Trump on releasing the JFK records

[Cliff Varnell]

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/03/as-dnc-hacked-itself-conspiracy-theory-collapses-key-backer-claim-exposed-as-uk-xxxxx/

As 'DNC Hacked Itself' Conspiracy Theory Collapses, Key Backer Of Claim Exposed As UK T-r-o-l-l

Roughly a year ago you might recall that numerous outlets happily parroted claims that the DNC wasn’t hacked by Russian intelligence (as latter reports would make clear), but had somehow actually hacked itself. The theory was never particularly well cooked, though outlets like The Nation ran with it anyway, claiming that “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” had all collectively unearthed undeniable evidence that the DNC had committed cyber-seppuku.

The widely-circulated report leaned heavily on a published memo by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a collection of former intelligence experts and whistleblowers like William Binney and Ray McGovern. It also leaned heavily on the input of several, anonymous, self-professed “computer forensics investigators” who, the news outlet informed readers, had “split the DNC case open like a coconut,” providing incontrovertible evidence that Russian intelligence played no role in the now-legendary breach.

But the entire claim was little more than fluff and nonsense.

As we noted at the time, The Nation story relied heavily on the allegation the stolen files must have been copied locally to USB by a DNC insider because, as The Nation claimed, “no Internet service provider was capable of downloading data at this speed” (22.7 megabytes per second). In reality, 22.7 megabytes per second was simply a 180 Mbps connection, widely available around the world at the time the DNC hack took place. That includes Romania, the country that the Russian cutout Guccifer 2.0 pretended (at the time) to have originated from.

We weren’t alone in pointing out that the story was flimsy, relied largely on cherry-picked evidence, and frequently stumbled into the realm of the “incoherent.” And it’s only gone downhill since. The Nation was forced to review the report, adding a meandering preamble to address criticism. In the year since, reports have forged a new infosec community consensus that yes, Guccifer 2.0 was GRU, and had been amusingly caught because Russian intelligence forgot to activate its VPN before logging into the bogus persona’s WordPress site on one occasion (one of several opsec errors made by Russian intel).

But at the time, any reporter that dared report on the emerging links between Russia and the hack were quickly smeared by a website custom built to try and downplay any Russian connection. The creator of the website went by the name of Adam Carter, who was broadly cited as a respected “independent researcher” in The Nation and other unskeptical reports. Carter’s website, a collection of half-cooked straw men and conspiratorial faux-technical nonsense, also took time to go after Techdirt, claiming our pretty rudimentary analysis of the theory’s principle error was “pedantic, sleazy & condescending” (thank you).

Fast forward to this week, and a new Computer Weekly report notes that Carter wasn’t much of an intelligence expert or “researcher” at all. He was, according to infosec reporter Duncan Campbell, a British IT manager and shitposter from Darlington, working in concert with U.S. trolls on a widespread online disinformation effort to downplay and discredit any and every connection between the DNC attack and Russia:

 

“The campaign is being run from the UK by 39-year-old programmer Tim Leonard, who lives in Darlington, using the false name 'Adam Carter'...Starting after the 2016 presidential election, Leonard worked with a group of mainly American right-wing activists to spread claims on social media that Democratic 'insiders' and non-Russian agents were responsible for hacking the Democratic Party.”

 

The story is long and incredibly weedy, so it’s going to be overlooked by many who lack patience or attention span during an oft-apocalyptic news cycle. But it’s definitely worth winding your way through and fully digesting to understand the sheer scope of the effort. Especially if you’re interested in understanding how incoherent internet bullshit has been industrialized and weaponized on an international scale for relatively little money.

Campbell methodically spent months tracking down Carter’s real identity, noting his tactic of pretending to be combating disinformation while actively spreading it around the internet, from his g-2.space website (which he built on the back of an employer’s server without their apparent knowledge), to the bowels of Reddit’s r/conspiracy subreddit, where he was routinely found feeding baseless conspiracy theories to the aggressively gullible. Campbell states Leonard attempted to lend credibility to the theories by co-creating a second fake identity known as “Forensicator” (also cited by media outlets as a real, but anonymous intel expert).

Campbell states that this analysis (again: bogus insight created by fake people), was then recirculated by an “independent” outlet by the name of Disobedient Media, which utilized Carter as a “technology correspondent” (they’re understandably none too happy with Campbell’s reporting). According to Campbell, Disobedient media has played more than a passing role in spreading conspiracy theories internationally, usually with the help of forged documents:

 

“Disobedient Media is a so-called 'independent media' site that describes ?Adam Carter? as its technology correspondent. It claims to ?bring honesty and integrity back into journalism?. The site has recycled paedophile allegations directed at Hillary Clinton and fellow democrats, and has made repeated attempts to frame murdered DNC official Seth Rich. Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain and Britain have identified Disobedient Media as an epicentre of Russian-backed attacks on Europe, using forged documents, including smears against Angela Merkel, Sadiq Khan and Emmanuel Macron.

 

While it’s easy to dismiss this as just some incoherent rambling by the 4chan / Qanon conspiracy set, the report notes how some of the effort’s “evidence” comically-managed to worm its way into White House policy circles. That was courtesy of William Binney, who met with CIA director Mike Pompeo at Trump’s request to dig deeper into the “DNC hacked itself” conspiracy. Nothing appears to have come of that meeting (because again, the whole DNC hacked itself theory is garbage), but it’s still worth pointing out that much of the underlying evidence was intentionally manipulated in order to deceive:

 

“'One document' a tip-off file obtained in June 2017 by Leonard's site from an 'anonymous source' took new disinformation all the way to the White House and the CIA…The team that created Forensicator, including Leonard, gave away that they were not the real authors of the analysis when they inaccurately copied a Linux 'Bash" script they had been sent, breaking it. This suggested that they did not write, understand, or test the script before they published. Someone else had sent the script, together with the fake conclusion they wanted discovered and published 'that DNC stolen files had been copied in the US Eastern Time zone on 5 July 2016, five days before DNC employee Seth Rich was killed.'"

 

One year later and The Nation’s original theory isn’t looking so hot, with even many of the original VIPS supporters running in the opposite direction, including Binney:

 

“A month after visiting CIA headquarters, Binney came to Britain. After re-examining the data in Guccifer 2.0 files thoroughly with the author of this article, Binney changed his mind. He said there was 'no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done?' The Guccifer 2.0 files analysed by Leonard?s g-2.space were 'manipulated', he said, and a 'fabrication'.

 

But the damage was done, and the Brietbart, Bloomberg, Nation and other reports remain online, still widely circulated as “evidence” that the DNC hacked itself. Amusingly, many of the same people (quite justly) railing against the over-reliance on anonymous sources in stories supporting Russian involvement in the hack saw no problem amplifying this dubious report, despite the warnings that the report was leaning largely on extremely dubious, anonymous experts.

Obviously real investigators continue to dig through the aftermath of the 2016 election to determine the width and breadth of Russia’s global disinformation and hacking efforts in retribution for the Magnitsky sanctions. That process should slowly unravel which organizations and individuals were simply useful idiots, and which organizations and individuals actively coordinated their disinformation assault with the help of foreign governments.

But with questions arising about a evolved disinformation campaign on Facebook and another major internet disiformation effort operating out of Macedonia, it raises plenty of questions about just what real forensic investigators will unearth by this time next year.

</q>

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/08/16/stories-claiming-dnc-hack-was-inside-job-rely-heavily-stupid-conversion-error-no-forensic-expert-would-make/

Stories Claiming DNC Hack Was 'Inside Job' Rely Heavily On A Stupid Conversion Error No 'Forensic Expert' Would Make

While we wait for the Mueller investigation to clearly illustrate if and how Russia meddled in the last election, there’s no shortage of opinions regarding how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. While it’s pretty obvious that Putin used social media and media propaganda to pour some napalm on our existing bonfires of dysfunction, just how much of an impact these efforts had on the election won’t be clear until a full postmortem is done. Similarly, while Russian hackers certainly had fun probing our voting systems and may have hacked both political parties, clearly proving state involvement is something else entirely.

Quite fairly, many folks have pushed for caution in terms of waiting for hard evidence to emerge, highlighting the danger in trusting leaks from an intelligence sector with a dismal track record of integrity and honesty. There’s also the obvious concern of ramping up tension escalation between two nuclear powers. But last week, many of those same individuals were quick to highlight several new stories that claimed to “completely debunk” Russia’s involvement in hacking the DNC ahead of last year’s election. The problem? These reports were about as flimsy — if not flimsier — than the Russian hacking theories they supposedly supplanted.

In fact, these reports took things one step further by claiming that the hack of the DNC was something committed solely by someone within the DNC itself. This particularly overlong, meandering piece by The Nation, for example, claimed to cite numerous anonymous intelligence sources who have supposedly grown increasingly skeptical over the “Russian hacking narrative.” Quite correctly, the report starts out by noting that while there’s oodles and oodles of smoke regarding Putin’s involvement in the election hacks, the fire (hard evidence) has been hard to come by so far:

 

“Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess 'high confidence' in their 'assessment' as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year, this standing as their authoritative judgment."

 

But it’s then that’s where things get a little weird. The report repeatedly proclaims that a laundry list of anonymous “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” have been hard at work “producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year.” But one of the key conclusions by these experts — and a key cornerstone for of all of these stories — makes absolutely no sense.

The reports lean heavily on anonymous cybersecurity experts calling themselves “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter,” who purportedly took a closer look at the metadata attached to the stolen files. Said metadata, we’re breathlessly informed, indisputably proves that the data had to have been transferred from inside of the DNC network and not over the internet, since the internet isn’t supposedly capable of such transfer speeds:

 

“Forensicator's first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate?the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC's server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

"These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.”

 

That reads like a semi-cogent paragraph, but it’s largely nonsense. 22.7 megabytes per second (MB/s) sounds impossibly fast if you don’t know any better. But if you do the simple conversion from megabytes per second to megabits per second necessary to determine the actual speed of the connection used, you get a fairly reasonable 180 megabits per second (Mbps). While the report proclaims that “no internet service provider” can provide such speeds, ISPs around the world routinely offer speeds far, far faster — from 500 Mbps to even 1 Gbps.

And despite the report oddly pooh pooh’ing Romanian broadband’s “delivery overheads,” many Romanian cities actually have faster internet connectivity than either Russia or in the States (check out Akamai’s global broadband rankings). Bernie Sanders learned this last year when he unintentionally pissed off many Romanians when trying to highlight the dismal state of U.S. connectivity. Even then, the hacker in question could have used any number of tricks to hide his or her location and real identity from a high-bandwidth vantage point, so the claim that the hacker couldn’t achieve 180 Mbps through a VPN is simply nonsense.

Obviously this raises some questions about what kind of cyber-sleuths we’re talking about when they can’t do basic conversions or look at some fairly obvious broadband speed availability charts. And it also raises some questions about why reporters thought flimsy anonymous experts were the perfect remedy to the other flimsy anonymous leaks they hoped to debunk. While The Nation couldn’t even be bothered to do the simple calculation to determine the speed of the connection used by the hacker was relatively ordinary, in a story titled “Why Some U.S. Ex-Spies Don’t Buy the Russia Story,” Bloomberg actually did the conversion to get the 180 Mbps speed, and still somehow told readers that such speeds were impossible:

 

“The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter.” The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer’s files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second — or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic.”

 

Yes, all but impossible! Provided you ignore that DOCSIS 3.1 cable upgrades and fiber connections deliver speeds consistently faster than that all around the world every day — including Romania. False claims and sloppy math aside, after the Bloomberg column ran, several actual, identifiable intelligence experts also came forward doubting the legitimacy of the supposed intelligence sources for these stories altogether:

Surrounded by raised eyebrows, The Nation is now apparently reviewing its story for accuracy after numerous people highlighted that a major cornerstone of the report was little more than fluff and nonsense. Bloomberg has so far failed to follow suit.

So again, there’s certainly every reason to not escalate hostility between the United States and Russia with many details still obfuscated and investigations incomplete. And there’s also every reason to view reports leaning heavily on anonymous intelligence insiders skeptically after generations of distortions and falsehoods from those same agencies. That said, if you want to debunk the anonymous claims of a growing number of intelligence insiders who claim Russia played pinball with our electoral process, perhaps running into the arms of even more unreliable, anonymous intelligence sources — without checking your math — isn’t your best path toward the truth.

</q>

 

Edited March 21 by Cliff Varnell

[Benjamin Cole]

For those of you who profess to be socialist, here is an interesting missive from the World Socialist website. 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/13/pers-m13.html

"The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party"

Despite the overt socialist slant of the above article, there is a lot of insightful post-WWII history therein, and commentary regarding Truman's founding of the agency, and the intel-state ascendance post 9/11. 

I don't agree with everything from the above article, but a forum is for looking at other points as view (as well as confirmation-bias!).  

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/20/2024 at 3:27 PM, Keven Hofeling said:

Julian Assange seems to suggest on Dutch television program Nieuwsuur that Seth Rich was the source for the Wikileaks-exposed DNC emails and was murdered."

 

I don't have a dog in this fight, and am not intimately familiar with the facts. But...

According to this Wikipedia article on Julian Assange :

According to the Mueller investigation, Assange falsely implied that [Seth] Rich was the source ostensibly to obscure the fact that Russian military intelligence was the source, and Assange received the emails when Rich was already dead and continued to confer with the Russian hackers to coordinate the release of the material.

I trust Robert Mueller's judgement and the integrity of the Mueller Report.

 

[Keven Hofeling]

6 hours ago, Cliff Varnell said:

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/03/as-dnc-hacked-itself-conspiracy-theory-collapses-key-backer-claim-exposed-as-uk-xxxxx/

As 'DNC Hacked Itself' Conspiracy Theory Collapses, Key Backer Of Claim Exposed As UK T-r-o-l-l

Roughly a year ago you might recall that numerous outlets happily parroted claims that the DNC wasn’t hacked by Russian intelligence (as latter reports would make clear), but had somehow actually hacked itself. The theory was never particularly well cooked, though outlets like The Nation ran with it anyway, claiming that “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” had all collectively unearthed undeniable evidence that the DNC had committed cyber-seppuku.

The widely-circulated report leaned heavily on a published memo by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a collection of former intelligence experts and whistleblowers like William Binney and Ray McGovern. It also leaned heavily on the input of several, anonymous, self-professed “computer forensics investigators” who, the news outlet informed readers, had “split the DNC case open like a coconut,” providing incontrovertible evidence that Russian intelligence played no role in the now-legendary breach.

But the entire claim was little more than fluff and nonsense.

As we noted at the time, The Nation story relied heavily on the allegation the stolen files must have been copied locally to USB by a DNC insider because, as The Nation claimed, “no Internet service provider was capable of downloading data at this speed” (22.7 megabytes per second). In reality, 22.7 megabytes per second was simply a 180 Mbps connection, widely available around the world at the time the DNC hack took place. That includes Romania, the country that the Russian cutout Guccifer 2.0 pretended (at the time) to have originated from.

We weren’t alone in pointing out that the story was flimsy, relied largely on cherry-picked evidence, and frequently stumbled into the realm of the “incoherent.” And it’s only gone downhill since. The Nation was forced to review the report, adding a meandering preamble to address criticism. In the year since, reports have forged a new infosec community consensus that yes, Guccifer 2.0 was GRU, and had been amusingly caught because Russian intelligence forgot to activate its VPN before logging into the bogus persona’s WordPress site on one occasion (one of several opsec errors made by Russian intel).

But at the time, any reporter that dared report on the emerging links between Russia and the hack were quickly smeared by a website custom built to try and downplay any Russian connection. The creator of the website went by the name of Adam Carter, who was broadly cited as a respected “independent researcher” in The Nation and other unskeptical reports. Carter’s website, a collection of half-cooked straw men and conspiratorial faux-technical nonsense, also took time to go after Techdirt, claiming our pretty rudimentary analysis of the theory’s principle error was “pedantic, sleazy & condescending” (thank you).

Fast forward to this week, and a new Computer Weekly report notes that Carter wasn’t much of an intelligence expert or “researcher” at all. He was, according to infosec reporter Duncan Campbell, a British IT manager and shitposter from Darlington, working in concert with U.S. trolls on a widespread online disinformation effort to downplay and discredit any and every connection between the DNC attack and Russia:

 

“The campaign is being run from the UK by 39-year-old programmer Tim Leonard, who lives in Darlington, using the false name 'Adam Carter'...Starting after the 2016 presidential election, Leonard worked with a group of mainly American right-wing activists to spread claims on social media that Democratic 'insiders' and non-Russian agents were responsible for hacking the Democratic Party.”

 

The story is long and incredibly weedy, so it’s going to be overlooked by many who lack patience or attention span during an oft-apocalyptic news cycle. But it’s definitely worth winding your way through and fully digesting to understand the sheer scope of the effort. Especially if you’re interested in understanding how incoherent internet bullshit has been industrialized and weaponized on an international scale for relatively little money.

Campbell methodically spent months tracking down Carter’s real identity, noting his tactic of pretending to be combating disinformation while actively spreading it around the internet, from his g-2.space website (which he built on the back of an employer’s server without their apparent knowledge), to the bowels of Reddit’s r/conspiracy subreddit, where he was routinely found feeding baseless conspiracy theories to the aggressively gullible. Campbell states Leonard attempted to lend credibility to the theories by co-creating a second fake identity known as “Forensicator” (also cited by media outlets as a real, but anonymous intel expert).

Campbell states that this analysis (again: bogus insight created by fake people), was then recirculated by an “independent” outlet by the name of Disobedient Media, which utilized Carter as a “technology correspondent” (they’re understandably none too happy with Campbell’s reporting). According to Campbell, Disobedient media has played more than a passing role in spreading conspiracy theories internationally, usually with the help of forged documents:

 

“Disobedient Media is a so-called 'independent media' site that describes ?Adam Carter? as its technology correspondent. It claims to ?bring honesty and integrity back into journalism?. The site has recycled paedophile allegations directed at Hillary Clinton and fellow democrats, and has made repeated attempts to frame murdered DNC official Seth Rich. Newspapers in France, Germany, Spain and Britain have identified Disobedient Media as an epicentre of Russian-backed attacks on Europe, using forged documents, including smears against Angela Merkel, Sadiq Khan and Emmanuel Macron.

 

While it’s easy to dismiss this as just some incoherent rambling by the 4chan / Qanon conspiracy set, the report notes how some of the effort’s “evidence” comically-managed to worm its way into White House policy circles. That was courtesy of William Binney, who met with CIA director Mike Pompeo at Trump’s request to dig deeper into the “DNC hacked itself” conspiracy. Nothing appears to have come of that meeting (because again, the whole DNC hacked itself theory is garbage), but it’s still worth pointing out that much of the underlying evidence was intentionally manipulated in order to deceive:

 

“'One document' a tip-off file obtained in June 2017 by Leonard's site from an 'anonymous source' took new disinformation all the way to the White House and the CIA…The team that created Forensicator, including Leonard, gave away that they were not the real authors of the analysis when they inaccurately copied a Linux 'Bash" script they had been sent, breaking it. This suggested that they did not write, understand, or test the script before they published. Someone else had sent the script, together with the fake conclusion they wanted discovered and published 'that DNC stolen files had been copied in the US Eastern Time zone on 5 July 2016, five days before DNC employee Seth Rich was killed.'"

 

One year later and The Nation’s original theory isn’t looking so hot, with even many of the original VIPS supporters running in the opposite direction, including Binney:

 

“A month after visiting CIA headquarters, Binney came to Britain. After re-examining the data in Guccifer 2.0 files thoroughly with the author of this article, Binney changed his mind. He said there was 'no evidence to prove where the download/copy was done?' The Guccifer 2.0 files analysed by Leonard?s g-2.space were 'manipulated', he said, and a 'fabrication'.

 

But the damage was done, and the Brietbart, Bloomberg, Nation and other reports remain online, still widely circulated as “evidence” that the DNC hacked itself. Amusingly, many of the same people (quite justly) railing against the over-reliance on anonymous sources in stories supporting Russian involvement in the hack saw no problem amplifying this dubious report, despite the warnings that the report was leaning largely on extremely dubious, anonymous experts.

Obviously real investigators continue to dig through the aftermath of the 2016 election to determine the width and breadth of Russia’s global disinformation and hacking efforts in retribution for the Magnitsky sanctions. That process should slowly unravel which organizations and individuals were simply useful idiots, and which organizations and individuals actively coordinated their disinformation assault with the help of foreign governments.

But with questions arising about a evolved disinformation campaign on Facebook and another major internet disiformation effort operating out of Macedonia, it raises plenty of questions about just what real forensic investigators will unearth by this time next year.

</q>

https://www.techdirt.com/2017/08/16/stories-claiming-dnc-hack-was-inside-job-rely-heavily-stupid-conversion-error-no-forensic-expert-would-make/

Stories Claiming DNC Hack Was 'Inside Job' Rely Heavily On A Stupid Conversion Error No 'Forensic Expert' Would Make

While we wait for the Mueller investigation to clearly illustrate if and how Russia meddled in the last election, there’s no shortage of opinions regarding how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. While it’s pretty obvious that Putin used social media and media propaganda to pour some napalm on our existing bonfires of dysfunction, just how much of an impact these efforts had on the election won’t be clear until a full postmortem is done. Similarly, while Russian hackers certainly had fun probing our voting systems and may have hacked both political parties, clearly proving state involvement is something else entirely.

Quite fairly, many folks have pushed for caution in terms of waiting for hard evidence to emerge, highlighting the danger in trusting leaks from an intelligence sector with a dismal track record of integrity and honesty. There’s also the obvious concern of ramping up tension escalation between two nuclear powers. But last week, many of those same individuals were quick to highlight several new stories that claimed to “completely debunk” Russia’s involvement in hacking the DNC ahead of last year’s election. The problem? These reports were about as flimsy — if not flimsier — than the Russian hacking theories they supposedly supplanted.

In fact, these reports took things one step further by claiming that the hack of the DNC was something committed solely by someone within the DNC itself. This particularly overlong, meandering piece by The Nation, for example, claimed to cite numerous anonymous intelligence sources who have supposedly grown increasingly skeptical over the “Russian hacking narrative.” Quite correctly, the report starts out by noting that while there’s oodles and oodles of smoke regarding Putin’s involvement in the election hacks, the fire (hard evidence) has been hard to come by so far:

 

“Lost in a year that often appeared to veer into our peculiarly American kind of hysteria is the absence of any credible evidence of what happened last year and who was responsible for it. It is tiresome to note, but none has been made available. Instead, we are urged to accept the word of institutions and senior officials with long records of deception. These officials profess 'high confidence' in their 'assessment' as to what happened in the spring and summer of last year, this standing as their authoritative judgment."

 

But it’s then that’s where things get a little weird. The report repeatedly proclaims that a laundry list of anonymous “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” have been hard at work “producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year.” But one of the key conclusions by these experts — and a key cornerstone for of all of these stories — makes absolutely no sense.

The reports lean heavily on anonymous cybersecurity experts calling themselves “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter,” who purportedly took a closer look at the metadata attached to the stolen files. Said metadata, we’re breathlessly informed, indisputably proves that the data had to have been transferred from inside of the DNC network and not over the internet, since the internet isn’t supposedly capable of such transfer speeds:

 

“Forensicator's first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate?the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC's server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.

"These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed. Compounding this contradiction, Guccifer claimed to have run his hack from Romania, which, for numerous reasons technically called delivery overheads, would slow down the speed of a hack even further from maximum achievable speeds.”

 

That reads like a semi-cogent paragraph, but it’s largely nonsense. 22.7 megabytes per second (MB/s) sounds impossibly fast if you don’t know any better. But if you do the simple conversion from megabytes per second to megabits per second necessary to determine the actual speed of the connection used, you get a fairly reasonable 180 megabits per second (Mbps). While the report proclaims that “no internet service provider” can provide such speeds, ISPs around the world routinely offer speeds far, far faster — from 500 Mbps to even 1 Gbps.

And despite the report oddly pooh pooh’ing Romanian broadband’s “delivery overheads,” many Romanian cities actually have faster internet connectivity than either Russia or in the States (check out Akamai’s global broadband rankings). Bernie Sanders learned this last year when he unintentionally pissed off many Romanians when trying to highlight the dismal state of U.S. connectivity. Even then, the hacker in question could have used any number of tricks to hide his or her location and real identity from a high-bandwidth vantage point, so the claim that the hacker couldn’t achieve 180 Mbps through a VPN is simply nonsense.

Obviously this raises some questions about what kind of cyber-sleuths we’re talking about when they can’t do basic conversions or look at some fairly obvious broadband speed availability charts. And it also raises some questions about why reporters thought flimsy anonymous experts were the perfect remedy to the other flimsy anonymous leaks they hoped to debunk. While The Nation couldn’t even be bothered to do the simple calculation to determine the speed of the connection used by the hacker was relatively ordinary, in a story titled “Why Some U.S. Ex-Spies Don’t Buy the Russia Story,” Bloomberg actually did the conversion to get the 180 Mbps speed, and still somehow told readers that such speeds were impossible:

 

“The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter.” The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer’s files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second — or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic.”

 

Yes, all but impossible! Provided you ignore that DOCSIS 3.1 cable upgrades and fiber connections deliver speeds consistently faster than that all around the world every day — including Romania. False claims and sloppy math aside, after the Bloomberg column ran, several actual, identifiable intelligence experts also came forward doubting the legitimacy of the supposed intelligence sources for these stories altogether:

Surrounded by raised eyebrows, The Nation is now apparently reviewing its story for accuracy after numerous people highlighted that a major cornerstone of the report was little more than fluff and nonsense. Bloomberg has so far failed to follow suit.

So again, there’s certainly every reason to not escalate hostility between the United States and Russia with many details still obfuscated and investigations incomplete. And there’s also every reason to view reports leaning heavily on anonymous intelligence insiders skeptically after generations of distortions and falsehoods from those same agencies. That said, if you want to debunk the anonymous claims of a growing number of intelligence insiders who claim Russia played pinball with our electoral process, perhaps running into the arms of even more unreliable, anonymous intelligence sources — without checking your math — isn’t your best path toward the truth.

</q>

 

Mr. Varnell, can you please explain why you are wasting our time with this 8/3/2018 article which can basically be summarized by the following two paragraphs from an 8/10/2017 Bloomberg article entitled “Why Some U.S. Ex-Spies Don’t Buy the Russia Story”? https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-08-10/why-some-u-s-ex-spies-don-t-buy-the-russia-story

"The VIPS theory relies on forensic findings by independent researchers who go by the pseudonyms “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter.” The former found that 1,976 MB of Guccifer’s files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second — or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers. Downloading such files this quickly over the internet, especially over a VPN (most hackers would use one), would have been all but impossible because the network infrastructure through which the traffic would have to pass would further slow the traffic.” [ ... ]

"That reads like a semi-cogent paragraph, but it’s largely nonsense. 22.7 megabytes per second (MB/s) sounds impossibly fast if you don’t know any better. But if you do the simple conversion from megabytes per second to megabits per second necessary to determine the actual speed of the connection used, you get a fairly reasonable 180 megabits per second (Mbps). While the report proclaims that “no internet service provider” can provide such speeds, ISPs around the world routinely offer speeds far, far faster — from 500 Mbps to even 1 Gbps."

Neither Roger Odisio nor myself have presented you with any information associated with the so-called "independent researchers" who go by the pseudonyms “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter,” who evidently made the following claim:

"...[T]hat 1,976 MB of Guccifer’s files were copied from a DNC server on July 5 in just 87 seconds, implying a transfer rate of 22.6 megabytes per second — or, converted to a measure most people use, about 180 megabits per second, a speed not commonly available from U.S. internet providers...."

As you can see in the following, your article had knocked down a straw man by attacking an inaccurate analysis of the DNC email download speed:

"...Is Guccifer 2.0 a Fraud?

There is further compelling technical evidence that undermines the claim that the DNC emails were downloaded over the internet as a result of a spearphishing attack. William Binney, one of VIPS’ two former Technical Directors at NSA, along with other former intelligence community experts, examined files posted by Guccifer 2.0 and discovered that those files could not have been downloaded over the internet. It is a simple matter of mathematics and physics.

There was a flurry of activity after Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: “We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.” On June 14, DNC contractor CrowdStrike announced that malware was found on the DNC server and claimed there was evidence it was injected by Russians. On June 15, the Guccifer 2.0 persona emerged on the public stage, affirmed the DNC statement, claimed to be responsible for hacking the DNC, claimed to be a WikiLeaks source, and posted a document that forensics show was synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”

Our suspicions about the Guccifer 2.0 persona grew when G-2 claimed responsibility for a “hack” of the DNC on July 5, 2016, which released DNC data that was rather bland compared to what WikiLeaks published 17 days later (showing how the DNC had tipped the primary scales against Sen. Bernie Sanders). As VIPS reportedin a wrap-up Memorandum for the President on July 24, 2017 (titled “Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence),” forensic examination of the July 5, 2016 cyber intrusion into the DNC showed it NOT to be a hack by the Russians or by anyone else, but rather a copy onto an external storage device. It seemed a good guess that the July 5 intrusion was a contrivance to preemptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish from the DNC, by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.” WikiLeaks published the DNC emails on July 22, three days before the Democratic convention.

As we prepared our July 24 memo for the President, we chose to begin by taking Guccifer 2.0 at face value; i. e., that the documents he posted on July 5, 2016 were obtained via a hack over the Internet. Binney conducted a forensic examination of the metadata contained in the posted documents and compared that metadata with the known capacity of Internet connection speeds at the time in the U.S. This analysis showed a transfer rate as high as 49.1 megabytes per second, which is much faster than was possible from a remote online Internet connection. The 49.1 megabytes speed coincided, though, with the rate that copying onto a thumb drive could accommodate.

Binney, assisted by colleagues with relevant technical expertise, then extended the examination and ran various forensic tests from the U.S. to the Netherlands, Albania, Belgrade and the UK. The fastest Internet rate obtained — from a data center in New Jersey to a data center in the UK — was 12 megabytes per second, which is less than a fourth of the capacity typical of a copy onto a thumb drive.

The findings from the examination of the Guccifer 2.0 data and the WikiLeaks data does not indicate who copied the information to an external storage device (probably a thumb drive). But our examination does disprove that G.2 hacked into the DNC on July 5, 2016. Forensic evidence for the Guccifer 2.0 data adds to other evidence that the DNC emails were not taken by an internet spearphishing attack. The data breach was local. The emails were copied from the network...."

'VIPS: MUELLER'S FORENSICS-FREE FINDINGS'
March 13, 2019 | Consortium News | https://consortiumnews.com/2019/03/13/vips-muellers-forensics-free-findings/

 March 13, 2019

MEMORANDUM FOR: The Attorney General

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Mueller’s Forensics-Free Findings

Executive Summary

Highlighting, underscoring, and emphasizing the point is the following from Craig Murray:

"...Binney states that the download rates for the “hack” given by Crowdstrike are at a speed — 49 megabytes per second — that could not even nearly be attained remotely at the location: thus the information must have been downloaded to a local device, eg a memory stick. Binney has further evidence regarding formatting that supports this. 

Mueller’s identification of “DC Leaks” and “Guccifer 2.0” as Russian security services is something Mueller attempts to carry off by simple assertion. Mueller shows DNC Leaks to have been the source of other, unclassified emails sent to WikiLeaks that had been obtained under a Freedom of Information request and then Mueller simply assumes, with no proof, the same route was used again for the leaked DNC material. His identification of the Guccifer 2.0 persona with Russian agents is so flimsy as to be laughable. Nor is there any evidence of the specific transfer of the leaked DNC emails from Guccifer 2.0 to WikiLleaks. Binney asserts that had this happened, the packets would have been instantly identifiable to the NSA. 

Bill Binney: Not interviewed. (Miquel Taverna / CCCB via Flickr)

Bill Binney is not a “deplorable.” He is a former technical director of the NSA. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met him to hear his expertise on precisely this matter. Binney offered to give evidence to Mueller. Yet did Mueller call him as a witness? No. Binney’s voice is entirely unheard in the report. 

Mueller’s refusal to call Binney and consider his evidence was not the action of an honest man...."

'THE REAL MUELLER-GATE SCANDAL'
By Craig Murray | Consortium News | May 14, 2019 | https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/14/the-real-mueller-gate-scandal/

Furthermore, the 8/3/2018 publish date of your article means that it was written prior to the 2020 declassification of the December 2017 deposition by the House Intelligence Committee of Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry which revealed that contrary to Crowdstrike's earlier fraudulent representations about having proven that the DNC server had been hacked by "Fancy Bear," CROWDSTRIKE ACTUALLY HAD NEVER HAD ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL OF ANY KIND OF HACK OF THE DNC SERVER:

"...Asked for the date when alleged Russian hackers stole data from the DNC server, Henry testified that CrowdStrike did not in fact know if such a theft occurred at all: "We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated," Henry said.

Henry reiterated his claim on multiple occasions: 

• "There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left."

• "There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."

• "There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network. … We didn't have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made."

• "Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn't see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw."

• Asked directly if he could "unequivocally say" whether "it was or was not exfiltrated out of DNC," Henry told the committee: "I can't say based on that." 

In a later exchange with Republican Rep. Chris Stewart of Utah, Henry offered an explanation of how Russian agents could have obtained the emails without any digital trace of them leaving the server. The CrowdStrike president speculated that Russian agents might have taken "screenshots" in real time. "[If] somebody was monitoring an email server, they could read all the email," Henry said. "And there might not be evidence of it being exfiltrated, but they would have knowledge of what was in the email. … There would be ways to copy it. You could take screenshots." 

"HIDDEN OVER 2 YEARS: DEM CYBER FIRM'S SWORN TESTIMONY IT HAD NO PROOF OF RUSSIAN HACK OF DNC"
By Aaron Mate | RealClearInvestigations | May 13, 2020 | https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/05/13/hidden_over_2_years_dem_cyber-firms_sworn_testimony_it_had_no_proof_of_russian_hack_of_dnc_123596.html

Thus and therefore, Mr. Varnell, once again it turns out that you have absolutely no evidence supporting the Russiagate hoax, just more diversionary nonsense.

And with regard to Julian Assange (as well as Seth Rich) -- who you profess to admire so much, but without any acknowledgement of the fact that the cult you belong to has imprisoned him on trumped up charges, and tortures him daily -- Craig Murray noted the following:

"...Mueller’s failure to examine the servers or take Binney’s evidence pales into insignificance compared to his attack on Julian Assange. Based on no conclusive evidence, Mueller accuses Assange of receiving the emails from Russia. Most crucially, he did not give Assange any opportunity to answer his accusations. For somebody with Mueller’s background in law enforcement, declaring somebody in effect guilty, without giving them any opportunity to tell their side of the story, is plain evidence of malice. 

Inexplicably, for example, the Mueller report quotes a media report of Assange stating he had “physical proof” the material did not come from Russia, but Mueller simply dismisses this without having made any attempt at all to ask Assange himself. 

It is also particularly cowardly as Assange was and is held incommunicado with no opportunity to defend himself. Assange has repeatedly declared the material did not come from the Russian state or from any other state. He was very willing to give evidence to Mueller, which could have been done by video-link, by interview in the Ecuadorian embassy or by written communication. But as with Binney and as with the DNC servers, the entirely corrupt Mueller was unwilling to accept any evidence which might contradict his predetermined narrative.

[ ... ]

Mueller gives no evidence whatsoever to back up his simple statement that Seth Rich was not the source of the DNC leak. He accuses Julian Assange of “dissembling” by referring to Seth Rich’s murder. It is an interesting fact that the U.S. security services have shown precisely the same level of interest in examining Seth Rich’s computers that they have shown in examining the DNC servers. It is also interesting that this murder features in a report of historic consequences like that of Mueller, yet has had virtually no serious resource put into finding the killer.

Mueller’s condemnation of Julian Assange for allegedly exploiting the death of Seth Rich, would be infinitely more convincing if the official answer to the question “who murdered Seth Rich?” was not “who cares?”"

'THE REAL MUELLER-GATE SCANDAL'
By Craig Murray | Consortium News | May 14, 2019 | https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/14/the-real-mueller-gate-scandal/

 

Edited March 22 by Keven Hofeling

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/20/2024 at 3:27 PM, Keven Hofeling said:

And do you really not understand what it means that when the FBI seized Seth Rich's laptop on the night of his murder, the DNC email files were found on it as well as evidence that Rich was in contact with Wikileaks?

 

 

Hersh cautioned that his claim may not be true. He later said that he had relayed "gossip" and that he was fishing for information.

(Source)

 

[Sandy Larsen]

On 3/20/2024 at 3:27 PM, Keven Hofeling said:

Moreover, are you oblivious to the fact that the FBI has now been busted for being in possession of Seth Rich's laptop -- after previously denying having it -- and is in contempt of a Court order to turn over the files to a plaintiff in civil litigation, which the FBI is trying to avoid BY HAVING THE FILES CLASSIFIED FOR SIXTY-SIX YEARS!

 

 

I doubt you can find a reliable source for that. Because I doubt it is true.

When challenged on their reporting of this story, Fox News retracted it without apology or explanation. Seth Rich's family sued Fox News in March 2018 for having engaged in "extreme and outrageous conduct" by fabricating the story defaming their son and thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them. Fox News reached a seven-figure settlement with the Rich family in October 2020

 

[Keven Hofeling]

32 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I don't have a dog in this fight, and am not intimately familiar with the facts. But...

According to this Wikipedia article on Julian Assange :

According to the Mueller investigation, Assange falsely implied that [Seth] Rich was the source ostensibly to obscure the fact that Russian military intelligence was the source, and Assange received the emails when Rich was already dead and continued to confer with the Russian hackers to coordinate the release of the material.

I trust Robert Mueller's judgement and the integrity of the Mueller Report.

 

Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: “We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”

Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016

The DNC emails were leaked by Wikileaks in two phases (the first on July 22, 2016 and the second on November 6, 2016), revealing information about the DNC's interactions with the media, Hillary Clinton's and Bernie Sanders's campaigns, and financial contributions.

 

[Keven Hofeling]

30 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Hersh cautioned that his claim may not be true. He later said that he had relayed "gossip" and that he was fishing for information.

(Source)

 

"Famed journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh stated that he had confirmed that Seth Rich was
responsible for leaking the DNC emails. According to Mr. Hersh, who was by no means a
Republican or a Trump supporter, he could not find a media outlet willing to publish the
Seth Rich story. In a separate phone call with Mr. Butowsky, Mr. Hersh said he obtained
his information about Seth Rich from Mr. McCabe, the deputy FBI director." 

http://lawflog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/2019.07.15-Amended-complaint-stamped.pdf

 

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I don't have a dog in this fight, and am not intimately familiar with the facts. But...

According to this Wikipedia article on Julian Assange :

According to the Mueller investigation, Assange falsely implied that [Seth] Rich was the source ostensibly to obscure the fact that Russian military intelligence was the source, and Assange received the emails when Rich was already dead and continued to confer with the Russian hackers to coordinate the release of the material.

I trust Robert Mueller's judgement and the integrity of the Mueller Report.

 

I guess you didn't read what I wrote earlier.  On June 12 in an interview, Assange announced he would be releasing the DNC emails.  Rich was murdered July 10.  This isn't about faith in judgement, Sandy.  It's about facts. In any case, why would you trust something you read on Wikipedia?

[Keven Hofeling]

47 minutes ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

I doubt you can find a reliable source for that. Because I doubt it is true.

When challenged on their reporting of this story, Fox News retracted it without apology or explanation. Seth Rich's family sued Fox News in March 2018 for having engaged in "extreme and outrageous conduct" by fabricating the story defaming their son and thereby intentionally inflicting emotional distress on them. Fox News reached a seven-figure settlement with the Rich family in October 2020

 

SIXTH DECLARATION OF MICHAEL G. SEIDEL: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.197917/gov.uscourts.txed.197917.84.1.pdf

___________

REPLY IN SUPPORT OF PLAINTIFF’S MOTION FOR CLARIFICATION:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txed.197917/gov.uscourts.txed.197917.92.0.pdf

___________

 

 

Edited March 22 by Keven Hofeling

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

For those of you who profess to be socialist, here is an interesting missive from the World Socialist website. 

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/03/13/pers-m13.html

"The CIA takeover of the Democratic Party"

Despite the overt socialist slant of the above article, there is a lot of insightful post-WWII history therein, and commentary regarding Truman's founding of the agency, and the intel-state ascendance post 9/11. 

I don't agree with everything from the above article, but a forum is for looking at other points as view (as well as confirmation-bias!).  

 

 

Ben,

     More Pin-the-Tale-on-the -Donkey, eh?  From an "apolitical," "non-partisan" guy like you?  🙄

     But don't be deceived by your WSWS article here.  It's riddled with numerous, blatant inaccuracies-- especially regarding Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election on behalf of Trump and the Republican Party.

      So, not surprisingly, WSWS has been identified by some as a left-wing Kremlin propaganda source.* 

      (Though most Kremlin propaganda sources in the West are aligned with right-wing fascist movements.)

       As a Kremlin-funded source, one of WSWS's objectives would involve undermining Biden and the Democratic Party, to weaken U.S. support for Ukraine.

*On Gutter Journalism and Purported “Anti-Imperialism” - New Politics

      As for bashing the Donks, let's briefly walk down Langley memory lane.

1)     It's a bit specious to denounce Truman as a Democratic enthusiast of the CIA, especially in light of Truman's openly expressed criticisms of the Agency following JFK's assassination.  Truman explicitly regretted signing off on giving the CIA unregulated operational license.

2)     Eisenhower was delighted by the low cost of CIA black ops-- e.g., the assassination of Mossadeq and the Albeniz coup in Guatemala.  He also, obviously, signed off on the Bay of Pigs op to oust Castro.

3)     After the Bay of Pigs debacle, as we all know, JFK canned Allen Dulles and wanted to break Dulles' rogue CIA into a thousand pieces. 

4)    (See Robert Morrow for LBJ's history with the CIA.)

5)   But no subsequent U.S. Presidents locked horns with the Company, with the notable exception of Nixon firing Richard Helms. 

6)     Gerald Ford appointed "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" CIA Director.  Speaks volumes.

7)   Jimmy Carter then replaced "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" with Stansfield Turner-- in the Church Committee era.  Carter and Brezinski also recruited Osama Bin Laden and the Muslim mujaheddin to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

8 ) Reagan and GHWB restored CIA hardliners (including William Casey) to Agency leadership.   This restoration of the post-Colby CIA played a major role in Reagan-era black ops like Iran-Contra, and CIA cocaine trafficking in the U.S.  (Detailed by Gary Webb-- per Kill the Messenger.)

9 )  President GHWB promoted CIA lawyer Bill Barr to AG, to manage his pardons of the Reagan/Bush Iran-Contra convicts-- Casper Weinberger, Oliver North, et.al.  

10)     Clinton's relationship with the CIA is a bit of a mystery to me.  According to John Schindler, the CIA was involved in some way with Osama Bin Laden and his mujaheddin ("Al Qaeda") militants, the Izetbegovic regime in Bosnia, and the KLA, during the Clinton/NATO bombing of the Yugoslavian rump state during the Kosovo War.

11)      As CIA Director, George Tennant later facilitated the George W. Bush/Cheney/Neocon "War on Terror"-- even famously declaring that Iraq WMDs were "a slam dunk."  Bush and Cheney's Deep State also implemented the Patriot Act-- which you erroneously attributed to Obama.

12)      Much to my amazement, Obama retained Bush and Cheney's CIA/MIC man, Robert Gates, as Sec Def-- and he appointed the crafty administrator Leon Panetta CIA Director.  Leon Panetta reportedly told Obama in 2009, "You can't just say, 'No' to these guys."  

13)     Trump appointed his favorite, West Point yes-man, Mike Pompeo, CIA Director, and "got rolled by the Deep State" in October of 2017, as Oliver Stone put it.

     So, in summary, the CIA has, obviously, remained ascendant in Republican and Democratic administrations since 1963-- although "Mr. George Bush of the CIA" and his son started our wars in Panama, (GHWB) the Persian Gulf, (GHWB) Afghanistan, (Dubya) and Iraq (Dubya.)

      

Edited March 22 by W. Niederhut

[Keven Hofeling]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

Hersh cautioned that his claim may not be true. He later said that he had relayed "gossip" and that he was fishing for information.

(Source)

 

'JOURNALIST SEYMOUR HERSCH CLAIMS SETH RICH WAS WIKILEAKS SOURCE'

Rusty Weiss | The Political Insider | Updated: August 2, 2017 | https://thepoliticalinsider.com/seymour-hersh-seth-rich/

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh claims that Seth Rich reached out to Wikileaks and set up a DropBox account with “an extensive sample” of DNC emails that they were later able to access.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

50 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

According to this Wikipedia article on Julian Assange :

According to the Mueller investigation, Assange falsely implied that [Seth] Rich was the source ostensibly to obscure the fact that Russian military intelligence was the source, and Assange received the emails when Rich was already dead and continued to confer with the Russian hackers to coordinate the release of the material.

I trust Robert Mueller's judgement and the integrity of the Mueller Report.

 

 

50 minutes ago, Keven Hofeling said:

Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016: “We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.”

Seth Rich was murdered on July 10, 2016

 

The problem with your timeline is that Wikileaks had ALSO been getting DNC e-mail leaks for several months prior to the time Julian Assange said on June 12, 2016 that he had Hillary Clinton related e-mails.

You can check that out on the detailed timeline given in this article.

That article also lists DNC e-mails received by Wikileaks after Seth Rich's death. See the entry for July 14, 2016.

Which is the reason why Mueller reported that Seth Rich was not the source for those leaks. That he was already dead by then.

Following is a New York Time article regarding that. It has a paywall so I can't just link to it. Luckily I was able to copy the article before the paywall kicked in.

 

Quote

Seth Rich Was Not Source of Leaked D.N.C. Emails, Mueller Report Confirms

By Sarah Mervosh
    April 20, 2019

The special counsel’s [Mueller's] report confirmed this week that Seth Rich, a young Democratic National Committee employee whose unsolved killing became grist for a right-wing conspiracy theory, was not the source of thousands of internal D.N.C. emails that WikiLeaks released during the 2016 presidential race, officially debunking a notion that had persisted without support for years.

Tucked amid hundreds of pages of the report’s main findings, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, took aim at WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, for falsely implying that Mr. Rich was somehow involved in the dissemination of the emails, an act that aided President Trump’s campaign.

“WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the materials that WikiLeaks was releasing,” according to the report, which showed that WikiLeaks corresponded with the true source of the leaked emails — Russian hackers — after Mr. Rich’s death.

The confirmation comes after years of anguish for Mr. Rich’s family, who fought attempts to politicize and spread misinformation about his killing, which is believed to have happened during a bungled robbery attempt.

The theory linking Mr. Rich to the email leak took root in conservative circles and was cited by prominent conservatives like Newt Gingrich and right-wing commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Alex Jones of Infowars. WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information about Mr. Rich’s killing, fueling speculation that he was the source. Fox News also published an article, which the network later retracted, suggesting that Mr. Rich was killed in retaliation for having leaked the emails.

In a statement, Mr. Rich’s brother, Aaron Rich, responded to the special counsel’s report, saying it provided “hard facts that demonstrate this conspiracy is false.”

[Bolding mine.]

 

[Cliff Varnell]

KH:  Mr. Varnell, can you please explain why you are wasting our time

That's rich coming from you.

KH: Furthermore, the 8/3/2018 publish date of your article means that it was written prior to the 2020 declassification of Crowdstrike December 2017 deposition by the House Intelligence Committee of Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry which revealed that contrary to Crowdstrike's earlier fraudulent representations about having proven that the DNC server had been hacked by "Fancy Bear," CROWDSTRIKE ACTUALLY HAD NEVER HAD ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL OF ANY KIND OF HACK OF THE DNC SERVER

You can lead a pedant to water but you can't make them think.

MR. SCHIFF: lt provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd, data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor.

MR.HENRY: Yes, sir.

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

2 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

Hersh cautioned that his claim may not be true. He later said that he had relayed "gossip" and that he was fishing for information.

 

1 hour ago, Keven Hofeling said:

"Famed journalist Seymour “Sy” Hersh stated that he had confirmed that Seth Rich was responsible for leaking the DNC emails.

 

Below are two reputable sources reporting what I said.

I'll bet you have no reputable sources for your counter-claim.

 

NPR - Behind Fox News' Baseless Seth Rich Story: The Untold Tale

"I hear gossip," Hersh tells NPR on Monday. "[Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it."

 

The Man Behind The Scenes In Fox News' Discredited Seth Rich Story

Hersh now says he was fishing for information from Butowsky. "I did not talk to anybody at the FBI — not about this," Hersh tells NPR. "Nothing is certain until it's proved. And I didn't publish any story on this."

 

Note the Butowsky is the person who took Hersh's story to Fox News. (Who, recall, went with it. The retracted it. Then was sued for it and had to pay six figures to settle the suit.)