[Peace-discuss] HuffPo Yanks Article On Russiagate Hysteria By Award Winning Journalist Joe Lauria - So Here It Is

Sat Mar 17 11:20:46 UTC 2018

HuffPo Yanks Article On Russiagate Hysteria By Award Winning Journalist Joe
Lauria  So Here It Is 

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by  <https://www.zerohedge.com/users/zeropointnow> ZeroPointNow 

Tue, 11/07/2017 - 20:56 

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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 Huffington Post this week.

24 hours later, HuffPo
<http://raymcgovern.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CLEANOn-The-Origins-of-Ru
ssia-gate-_-HuffPost.pdf> yanked the article  leaving a dead link and a sad
message in its place.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/byed.png>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/byed.png

Perhaps the insights offered in the article didnt quite conform to HuffPos
approved narratives, or maybe it has something to do with
<http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/how-i-lost/> Laurias new book How I Lost
By Hillary Clinton, with a forward written by Julian Assange.

Considering Joe Laurias tenure as the Wall St. Journals UN correspondent
of nearly seven years, as well as the Boston Globes for six  covering just
about every major world crisis over the past quarter century, his unique
perspective on the matter merits a read.

Reproduced below for your edification:

The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate

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.

By Joe Lauria

The two sources that originated the allegations claiming that Russia meddled
in the 2016 election  without providing convincing evidence  were both
paid for 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.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/portrait-clinton.jpg>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/portrait-clinton-300x226.jpg
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

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.

And, it has now been disclosed that the Clinton campaign and the DNC
<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:homepag
e/story&utm_term=.707164d050ef&tid=a_inl> paid for 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 Trumps presidency
years ago when no one else did.

Since then, the U.S. intelligence community has struggled to corroborate
Steeles allegations, but those suspicions still colored the thinking of
President Obamas 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.

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.

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 Obamas intelligence chiefs to serve political and geopolitical
aims.

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.

Though lacking independent evidence of the core Russia-gate allegations, the
scandal continues to expand into
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/10/russia-gate-jumps-the-shark/> wild
exaggerations about the impact of a tiny number of social media pages
suspected of having links to Russia but that apparently carried very few
specific campaign messages. (
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/04/the-mystery-of-the-russia-gate-puppie
s/> Some pages reportedly were devoted to photos of puppies.)

Cash for Trash

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
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.ht
ml?_r=0> denied that it hired Steele for this work or that the research had
anything to do with Russia.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/hpop.png>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/hpop-228x300.pngCouple
walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)

Then, in April 2016 the DNC and the Clinton campaign
<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:homepag
e/story&tid=a_inl&utm_term=.d971e593bee8> paid 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.

The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/us/politics/clinton-dnc-russia-dossier.h
tml> retained Fusion GPS to research any possible connections between Mr.
Trump, his businesses, his campaign team and Russia, court filings revealed
this week, The New York Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.ht
ml?_r=0> reported on Friday night.

So, linking Trump to Moscow as a way to bring Russia into the election story
was the Democrats aim from the start.

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
<http://www.nationalreview.com/article/453104/russia-dossier-story-clinton-l
ies-media-irresponsibility-democratic-moral-blindness> look like one.

Its 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
governments 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.

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.

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.

Dubious Stuff

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
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/03/29/the-sleazy-origins-of-russia-gate/>
so much dubious stuff in Steeles memos that the FBI was unable to confirm
its most salacious allegations and apparently refuted several key points.

<http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/clapper-obama-oval-office-3
00x200.jpg>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/clapper-obama-oval-office-30
0x200-300x200.jpgDirector 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)

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.

Despite this circumspection, the Steele dossier was shared with the FBI at
some point in the summer of 2016 and apparently
<http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-fbi-dossier-fisa-warrant-case-20
17-4> became the basis for the FBI to seek Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act warrants against members of Trumps campaign. More alarmingly, it may
have formed the basis for much of the Jan. 6 intelligence
<https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf> assessment 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. (Obamas intelligence chiefs, DNI Clapper and CIA
Director John Brennan, publicly admitted that only three agencies took part
and The New York Times
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/29/nyt-finally-retracts-russia-gate-cana
rd/> printed a correction saying so.)

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.

Five days later, after the fact of Comeys briefing was leaked to the press,
the Steele dossier was published
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-t
ies-to-russia?utm_term=.riWVKwnRzz#.pnnG0lKjxx> in fullby the sensationalist
website BuzzFeed behind the excuse that the allegations inclusion in the
classified annex of a U.S. intelligence report justified the dossiers
publication regardless of doubts about its accuracy.

Russian Fingerprints

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.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/dmitri.jpg>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/dmitri-300x300.jpgDmitri
Alperovitch, the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of CrowdStrike
Inc., leading its Intelligence, Technology and CrowdStrike Labs teams.

CrowdStrike also claimed that the alleged Russian intelligence operation was
extremely sophisticated and skilled in concealing its external penetration
of the server. But CrowdStrikes conclusion about Russian fingerprints
resulted from clues that would have been left behind by extremely sloppy
hackers or inserted intentionally to implicate the Russians.

CrowdStrikes credibility was further undermined when Voice of America
<https://www.voanews.com/a/crowdstrike-comey-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump/3
776067.html> reported 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.

An influential British think tank and Ukraines 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, VOA reported.
Dimitri Alperovitch, a CrowdStrike co-founder, is also a senior fellow at
the anti-Russian Atlantic Council think tank in Washington.

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, theres the fact that
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has declared again and again that WikiLeaks
did not get the Democratic emails from the Russians. Buttressing Assanges
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.

And, William Binney, maybe the best mathematician to ever work at the
National Security Agency, and former CIA analyst Ray McGovern have
<https://consortiumnews.com/2017/09/20/more-holes-in-russia-gate-narrative/>
published a technical analysis 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.

Fueling Neo-McCarthyism

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 Kremlins guilt.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/twp26p1.jpg>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/twp26p1-300x188.jpgThe
Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit:
Washington Post)

Just weeks after last Novembers election, The Washington Post
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/11/27/washington-posts-fake-news-guilt/>
published a front-page story 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.

Last week, a  <http://www.europeanvalues.net/rt/> new list 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 Kremlins Platform for Useful Idiots in the
West, put out by an outfit called European Values, with a
<http://www.europeanvaluesstudy.eu/page/sponsors-of-the-2008-survey.html>
long list of European funders.

Included on the list of useful idiots absurdly are CIA-friendly Washington
Post columnist David Ignatius; David Brock, Hillary Clintons opposition
research chief; and U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.

The report stated: Many people in Europe and the US, including politicians
and other persons of influence, continue to exhibit troubling naïveté about
RTs political agenda, buying into the networks marketing ploy that it is
simply an outlet for independent voices marginalised by the mainstream
Western press. These useful idiots remain oblivious to RTs intentions and
boost its legitimacy by granting interviews on its shows and newscasts.

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.

Geopolitical Risks

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
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/06/27/europeans-contest-us-anti-russian-hyp
e/> regain control over Russia, an advantage that the U.S. enjoyed during
the Yeltsin years in the 1990s.

 <http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/Time-Yeltsin.jpg>
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/files/2017/11/Time-Yeltsin-227x300.jpgTime
magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsins reelection as
Russian president in 1996.

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
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/05/americans-spot-electi
on-meddling-doing-years-vladimir-putin-donald-trump> intervened in Russian
politics to help get Yeltsin re-elected in 1996. The political rise of
Vladimir Putin after Yeltsin resigned on New Years Eve 1999 reversed this
course, restoring Russian sovereignty over its economy and politics.

That inflamed Hillary Clinton and other American hawks whose desire was to
install another Yeltsin-like figure and resume U.S. exploitation of Russias
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 Russias border.

In 2014, the Obama administration helped
<https://consortiumnews.com/2016/05/05/if-russia-had-freed-canada/>
orchestrate 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
<https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/13/stephen_cohen_this_is_most_dangerous
> any time since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.

In this context, the Democratic Party-led Russia-gate offensive was intended
not only to explain away Clintons 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.

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
<http://www.orbooks.com/catalog/how-i-lost/> How I Lost By Hillary Clinton
published by OR Books in June 2017. He can be reached at
<mailto:joelauria at gmail.com> joelauria at gmail.com and followed on Twitter at
<https://twitter.com/unjoe> @unjoe.

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