Social Media

In FTR #854, we noted John Perry Barlow’s background as Dick Cheney’s campaign manager and George Wallace supporter in 1968. In FTR #895, we discussed the fact that the Electronic Frontier Foundation embraced technologies developed by CIA-linked institutions. Barlow founded the EFF. It turns out that Barlow was invited to CIA headquarters in 1992 and advanced concepts that may well have lead to the development of social media–“. . . Let’s create a process of information digestion in which inexpensive data are gathered from largely open sources and condensed, through an open process . . . The entity I envision would be small, highly networked, and generally visible. It would be open to information from all available sources . . . It would rely heavily on the Internet, public media, the academic press, and an informal worldwide network of volunteers–a kind of global Neighborhood Watch–that would submit on-the-ground reports. . . . It would use off-the-shelf technology, and use it less for gathering data than for collating and communicating them. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. . . .”

Sign of the Times: “US Says Anti-Nazi Resolution at U.N. Restricts Free Speech”

“The United States was one of three countries to vote against a U.N. resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism on Thursday, citing freedom of speech issues and concerns Russia was using it to carry out political attacks against its neighbors. The resolution entitled ‘Combating glorification of Nazism, Neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance,’ was approved by the U.N.’s human rights committee on Friday with 131 in favor, 3 against with 48 abstentions. Ukraine and Palau were the other no votes. . . .” This was the second time in three years that the U.S. vetoed such a resolution. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.

FTR #930 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 9: Alfa Males, Part 3 (German Ostpolitik, Part 3)

With the (justifiable) outrage swirling around FBI director (and Mitt Romney backer) James Comey’s public discussion of the discovery of more of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails having been discovered, another election-related investigation has gone largely unexamined. Indeed, the importance of the investigation has been downplayed.

Computer experts discovered a link between a server registered to the Trump organization and two servers registered to the Alfa Bank in Moscow, a bank that is part of the Alfa conglomerate discussed in FTR #’s 530 and 573.

In the Foer piece, and in attempted discrediting articles of same, it is apparent that the investigators do not understand the nature of the entity they are investigating. The journalistic “spin” put on Alfa in the coverage is “Russia/Putin/Kremlin” new Cold War context. Alfa is very, very different.

In FTR #’s 530, 573 we examnined the nature of Alfa’s history, operations and institutional and economic foundations. It is anything BUT “Kremlin/Putin/Russia.”

It appears to be Underground Reich, all the way, with evidentiary tributaries running in the direction of: the Iran-Contra scandal; the Iraqgate scandal; the oil-for-food scam vis a vis Iraq; malfeasanace by a coterie of GOP bigwigs including Dick Cheney and others close to George W. Bush, and Haley Barbour; money-laundering by powerful international drug syndicates; Chechen warlords and drug-trafficking syndicates; the Royal family of Liechtenstein; the Bank al-Taqwa (which helped finance al-Qaeda); the Marc Rich operations; Eastern European and Russian associates of Wolfgang Bohringer, one of Mohamed Atta’s close associates in South Florida; and the Carl Duisberg Fellowship, which brought Mohamed Atta to Germany from Egypt and may have helped him into the U.S.

The program highlights major aspects of the investigation into the Alfa/Trump link:

The Trump/Alfa link was not a malware attack, as some of the computer scientists initially thought: ” . . . . The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. . . .”

The set-up was highly unusual: ” . . . . The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. ‘I’ve never seen a server set up like that,’ says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s registration record.) But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. ‘I get more mail in a day than the server handled,’ Davis says. . . .”
The article details more unusual aspects of the link: ” . . . . That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. . . . Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. ‘It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,’ Camp told me. ‘These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out.’ . . . .”

Paul Vixie–one of the premier experts in the field–felt the connection was highly unusual: ” . . . . Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, ‘The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.’ Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. . . .”

The available evidence indicates that the hookup indicated “human-level communication”: ” . . . I put the question of what kind of activity the logs recorded to the University of California’s Nicholas Weaver, another computer scientist not involved in compiling the logs. ‘I can’t attest to the logs themselves,’ he told me, ‘but assuming they are legitimate they do indicate effectively human-level communication.’ . . . ”

More about the nature of the communication, from the scientist using the code-name “Tea Leaves”: ” . . . . Tea Leaves and his colleagues plotted the data from the logs on a timeline. What it illustrated was suggestive: The conversation between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States. ‘At election-related moments, the traffic peaked,’ according to Camp. There were considerably more DNS lookups, for instance, during the two conventions. . . .”

The scientists attempted to get the public to pay attention to their investigation and New York Times writers turned their attention to the case: ” . . . In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story.* (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. . . .”

Things got “interesting” after that. According to the computer scientists, the Trump Organization shut down the server! As the brilliant Berkeley researcher Peter Dale Scott noted, in a different context, “The cover-up obviates the conspiracy. ” . . . . In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story.* (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. . . . The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Weaver told me the Trump domain was ‘very sloppily removed.’ Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like ‘the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.’. . . . Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. ‘That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration],’ Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. ‘If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,’ Vixie says. ‘The only look-ups came from this particular source.’According to Vixie and others, the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold. . . .”

Not surprisingly, the FBI has dismissed the relevance of the computer link.

This dismissal comes against the background of several late-breaking developments:

The unsuccessful attempt by Alfa subsidiary Crown Resources to buy Marc Rich’s commodities firm: ” . . . A deal to sell the Swiss-based commodities operation of former U.S. fugitive financier Marc Rich to Russia-owned energy trading group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group conglomerate. . . . .”

The subsequent successful attempt by Alfa player Mikhail Fridman to purchase the Marc Rich firm: ” . . . Mikhail Fridman: ‘Defendant Mikhail Fridman currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of co-conspirator Alfa Bank and as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Defendant Consortium Alfa Group. Fridman further served on the Board of VimpelCom, a NYSE company, and has control over Golden Telecom, a NASDAQ company … purchased the United States trading firm owned by American, Mark Rich, the one time commodities baron pardoned by President Clinton with much controversy. . . .”

The FBI’s long-dormant Twitter account began tweeting files about Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, shortly after the official dismissal of investigations into the Alfa/Trump link: ” . . . . Now, a new interagency mystery is raising questions about whether the F.B.I. has become politicized, just days before the presidential election. On Sunday, a long-dormant F.B.I. Twitter account suddenly sprung to life, blasting out a series of links to case files that cast the Clintons in a decidedly negative light. . . . Then, on Tuesday, the “FBI Records Vault” account—which had not tweeted at all between October 2015 and Sunday—published a link to records related to the 15-year-old, long-closed investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s pardoning of onetime commodities trader turned fugitive Marc Rich. The post, which was quickly retweeted thousands of times, links to a heavily redacted document that repeatedly references the agency’s “Public Corruption” unit—less-than-ideal optics for Hillary Clinton, who has spent her entire campaign fighting her image as a corrupt politician. . . .”

FBI Director James Comey was in charge of the original Marc Rich investigation and the pardon of Rich by Bill Clinton. Is there a connection between the official dismissal of the investigation into the Alfa/Trump link by the FBI, the tweeting by the FBI of the files on the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich and the fact that it was Comey who presided over the Marc Rich investigations? ” . . . . In 2002, Comey, then a federal prosecutor, took over an investigation into President Bill Clinton’s 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich, who had been indicted on a laundry list of charges before fleeing the country. The decision set off a political firestorm focused on accusations that Rich’s ex-wife Denise made donations to the Democratic Party, the Clinton Library and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign as part of a plan to get Rich off the hook. Comey ultimately decided not to pursue the case. The kicker: Comey himself had overseen Rich’s prosecution between 1987 and 1993. . . .”

Program Highlights Include: details of the Carl Duisberg Society’s links to Atta and to major German corporations; discussion of the Alfa Fellowhip against the background of German Ostpolitik discussed in FTR #’s 918 and 919; detailed analysis of Viktor Kozeny associates Fridman and (Pyotr) Aven (Kozeny employed Bohringer as a pilot); a summary analysis of the major points in FTR #’s 530 and 573.

FTR #926 Painting Oswald “Red,” Part 2: “Oswald” in Mexico City

Just as JFK’s assassination–pinned on the ersatz Communist Lee Harvey Oswald–destroyed JFK’s attempts at detente with the Soviet Union, the “op” fronted for by Edward Snowden–the “Obverse Oswald”–destroyed the Obama/Clinton State Department’s attempts at a “re-boot” with Russia. This program is the second in a series reviewing how Oswald was “painted red.” For purposes of convenience and continuity, we begin the discussion by reviewing and synopsizing information indicating that Russia has been framed for the “Shadow Brokers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack.

Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shadow Brokers” non-hack of the NSA, the evidence points increasingly toward “Team Snowden” (including WikiLeaks) and Eddie the Friendly Spook himself. The process of propagandizing the high-profile hacks as effected by “Russia” is analogous to the “painting of Oswald Red.” This broadcast details a visit to Mexico City by “Oswald,” in which the patsy-to-be of the JFK assassination went to lengths to reinforce the image of a Communist, linked to, among other elements, the KGB’s assassination expert Valery Kostikov.

The “Oswald” operating in Mexico City did not look like Oswald: ” . . . He was described as ‘apparent age 35, athletic build, circa 6 feet, receding hairline, balding top.’ In a CIA cable back to Mexico City on October 10, the Lee Oswald who defected to the U.S.S.R. in October 1959 was described as not quite 24, ‘five feet ten inches, one hundred sixty five pounds, light brown wavy hair, blue eyes.’ . . .” He did not speak like Oswald: ” . . . . Equally noteworthy in the October 9 cable is the evidence it provides that the “Lee Oswald” who made the October 1 phone call was an impostor. The caller, it said, “spoke broken Russian.” The real Oswald was fluent in Russian. . . .”

The “Oswald” in Mexico City had unusual credentials: ” . . . [Cuban diplomat Silvia] Duran was a little suspicious of Oswald. She felt the American was too eager in displaying his leftist credentials: membership cards in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the American Communist Party, old Soviet documents, a newspaper clipping on his arrest in New Orleans, a photo of Oswald being escorted by a policeman on each arm that Duran thought looked Phony. Duran also knew that belonging to the Communist Party was illegal in Mexico in 1963. For that reason, a Communist would normally travel in the country with only a passport. Yet here was Oswald documented in a way that invited his arrest. . . .”

The “Oswald” in Mexico City displayed unusual behavior: ” . . . He took a revolver from his jacket pocket, placed it on a table, and said, ‘See? This is what I must now carry to protect my life.’ The Soviet officials carefully took the gun and removed its bullets. They told Oswald once again they could not give him a quick visa. They offered him instead the necessary forms to be filled out. Oswald didn’t take them. Oleg Nechiporenko joined the three men as their conversation was ending. For the second day in a row, he accompanied a depressed Oswald to the gate of the embassy, this time with Oswald’s returned revolver and its loose bullets stuck back in his jacket pocket. Nechiporenko says that he, Kostikov, and Yatskov then immediately prepared a report on Oswald’s two embassy visits that they cabled to Moscow Center. . . .”

A CIA telephonic intercept of the “Oswald” appears to have been a fabrication: ” . . . . The CIA’s transcript states that the Saturday, September 28, call came from the Cuban Consulate. The first speaker is identified as Silvia Duran. However, Silvia Duran has insisted repeatedly over the years, first, that the Cuban Embassy was closed to the public on Saturdays, and second, that she never took part in such a call. ‘Duran’ is said to be phoning the Soviet Consulate. Oleg Nechiporenko denies in turn that this call occurred. He says it was impossible because the Soviet switchboard was closed. The ‘Duran’ speaker in the transcript says that an American in her consulate, who had been in the Soviet Embassy, wants to talk to them. She passes the phone to a North American man. The American insists that he and the Soviet representative speak Russian. They engage in a conversation, with the American speaking with the translator describes as ‘terrible hardly recognizable Russian.’ This once again argues against the speaker being Oswald, given his fluent Russian. . . .”

The net effect of the phony Oswald in Mexico City was to reinforce the notion that a Communist killed Kennedy, increasing pressure for retaliation against Russia and/or Cuba and escalating Cold War tensions. ” . . . . One must give the CIA (and the assassination sponsors that were even further in the shadows) their due for having devised and executed a brilliant setup. They had played out a scenario to Kennedy’s death in Dallas that pressured other government authorities to choose among three major options: a war of vengeance against Cuba and the Soviet Union based on the CIA’s false Mexico City documentation of a Communist assassination plot; a domestic political war based on the same documents seen truly, but a war the CIA would fight with every covert weapon at its command; or a complete cover-up of any conspiracy evidence and a silent coup d’etat that would reverse Kennedy’s efforts to end the Cold War. . . .” The propaganda blitzkrieg against Russia over the high-profile hacks, Ukraine and Syria have positioned Hillary Clinton in an analogous fashion. It will be VERY difficult for her to avoid being sucked into the New Cold War dynamics. Program Highlights Include: Review of the disinformation linking Oswald to the KGB’s alleged assassination of Stephan Bandera (head of the OUN/B); review of the role of Pierre Omidyar in the Maidan coup; review of Oswald’s altogether improbable activities in the U.S., given his supposed Communist status.

FTR #925 Painting Oswald “Red,” Part 1

One of the nicknames Mr. Emory has bestowed upon “Eddie the Friendly Spook” Snowden is “The Obverse Oswald.” Whereas Lee Harvey Oswald was a U.S. intelligence officer infiltrated into the Soviet Union, repatriated and infiltrated into leftist organizations, given a “left cover” and then framed for the assassination of J.F.K. (and killed before he could exonerate himself), Snowden has been infiltrated into Russia and portrayed as a hero. Snowden, like Oswald, is involved in an “op.”
Just as Oswald was “painted Red,” Russia appears to have been framed in the U.S. media for the hack of the Democratic National Committee and the non-hack of NSA cyberweapons by the so-called Shadow Brokers.

In this first of two programs, we review the process of “painting Oswald Red,” by way of gaining historical perspective on the Snowden “op” and the framing of Russia for the high-profile hacks in the New Cold War.

After reviewing particulars concerning the framing of Russia for the hacks, we detail the framing of Lee Harvey Oswald and the Soviet Union for the assassination of Stephan Bandera, the head of the fascist Ukrainian OUN/B.

Supposedly executed by the KGB, the killing was almost certainly done by the West, with the BND being the most likely agency involved.

Elements of the W.A.C.C.F.L. (the forerunner of the World Anti-Communist League) disseminated the disinformation that Oswald was trained by the same KGB sub-group that managed Bogdan Stashynsky, the killer of Bandera.

After Oswald returned to the U.S., he was infiltrated into the Fair Play For Cuba Committee (he was its only New Orleans member). Oswald’s alleged pro-Castro stance received considerable exposure as a result of an interview he did with WDSU in New Orleans. That interview, arranged by the Information Council of the Americas, featured Oswald discussing his Marxist sympathies and his “defection” to the Soviet Union.

The Information Council of the Americas had close links to the U.S. intelligence community. The net effect of the painting of Oswald Red was to motivate liberals and President Johnson to cover-up the truth concerning the assassination, out of fear that if the American public believed that Kennedy was killed as a result of a Communist conspiracy, it could lead to a Third World War.

Program Highlights Include: Oswald’s WDSU gaffe in which he disclosed his relationship with the U.S. government while in the U.S.S.R.; the highly unlikely fact that alleged K.G.B. operative Stashynsky had the broken key to Bandera’s apartment in his possession when he went to trial two years later; the equally unlikely proposition that the other half of the broken key was still in the lock of Bandera’s apartment two years later!

FTR #924 Technocratic Fascism, the High-Profile Hacks and The Obverse Oswald: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

Continuing our analysis of the high-profile hacks and “Team Snowden,” we begin with analysis of some cryptic tweets that Snowden issued, shortly before the “Shadow Brokers” announced their pilfering of NSA cyberweapons. The possibility that the tweets were a signal to release the information is one to be considered.

Much of the program reviews key points of information from FTR #923 and other broadcasts: Russia appears to have been wrongly fingered for the DNC hack released by WikiLeaks; the Shadow Brokers’ supposed hack of the NSA’s servers does not appear to have been a hack at all but the work of an insider who downloaded the files onto a USB drive; the files offered up by the Shadow Brokers were from 2013, when Snowden undertook his operation.

Snowden has supported the cover story for the NSA non-hack–that it was, indeed, a hack (it probably wasn’t) and that Russia was behind it, which was probably not the case.

A chief suspect in the release of the NSA files is Jacob Applebaum, the WikiLeaker who appears to have facilitated Snowden’s journey from Hawaii to Hong Kong. The program reviews Applebaum’s hostility to Hillary Clinton, comparing it to the so-called “Shadow Brokers'” hostility to Clinton, echoing the views of Trump, Assange and Applebaum. The broadcast reviews the fact that the “Shadow Brokers” used an e-mail account in Germany that has been recalcitrant to attempts at penetrating its users’ information.

The program reviews Applebaum’s presence in Germany, along with other key members of the WikiLeaks/Team Snowden cadre.

Program Highlights Include: review of the fact that Snowden (at the time he set out to subvert the NSA), Applebaum and other high-profile “privacy activists” have documented links to the CIA; a look at Donald Trump, Jr. who has been active in tweeting and re-tweeting “Alt.right” racist and anti-Semitic memes; Trump, Jr.’s expressed willingness to run for office.

FTR #923 The Obverse Oswald and the High Profile Hacks: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook (Weighing in for The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 2)

Supplementing and summing up the exhaustive “Eddie the Friendly Spook” series, this program sets forth the Snowden “psy-op” and the high-profile hacks against the background of Lee Harvey Oswald, the U.S. spy infiltrated into the Soviet Union and then into leftist organizations in the United States. Oswald was framed for JFK’s assassination and then killed before he could defend himself.

Whereas Oswald was portrayed as a villain, Eddie the Friendly Spook’s operation is the obverse, with Snowden decamping first to China and then to Russia, and being portrayed as a hero.

Snowden is not only a spy but a fascist, who advocates the elimination of Social Security and the return to the gold standard.

Snowden’s Russian sojourn appears to have been arranged by WikiLeaks, which also appears to have arranged his flight to China from Hawaii. (Snowden’s journey to Hawaii appears to have been facilitated by Jacob Applebaum, who may be behind the “Shadow Brokers” alleged hack of NSA cyberweapons.) It was Snowden’s journey to Moscow that threw Obama’s “reboot” with Russia under the bus.

In this program, we examine information indicating that Russia has been framed for the “Shadow Brokers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shadow Brokers” non-hack of the NSA, the evidence points increasingly toward “Team Snowden” and Eddie the Friendly Spook himself.

In that context, we again point to “The Obverse Oswald.” We strongly suspect that “Team Snowden” may have had something to do with this. Snowden is in Russia and working for a computer firm. The (frankly lame) framing of Russia for the DNC hack and the “Shadow Brokers” non-hack of the NSA reminds us of the process of “painting Oswald Red.” After reviewing information about the political, ideological and rhetorical continuity between Ron Paul (Snowden’s and Julian Assange’s Presidential candidate of choice), David Duke and Donald Trump and his “alt.right” associates, the program reviews the apparently deep and ongoing collaboration between Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and Donald Trump’s dirty tricks specialist Roger Stone.

The program reviews at length the overwhelming probability that Russia was framed for the DNC hacks. Tackling the “Shadow Brokers'” penetration of NSA cyberweapons technology, we note that the evidence that this was done by Russia is very poor. The bitcoin auctioning of the cyberweapons is extremely unlikely, as is the public announcement of the so-called “hack.” In addition, the announcement of the so-called “hack” is done in a comical broken English, reminiscent of the Boris and Natasha cartoon characters from the early 1960’s.

Next, the program sets forth the hypothesis that, rather than a “hack,” this was more likely an insider penetration of NSA and downloading of the files onto a USB stick. Longtime NSA observer James Bamford points a finger of suspicion at Jacob Applebaum, the WikiLeaker who appears to have facilitated Snowden’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong. Applebaum is a resolute opponent of Hillary Clinton, and the Shadow Brokers’ broken English targeted the Democratic nominee as well.

It is more than a little interesting that Edward Snowden has gone on record saying that Russia was behind this event and that it was a hack. The evidence of Russia being behind the Shadow Brokers and this event being a “hack” is very poor. Nonetheless, Snowden is giving credence to the cover story for this event.

Program Highlights Include: The use of a German e-mail provider that has been resistant to government attempts at transparency; review of the presence in Germany of Applebaum, Sarah Harrison (Assange’s former girlfriend and the woman who assisted Snowden’s flight from Hong Kong to Moscow), Laura Poitras (close associate of Snowden and Glenn Greenwald) and Peter Sunde (who founded the Pirate Bay site on which WikiLeaks inititially held forth); rumination about the possibility that Snowden and Applebaum may have collaborated in the context of the “Shadow Brokers;” review of the links between the CIA-derived Broadcasting Board of Governors and Jacob Applebaum; review of Eddie Snowden’s work for the CIA at the time he chose to leak NSA documents.