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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><b><span style='font-size:24.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>HuffPo Yanks Article On Russiagate Hysteria By Award Winning Journalist Joe Lauria – So Here It Is <o:p></o:p></span></b></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/users/zeropointnow"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:blue;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=40 height=40 id="Picture_x0020_1" src="cid:image001.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="Profile picture for user ZeroPointNow"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>by <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/users/zeropointnow" title="View user profile."><span style='color:blue'>ZeroPointNow</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Tue, 11/07/2017 - 20:56 <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;line-height:24.0pt'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>50<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;line-height:24.0pt'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>SHARES<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;line-height:24.0pt'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'><a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/#twitter" target="_blank"><span style='color:blue'>Twitter</span></a> <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/#facebook" target="_blank"><span style='color:blue'>Facebook</span></a> <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/#reddit" target="_blank"><span style='color:blue'>Reddit</span></a> <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/#email" target="_blank"><span style='color:blue'>Email</span></a> <a href="https://www.zerohedge.com/#print"><span style='color:blue'>Print</span></a> <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Award winning journalist and UN correspondent of 25 years, Joe Lauria, penned an outstanding article on the origins of “Russiagate” which he published to the liberal <i>Huffington Post</i> this week.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>24 hours later, HuffPo <a href="http://raymcgovern.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CLEANOn-The-Origins-of-Russia-gate-_-HuffPost.pdf" target="_blank"><span style='color:blue'>yanked the article</span></a> – leaving a dead link and a sad message in its place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/byed.png"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=637 height=223 id="Picture_x0020_2" src="cid:image002.png@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/byed.png"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Perhaps the insights offered in the article didn’t quite conform to HuffPo’s approved narratives, or maybe it has something to do with <a href="http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/how-i-lost/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>Lauria’s new book</span></a> “<i>How I Lost By Hillary Clinton</i>,” with a forward written by Julian Assange.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Considering Joe Lauria’s tenure as the Wall St. Journal’s UN correspondent of nearly seven years, as well as the Boston Globe’s for six – covering just about every major world crisis over the past quarter century, his unique perspective on the matter merits a read.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Reproduced below for your edification:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:18.75pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:7.5pt;margin-left:0in;text-align:left;mso-line-height-alt:12.0pt;background:white'><span style='font-size:27.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>As Russia-gate continues to buffet the Trump administration, we now know that the “scandal” started with Democrats funding the original dubious allegations of Russian interference, notes Joe Lauria.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>By Joe Lauria<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled in the 2016 election — without providing convincing evidence — were both <i>paid for</i> by the Democratic National Committee, and in one instance also by the Clinton campaign: the Steele dossier and the CrowdStrike analysis of the DNC servers. Think about that for a minute.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/portrait-clinton.jpg"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=300 height=226 id="Picture_x0020_3" src="cid:image003.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/portrait-clinton-300x226.jpg"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>We have long known that the DNC did not allow the FBI to examine its computer server for clues about who may have hacked it – or even if it was hacked – and instead turned to CrowdStrike, a private company co-founded by a virulently anti-Putin Russian. Within a day, CrowdStrike blamed Russia on dubious evidence.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>And, it has now been disclosed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_dossier-630pm:homepage/story&utm_term=.707164d050ef&tid=a_inl" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>paid for</span></a> opposition research memos written by former British MI6 intelligence agent Christopher Steele using hearsay accusations from anonymous Russian sources to claim that the Russian government was blackmailing and bribing Donald Trump in a scheme that presupposed that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw Trump’s presidency years ago when no one else did.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has struggled to corroborate Steele’s allegations, but those suspicions still colored the thinking of President Obama’s intelligence chiefs who, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “hand-picked” the analysts who produced the Jan. 6 “assessment” claiming that Russia interfered in the U.S. election.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>In other words, possibly all of the Russia-gate allegations, which have been taken on faith by Democratic partisans and members of the anti-Trump Resistance, trace back to claims paid for or generated by Democrats.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>If for a moment one could remove the sometimes justified hatred that many people feel toward Trump, it would be impossible to avoid the impression that the scandal may have been cooked up by the DNC and the Clinton camp in league with Obama’s intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical aims.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Absent new evidence based on forensic or documentary proof, we could be looking at a partisan concoction devised in the midst of a bitter general election campaign, a manufactured “scandal” that also has fueled a dangerous New Cold War against Russia; a case of a dirty political “oppo” serving American ruling interests in reestablishing the dominance over Russia that they enjoyed in the 1990s, as well as feeding the voracious budgetary appetite of the Military-Industrial Complex.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Though lacking independent evidence of the core Russia-gate allegations, the “scandal” continues to expand into <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/10/russia-gate-jumps-the-shark/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>wild exaggerations about the impact of a tiny number of social media pages</span></a> suspected of having links to Russia but that apparently carried very few specific campaign messages. (<a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/04/the-mystery-of-the-russia-gate-puppies/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>Some pages reportedly were devoted to photos of puppies.</span></a>)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>‘Cash for Trash’</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Based on what is now known, Wall Street buccaneer Paul Singer paid for GPS Fusion, a Washington-based research firm, to do opposition research on Trump during the Republican primaries, but dropped the effort in May 2016 when it became clear Trump would be the GOP nominee. GPS Fusion has strongly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>denied</span></a> that it hired Steele for this work or that the research had anything to do with Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/hpop.png"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=228 height=300 id="Picture_x0020_4" src="cid:image004.png@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/hpop-228x300.png"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Then, in April 2016 the DNC and the Clinton campaign <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/clinton-campaign-dnc-paid-for-research-that-led-to-russia-dossier/2017/10/24/226fabf0-b8e4-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_dossier-630pm:homepage/story&tid=a_inl&utm_term=.d971e593bee8" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>paid</span></a> its Washington lawyer Marc Elias to hire Fusion GPS to unearth dirt connecting Trump to Russia. This was three months before the DNC blamed Russia for hacking its computers and supposedly giving its stolen emails to WikiLeaks to help Trump win the election.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>“The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/clinton-dnc-russia-dossier.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>retained Fusion GPS</span></a> to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed this week,” The New York Times <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html?_r=0" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>reported</span></a> on Friday night.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>So, linking Trump to Moscow as a way to bring Russia into the election story was the Democrats’ aim from the start.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Fusion GPS then hired ex-MI6 intelligence agent Steele, it says for the first time, to dig up that dirt in Russia for the Democrats. Steele produced classic opposition research, not an intelligence assessment or conclusion, although it was written in a style and formatted to <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453104/russia-dossier-story-clinton-lies-media-irresponsibility-democratic-moral-blindness" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>look like</span></a> one.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>It’s important to realize that Steele was no longer working for an official intelligence agency, which would have imposed strict standards on his work and possibly disciplined him for injecting false information into the government’s decision-making. Instead, he was working for a political party and a presidential candidate looking for dirt that would hurt their opponent, what the Clintons used to call “cash for trash” when they were the targets.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Had Steele been doing legitimate intelligence work for his government, he would have taken a far different approach. Intelligence professionals are not supposed to just give their bosses what their bosses want to hear. So, Steele would have verified his information. And it would have gone through a process of further verification by other intelligence analysts in his and perhaps other intelligence agencies. For instance, in the U.S., a National Intelligence Estimate requires vetting by all 17 intelligence agencies and incorporates dissenting opinions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Instead Steele was producing a piece of purely political research and had different motivations. The first might well have been money, as he was being paid specifically for this project, not as part of his work on a government salary presumably serving all of society. Secondly, to continue being paid for each subsequent memo that he produced he would have been incentivized to please his clients or at least give them enough so they would come back for more.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Dubious Stuff</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Opposition research is about getting dirt to be used in a mud-slinging political campaign, in which wild charges against candidates are the norm. This “oppo” is full of unvetted rumor and innuendo with enough facts mixed in to make it seem credible. There was <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/29/the-sleazy-origins-of-russia-gate/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>so much dubious stuff in Steele’s memos</span></a> that the FBI was unable to confirm its most salacious allegations and apparently refuted several key points.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/clapper-obama-oval-office-300x200.jpg"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=300 height=200 id="Picture_x0020_5" src="cid:image005.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/clapper-obama-oval-office-300x200-300x200.jpg"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Perhaps more significantly, the corporate news media, which was largely partial to Clinton, did not report the fantastic allegations after people close to the Clinton campaign began circulating the lurid stories before the election with the hope that the material would pop up in the news. To their credit, established media outlets recognized this as ammunition against a political opponent, not a serious document.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Despite this circumspection, the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-fbi-dossier-fisa-warrant-case-2017-4" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>became</span></a> the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants against members of Trump’s campaign. More alarmingly, it may have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence <a href="https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>“assessment” </span></a>by those “hand-picked” analysts from three U.S. intelligence agencies – the CIA, the FBI and the NSA – not all 17 agencies that Hillary Clinton continues to insist were involved. (Obama’s intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA Director John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part and The New York Times <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/29/nyt-finally-retracts-russia-gate-canard/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>printed a correction</span></a> saying so.)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>If in fact the Steele memos were a primary basis for the Russia collusion allegations against Trump, then there may be no credible evidence at all. It could be that because the three agencies knew the dossier was dodgy that there was no substantive proof in the Jan. 6 “assessment.” Even so, a summary of the Steele allegations were included in a secret appendix that then-FBI Director James Comey described to then-President-elect Trump just two weeks before his inauguration.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Five days later, after the fact of Comey’s briefing was leaked to the press, the Steele dossier was published <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.riWVKwnRzz#.pnnG0lKjxx" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>in full</span></a>by the sensationalist website BuzzFeed behind the excuse that the allegations’ inclusion in the classified annex of a U.S. intelligence report justified the dossier’s publication regardless of doubts about its accuracy.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Russian Fingerprints</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The other source of blame about Russian meddling came from the private company CrowdStrike because the DNC blocked the FBI from examining its server after a suspected hack. Within a day, CrowdStrike claimed to find Russian “fingerprints” in the metadata of a DNC opposition research document, which had been revealed by an Internet site called DCLeaks, showing Cyrillic letters and the name of the first Soviet intelligence chief. That supposedly implicated Russia.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/dmitri.jpg"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=300 height=300 id="Picture_x0020_6" src="cid:image006.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/dmitri-300x300.jpg"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Dmitri Alperovitch, the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike Inc., leading its Intelligence, Technology and CrowdStrike Labs teams.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>CrowdStrike also claimed that the alleged Russian intelligence operation was extremely sophisticated and skilled in concealing its external penetration of the server. But CrowdStrike’s conclusion about Russian “fingerprints” resulted from clues that would have been left behind by extremely sloppy hackers or inserted intentionally to implicate the Russians.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>CrowdStrike’s credibility was further undermined when <i>Voice of America <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/crowdstrike-comey-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump/3776067.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>reported</span></a></i> on March 23, 2017, that the same software the company says it used to blame Russia for the hack wrongly concluded that Moscow also had hacked Ukrainian government howitzers on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>“An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cyber-security firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election,” <i>VOA </i>reported. Dimitri Alperovitch, a CrowdStrike co-founder, is also a senior fellow at the anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>More speculation about the alleged election hack was raised with WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 release, which revealed that the CIA is not beyond covering up its own hacks by leaving clues implicating others. Plus, there’s the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declared again and again that WikiLeaks did not get the Democratic emails from the Russians. Buttressing Assange’s denials of a Russian role, WikiLeaks associate Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said he met a person connected to the leak during a trip to Washington last year.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>And, William Binney, maybe the best mathematician to ever work at the National Security Agency, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern have <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/20/more-holes-in-russia-gate-narrative/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>published a technical analysis</span></a> of one set of Democratic email metadata showing that a transatlantic “hack” would have been impossible and that the evidence points to a likely leak by a disgruntled Democratic insider. Binney has further stated that if it were a “hack,” the NSA would have been able to detect it and make the evidence known.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Fueling Neo-McCarthyism</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Despite these doubts, which the U.S. mainstream media has largely ignored, Russia-gate has grown into something much more than an election story. It has unleashed a neo-McCarthyite attack on Americans who are accused of being dupes of Russia if they dare question the evidence of the Kremlin’s guilt.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/twp26p1.jpg"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=300 height=188 id="Picture_x0020_7" src="cid:image007.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/twp26p1-300x188.jpg"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Just weeks after last November’s election, The Washington Post <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/27/washington-posts-fake-news-guilt/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>published a front-page story</span></a> touting a blacklist from an anonymous group, called PropOrNot, that alleged that 200 news sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other leading independent news sources, were either willful Russian propagandists or “useful idiots.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Last week, a <a href="http://www.europeanvalues.net/rt/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>new list</span></a> emerged with the names of over 2,000 people, mostly Westerners, who have appeared on RT, the Russian government-financed English-language news channel. The list was part of a report entitled, “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West,” put out by an outfit called European Values, with a <a href="http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/sponsors-of-the-2008-survey.html" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>long list</span></a> of European funders.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Included on the list of “useful idiots” absurdly are CIA-friendly Washington Post columnist David Ignatius; David Brock, Hillary Clinton’s opposition research chief; and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The report stated: “Many people in Europe and the US, including politicians and other persons of influence, continue to exhibit troubling naïveté about RT’s political agenda, buying into the network’s marketing ploy that it is simply an outlet for independent voices marginalised by the mainstream Western press. These ‘useful idiots’ remain oblivious to RT’s intentions and boost its legitimacy by granting interviews on its shows and newscasts.”<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>The intent of these lists is clear: to shut down dissenting voices who question Western foreign policy and who are usually excluded from Western corporate media. RT is often willing to provide a platform for a wider range of viewpoints, both from the left and right. American ruling interests fend off critical viewpoints by first suppressing them in corporate media and now condemning them as propaganda when they emerge on RT.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Geopolitical Risks</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>More ominously, the anti-Russia mania has increased chances of direct conflict between the two nuclear superpowers. The Russia-bashing rhetoric not only served the Clinton campaign, though ultimately to ill effect, but it has pushed a longstanding U.S.-led geopolitical agenda to <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/27/europeans-contest-us-anti-russian-hype/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>regain control </span></a>over Russia, an advantage that the U.S. enjoyed during the Yeltsin years in the 1990s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto;text-align:left'><a href="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/Time-Yeltsin.jpg"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'><img border=0 width=227 height=300 id="Picture_x0020_8" src="cid:image008.jpg@01D3BDB8.160D0320" alt="http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/Time-Yeltsin-227x300.jpg"></span></a><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"'>Time magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsin’s reelection as Russian president in 1996.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Wall Street rushed in behind Boris Yeltsin and Russian oligarchs to asset strip virtually the entire country, impoverishing the population. Amid widespread accounts of this grotesque corruption, Washington <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americans-spot-election-meddling-doing-years-vladimir-putin-donald-trump" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>intervened</span></a> in Russian politics to help get Yeltsin re-elected in 1996. The political rise of Vladimir Putin after Yeltsin resigned on New Year’s Eve 1999 reversed this course, restoring Russian sovereignty over its economy and politics.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>That inflamed Hillary Clinton and other American hawks whose desire was to install another Yeltsin-like figure and resume U.S. exploitation of Russia’s vast natural and financial resources. To advance that cause, U.S. presidents have supported the eastward expansion of NATO and have deployed 30,000 troops on Russia’s border.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>In 2014, the Obama administration helped <a href="https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/05/if-russia-had-freed-canada/" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>orchestrate</span></a> a coup that toppled the elected government of Ukraine and installed a fiercely anti-Russian regime. The U.S. also undertook the risky policy of aiding jihadists to overthrow a secular Russian ally in Syria. The consequences have brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/13/stephen_cohen_this_is_most_dangerous" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>any time since</span></a> the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='margin-bottom:15.0pt;text-align:left;background:white'><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>In this context, the Democratic Party-led Russia-gate offensive was intended not only to explain away Clinton’s defeat but to stop Trump — possibly via impeachment or by inflicting severe political damage — because he had talked, insincerely it is turning out, about detente with Russia. That did not fit in well with the plan at all.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal align=left style='text-align:left;background:white'><b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'>Joe Lauria is a veteran foreign-affairs journalist. He has written for the Boston Globe, the Sunday Times of London and the Wall Street Journal among other newspapers. He is the author of <a href="http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/how-i-lost/" target="_blank"><i><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>How I Lost By Hillary Clinton</span></i></a> published by OR Books in June 2017. He can be reached at <a href="mailto:joelauria@gmail.com" target="_blank"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>joelauria@gmail.com</span></a> and followed on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/unjoe"><span style='color:#00A3CC;text-decoration:none'>@unjoe</span></a>.</span></b><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Helvetica","sans-serif";color:#333333'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>