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For The Record  

FTR #925 Painting Oswald “Red,” Part 1

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: The first of a two-part series review­ing infor­ma­tion about what the bril­liant Berke­ley researcher Peter Dale Scott calls “lev­el one coverup” of the JFK assas­si­na­tion, this broad­cast presents part of the “paint­ing of Oswald Red,” by way of giv­ing us his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive on the appar­ent fram­ing of
Rus­sia for the hack of the DNC and the “non-hack” of NSA cyber­weapons by the “Shad­ow Bro­kers.”

On Novem­ber 22, 1963, Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion fun­da­men­tal­ly altered the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal land­scape, neu­tral­iz­ing JFK’s peace ini­tia­tives in Europe, South­east Asia and Cuba. Fur­ther­more, LBJ was manip­u­lat­ed into pur­su­ing the open-end­ed Viet­nam com­mit­ment JFK had stu­dious­ly avoid­ed.

In past dis­cus­sion of “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook,” we have char­ac­ter­ized him as “the Obverse Oswald.” With their exer­cise of “Tech­no­crat­ic Fas­cism,” “Team Snow­den” is destroy­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy as defin­i­tive­ly and effec­tive­ly as the bul­lets in Dealy Plaza did on 11/22/1963.

Sup­ple­ment­ing and sum­ming up the exhaus­tive FTR series on “The Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” series, this pro­gram sets forth the Snow­den “psy-op” and the high-pro­file hacks against the back­ground of Lee Har­vey Oswald, the U.S. spy infil­trat­ed into the Sovi­et Union and then into left­ist orga­ni­za­tions in the Unit­ed States, Oswald was framed for JFK’s assas­si­na­tion and then killed before he could defend him­self.

Where­as Oswald was por­trayed as a vil­lain, Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s oper­a­tion is the obverse, with Snow­den por­trayed as a hero, while decamp­ing first to Chi­na and then to Rus­sia.

We begin by review­ing and syn­op­siz­ing infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Rus­sia has been framed for the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA, the evi­dence points increas­ing­ly toward “Team Snow­den” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook him­self.

Points of infor­ma­tion reviewed include:

  • Evi­dence sug­gest­ing that Rus­sia was NOT behind the DNC hacks. ” . . . . None of the tech­ni­cal evi­dence is con­vinc­ing. It would only be con­vinc­ing if the attack­ers used entire­ly nov­el, unique, and sophis­ti­cat­ed tools with unmis­tak­able indi­ca­tors point­ing to Rus­sia sup­port­ed by human intel­li­gence, not by mal­ware analy­sis.The DNC attack­ers also had very poor, almost com­i­cal, oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty (OPSEC). State actors tend to have a qual­i­ty assur­ance review when devel­op­ing cyber­at­tack tools to min­i­mize the risk of dis­cov­ery and leav­ing obvi­ous crumbs behind. Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices are espe­cial­ly good. They are high­ly capa­ble, tac­ti­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly agile, and ratio­nal. They ensure that offen­sive tools are tai­lored and pro­por­tion­ate to the sig­nal they want to send, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­clo­sure and pub­lic per­cep­tion, and the odds of esca­la­tion. The shod­dy OPSEC just doesn’t fit what we know about Russ­ian intel­li­gence. . . . Giv­en these argu­ments, blam­ing Rus­sia is not a slam dunk. Why would a coun­try with some of the best intel­li­gence ser­vices in the world com­mit a whole series of real­ly stu­pid mis­takes in a high­ly sen­si­tive oper­a­tion? Why pick a tar­get that has a strong chance of lead­ing to esca­la­to­ry activ­i­ty when Rus­sia is known to pre­fer incre­men­tal actions over dras­tic ones? Why go through the trou­ble of a false flag when doing noth­ing would have been arguably bet­ter?. . . .”
  • Infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the NSA “hack” may well not have been a hack at all, but the work of an insid­er down­load­ing the infor­ma­tion onto a USB dri­ve. “. . . Their claim to have ‘hacked’ a serv­er belong­ing to the NSA is fishy. Accord­ing to ex-NSA insid­ers who spoke with Busi­ness Insid­er, the agency’s hack­ers don’t just put their exploits and toolk­its online where they can poten­tial­ly be pil­fered. The more like­ly sce­nario for where the data came from, says ex-NSA research sci­en­tist Dave Aitel, is an insid­er who down­loaded it onto a USB stick. . . . When hack­ers gain access to a serv­er, they keep qui­et about it so they can stay there. . . .One of the many strange things about this inci­dent is the very pub­lic nature of what tran­spired. When a hack­er takes over your com­put­er, they don’t start acti­vat­ing your web­cam or run­ning weird pro­grams because you’d fig­ure out pret­ty quick­ly that some­thing was up and you’d try to get rid of them. . . . . . . If the Shad­ow Bro­kers owned the NSA’s com­mand and con­trol serv­er, then it would prob­a­bly be a much bet­ter approach to just sit back, watch, and try to piv­ot to oth­er inter­est­ing things that they might be able to find. . . Peo­ple sell exploits all the time, but they hard­ly ever talk about it. . . . Most of the time, an exploit is either found by a secu­ri­ty research firm, which then writes about it and reports it to the com­pa­ny so it can fix the prob­lem. Or, a hack­er look­ing for cash will take that found exploit and sell it on the black mar­ket. So it would make sense for a group like Shad­ow Bro­kers to want to sell their trea­sure trove, but going pub­lic with it is beyond strange. . . .”
  • Eddie the Friend­ly Spook endorsed the cov­er sto­ry of the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ NSA “hack”–that the event was a hack (despite indi­ca­tors to the con­trary) and that Rus­sia did it.  . . . If you ask ex-NSA con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den, the pub­lic leak and claims of the Shad­ow Bro­kers seem to have Russ­ian fin­ger­prints all over them, and it serves as a warn­ing from Moscow to Wash­ing­ton. The mes­sage: If your pol­i­cy­mak­ers keep blam­ing us for the DNC hack, then we can use this hack to impli­cate you in much more.‘That could have sig­nif­i­cant for­eign pol­i­cy con­se­quences,’ Snow­den wrote on Twit­ter. ‘Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed US allies. Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed elec­tions. . . .” 
  • The code in the files was from 2013, when Snow­den under­took his “op.”  “. . . . The code released by the Shad­ow Bro­kers dates most recent­ly to 2013, the same year Edward Snow­den leaked clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the NSA’s sur­veil­lance pro­grams.. . . Snow­den also not­ed that the released files end in 2013. ‘When I came for­ward, NSA would have migrat­ed offen­sive oper­a­tions to new servers as a pre­cau­tion,’ he sug­gest­ed — a move that would have cut off the hack­ers’ access to the serv­er. . . . ”
  • Author James Bam­ford high­light­ed cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that Wik­iLeak­er Jacob Applebaum–who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hawaii to Hong Kong–may have been behind the Shad­ow Bro­kers non-hack. “. . . . There also seems to be a link between Assange and the leak­er who stole the ANT cat­a­log, and the pos­si­ble hack­ing tools. Among Assange’s close asso­ciates is Jacob Appel­baum, a cel­e­brat­ed hack­tivist and the only pub­licly known Wik­iLeaks staffer in the Unit­ed States – until he moved to Berlin in 2013 in what he called a “polit­i­cal exile” because of what he said was repeat­ed harass­ment by U.S. law enforce­ment per­son­nel. In 2010, a Rolling Stone mag­a­zine pro­file labeled him “the most dan­ger­ous man in cyber­space.”In Decem­ber 2013, Appel­baum was the first per­son to reveal the exis­tence of the ANT cat­a­log, at a con­fer­ence in Berlin, with­out iden­ti­fy­ing the source. That same month he said he sus­pect­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment of break­ing into his Berlin apart­ment. He also co-wrote an arti­cle about the cat­a­log in Der Spiegel. But again, he nev­er named a source, which led many to assume, mis­tak­en­ly, that it was Snow­den. . . .”
  • Apple­baum was anti-Clin­ton, sen­ti­ments expressed in the clum­sy Boris and Natasha-like bro­ken Eng­lish that accom­pa­nied announce­ment of the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ gam­bit. . . . . Short­ly there­after, he [Apple­baum] turned his atten­tion to Hillary Clin­ton. At a screen­ing of a doc­u­men­tary about Assange in Cannes, France, Appel­baum accused her of hav­ing a grudge against him and Assange, and that if she were elect­ed pres­i­dent, she would make their lives dif­fi­cult. ‘It’s a sit­u­a­tion that will pos­si­bly get worse’ if she is elect­ed to the White House, he said, accord­ing to Yahoo News. . . .. . . . In hack­tivist style, and in what appears to be pho­ny bro­ken Eng­lish, this new release of cyber­weapons also seems to be tar­get­ing Clin­ton. It ends with a long and angry ‘final mes­sage” against ‘Wealthy Elites . . . break­ing laws’ but ‘Elites top friends announce, no law bro­ken, no crime commit[ed]. . . Then Elites run for pres­i­dent. Why run for pres­i­dent when already con­trol coun­try like dic­ta­tor­ship?’ . . .” 
  • The e‑mail account used by the Shad­ow Bro­kers is in Ger­many and is resis­tant to attempts at dis­clos­ing users’ infor­ma­tion. Apple­baum, Lau­ra Poitras, Sarah Har­ri­son and Peter Sunde are in Ger­many.  “. . . He said Tutan­o­ta had only ever been forced to hand over encrypt­ed data of its users a few times and it has a trans­paren­cy report where it dis­clos­es those cas­es. ‘How­ev­er, we release data only in very, very few cas­es … And when we have to pro­vide the data due to a court order, it is still encrypt­ed,’ Pfau added, going on to explain the company’s stance on sur­veil­lance. . . .”
  • Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we not­ed that Snow­den was work­ing for the CIA in the sum­mer of 2009 when he decid­ed to infil­trate NSA and leak its infor­ma­tion. NSA “non-hack” sus­pect Apple­baum and much of the so-called “pri­va­cy” advo­cates have received fund­ing from CIA-derived orga­ni­za­tions such as the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, Radio Free Asia and the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. What role is the CIA play­ing in this? “. . . Jacob Appelbaum’s will­ing­ness to work direct­ly for an old CIA cutout like Radio Free Asia in a nation long tar­geted for regime-change is cer­tainly odd, to say the least. Par­tic­u­larly since Appel­baum made a big pub­lic show recent­ly claim­ing that, though it pains him that Tor takes so much mon­ey from the US mil­i­tary, he would nev­er take mon­ey from some­thing as evil as the CIA. . . .. . . Appelbaum’s finan­cial rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous CIA spin­offs like Radio Free Asia and the BBG go fur­ther. From 2012 through 2013, Radio Free Asia trans­ferred about $1.1 mil­lion to Tor in the form of grants and con­tracts. This mil­lion dol­lars comes on top of anoth­er $3.4 mil­lion Tor received from Radio Free Asia’s par­ent agency, the BBG, start­ing from 2007. . . . . . . . Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can getIn fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF. . . .. . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .”

After syn­op­siz­ing the appar­ent fram­ing of Rus­sia for the DNC hack and the Shad­ow-Bro­kers’ non-hack of NSA, the broad­cast recaps two key episodes in the paint­ing of “Oswald Red.”

One of the results of the Snow­den “op” was the death of the Obama/Clinton State Department’s attempt­ed re-boot with Rus­sia. In this regard, the actions of the Obverse Oswald are sim­i­lar to the way that the paint­ing of Oswald Red served to exac­er­bate Cold War ten­sions.

The killing of the attempt­ed diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment with Rus­sia was, in turn, cen­tral to the real­iza­tion of the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Yanukovich gov­ern­ment in Ukraine and the instal­la­tion of the heirs to Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B in the Maid­an coup.

(Recall that the Maid­an coup was financed, in part, by Pierre Omid­yar, whose First Look Media were not only recip­i­ents of Snowden’s pur­loined files, but served as the jour­nal­is­tic plat­form for Glenn Green­wald, Snowden’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice.)

This pro­gram details the assas­si­na­tion of OUN/B leader Stephan Ban­dera–a key part of the paint­ing of Oswald Red.

Blamed on the KGB, the killing was–in all likelihood–performed by BND (Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence and the suc­ces­sor to the Rein­hard Gehlen “org”) or oth­er Under­ground Reich-con­nect­ed ele­ments, pos­si­bly ele­ments of CIA.

The broad­cast cen­ters on dis­in­for­ma­tion point­ing to Lee Har­vey Oswald as a KGB-trained assas­sin. (The dis­in­for­ma­tion was spread by the World Anti-Com­mu­nist Con­gress for Free­dom and Liberation–the fore­run­ner of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.)

Attempt­ing to pin the assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­ets and/or Cubans, these ele­ments spurred many lib­er­als to endorse the “Oswald as lone-nut” hypoth­e­sis. They were afraid that the assas­si­na­tion could lead to nuclear war, if the per­cep­tion gained trac­tion that Oswald was a com­mu­nist. A cen­tral ele­ment in this dis­in­for­ma­tion ploy was an attempt to con­nect the JFK assas­si­na­tion to the death of Stephan Ban­dera, alleged­ly per­formed by an KGB assas­sin named Bog­dan Stashyn­sky.

Mur­dered on the same day that Lee Har­vey Oswald “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union, Bandera’s killing was linked to Oswald’s alleged killing of JFK by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the W.A.C.C.F.L.

W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments dis­sem­i­nated the lie that Oswald was trained at the same facil­ity as Stashyn­sky, and that the JFK hit was part of a Sovi­et pro­gram of assas­si­na­tion of West­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers. It should be not­ed that W.A.C.C.F.L.-related ele­ments also fig­ured promi­nently in the “han­dling” of Oswald in New Orleans, Dal­las and (pos­si­bly) the Sovi­et Union.

Those W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments were close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the OUN/B and the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the BND, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

The dis­in­for­ma­tion that Oswald was a KGB assas­sin was insert­ed into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report by Sen. Thomas Dodd, with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA.

Anoth­er episode in the paint­ing of Oswald Red con­cerns an inter­view set up on WDSU in New Orleans. Arranged by Ed But­ler, whose Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as served as a front for ele­ments of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mit­tee, the inter­view fea­tured Oswald pro­claim­ing his Marx­ist, pro-Cas­tro sym­pa­thies, as well as dis­cussing his so-called “defec­tion” to Rus­sia. One of the par­tic­i­pants in the inter­view was Car­los Bringuier, an anti-Cas­tro Cuban and key mem­ber of the DRE, one of the anti-Cas­tro Cuban groups man­aged by the CIA.

George Joan­nides, who served as some­thing of a case offi­cer for the DRE, was the liai­son between the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions and the CIA. Joan­nides was also report­ed by the BBC to have been present at the Ambas­sador Hotel in Los Ange­les on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed.

The myth of “Lee Har­vey Oswald the Com­mu­nist” was suc­cess­ful­ly dis­played and stem­ming from that fic­tion led many lib­er­als to opt for the “Oswald the lone nut” sce­nario because they feared a Third World War might result from the pub­lic per­cep­tion that a “com­mie” had killed the Pres­i­dent. The sec­ond  pro­gram fea­tures a re-broad­cast of the inter­view that Oswald gave on WDSU in New Orleans in August of 1963. In this inter­view, Oswald express­es sym­pa­thy for Castro’s Cuba and dis­cuss­es his sojourn in the Sovi­et Union.

To all out­ward appear­ances, Oswald looked like a com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er in the inter­view. Oswald was the sole mem­ber of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee’s New Orleans chap­ter, which shared an address with Guy Bannister’s detec­tive agency, a front for var­i­ous right-wing activ­i­ties, includ­ing the [then] ongo­ing para­mil­i­tary efforts to oust Cas­tro. (Ban­nis­ter is pic­tured at right.) In addi­tion to the WDSU inter­view, the sec­ond side fea­tures discussion—excerpted from the Guns of Novem­ber, Part I from 11/1/1983—of the intel­li­gence con­nec­tions of Ed But­ler, whose Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as arranged the Oswald inter­view. Again, Butler’s INCA was lit­tle more than an intel­li­gence front, with close ties to Bannister’s detec­tive agency.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  • Oswald’s WDSU gaffe in which he dis­closed his rela­tion­ship with the U.S. gov­ern­ment while in the U.S.S.R.
  • The high­ly unlike­ly fact that alleged K.G.B. oper­a­tive Stashyn­sky had the bro­ken key to Bandera’s apart­ment in his pos­ses­sion when he went to tri­al two years lat­er.
  • The equal­ly unlike­ly propo­si­tion that the oth­er half of the bro­ken key was still in the lock of Bandera’s apart­ment two years lat­er!

1. We begin by review­ing and syn­op­siz­ing infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Rus­sia has been framed for the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” alleged hack of the NSA, much as it appears to have been framed for the DNC hack. Indeed, with both the DNC hack and the “Shad­ow Bro­kers” non-hack of the NSA, the evi­dence points increas­ing­ly toward “Team Snow­den” and Eddie the Friend­ly Spook him­self.

Points of infor­ma­tion reviewed include:

  • Evi­dence sug­gest­ing that Rus­sia was NOT behind the DNC hacks. ” . . . . None of the tech­ni­cal evi­dence is con­vinc­ing. It would only be con­vinc­ing if the attack­ers used entire­ly nov­el, unique, and sophis­ti­cat­ed tools with unmis­tak­able indi­ca­tors point­ing to Rus­sia sup­port­ed by human intel­li­gence, not by mal­ware analy­sis.The DNC attack­ers also had very poor, almost com­i­cal, oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty (OPSEC). State actors tend to have a qual­i­ty assur­ance review when devel­op­ing cyber­at­tack tools to min­i­mize the risk of dis­cov­ery and leav­ing obvi­ous crumbs behind. Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices are espe­cial­ly good. They are high­ly capa­ble, tac­ti­cal­ly and strate­gi­cal­ly agile, and ratio­nal. They ensure that offen­sive tools are tai­lored and pro­por­tion­ate to the sig­nal they want to send, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of dis­clo­sure and pub­lic per­cep­tion, and the odds of esca­la­tion. The shod­dy OPSEC just doesn’t fit what we know about Russ­ian intel­li­gence. . . . Giv­en these argu­ments, blam­ing Rus­sia is not a slam dunk. Why would a coun­try with some of the best intel­li­gence ser­vices in the world com­mit a whole series of real­ly stu­pid mis­takes in a high­ly sen­si­tive oper­a­tion? Why pick a tar­get that has a strong chance of lead­ing to esca­la­to­ry activ­i­ty when Rus­sia is known to pre­fer incre­men­tal actions over dras­tic ones? Why go through the trou­ble of a false flag when doing noth­ing would have been arguably bet­ter?. . . .”
  • Infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that the NSA “hack” may well not have been a hack at all, but the work of an insid­er down­load­ing the infor­ma­tion onto a USB dri­ve. “. . . Their claim to have ‘hacked’ a serv­er belong­ing to the NSA is fishy. Accord­ing to ex-NSA insid­ers who spoke with Busi­ness Insid­er, the agency’s hack­ers don’t just put their exploits and toolk­its online where they can poten­tial­ly be pil­fered. The more like­ly sce­nario for where the data came from, says ex-NSA research sci­en­tist Dave Aitel, is an insid­er who down­loaded it onto a USB stick. . . . When hack­ers gain access to a serv­er, they keep qui­et about it so they can stay there. . . .One of the many strange things about this inci­dent is the very pub­lic nature of what tran­spired. When a hack­er takes over your com­put­er, they don’t start acti­vat­ing your web­cam or run­ning weird pro­grams because you’d fig­ure out pret­ty quick­ly that some­thing was up and you’d try to get rid of them. . . . . . . If the Shad­ow Bro­kers owned the NSA’s com­mand and con­trol serv­er, then it would prob­a­bly be a much bet­ter approach to just sit back, watch, and try to piv­ot to oth­er inter­est­ing things that they might be able to find. . . Peo­ple sell exploits all the time, but they hard­ly ever talk about it. . . . Most of the time, an exploit is either found by a secu­ri­ty research firm, which then writes about it and reports it to the com­pa­ny so it can fix the prob­lem. Or, a hack­er look­ing for cash will take that found exploit and sell it on the black mar­ket. So it would make sense for a group like Shad­ow Bro­kers to want to sell their trea­sure trove, but going pub­lic with it is beyond strange. . . .”
  • Eddie the Friend­ly Spook endorsed the cov­er sto­ry of the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ NSA “hack”–that the event was a hack (despite indi­ca­tors to the con­trary) and that Rus­sia did it.  . . . If you ask ex-NSA con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den, the pub­lic leak and claims of the Shad­ow Bro­kers seem to have Russ­ian fin­ger­prints all over them, and it serves as a warn­ing from Moscow to Wash­ing­ton. The mes­sage: If your pol­i­cy­mak­ers keep blam­ing us for the DNC hack, then we can use this hack to impli­cate you in much more.‘That could have sig­nif­i­cant for­eign pol­i­cy con­se­quences,’ Snow­den wrote on Twit­ter. ‘Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed US allies. Par­tic­u­lar­ly if any of those oper­a­tions tar­get­ed elec­tions. . . .” 
  • The code in the files was from 2013, when Snow­den under­took his “op.”  “. . . . The code released by the Shad­ow Bro­kers dates most recent­ly to 2013, the same year Edward Snow­den leaked clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion about the NSA’s sur­veil­lance pro­grams.. . . Snow­den also not­ed that the released files end in 2013. ‘When I came for­ward, NSA would have migrat­ed offen­sive oper­a­tions to new servers as a pre­cau­tion,’ he sug­gest­ed — a move that would have cut off the hack­ers’ access to the serv­er. . . . ”
  • Author James Bam­ford high­light­ed cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that Wik­iLeak­er Jacob Applebaum–who appears to have facil­i­tat­ed Snow­den’s jour­ney from Hawaii to Hong Kong–may have been behind the Shad­ow Bro­kers non-hack. “. . . . There also seems to be a link between Assange and the leak­er who stole the ANT cat­a­log, and the pos­si­ble hack­ing tools. Among Assange’s close asso­ciates is Jacob Appel­baum, a cel­e­brat­ed hack­tivist and the only pub­licly known Wik­iLeaks staffer in the Unit­ed States – until he moved to Berlin in 2013 in what he called a “polit­i­cal exile” because of what he said was repeat­ed harass­ment by U.S. law enforce­ment per­son­nel. In 2010, a Rolling Stone mag­a­zine pro­file labeled him “the most dan­ger­ous man in cyber­space.”In Decem­ber 2013, Appel­baum was the first per­son to reveal the exis­tence of the ANT cat­a­log, at a con­fer­ence in Berlin, with­out iden­ti­fy­ing the source. That same month he said he sus­pect­ed the U.S. gov­ern­ment of break­ing into his Berlin apart­ment. He also co-wrote an arti­cle about the cat­a­log in Der Spiegel. But again, he nev­er named a source, which led many to assume, mis­tak­en­ly, that it was Snow­den. . . .”
  • Apple­baum was anti-Clin­ton, sen­ti­ments expressed in the clum­sy Boris and Natasha-like bro­ken Eng­lish that accom­pa­nied announce­ment of the Shad­ow Bro­kers’ gam­bit. . . . . Short­ly there­after, he [Apple­baum] turned his atten­tion to Hillary Clin­ton. At a screen­ing of a doc­u­men­tary about Assange in Cannes, France, Appel­baum accused her of hav­ing a grudge against him and Assange, and that if she were elect­ed pres­i­dent, she would make their lives dif­fi­cult. ‘It’s a sit­u­a­tion that will pos­si­bly get worse’ if she is elect­ed to the White House, he said, accord­ing to Yahoo News. . . .. . . . In hack­tivist style, and in what appears to be pho­ny bro­ken Eng­lish, this new release of cyber­weapons also seems to be tar­get­ing Clin­ton. It ends with a long and angry ‘final mes­sage” against ‘Wealthy Elites . . . break­ing laws’ but ‘Elites top friends announce, no law bro­ken, no crime commit[ed]. . . Then Elites run for pres­i­dent. Why run for pres­i­dent when already con­trol coun­try like dic­ta­tor­ship?’ . . .” 
  • The e‑mail account used by the Shad­ow Bro­kers is in Ger­many and is resis­tant to attempts at dis­clos­ing users’ infor­ma­tion. Apple­baum, Lau­ra Poitras, Sarah Har­ri­son and Peter Sunde are in Ger­many.  “. . . He said Tutan­o­ta had only ever been forced to hand over encrypt­ed data of its users a few times and it has a trans­paren­cy report where it dis­clos­es those cas­es. ‘How­ev­er, we release data only in very, very few cas­es … And when we have to pro­vide the data due to a court order, it is still encrypt­ed,’ Pfau added, going on to explain the company’s stance on sur­veil­lance. . . .”
  • Recall that, in FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we not­ed that Snow­den was work­ing for the CIA in the sum­mer of 2009 when he decid­ed to infil­trate NSA and leak its infor­ma­tion. NSA “non-hack” sus­pect Apple­baum and much of the so-called “pri­va­cy” advo­cates have received fund­ing from CIA-derived orga­ni­za­tions such as the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, Radio Free Asia and the Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund. What role is the CIA play­ing in this? “. . . Jacob Appelbaum’s will­ing­ness to work direct­ly for an old CIA cutout like Radio Free Asia in a nation long tar­geted for regime-change is cer­tainly odd, to say the least. Par­tic­u­larly since Appel­baum made a big pub­lic show recent­ly claim­ing that, though it pains him that Tor takes so much mon­ey from the US mil­i­tary, he would nev­er take mon­ey from some­thing as evil as the CIA. . . .. . . Appelbaum’s finan­cial rela­tion­ships with var­i­ous CIA spin­offs like Radio Free Asia and the BBG go fur­ther. From 2012 through 2013, Radio Free Asia trans­ferred about $1.1 mil­lion to Tor in the form of grants and con­tracts. This mil­lion dol­lars comes on top of anoth­er $3.4 mil­lion Tor received from Radio Free Asia’s par­ent agency, the BBG, start­ing from 2007. . . . . . . . Though many of the apps and tech backed by Radio Free Asia’s OTF are unknown to the gen­eral pub­lic, they are high­ly respect­ed and extreme­ly pop­u­lar among the anti-sur­veil­lance Inter­net activist crowd. OTF-fund­ed apps have been rec­om­mended by Edward Snow­den, cov­ered favor­ably by ProP­ub­lica and The New York Times’ tech­nol­ogy reporters, and repeat­edly pro­moted by the Elec­tronic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion. Every­one seems to agree that OTF-fund­ed pri­vacy apps offer some of the best pro­tec­tion from gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance you can getIn fact, just about all the fea­tured open-source apps on EFF’s recent “Secure Mes­sag­ing Score­card” were fund­ed by OTF. . . .. . . . You’d think that anti-sur­veil­lance activists like Chris Soghoian, Jacob Appel­baum, Cory Doc­torow and Jil­lian York would be staunch­ly against out­fits like BBG and Radio Free Asia, and the role they have played — and con­tinue to play — in work­ing with defense and cor­po­rate inter­ests to project and impose U.S. pow­er abroad. Instead, these rad­i­cal activists have know­ingly joined the club, and in doing so, have become will­ing pitch­men for a wing of the very same U.S. Nation­al Secu­rity State they so adamant­ly oppose. . . .”

2. After syn­op­siz­ing the appar­ent fram­ing of Rus­sia for the DNC hack and the Shad­ow-Bro­kers’ non-hack of NSA, the broad­cast recaps two key episodes in the paint­ing of “Oswald Red.”

One of the results of the Snow­den “op” was the death of the Obama/Clinton State Department’s attempt­ed re-boot with Rus­sia. In this regard, the actions of the Obverse Oswald are sim­i­lar to the way that the paint­ing of Oswald Red served to exac­er­bate Cold War ten­sions.

The killing of the attempt­ed diplo­mat­ic rap­proche­ment with Rus­sia was, in turn, cen­tral to the real­iza­tion of the desta­bi­liza­tion of the Yanukovich gov­ern­ment in Ukraine and the instal­la­tion of the heirs to Stephan Bandera’s OUN/B in the Maid­an coup.

(Recall that the Maid­an coup was financed, in part, by Pierre Omid­yar, whose First Look Media were not only recip­i­ents of Snowden’s pur­loined files, but served as the jour­nal­is­tic plat­form for Glenn Green­wald, Snowden’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice.)

This pro­gram details the assas­si­na­tion of OUN/B leader Stephan Ban­dera–a key part of the paint­ing of Oswald Red.

Blamed on the KGB, the killing was–in all likelihood–performed by BND (Ger­man for­eign intel­li­gence and the suc­ces­sor to the Rein­hard Gehlen “org”) or oth­er Under­ground Reich-con­nect­ed ele­ments, pos­si­bly ele­ments of CIA.

The broad­cast cen­ters on dis­in­for­ma­tion point­ing to Lee Har­vey Oswald as a KGB-trained assas­sin. (The dis­in­for­ma­tion was spread by the World Anti-Com­mu­nist Con­gress for Free­dom and Liberation–the fore­run­ner of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.)

Attempt­ing to pin the assas­si­na­tion on the Sovi­ets and/or Cubans, these ele­ments spurred many lib­er­als to endorse the “Oswald as lone-nut” hypoth­e­sis. They were afraid that the assas­si­na­tion could lead to nuclear war, if the per­cep­tion gained trac­tion that Oswald was a com­mu­nist. A cen­tral ele­ment in this dis­in­for­ma­tion ploy was an attempt to con­nect the JFK assas­si­na­tion to the death of Stephan Ban­dera, alleged­ly per­formed by an KGB assas­sin named Bog­dan Stashyn­sky.

Mur­dered on the same day that Lee Har­vey Oswald “defect­ed” to the Sovi­et Union, Bandera’s killing was linked to Oswald’s alleged killing of JFK by ele­ments asso­ci­at­ed with the W.A.C.C.F.L.

W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments dis­sem­i­nated the lie that Oswald was trained at the same facil­ity as Stashyn­sky, and that the JFK hit was part of a Sovi­et pro­gram of assas­si­na­tion of West­ern polit­i­cal lead­ers. It should be not­ed that W.A.C.C.F.L.-related ele­ments also fig­ured promi­nently in the “han­dling” of Oswald in New Orleans, Dal­las and (pos­si­bly) the Sovi­et Union.

Those W.A.C.C.F.L. ele­ments were close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the OUN/B and the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, a con­sor­tium of East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the BND, the CIA and the Under­ground Reich.

The dis­in­for­ma­tion that Oswald was a KGB assas­sin was insert­ed into a Sen­ate Sub­com­mit­tee report by Sen. Thomas Dodd, with assis­tance from ele­ments of CIA.

(We went into this at greater length in FTR #876.)

3. Anoth­er episode in the paint­ing of Oswald Red con­cerns an inter­view set up on WDSU in New Orleans. Arranged by Ed But­ler, whose Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as served as a front for ele­ments of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mit­tee, the inter­view fea­tured Oswald pro­claim­ing his Marx­ist, pro-Cas­tro sym­pa­thies, as well as dis­cussing his so-called “defec­tion” to Rus­sia. One of the par­tic­i­pants in the inter­view was Car­los Bringuier, an anti-Cas­tro Cuban and key mem­ber of the DRE, one of the anti-Cas­tro Cuban groups man­aged by the CIA.

George Joan­nides, who served as some­thing of a case offi­cer for the DRE, was the liai­son between the House Select Com­mit­tee on Assas­si­na­tions and the CIA. Joan­nides was also report­ed by the BBC to have been present at the Ambas­sador Hotel in Los Ange­les on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assas­si­nat­ed.

The myth of “Lee Har­vey Oswald the Com­mu­nist” was suc­cess­ful­ly dis­played and stem­ming from that fic­tion led many lib­er­als to opt for the “Oswald the lone nut” sce­nario because they feared a Third World War might result from the pub­lic per­cep­tion that a “com­mie” had killed the Pres­i­dent. The sec­ond  pro­gram fea­tures a re-broad­cast of the inter­view that Oswald gave on WDSU in New Orleans in August of 1963. In this inter­view, Oswald express­es sym­pa­thy for Castro’s Cuba and dis­cuss­es his sojourn in the Sovi­et Union.

To all out­ward appear­ances, Oswald looked like a com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­er in the inter­view. Oswald was the sole mem­ber of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee’s New Orleans chap­ter, which shared an address with Guy Bannister’s detec­tive agency, a front for var­i­ous right-wing activ­i­ties, includ­ing the [then] ongo­ing para­mil­i­tary efforts to oust Cas­tro. (Ban­nis­ter is pic­tured at right.) In addi­tion to the WDSU inter­view, the sec­ond side fea­tures discussion—excerpted from the Guns of Novem­ber, Part I from 11/1/1983—of the intel­li­gence con­nec­tions of Ed But­ler, whose Infor­ma­tion Coun­cil of the Amer­i­c­as arranged the Oswald inter­view. Again, Butler’s INCA was lit­tle more than an intel­li­gence front, with close ties to Bannister’s detec­tive agency.

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #925 Painting Oswald “Red,” Part 1”

  1. It’s worth not­ing that Yasha Levine, who has done crit­i­cal work cov­er­ing the rela­tion­ships between the pri­va­cy advocacy/cypherpunk tech com­mu­ni­ty and folks like Jacob Appel­baum with the nation­al secu­ri­ty state (like his crit­i­cal arti­cle about the BBG) appears to be unem­ployed at the moment. It’s some­thing that came up after an Inter­cept reporter, Sam Bid­dle, got in a Twit­ter spot with Levine and Bid­dle belit­tled him for being unem­ployed.

    Con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance and sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the top­ics Levine cov­ers, it will be very inter­est­ing to see if he can find a new gig soon or has land­ed on some sort of jour­nal­is­tic black­list. He’s cur­rent­ly work­ing on a book Sur­veil­lance Val­ley accord­ing to his web­site, so hope­ful­ly that’s what he’s doing now and he has­n’t actu­al­ly been black­list­ed, but that will be some­thing to watch.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 30, 2016, 5:55 pm

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