I’m surprised by the seeming lack of skepticism at BMG over Gen. James “there are definitely WMD in Iraq” Clapper’s claim that the Russkies hacked the DNC servers etc. and that there’s secret evidence just trust him. Or possibly I’ve only run into non-skeptics here, and haven’t conversed with the skeptics.
The one piece of “evidence” that I’ve seen that Russia did this is a phishing email that Podesta fell for. This phishing email was the least-sophisticated thing imaginable, simply a faked Google email:
This is the most obvious way imaginable to gain access to a password, has been done by many hackers for about as long as the Internet’s been “a thing”. A clever teenager could whip it up in a few hours. How this counts as evidence of Russian hacking… I’m not getting it.
In any case, the reason that I’m writing this is to give some visibility to a memo released yesterday by 20+ very seasoned veteran intelligence professionals, including folks like the former Technical Director of the NSA. They too are skeptical of the Obama administration’s claims on here, and are asking for proof.
A Demand for Russian ‘Hacking’ Proof
From the memo:
We urge you to authorize public release of any tangible evidence that takes us beyond the unsubstantiated, “we-assess” judgments by the intelligence agencies. Otherwise, we – as well as other skeptical Americans – will be left with the corrosive suspicion that the intense campaign of accusations is part of a wider attempt to discredit the Russians and those – like Mr. Trump – who wish to deal constructively with them.
…
You told Alexander you were reluctant to “compromise sources and methods.” We can understand that concern better than most Americans. We would remind you, though, that at critical junctures in the past, your predecessors made judicious decisions to give higher priority to buttressing the credibility of U.S. intelligence-based policy than to protecting sources and methods. With the Kremlin widely accused by politicians and pundits of “an act of war,” this is the kind of textbook case in which you might seriously consider taking special pains to substantiate serious allegations with hard intelligence – if there is any.
During the Cuban missile crisis, for instance, President Kennedy ordered us to show highly classified photos of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba and on ships en route, even though this blew sensitive detail regarding the imagery intelligence capabilities of the cameras on our U-2 aircraft.
…
Our VIPS colleague William Binney, who was Technical Director of NSA and created many of the collection systems still in use, assures us that NSA’s “cast-iron” coverage – particularly surrounding Julian Assange and other people associated with WikiLeaks – would almost certainly have yielded a record of any electronic transfer from Russia to WikiLeaks. Binney has used some of the highly classified slides released by Edward Snowden to demonstrate precisely how NSA accomplishes this using trace mechanisms embedded throughout the network. [See: “U.S. Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims,” Dec. 12, 2016.]
I suspect that this will change few minds, if any, but it might be interesting to some.
n/t
…but when you have 17 intelligence agencies in agreement, the known animosity of Julian Assange toward HRC, and a pile of circumstantial evidence I would rate what we have so far as “clear and convincing”.
Many of the 17 intelligence agencies are not in a position to verify independently the claim of Russian hacking. Why would anyone ask them?
There is known animosity toward Julian Assange by the intelligence community. The chance to blacken his achievements by associating him with a foreign adversary may be a factor here.
And if Putin is supposedly pulling the strings on his puppet Trump, why did Trump operate against Russian policy at the UN Security Council vote on Israeli settlements? Ron Dermer, the Israeli ambassador claims to have information about the decision of the American government to abstain. That sounds like information that he could only get by covert means.
Did Trump leak classified information to Dermer? Did Dermer have an asset inside the White House, and give info to Trump?
Circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but there seems to be a pile of it.
Beyond helping elect Trump, working with Putin, endangering American operatives abroad and assaulting women, what are those again?
For your conspiracy theory to be true, weakening an overseas nuisance is apparently worth the massive gamble of institutional credibility and international instability accusing the Russians will arouse not to mention the dark pall of illegitimacy this casts on the legitimacy of the President and the election that put him in office. They would do this just to “blacken” Assange?
All of you got to get a grip on reality.
Have you forgotten?
n/t
. . . and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time.”
Ellsburg knew what he was doing and knew the context of his documents as he was part of the process. Assange is just being reckless and is not doing it for love of a country that isn’t even home for him.
n/t
because that entire comment consists of his quote.
which is a false argument ; a subtle tricky, superficially plausible but generally fallacious method of thinking.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Someone has to leak it, and someone else has to trust the leaker and publish the information. Otherwise we find out 50 years later.
Go to Congress, or at very least give some context.
n/t
If Iraq/Afghanistan, they may or may not have known all the details of a war largely run by the executive, and if Congress doesn’t act go to the press. Ditto if we are talking about Ellsburg and the Pentagon Papers. There was no excuse whatsoever for Assange to have leaked DNC/Clinton communications and he was the absolute wrong conduit for national security leaks.
He’s not the issue. I don’t like Assange at all, but people who make him the issue (I don’t mean you) are using his flaws to sidestep the issues.
I don’t think he should have released the DNC stuff either, but he did. Have you read the stuff? I didn’t find it damaging at all.
Again, there’s no right conduit. America has become obsessed with secrecy, to its detriment. If it MUST be Wikileaks who exposes stuff like war crimes because no one else is doing so, I’ll take it.
The war crimes video is the only example you can point to where he provided a public good. Otherwise he helped destabilize large swaths of the Mideast, expose moderate Iranian and North Korean diplomats to their government, hurt China’s ability to wrangle NK and expose hundreds of covert American agents putting their lives on the line to protect us for what? Embarrassing Clinton and “exposing” a war crime that was already being investigated anyway? Has he exposed any of the vastly more deliberate and illegal war crimes his Russian sponsors are conducting in Syria? In Ukraine? In Chechnya?
And you don’t think this hasn’t caused our government to double down on secrecy? State lost whatever cache it had left to the Defense department which is far less equipped and accountable, to run our foreign policy since the perception is they do a better job plugging leaks and their staff are more
Loyal. Legitimate whistleblowers are now far less likely to spill the beans on actual issues of transparency because these nihilist clowns have been playing with fire they don’t care to control.
Leaking a specific paper showing that internally the war is lost is totally
different from leaking every single secret diplomatic cable in one fell swoop undermining any ability to conduct candid diplomacy. The worst thing Obama did this week was pardon Manning who should stay in jail.
We should all play for Team America-and this intentional undermining of our security services has severely endangered us and possibly compromised the integrity of our elections. Putins long game is to destabilize the world order and erode confidence in liberal regimes while funding populists on both the left and right to embrace the chaos. You’ll have far less press freedoms under President Trump, and a foreign policy that enables the regime most hostile to the press on the planet. Good job! Assange, Manning, Snowden and Trump are useful idiots and I’ve been pretty consistent for about eight years here warning against Russia’s sophisticated cyber warfare and propaganda war.
Snowden, from the NSA, and Wikileaks also published State Department material. According to you, this caused the State Department to “lose whatever cache it had left to the Defense Department.”
How does that make any sense? Why would anyone come to the conclusion that “they do a better job of plugging leaks. . . .” after the Manning leaks of Defense Department material?
I’ve had her exact clearance with access to the same stream of information. As a military attaché to a DOS subdepartment she was an employee of the DOD, but the actual cables she leaked came from the DOS feed. Diplomats rely on having access to the stream of cables and communiques flowing from global Embassies. And it’s essential this candid analysis and recommendations stay secret and not open to the general public.
I worry this culture of access and coordination has been even more siloed and closed from coordination in light of this. More diplomacy and foreign policy will be conducted by the DOD, CIA and DIA which is a troubling trend for us all.
Since he didn’t also do it for the RNC (since his Russian suppliers didn’t give him that information and apparently Hillary is a greater enemy of open source information than Trump which is ridiculous), it’s hard to see how this is an example of the public seeing the elite for their nefariousness. Instead, it was clearly done to undermine the public trust in one candidate at the expense of another. The timing was deliberate to impede the convention and give fodder to the #NeverHillary Stein and Sanders conspiracy theorists.
I partially addressed this upthread, and like I said, I wouldn’t have released the DNC stuff.
The public didn’t really benefit from the Sony hack either, but plenty of news outlets ran with that.
Lest we forget, HRC mishandled her email story VERY badly. She made it news, she kept the story alive. The leak, whether we like or not, generated intense interest.
The MEDIA mishandled the email story badly by breathlessly reporting it for 500 days straight as if there were a new scandalous revelation for each of those days.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-31806907
…and some of that was classified post hoc.
the email server issue. The basic formula for handling a PR crisis: 1) acknowledge the problem immediately 2) answer questions 3) move on. I’m far from being a PR specialist, but Clinton should have known how to handle this. She didn’t. The issue may have lingered, but the fact she didn’t address it head-on in the beginning made her look like she was hiding something and guaranteed that it would linger.
That’s a domestic official investigated by a domestic security agency. It’s several order of magnitudes different than a foreign intelligence service actively interfering in our elections. Her mistake was routine and has happened before with officials in both parties, foreign interference in our elections is a new and very troubling development. It’s really important we take our partisan blinders off and examine the evidence on a case by case basis. These are two entirely different cases.
I don’t recall even one other official who conducted all email business from a private server in their home, or otherwise under their personal control. Some Republicans have done things in this direction (Bush admin) and they should have been taken to task by those who are supposed to be fighting them.
…but of course the VWRC wasn’t satisfied and it rubbed off on some on the left.
I supported Clinton from the beginning.
I learned that my monthly donations to the party were being used in a manner that I find troubling, unfair, undemocratic, and in a word sleazy. I have since stopped direct donations to the party but still donate directly to candidates I support. That his how this particular member of the public benefited.
Keep in mind, it costs nothing for party staffers to send each other private emails talking smack about one of their candidates.
Sorry, exposing some incredibly trivial “treachery” against Bernie Sanders doesn’t justify a massive cyberattack on our electoral system by a foreign power. Just as being upset with American foreign policy doesn’t justify jeopardizing the lives of our diplomats and covert operatives abroad. Some of whom are my former colleagues. Just as being leery of Hillary’s hawkishness doesn’t justify defending the global alt right in the form of Putin and Assange.
n/t
It was primarily a reply to John’s comment upthread that confirming his grievance against the DNC was worth the tremendous costs of foreign hacking. It also amazes me how ignorant the public is about foreign policy-which used to be an issue most Americans had familiarity with and real ideals around. Or how cynical some of us are about our own government. It’s not out to get us.
(By the way Bob made no such argument.)
I invite you to re-read the comments you’ve made in this thread. You’re against the leak; fine. But the American experiment is based on open government. The security state is out of control, classifies too much (Just ask HRC — she said so when it finally suited her to say so), and treats everything associated with the Global War on Terror like our highest security priority.
It’s a blanket for incredible amounts of corruption and frankly some pretty evil acts. You want to argue over who’s “legitimate” and “loyal” before they leak information? I don’t, I want to know as much as possible to prevent the corruption and the evil.
…that the burden of proof fall on those arguing for classification, but the credibility and motives of the source absolutely matter to me.
Anyone willing to work, as Assange and Snowden have publicly said, with Putin or claims that society is more open than this one has zero credibility with me. He’s killing journalists while our President insults them on twitter. Huge difference.
And I don’t see what corruption or evil was exposed by the illegal hacking of the DNC but russian intelligence. The burden is on you to prove what the benefit was Jim. Unless you think a few staffers joking about Bernie was proof of some grand conspiracy to deny him the nomination (and not the millions korenDemocrats who voted for Clinton).
All three of you are giving far more benefit of the doubt to an accused sexual assailant who espouses white nationalist views than your own government. That’s a huge problem.
Try to focus on what we’re discussing Jconway and try not to get distracted by Julian Assange’s sexual history. It annoyed me that Assange had such an obvious dislike of Clinton, but what was published during the election, from what I can tell, was authentic.
Clapper, on the other hand, lied to Congress when it was convenient, and still was picked to write the report on this whole thing. That suggests to me that the people who picked him were not overly concerned with finding the truth.
I don’t take anyone’s word for it and unlike you, I don’t read minds. I look at what is on the public record, and I see more lying from the DNI than the head of Wikileaks.
But in the period before the election, the intelligence community had a long record of failure. Wikileaks, at least at first, is pretty reliable.
I grant that our IC is more right than wrong, and it’s their failures that got noticed, but they are wrong a lot. The Cold War is the ultimate example: they deliberated exaggerated the Soviet threat, for decades.
They fell for phony armies and phony tanks in the late 1970’s, partially justifying the Reagan build-up. But they also saw it collapsing and pegged Gorbachev as a reformer. Part of the reason Bob Gates was opposed by Kennedy for CIA in the early 90’s was due to internal dissent that he was too much of a hardliners.
They are working on much better evidence here. Where’s your evidence to cast doubt on this?
Back to the original point. We don’t know how good their evidence is. They haven’t shown it to us.
They can’t just dangle “The election was hacked” without proof.
Read the fuckin report.
I immediately regretted the curt comment. Still, what level of proof do you
Require? What evidence do you have that proves they didn’t do this? What credible sources of criticism can you link to that aren’t longtime opponents of Hillary Clinton or American foreign policy? Greenwald, Assange and Snowden also have axes to grind and their stance on this is hardly objective. The IC analysis and the third party analysis Tom links to verifies six facts:
-They had the means
-They had the motive
-Theyve done it before and been caught
-Wikileaks had the motive but not the means
-Wikileaks leaked the DNC emails
-The chain they got it from had a Russian origin
It’s therefore a reasonable conclusion that Russian intelligence services were behind this. That will never be foolproof proof since the IC can’t release classified information without compromising existing missions and operatives.
I might add the DNI has never done this before. Ever. The Iraq stuff happened before the DNI and didn’t have nearly as much consensus as this. Sometimes if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s a duck.
– I am perfectly willing to believe Russia did this. Just show me why the IC thinks so (they don’t have to show me everything).
– The IC absolutely MUST be taken with a grain of salt. I don’t consider this arguable, and if you do, there we part.
– “Inside Russia” or even “Russian hackers” is a really broad brush. Putin seems like the most likely actor, but “Russia” alone does not implicate him.
– Wikileaks doesn’t matter. The information got out. Glenn Greenwald, jerk though he is, certainly has clean hands on this particular issue.
– Barack Obama was willing to share the information, Mitch McConnell was not. What does that mean?
And … I think that’s it.
Did you read the full 35 pages of the report? It’s public and I’ve linked to it elsewhere on the thread. The report shows in detail why they concluded this. Do you object to their reasoning? If so, why?
Taking the IC with a grain of salt
I don’t see anyone here arguing not to. I am saying, they are more credible on this subject with their analysis than any of the actors or evidence currently arguing the counterpoint. And citing past mistakes does not automatically indict their current analysis or conclusions. Take everything with a grain of salt and treat every issue on a case by case basis. No one absolves them of their errors, no one should use their errors as proof that they never get it right. They get some things right and some things wrong, on this question they look far closer to right than wrong and far closer to right than those proposing the case that they are wrong.
Inside Russia doesn’t mean Putin/em>
It does make it more likely than not. Vibesmens third party analysis demonstrates that Wikileaks isn’t capable of releasing this information on their own. Just as they needed inside men like Snowden and Manning for their other big scoops, you need someone with high intelligence credentials capable of doing this sophisticated attack and knowing how to direct this information strategically to maximize benefit to Russia. It is far less likely an independent hacker coming from Russia had the means or motive to do that as well as the Russian intelligence service which has been caught pursuing the same strategy with the same tactics to influence other elections. As the report carefully lay out.
Wikileaks doesn’t matter
I am not sure what this point is referring to. My point is it’s the means of conveying information it clearly did not have the capability of obtaining. It’s unlikely someone from the DNC flew to Russia and leaked the information. Far more likely Russian intelligence had the means and motive.
Obama/McConnell
That he put the short term needs of his party ahead of the long term interests of his country. As he has repeatedly done time and time again. This is really a your weakest point. He’d rather repeal Obamacare than protect Eastern Europe. And sadly you’ll see a lot of Republicans make the same calculus.
but there is actually a free press in Russia now. Is it perfect? No, but they have rain.ru which is sort of the Fox news of Russia which is contstantly jabbing at Putin and the oligarchs. And RadioMoscow is really quite independent, much as our NPR. It appears that the professors you had in college were artifacts from the days of the Cold War. I suggest you do a little research and tighten up those generalities that you throw around about Russia.
freedom. They haven’t killed any journalists in a while. I know your opinion is fact, but here’s one source that would disagree with you. (For the life of me, I don’t get the appeal Russia has for you conservatives).
https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-press/freedom-press-2016
This post was about whether we can be sure that the election was hacked by the Russians, given the evidence released so far.
Assange came up because Christopher claimed that Assange’s antipathy toward Clinton is evidence that he worked with the Russians. I brought up the undisputed antipathy toward Wikileaks and Assange on the part of the intelligence community.
Whether we should all hate Wikileaks isn’t the question. Did Wikileaks work with the Russians to undermine the elections? Or was the intelligence community inclined to link Assange with Putin because of their own dislike of Wikileaks?
And the argument you make is that Assange is a terrible person because he worked with the Russians in a “massive cyberattack.”
So your proof that he worked with the Russians is your claim that he worked with the Russians. He may or may not have–I think there are g arguments for both sides.
I don’t consider it a good argument when you use phrases from the McCarthy era.
I’m really starting to feel you, manny and Jim didn’t even read the report. It barely mentions Assange but spends a lot of time analyzing how the GRU and FSB used hacking to disrupt civil governments and elections in other countries and how they could use those here. The FBI did trace the hacking to Russian servers-so fan we at least agree it’s not some fat kid in New Jersey? We know it was Russians, and typically hacking of this sophistication only occurs at the upper echelons of intelligence work.
Most third party cyber analysts conclude that Assange did not have the capability to gather this information, so it’s safe to say someone passed it to him, likely a Russian intelligence officer. Is this certain beyond a resonsbake doubt? No, and that’s not a standard we will ever have access to information to make. Is it certain with a preponderance of the evidence? I would say yes.
The intelligence committee’s antipathy toward Assange provides a motive to show Wikileaks in as bad a light as possible. And the DNI has lied to Congress before when he feels the motivation.
That alone doesn’t disprove the Putin-Assange connection, but it should make us a little more skeptical.
To stock all the straw men you people are tossing about. There was nothing “trivial” about the straightforward bias of the committee in favor of Clinton and against Sanders – And ANYONE else who might get in the way. This does not justify the attack and nowhere have I said it did. YOU asked
And I answered.
Imagine that the committee was not biased, operated under the rules as understood by all. The “hacking” would have exposed nothing.
But putting this on the Sanders people or the Russians is just more Clinton garbage, blaming others for exposing their moral lapses. Thank goodness those two are gone.
DNC having its thumb on the scales for Clinton. No question. There’s no reason why you should show your displeasure with them by not contributing.
You’re wrong when you say its Clinton people blaming Russia or Sanders. Both certainly had an effect on Clinton’s loss as did Clinton being a lousy candidate who ran a lousy campaign. (I supported her from the beginning and expected better). The statisticians say Clinton’s drops in the polls coincided with Comey’s releases on the emails. There are always multiple factors in an election loss.
The Russia Connection is a serious. Did it tip the election? Probably not, but like I said, there a lot of factors.
I sent the money, in good faith, for the party to use at its discretion and in accordance with the rules, and the rules state that prior to the results of a primary, the party is to have NO official bias. Clearly it did. That’s all.
…the email exchanges were at best UNofficial!
That the DNC is rigged, so nominating FDR Democrats over Third Wayers will require some serious adjustments.
He indirectly aided Trump and probably did so without the candidates consent since he knew that would destabilize US foreign policy, the EU, and NATO. He has close ties to Israel through their ex-pat community and Netanyahu who largely supports his agenda in Syria and a denuclearized Iran. That matters far more than symbolic resolutions, embassy locations and the Arab/Israeli conflict which doesn’t effect him.
At the end of the day he can tolerate a President closer to Tel Aviv who is far less close to Warsaw, Vilinus, Berlin and Brussels.
The UNSC vote against Israel is a symbolic move the Russians make to show solidarity with their Muslim allies, citizens and neighbors and doesn’t directly affect their real ties which include deep military and trading ties. He would love to take advantage of the low ebb to move Israel closer to Moscow and already has under Obama. But Ukraine is their backyard and it’s worth exchanging a foe on an issue that doesn’t matter to them for a friend on a whole lot of other issues they care about far more.
That’s a new approach.
The intelligence community’s animus toward Assange is an established fact. It has to be considered as a factor–no one is claiming that as the only factor.
Beyond the two or three agencies that actually do spy on Moscow, the opinion of the other agencies is not very important. The constant refrain of “17 intelligence agencies” strikes a false note.
I do a nice little trick where I can make a coin disappear by rubbing it on my sleeve, but that’s the extent of my magical powers. I don’t claim to read people’s minds. All I can do is look at what is on the record, and point out where the record doesn’t seem to support the conclusions. I think there are still questions to be asked.
The (reported) unanimity is suspicious. There must be some disagreement, at least on minor points.
Also, to be honest I had no idea we had 17 intelligence agencies. That seems like way too many.
These guys never agree on anything! To have 17 agency heads agree on this, debrief the CODEL leadership and the outgoing and incoming administrations is also unprecedented. The evidence is overwhelming as is the consensus. Releasing it to the public likely will compromise sources and endanger covert operations to gather this data.
Comparing this to WMD’s like Trump is, is intellectually lazy and dishonest for reasons I’ve already gone over. Many, many active intelligence agents publicly disputed the Bush administration on WMD’s. Pretending otherwise let’s him off the hook for his war and gives Trump and his Russian allies cover they don’t deserve.
An assessment was made by the DNI, Gen. James “I lied to Congress” Clapper that the Russians are responsible, and he is (unbelievably!) In charge of 17 intelligence agencies. But I’m pretty sure an assessment was not made independently by the 17 agencies. Please correct me if I’m wrong about this (hopefully with sources, of course).
It details that in fact, the entire IC stands behind this as the independent assessment of the three lead agencies and their subdepartments coming together to make a clear uniform assessment. So yes all the agencies came together under the DNI to issue this report. That’s by definition what the DNI is, and the reason we have one JimC is because lack of such coordination led to 9/11 and Iraq related intel failures.
Their evidence is sourced and quite detailed, to the extent that your standard of independence seems to be “has nothing to do with the US government”, then no you won’t find an objective assessment precisely because no journalist has the scope and resources of a major powers intelligence agency or access to all its classified information.
So, short of giving up the state secrets, something you apparently endorse since you praise Assange repeatedly, how can the government definitively prove this hacking occurred to your satisfaction? When you disputed that the objective analysts are subjective partisans with axes to grind (and apparently for Hillary), who in your judgment is credible enough to end your skepticism?
Moreover, what sources do you have that aren’t shills for either Putin or Trump that justify your skepticism and what information are they citing?
The proof is on you, just as Iranian on climate deniers, to demonstrate why this overwhelming consensus is some kind of conspiracy and not simply the hard truth backed by evidence.
Or as much of it as a person without serious security clearances can read. And while I don’t think there’s any reason to doubt that the Russians hacked the DNC — something I base less on the intelligence assessments, to be honest, than on the fact that apparently the system was badly secured, and any service with the relevant capabilities would have been negligent not to go for it — I continue to be baffled at the general willingness to take a report that says, over and over, that “this version does not include the full supporting information” to back its various conclusions as being the same sort of thing as a hypothetical report that says, “We’ve got at least as much evidence for this as there is for anthropogenic climate change, here it is, you can check our work.”
The government likely can’t definitively prove that the Russians did this hacking to any skeptical member of the public’s satisfaction, because the problem about sources and methods is a real one. (That there are going to be skeptics is probably an inevitable cost of some of the failures of our intelligence services and political control over them during the past few decades.) This report may very well be the best they can reasonably give us. I just don’t see the point in pretending that there’s any more there than there actually is.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, not ” if a lot of people believe something extraordinary, you should just trust them.”
Has the intelligence professionals pointed out in there that long, in the past when extraordinary claims were made by our government, they released evidence that, by its nature, revealed things about our intelligence-gathering capabilities. In this instance, we’re making very series claims about a country that has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons, etcetera. I think that this rises to the level of extraordinary claims
As to the 17 agencies that agreed with their boss’s assessment… can you imagine them saying otherwise? ,”Sounds good” is different than “we independently investigated and came to the same conclusion”.
of Sagan’s Law.
The standards for actionable intelligence differ from those of pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, which Sagan was referring to. Journalism, which the Washington post, has different standards of evidence as does the law, which has more to do with justice than truth.
The intelligence agencies are NEVER going to show all their cards. The best the public is going to going to mediated, hopefully through people we trust. This is the reality we live in every day. We make decisions on what we think we know, consciously or unconsciously.
Doesn’t require great evidence, and we should just trust people like Clapper and the organizations he runs to tell us the truth before said accusations are made.
I feel much better, thank you.
I answered your question and now you invent another objection. Your dislike of Hillary and the US security establishment is outweighing your judgment here. The IC doesn’t invent intelligence to benefit one political candidate over another; it doesn’t invent intelligence to justify policy it recommends policies that the objective intelligence justifies.
Plenty of active CIA agents including Valerie Plame and Richard Clarke dissented publicly from George Tenant’s recommendations to go to war. They did not dissent from the intelligence. Even war opponents like Scowcroft and Clarke conceded the intelligence consensus. This is why we needed inspections-and had they been allowed to continue they would’ve confirmed the program had ended and war was not required. It’s Bush’s call-not the DNI or James Clapper who you lazily throw in with people he didn’t serve with-that got us to war.
You probably won’t get it. Then again, Trump may have taken a $100 million payment from Russian mafia figures linked to Putin to save his eponymous company. Thus, his deference to the dictator. You probably won’t find proof of that either, even though it may also be true. In the end, you have to judge based on results. At the moment, it looks like Trump has been on his knees to Putin from Day One. However, he hasn’t actually done anything yet. We’ll see if appearances become reality. That is likely to be the best proof you’ll get.
This information is mostly for James who is buying the love-in between Trump and Putin. Many of the Russians I talk with on a daily basis agree with Trump’s nativism. Just as with Walmart here in the US you can go into any department store in Russia, even all across Siberia and practically all the products have been made in China. As in our Rust Belt, there are thousands of boarded up factories. I have seen them In Kaliningrad in the West to Omsk in the East. And all of my friends there have these low-paying service and sales jobs as we do here. No one really has enough money to buy decent products, My best friends in Omsk went bankrupt because people could not afford to pay for the German kitchenware that they were selling. So you can take it from me that Putin will now be under pressure to improve the lot of the average Russian and to stop fawning over the oligarchs. I can guarantee you, James, the CIA does not have a clue as to what will really happen in Russia. The whole Trump/Putin meme is a joke.
…you are just about the last person I would expect to defend Russia. Why should we believe you know better than the CIA?
the track record. Go to the CIA building which is filled with desk-bound bureaucrats. Do they have any, any people who actually live in foreign countries? At least people who are in tune with what people are thinking? Let me take you up to the sixth floor of the CIA building where they serve gourmet dinners)))))
A few hundred men and women gave their lives in the field
for their country without any of us knowing their names. They aren’t deskbound hacks. Our military and intelligence services have made mistakes and committed errors-they are fallible. This evidence isn’t infallible-but it’s highly probable and more credible than any you have countered with in this thread.
to downrate the truth. As a teacher you should know better. I stated facts, not opinions.
the CIA. I read a book and I know some history too.
What I don’t know is how much the CIA actually does well. We know they missed the collapse of the USSR. We know about the Bay of Pigs. We know about their activities in Central America. Given the size of the organization, and knowing what I know about organizations, I think they accomplish more than their historic failures would suggest.
It’s nice to know your opinions are facts.
factories, stores awash in Chinese products, low wages and lack of concern for the average citizen are opinions? Look here at home and you probably missed the same signs of discontent that led to Trump’s election. You are from middle America, you should know better. I will talk to you again after the French elections later on this year.))))))
about?
I made a comment on the CIA.
Naturally, you responded, “you think that boarded up factories, stores awash in Chinese products, low wages and lack of concern for the average citizen are opinions?”
…is that it is exactly the type of agency where their successes must be downplayed publicly, but if they fail, the whole world knows it.
The CIA has lots of its own secrets to protect. We can’t possibly know all their secret agendas and motivations. Good point, Christopher.
Per the Associated Press, via PBS:
and:
And Assange’s recent political history is, shall we say, interesting:
Geopolitically, who would benefit, consistent with the politics noted above?
I would think it would be in Putin’s interest as the hegemon of a global (and growing) chauvinistic Right to have such an ally, who was instrumental in electing one of his sycophants to the Presidency.
another exploding head here on BMG. Yes Putin is a hegemon of the growing worldwide Right. Trump is not one of his sycophants.
Hi. I read a forensic breakdown of that email on Twitter that demonstrated why it’s almost certainly from Russia. The thread starts here:
https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/816621553643294720
It’s a condensed and easier to read version of the information here.
https://www.secureworks.com/research/threat-group-4127-targets-google-accounts
Now we have third party sources in addition to the IC. What evidence have their critics offered up again?
I’ve been involved in a while.
Have a good day.
I think some slack needs to be cut here.
They will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
MARK TWAIN
Words of wisdom from my favorite humorist.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
even if you call it an ‘alternate fact’.:)
Fred Rich LaRiccia
Link
Our intelligence agencies are awesome.
The most credible of sources! CIA did torture on Bush orders but Obama sacked everyone involved. And how does this disprove their findings on the hacking again? Your civil libertarian mistrust of the CIA is well placed, your skepticism of their findings here is not.
n/t
Sy Hersh, mofos!