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Key EuroMaidan Coup Player Had Insider Information on DNC “Hack” Before Senior Democratic Officials

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COMMENT: In past com­men­tary [5], we have not­ed the pro­found Ukrain­ian [6] and Gehlen-derived links to the sup­posed “Russ­ian” hacks lead­ing up to, and dur­ing, the 2016 U.S. elec­tion cam­paign.

These high-pro­file “hacks” have all the ear­marks of a “cyber-false flag” oper­a­tion, which we com­pared to the “Paint­ing of Oswald Red” in FTR #‘s 925 [7]and 926 [8].

Now, we learn that Vic­to­ria Nuland, a key play­er [9] in the Euro­Maid­an Coup that placed the OUN/B fas­cist suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions [9] in pow­er in Ukraine was informed of the sup­posed “Russ­ian” hacks months before senior DNC offi­cials were informed.

There was a peri­od, from around May of 2015 to March of 2016, where Vic­to­ria Nuland–again, a key Euro­Maid­en instigator–knew about these hacks, but the DNC effec­tive­ly didn’t. Accord­ing to the fol­low­ing arti­cle, there’s anoth­er set of peo­ple who were informed about the hacks in late 2015:

State Depart­ment offi­cials, includ­ing Vic­to­ria Nuland, were informed about the DNC hacks in Decem­ber of 2015 and tasked with devel­op­ing a US response. [10]

” . . . . That con­clu­sion was rein­forced Wednes­day by anoth­er wit­ness, Vic­to­ria Nuland, who served as assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for Europe dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. She told the pan­el that she had been briefed as ear­ly as Decem­ber 2015 about the hack­ing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee — long before senior DNC offi­cials were aware of it — and that the intru­sion had all the hall­marks of a Russ­ian oper­a­tion. . . . As she and oth­er State Depart­ment offi­cials became ‘more alarmed’ about what the Rus­sians were up to in the spring of 2016, they were autho­rized by then Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry to devel­op pro­pos­als for ways to deter the Rus­sians. . . .”

This rais­es the ques­tion of whether the “response” she devel­oped may have involved engag­ing and mobi­liz­ing the OUN/B and Gehlen-derived ele­ments we looked at in FTR #‘s 943 [5] and 981 [6].

“Oba­ma Cyber Chief Con­firms ‘Stand Down’ Order against Russ­ian Cyber­at­tacks in Sum­mer 2016” by Michael Isikoff; Yahoo News; 06/20/2018. [10]

The Oba­ma White House’s chief cyber offi­cial tes­ti­fied Wednes­day that pro­pos­als he was devel­op­ing to counter Russia’s attack on the U.S. pres­i­den­tial elec­tion were put on a “back burn­er” after he was ordered to “stand down [11]” his efforts in the sum­mer of 2016.The com­ments by Michael Daniel, who served as White House “cyber secu­ri­ty coor­di­na­tor” between 2012 and Jan­u­ary of last year, pro­vid­ed his first pub­lic con­fir­ma­tion of a much-dis­cussed pas­sage in the book, ““Russ­ian Roulette: The Inside Sto­ry of Putin’s War on Amer­i­ca and the Elec­tion of Don­ald Trump [12],” co-writ­ten by this reporter and David Corn, that detailed his thwart­ed efforts to respond to the Russ­ian attack.

They came dur­ing a Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee hear­ing into how the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion dealt with Russ­ian cyber and infor­ma­tion war­fare attacks in 2016, an issue that has become one of the more polit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive sub­jects in the panel’s ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into Russia’s inter­fer­ence in the U.S. elec­tion and any links to the Trump cam­paign.

The view that the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion failed to ade­quate­ly piece togeth­er intel­li­gence about the Russ­ian cam­paign and devel­op a force­ful response has clear­ly gained trac­tion with the intel­li­gence com­mit­tee. Sen. Mark Warn­er, D‑Va., the rank­ing Demo­c­rat on the pan­el, said in an open­ing state­ment that “we were caught flat-foot­ed at the out­set and our col­lec­tive response was inad­e­quate to meet Russia’s esca­la­tion.”

That con­clu­sion was rein­forced Wednes­day by anoth­er wit­ness, Vic­to­ria Nuland, who served as assis­tant sec­re­tary of state for Europe dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. She told the pan­el that she had been briefed as ear­ly as Decem­ber 2015 about the hack­ing of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee — long before senior DNC offi­cials were aware of it — and that the intru­sion had all the hall­marks of a Russ­ian oper­a­tion.

As she and oth­er State Depart­ment offi­cials became “more alarmed” about what the Rus­sians were up to in the spring of 2016, they were autho­rized by then Sec­re­tary of State John Ker­ry to devel­op pro­pos­als for ways to deter the Rus­sians. But most of those steps were nev­er tak­en — in part because offi­cials assumed they would be tak­en up by the next admin­is­tra­tion.

“I believe there were deter­rence mea­sures we could have tak­en and should have tak­en,” Nuland tes­ti­fied.

As intel­li­gence came in dur­ing the late spring and ear­ly sum­mer of that year about the Russ­ian attack, Daniel instruct­ed his staff on the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to begin devel­op­ing options for aggres­sive coun­ter­mea­sures to deter the Kremlin’s efforts, includ­ing mount­ing U.S. “denial of ser­vice” attacks on Russ­ian news sites and oth­er actions tar­get­ing Russ­ian cyber actors.

Daniel declined to dis­cuss the details of those options dur­ing Wednesday’s open hear­ing, say­ing he would share them with the pan­el dur­ing a clas­si­fied ses­sion lat­er in the day. But he described his pro­pos­als as “the full range of poten­tial actions” that the U.S. gov­ern­ment could use in the cyber are­na “to impose costs on the Rus­sians — both open­ly to demon­strate that we could do it as a deter­rent and also clan­des­tine­ly to dis­rupt their oper­a­tions as well.”

Sen. James Risch, R‑Idaho, asked about a “Russ­ian Roulette” pas­sage in which one of Daniel’s staff mem­bers, Daniel Pri­eto, recount­ed a staff meet­ing short­ly after the cyber coor­di­na­tor was ordered by Susan Rice, Pres­i­dent Obama’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er, to stop his efforts and “stand down.” This order was in part because Rice feared the options would leak and “box the pres­i­dent in.”

“I was incred­u­lous and in dis­be­lief,” Pri­eto is quot­ed as say­ing in the book. “It took me a moment to process. In my head, I was like, did I hear that cor­rect­ly?” Pri­eto told the authors he then spoke up, ask­ing Daniel: “Why the hell are we stand­ing down? Michael, can you help us under­stand?”

Daniel has con­firmed that the account was “an accu­rate ren­der­ing of what hap­pened” in his staff meet­ing. He said his boss­es at the NSC — he did not specif­i­cal­ly men­tion Rice in his tes­ti­mo­ny — had con­cerns about “how many peo­ple were work­ing on the options” so the “deci­sion” from his supe­ri­ors at the Oba­ma White House was to “neck down the num­ber of peo­ple that were involved in devel­op­ing our ongo­ing response options.”

Daniel added that “it’s not accu­rate to say that all activ­i­ty ceased at that point.” He and his staff “shift­ed our focus” to assist­ing state gov­ern­ments to pro­tect against Russ­ian cyber­at­tacks against state and local elec­tion sys­tems.

But as for his work on devel­op­ing cyber deter­rence mea­sures, “those actions were put on a back burn­er and that was not the focus of our activ­i­ty dur­ing that time peri­od.”

Instead, Oba­ma offi­cials chose anoth­er course of action after becom­ing frus­trat­ed that Repub­li­can lead­ers on Capi­tol Hill would not endorse a bipar­ti­san state­ment con­demn­ing Russ­ian inter­fer­ence and fear­ful that any uni­lat­er­al action by them would feed then can­di­date Don­ald Trump’s claims that the elec­tion was rigged. They chose a pri­vate “stern” warn­ing by Oba­ma to Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin at a sum­mit in Chi­na in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber 2016 to stop his country’s cam­paign to dis­rupt the U.S. elec­tion.

Oba­ma offi­cials were also wor­ried that a vig­or­ous cyber response along the lines Daniel had pro­posed could esca­late into a full scale cyber war. And, they have since argued, they believed that the president’s warn­ing had some impact, not­ing — as Daniel did in his tes­ti­mo­ny — that they saw some tamp­ing down in Russ­ian prob­ing of state elec­tion data sys­tems after Obama’s pri­vate talk with Putin.

But Nuland tes­ti­fied that while the Rus­sians were “a lit­tle less active” in Sep­tem­ber after the Oba­ma warn­ing, Russ­ian activ­i­ty picked up again in Octo­ber when the Rus­sians accel­er­at­ed their social media cam­paign using pho­ny Face­book ads and Twit­ter bots.

“We saw an increase in what they were doing in social media,” Daniel agreed. “They shift­ed their focus.”

Nuland also revealed, in response to ques­tions by Sen. Susan Collins, R‑Maine, anoth­er pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­li­cized dimen­sion to the Russ­ian attack. That sum­mer, Collins said, FBI offi­cials advised the com­mit­tee that Russ­ian diplo­mats were trav­el­ing around the coun­try in areas they were not — under diplo­mat­ic pro­to­cols — per­mit­ted to vis­it , appar­ent­ly to col­lect intel­li­gence. Asked by Collins if she believed this was part of the Russ­ian so-called active mea­sures attack on the elec­tion, Nuland respond­ed, “I do.”

After the Novem­ber 2016 elec­tion, in which Trump defeat­ed Hillary Clin­ton, Oba­ma did impose new sanc­tions on Russia’s intel­li­gence ser­vices and expelled diplo­mats. But Nuland tes­ti­fied that most in the admin­is­tra­tion saw that as only a begin­ning of what need­ed to be done. “It’s fair to say that all of us in the process assumed what was done in Decem­ber and Jan­u­ary would be a start­ing point for what the incom­ing admin­is­tra­tion would then build on.”

The Wednes­day hear­ing by the intel­li­gence pan­el did not touch steps the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en — or in many cas­es, failed to take — to respond to the Russ­ian elec­tion attack. But both wit­ness­es empha­sized that there is new urgency to the issue to devel­op­ing pro­pos­als to do so. Daniel not­ed that a mali­cious new Russ­ian bot­net – known as a “VPN fil­ter” — has been dis­cov­ered infect­ing home office routers [13] and allow­ing hack­ers to inter­cept inter­net com­mu­ni­ca­tions. He said this was a “type of mal­ware we haven’t seen before” and shows “the intent of the Rus­sians to con­tin­ue their cyber activ­i­ties.”