Mikhail Kalugin, allegedly confirmed Russian spy.
A BBC piece just rolled through my Google news feed that strikes me as significant. I don’t see a current thread for Mark (and others) to comment on, so I thought I’d just start one.
This piece looks pretty damning to me, and comes from apparently reliable sources.
Check this out (emphasis mine):
Members of the Obama administration believe, based on analysis they saw from the intelligence community, that the information exchange claimed by Steele continued into the election.
“This is a three-headed operation,” said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated “bots”, then on Russia’s English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US “news” sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls.
The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of “microtargeting”. Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters.
“You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic,” said the former official, “you know where to target that stuff when you’re pushing it back.”
This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed.“If you need to ensure that white women in Pennsylvania don’t vote or independents get pissed in Michigan so they stay home: that’s voter suppression. You can figure what your target demographics and locations are from the voter rolls. Then you can use that to target your bot.”
This is the “big picture” some accuse the FBI of failing to see.
…
With each new drip of information, option three – the chance that this is all a giant mistake, an improbable series of coincidences – seems further out of reach.Increasingly, the American people are being asked to choose between two unpalatable versions of events: abuse of power by one president or treason that put another in the White House.
It cannot be both.
This is big, folks. We really are talking treason here.
I’m terrible at self-promotion. This is really really big. 🙂
.
Maybe somebody can recommend or comment or something so that folks can see this.
I’d really like Mark Bail to see it.
It was covered by Forbes, The Hill, and The New York Times, among other outlets.
The original scoop came from Bloomberg/BusinessWeek, with the following money quote:
This was all common knowledge at the time, and (per the NYT article linked above) not illegal.
I remember the stories you cite.
The new aspect, introduced here, is the use of a bot-net organized and controlled by Russia to target individual voters and groups of voters based lists of voters stolen by that Russian bot-net.
I agree that explicit attempts to suppress voters is nothing new (sadly). This has been a center-piece of GOP political strategy for years, operating under the deceptive guise of “Voter Identification Programs”, and “Preventing voter fraud”.
The involvement of Russian operatives in aiding and assisting these efforts is new. If it is shown that campaign operatives knew of and participated in this Russian manipulation, that is surely treason.
…(and yes, I recall our discussion regarding its merit on another thread) has compiled this report purporting to connect the dots.
This BBC report specifically addresses the “Trump dossier” that was widely reported (and discredited by pro-Trump sources) earlier.
In my view, the aspects of today’s report that are newsworthy are:
1. The detailed description of why the CIA and FBI find Christopher Steele credible, and
2. The specifics of Mikhail Kalugin — his role as a Russian spy and his role in this operation, and
3. The description, in lay terms, of how the Russian bot-net was used
This not some tabloid rag talking about pictures of prostitutes servicing Mr. Trump. This is specific, credible documentation of a weaponized and VERY repeatable campaign to actively manipulate a US election.
In my view, this piece stands apart from the Palmer report.
Was any if the information inaccurate?
If not how is this different from the Pentagon Papers (save the ability to micro target due to technology advances instead of just nationwide news coverage)
It sounds as if you didn’t read the linked piece.
It confirms that much of the dossier was accurate, to the extent that such confirmation is possible in such matters.
The Pentagon Papers did not involve foreign nations. I, frankly, don’t have a clue why you bring up the Pentagon Papers.
How French of you.
THAT would have to be the comparison involving the Pentagon Papers. If this is true, it is a real smoking gun…the campaign turning over campaign data so that Russian bots could better target their misinformation campaign. YIKES!
Bots are used on social media sites all the time. Twitter is notorious for its bots. The idea is to pollute the news atmosphere with slanted and completely fake news to advantage.
I’ve been scouring Twitter and elsewhere to find an example of U.S. media passing along Russian propaganda. I’ve seen them, but I never filed them for later use. Russia Today or Sputnik put out some sort of story and it gets picked up by a wingnut site like WND or Breitbart, and it eventually makes itself to Fox News. In some cases, Trump tweets the stories himself.
What I’m offering below should be considered unverified, but it represents the kind of things investigators are looking at:
Cambridge Analytica, microtargets voters and was hired by Trump, used data hacked from Facebook to target voters Facebook newsfeeds. Cambridge Analytics, a subsidiary of a British company that is in part owned by Alfa Bank, a Russian bank tied to the FSB. It also has ties to those freaks, the Mercer family and Steve Bannon.
… why are you, even obliquely, defending the Trump Administration? It is, ostensibly, your party he has razed and it is decidedly your ideology that he has hijacked and made the laughingstock of the entire world. Why aren’t you hopping mad? You surely seem more intent, not just in this reply, but in most of your recent replies, on pinning the greater degree of malignancy upon the Left.
Are you a Republican? Are you, at all, really conservative? Or are you just an anti-Democrats??
Are you prepared to defend the actions of the Republicans: Adam Gopnik put it best:
That’s a description of YOUR party and what they are doing at the present. What do you have to say about that? Will you continue to defend that in the guise of pointing out some purely hypothetical cupidity shining from Democrats eyes…?
..to Crassus rather than Caligula. And he got his butt kicked when he tried to do foreign policy instead of just buying Senators and elections at home. That is more germane and realistic than Caligula – progressives are drowning in hyperbolic analogies.
… there is only so much autocracy possible in a triumvirate ( and Crassus got the shortest end of that stick ). You, yet again, obliquely defend him by dismissing the impetus behind the analogy.
Maybe, you’re just not as shrewd as you think you are.
For example, it is being reported today that Susan Rice was the person requesting the unveiling of the names in the ‘accidentally’ captured conversations about the transition team and its activities. It is stated THAT was behind Nunes’ White House visit – the server there had the electronic paper trail. If that is true, it helps justify Trump’s claim. He used the word ‘wiretap’ in an anecdotal way, to mean electronic spying while Democrats rely on literal truth telling that there was no FISA warrant.
IF that is accurate, the Democrats have just trashed their ability to credibly criticize Trump’s outrageous statements. And there will be far worse that will be ignored because of it.
and MSM reporting on it, I looked at what John Schindler, former NSA counter-intelligence guy and political conservative wrote. It’s only a tweet, and I’d like to know more (I’m sure LawFare or Just Security will cover it tomorrow), but he says it’s no big deal. I respect Peter Porcupine’s “If that is accurate…” I don’t think it is, though the media will pounce on it without understanding it.
Here’s Schindler:
Not your average alt-right site.
Schindler’s valuable for his intelligence experience. I wasn’t trying to indict your sourcing, just boost his credentials.
(That’s why I include MSM after conservative news outlets. I said conservative outlets because they popped up when I googled the story.
I know I challenge you often, but I wasn’t trying to this time.
Really?
I for one didn’t necessarily take wiretap literally to begin with, but to whatever extent and by whatever method Trump thinks Obama was spying on him and his people the charge is outrageous UNLESS of course as now seems to be the case Trump people were caught up incidentally in the surveillance of foreign agents, but that begs the question what were they doing talking to foreign agents!
It’s like Podesta complaining about the dissemination of accurate information. Trump is complaining about the Obama administration doing to him what he was doing to others. (Pause for False Equivalence Rant and Ten Minutes Hate).
If one is treason, so is the other.
And off topic, shaking fist and cane, it was Carly Fiorina who ran saying that the new boots on the ground were not soldiers but electronic espionage and terrorism threatening our economy, health care, and nation. Not that the corrupt MSM gave a damn about anything but the optics of a woman running not named Hillary.
… Democrats ‘credibility.’ This is about your credibility.
Objectively, Donald Trump is a *viciously incompetent* administrator, who is heedlessly squandering the political capital and public good will of *YOUR* party and borrowing the appearance of *YOUR* ideology to implement things to which *YOU* ought to be opposed. YOU should be more enraged than any single Democrat.
You, more so than me, should be in the forefront of criticizing Donald Trump. Unless you were one of those people who, in 2003, spent more time and energy on the kerning function of the IBM selectric typewriter than in actually analyzing the draft dodging habits of your candidate… Many of them cared less about the ‘soldiers’ than they professed to, and their credibility was shot all to hell. That’s part of the reason we’re in this mess… Yeah, I’m blaming you.
That’s why I ask, again, the questions you’ve not yet answered: Are you a Republican? Are you, at all, really conservative? Or are you just an anti-Democrats??
If you really believed in the conservative cause, you, before anyone else, should be the bulwark between your party and the worst, fascistic, tendencies of people in your party. Instead, you’d rather play a game of blame the Democrats to distract from the unholy mess your entire party has become.
N/T
with Trump coordinated propaganda misinformation to suppress voter turnout in Democratic strongholds.
Fred Rich LaRiccia
because we don’t know the difference between fake news and the truth.”
FORMER FBI COUNTER INTELLIGENCE AGENT CLINT WATTS
before the Senate Intelligence Committee last week
Fred Rich LaRiccia
I’ve been working on a post, but I’ve been busy and don’t have time to finish it.
I’ve been aware of the fact that the Steele Dossier continue to be proven true. There was speculation last week that Source E was Boris Epshteyn, who left the White House in a rush.
Here’s one of the things I’ve read: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RbpBxJ3QNyvts_w16UcSSGeH7cSrXK9U3wIq0OOq-Xs/preview
My main sources on the Russia Connection are John Schindler (former NSA, political conservative), Louise Mensch (former Tory MP), the Palmer Report, Just Security, and Lawfare. Mensch lives in NYC, but for some reason, she knows what she is talking about. Schindler definitely knows what he’s talking about on espionage. The Palmer Report does a good job connecting the dots, though you have to take many of the connections as hypotheses rather than conclusions. Just Security and Lawfare are both sites dedicated to law in the fields of intelligence and national security.
This information all has the ring of truth. I understand the risks of my own confirmation bias. I hope that at least SOME American authorities are willing to pursue this evidence. Surely officials with direct access to secure sources are able to confirm or deny much of this.
I really think that the key question now is whether or not our government has the courage and integrity to confront this outright
treason.
NBC reports:
Some other things Mensch has posted re: Russia.
Insinuation that Andrew Breitbart was assassinated by Russia.
Russia is behind riots in Sweden and that they killed their own ambassador in Turkey.
A Russian agent targeted Kurt Eichenwald with a gif to cause a seizure.
Anthony Weiner was catfished by Russian agents into sexting.
Knowledge is something we construct, and I’m always looking for building materials. I don’t build something out of everything I collect. Sometimes materials sit around in my workshop until I can make something out of them. Sometimes I never use the materials.
Mensch is a source of building materials, hypotheses, some information. If she supposes something, I don’t consider it true. I consider it as something I could use if it fits my understanding.
An idiot would read Mensch, take her as an authority, and credit what she says based on her authority. An idiot would read The Nation the same way. If the idiot was a liberal, he would credit The Nation as a source, and with a good measure of confirmation bias, accept on authority. If he did so, he would be wrong. The Nation has been misleading its readers on Russia for years.
Kurt Eichenwald was, in fact, induced into a seizure by a gif. Some in Maryland was arrested for it. Were the Russians involved? I have no evidence that they were. You have no evidence that they weren’t. Is this the kind of thing Russia would do? Yes. Does that mean they did? No. Informational value: this is the first attack of its kind. I can think of a lot of ways the Russians could have been involved. Either they were or weren’t involved. Either there will be enough public information to draw a conclusion or not. If not, the information sits in my workshop, never to be used.
You cite her as a main source of your information and one who “knows what she is talking about.” I spent 5 minutes gathering a small percentage of the information she has put out showing her to be a conspiracy theorist.
Similarly, the Palmer Report is basically Breitbart Left – running with poorly sourced articles or opinion pieces presented as reporting specifically designed for political effect. Palmer’s earlier site, Daily News Bin, was just there to push Clinton during the campaign.
When sources have been widely and consistently misleading, choosing only the handful of things you like takes away a lot of credibility, especially when those sources are relying on their own unnamed sources that can’t be independently verified.
I agree with Masha Gessen on these issues. We’re in a conspiracy trap and chasing all of these theories (while also not reporting when they are debunked) is doing further damage to both our politics and to our media infrastructure, which was already in a pitiful state.
read it. I’ve seen Matt Taibbi writing similar things. I can agree to disagree with you. I’m acquainted with your POV on the CIA, FBI, etc., and I’m not surprised that you prefer Gessen. I was typing a comment, not swearing an oath of support to Mensch. If I were choose my words more carefully, I would have mentioned her bullshit too.
The bigger problem I have with what you say here is that you conveniently ignore what I wrote about how I use sources. That’s why I said “Informational fundamenatlism?” You’re assuming that I take a source as an authority and believe it unquestioningly. You do that with Gessen, which is, I suspect, more a matter of confirmation bias than any form of empirical pursuit of the truth on your part.
I’m not looking for authoritative opinions. I don’t think I’ve ever cited Mensch as a source in a post, but she has pointed me in the direction of things to look for and think about. Same with the Palmer Report. I have used text from that site when it summarized what I thought. You assume, however, that I’m too stupid to read it without determining its relative value or validity.
Gessen is more subtle, but she’s nothing more than a left-wing bullshit artist here. She’s right about the Trump Administration’s and actions, but incredibly ignorant about Trump’s connections to Russia. Her reasoning is shit: she predicts what Republican constituents are “likely” to think. No evidence. In fact, the constituents of many GOP reps will care. And this ongoing scandal is actually effective in derailing some of Trump’s and the GOP’s agenda. Nunes got one protest about Russia so far. It will be interesting to see if that continues.
The FBI, and House and Senate Intelligence Committees are investigating the connections of Trump, Flynn, Manafort, Ross, Tillerson, and others to Russia. Trump’s connection to Russian mobsters and oligarchs are well-known and documented. More is being investigated. Calling these investigations a conspiracy theory is polemical. There are all kinds of connections here. The press is doing what it’s supposed to do. So is the Senate.
Here’s another Gessen beauty:
Honestly, this is so fucking stupid that it beggars the imagination. What’s making it difficult to combat Trump’s decisions are the GOP-owned government and the fact that he’s shattered every norm in American politics. It’s xenophobic, however, to be concerned about our president’s multifarious connections to Russian mobsters and Russian oligarchs? It’s xenophobic when what’s happening with the Trump Administration is not much different than the strategies used in Central and Eastern Europe? Might as well read Katrina Vandenheuvel’s husband on this.
I apologize if I’m irritable here. I’m irritable in general at the moment. It’s not you.
I’m not sure what you mean by this, but if the point is that I don’t inherently trust the CIA, FBI, or other government intelligence, you bet your ass I don’t. If you do, I can suggest a verrrry long list of things to read. And as far as agreeing with Gessen on this particular point, I’m ok with going with a notable Russian dissident who acknowledges the connections re: Trump and Russia and the problems they entail while pushing back on the conspiracy mongering rather than relying on the work of well-documented conspiracy theorists.
She doesn’t cite polls, but why are you so confident she is wrong on this. Here’s a poll from a couple days ago:
Poll after poll show little evidence that Republican voters will start jumping ship any time soon – on Russia or anything else.
On the quote you believe is “so fucking stupid that it beggars the imagination,” I think you are being ridiculous. It’s xenophobic (and also dumb) to focus on Russia as the sole source of our problems whether it’s giving the election to Trump, controlling policy, kompromat on every cabinet member, false flag operations everywhere, etc. etc. It’s also kind of funny historically because it makes the US out as a totally clean actor with respect to other countries and their operations and elections.
Absolutely move ahead with the investigations. The problem is that some are inflaming an appetite for Russia news to the extent that every allegation, no matter how dubious, is treated as fact, and Russia becomes the scapegoat for almost every problem. Maybe all of this will lead to a truly solid case for which Trump will face impeachment. I’m not at all confident on that. I’d wager that the chances of impeachment with a Republican Congress is less than 1%. And as each day goes by and Democrats choose to focus on this rather than other things, I’m less and less convinced they can pull off big gains in ~19 months. There’s more than enough to go after Trump (and the Republicans) – namely their outrageous incompetence, terrible policies, and broken promises. But hey, maybe we’ll get Cold War 2 out of all this.
I’m well aware of the failings, of omission and commission, of the intelligence community. I don’t apologize for them, and I don’t object to your lack of trust. What I do disagree with is your apparent black and white thinking on them, though honestly, I don’t really care to argue with you about it.
Take Gessen at her dissident word if you want. Her op-ed was stupid. I’m too busy to dissect. If you think it’s great, write a post on it for chrissakes. If she weren’t a Russian dissident going against the tide, no one would give a crap. He reasoning is specious, and it is newsworthy because of who she is and her contrarianism than her reasoning.
Who’s focusing on Russia as the sole source of our problems? That’s a straw man. And xenophobic? Who’s xenophobic? How does one prove he isn’t xenophobic? It’s not xenophobic to investigate tampering with our election and compromised members of the White House.
It makes it ironic, perhaps. But so what? Does that mean we don’t respond to hostile actions.
Your chances are off by a lot. Bookies are saying there’s a 55% chance Trump doesn’t finish his term.
If you have a problem with something I’ve written, bring it up then. Better yet, do some work yourself and do a post on Gessen’s minority opinion and why you support. Instead of picking fights with me in the comments, put your money where you mouth is.
My grades are due Tuesday. I have a select board meeting tomorrow, and I’m currently in trouble with my boss (meeting Tuesday AM). I just don’t have time to argue with you.
I’d take those 55% odds that he doesn’t finish the term. Those odds are for resignation or impeachment combined, though. I’d bet that he doesn’t finish. A Republican House impeaching him, however, is a different thing entirely.
I’m engaging you in the comments, which is the point of the comments. You citing Mensch and Palmer Report as a main source of your information (and someone who “knows what she is talking about”) is problematic – as would citing Breitbart as a main source.
I get their emails. They are a bit too sensationalized and put the worst possible spin on anti-Trump material, but there are sourced links to mainstream media throughout their articles.
You’ve completely ignored how I use things and focused on the sources, not how I use them. I didn’t cite them to prove something. I typed in a hurry and overstated my enthusiasm for Louise Mensch. I find the level of your criticism monochromatic.
I would cite Breitbart if it had actual information. I’ve seen writers quote information noted in some pretty weird places like Daily Caller or WND. If I’m writing about something seriously, I either note the source’s questionability or use it as an index to find a more original sources. That’s what I do with the Palmer Report with one exception, which Tom rightly called me on.
You’re not edifying or convincing me because you aren’t responding to what I write. You’re picking the details you need to prove how right you think you are. Use someone else as your straw man, or get off your ass, write a post, and bring everyone else into it.
Pretty well, I think. Media Matters.
She did what her role demanded she do. Unmasking is not leaking.
The relentless efforts of the Trumpists and their GOP collaborators to shift the focus from what their people did to who spilled the beans reveals their treasonous corruption. Their guys committed treason. They know it. They want to circle the wagons rather than focus on the truth.
Another dreadful and shameful episode for an already disgusting GOP.
Even the President himself just tweets cheap misdirections anytime someone gets close. First the ridiculous Obama wire tap, now Hillary cheated on debates and the Russians met with her! I predict we won’t see any action on this until we have a Democratic house-which is looking likelier by the day.