FTR #964 Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

As we have noted in many previous broadcasts and posts, cyber attacks are easily disguised. Perpetrating a “cyber false flag” operation is disturbingly easy to do.

This is of paramount significance in evaluating the increasingly neo-McCarthyite New Cold War propaganda about “Russian interference” in the U.S. election.

Compounding the situation are some recent disclosures and developments:

1.–We learn that the CIA’s hacking tools are specifically crafted to mask CIA authorship of the attacks. Most significantly, for our purposes, is the fact that the Agency’s hacking tools are engineered in such a way as to permit the authors of the event to represent themselves as Russian.

2.–The NSA’s elite hacking technology has been made widely available to the hacking community, courtesy of “The Shadow Brokers.”

3.–During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Michael Flynn was professionally involved with numerous cyber-security and cyber arms manufacturing firms: “ . . . . The month before Flynn joined the advisory board of OSY Technologies, NSO Group opened up a new arm called WestBridge Technologies, Inc., in the D.C. region. (The company was originally registered in Delaware in 2014, but formed in Maryland in April 2016.) Led by NSO Group co-founder Lavie, WestBridge is vying for federal government contracts for NSO Group’s products. Hiring Flynn would provide NSO Group with a well-connected figure in Washington, to help get its foot in the door of the notoriously insular world of secret intelligence budgeting. . . .When you’re trying to build up your business, you need someone who has connections, someone who is seen as an authority and a legitimate presence,” Johnson said. Hiring someone with Flynn’s background in intelligence would ‘open up doors that they wouldn’t have had access to,’ Johnson said.Throughout 2016, Flynn worked for a number of cybersecurity firms personally and through his consulting firm, Flynn Intel Group. In addition to his advisory board seat at OSY Technologies, he sat on the board of Adobe Systems, a large software company with Pentagon contracts, and the boards of the cybersecurity companies GreenZone Systems and HALO Privacy. (Though Flynn described himself as an Adobe advisory board member in his financial disclosure paperwork, the group said in a statement that he provided only “periodic counsel to Adobe’s public sector team.”) . . .”

4.–NSO Group and OSY Technologies specialize in spear-fishing attacks, one of the methodologies used in the hacks of U.S. election computers. Is there any link between Flynn’s cyber-security/cyber arms links and the high-profile hacks during the campaign?

5.–A GOP tech database–Deep Root–Exposed the data of almost two hundred million American voters to widespread scrutiny. Is there any connection between Deep Root, the GOP and the alleged Russian hacking of U.S. voting computers?

Following a Bloomberg report about widespread Russian hacking of American elections systems: “ . . . . Kay Stimson, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secretaries of State, said the members of her group — which represents the chief election officials in 40 states — were taken aback by the allegation that 39 states were hacked. ‘We cannot verify any information in that report,’ Stimson told Benzinga. “It has some claims that have raised some red flags. I don’t know where they’re getting it. We’re not able to assess to the credibility.’ She said that some cybersecurity firms were engaging in scare tactics at the state and local levels. ‘There are cybersecurity firms making some wild claims,’ she said. ‘It is a very aggressive industry.’ . . .”

With the high-profile hacks being attributed–almost certainly falsely–to Russia, there are ominous developments taking place that may well lead to a Third World War. During the closing days of his Presidency, Obama authorized the planting of cyber weapons on Russian computer networks. Obama did this after talking with Putin on the Hot Line, established to prevent a Third World War. Putin denied interfering in the U.S. election.

The conclusion that Russia hacked the U.S. election on Putin’s orders appears to have been based on a CIA source in the Kremlin. Even when that intelligence was delivered, other agencies weren’t ready to accept the CIA’s conclusion and it took intelligence from another nation (not named) to provide the final intelligence tipping point that led to a broad-based conclusion the not only was the Russian government behind the cyberattacks but that Vladimir Putin himself ordered it.

That ally’s intelligence is described as “the most critical technical intelligence on Russia,” however the NSA still wasn’t convinced based on what sounds like a lack of confidence in that source. Thus, it looks like a CIA Kremlin source and an unnamed foreign intelligence agency with questionable credentials are the basis of what appears to be a likely future full-scale US/Russian cyberwar.

Of paramount significance is the fact that IF, on Putin’s orders (and we are to believe such) Russia continued to hack U.S. computer systems to influence the election, Putin would have to have gone utterly mad. Those hacks would have precluded any rapprochement between Russia and the United States under a President Trump. There is not indication that Putin went off the deep end.

Also auguring a Third World War are two developments in Syria. Seymour Hersh published an article in Die Welt revealing that, not only was the April 4 alleged Sarin attack NOT a chemical weapons attack but there was widespread knowledge of this in American military and intelligence circles.

Ominously, the Trump White House is claiming they have advance knowledge of an impending Syrian chemical weapons strike and will punish Syria heavily, and hold Russia accountable.

Program Highlights Include: The fact that the bulk of activity detected by the DHS on U.S. election systems was “scanning”–standard operating procedure for hacking; a former NSA hacking specialist–Jake Williams–said that spear-phishing operation was of “medium sophistication” that “practically any hacker can pull off”; the question of whether or not GOP Secretaries of State might have deliberately responded to the spear-phishing e-mails that permitted the “hit” on U.S. election systems; the Russian authorization of the use by the Syrian air force of a smart bomb to eliminate Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists; the release of a chemical cloud as a result of that strike that was caused by secondary explosions; Cambridge Analytica’s hiring of GOP online data-basing kingpin Darren Bolding.

FTR #955 Syrian Chemical Weapons Attack? Not So Fast, Part 2

Supplementing FTR #954, this broadcast continues analysis of the alleged Assad government chemical weapons attack. Key points of discussion include:

1. Further analysis by MIT expert Theodore Postol, who sees the photographic evidence alleged to support the Trump administration’s allegations as questionable. ” . . . ‘This addendum provides data that unambiguously shows that the assumption in the WHR that there was no tampering with the alleged site of the sarin release is not correct. This egregious error raises questions about every other claim in the WHR. … The implication of this observation is clear – the WHR was not reviewed and released by any competent intelligence expert unless they were motivated by factors other than concerns about the accuracy of the report. . . .”

2. Particularly suspicious (laughable?) is a picture showing personnel examining the purported sarin attack site with woefully inadequate protective clothing. ” . . . . ‘If there were any sarin present at this location when this photograph was taken everybody in the photograph would have received a lethal or debilitating dose of sarin. The fact that these people were dressed so inadequately either suggests a complete ignorance of the basic measures needed to protect an individual from sarin poisoning, or that they knew that the site was not seriously contaminated. This is the crater that is the centerpiece evidence provided in the WHR for a sarin attack delivered by a Syrian aircraft.’ . . . . ”

3. Questionable analysis in the alleged chlorine gas attacks also attributed to the al-Assad regime. ” . . . In one of the chlorine cases, however, Syrian eyewitnesses came forward to testify that the rebels had staged the alleged attack so it could be blamed on the government. In that incident, the U.N. team reached no conclusion as to what had really happened, but neither did the investigators – now alerted to the rebels’ tactic of staging chemical attacks – apply any additional skepticism to the other cases. In one case, the rebels and their supporters also claimed to know that an alleged ‘barrel bomb’ contained a canister of chlorine because of the sound that it made while descending. There was no explanation for how that sort of detection was even possible. . . .”

4. A British doctor who was a focal point of PR coverage of the alleged sarin attack has a jihadist background. ” . . . . A British doctor who documented a suspected chemical weapons attack in Syria was considered a ‘committed jihadist’ by MI6 and was struck off the General Medical Council in 2016. Shajul Islam, 31, posted several videos on Twitter in the aftermath of the Tuesday’s (4 April) attack where he appeared to be treating patients in Khan Sheikhoun. He appeared on several television networks such as NBC to discuss what he saw, but it has now emerged Islam was previously charged on terror offences in the UK. . . .”

4. The underlying strategic reason for some of the Trump/Russian interface, one that dovetails with the Syrian provocation/escalation: ” . . . . The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials. The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective . . . .”

5. George W. Bush administration officials are confident another terrorist attack is coming appear to be concerned that the Trump could use terror to grab and abuse executive powers. We present some of their thoughts against the background of our discussion in FTR #953 about Bernie Sanders’ paving the way for Muslim Brotherhood-linked elements: ” . . . . ‘We can assume there will be another terrorist attack in the U.S. If the executive order is in place, he will point to the attack as support for the executive order and the need to expand it to other countries with bad dudes (Muslims). If the executive order has been struck down, Trump will blame judges and Democrats for the attack. . . .’We both wholly believe that Trump needs a bogeyman. But, more importantly, he needs distraction and a blame source. In terrorists, he has his bogeyman. In his control of the prevailing press narrative via tweet, he has distraction. And, in the judiciary, he has a source of blame for why his way was right from the beginning.’ . . . . ‘I am fully confident that an attack is exactly what he wants and needs.’ . . . .”

Whereas the Syrian alleged sarin incident appears to have been effected by some of the West’s al-Qaeda surrogates in the conflict, past provocations have involved more direct involvement by elements of the intelligence community. In May of 1963, with then South Vietnamese president Diem pushing for a reduction in U.S. forces in Vietnam (against American wishes), a bombing occurred at a Hue radio station that was the focal point of Buddhist protests of the government’s policy toward Buddhists. The authorship of that attack and a 1952 Saigon bombing, was not the Vietcong.

Key points of analysis:

1. The May, 1963 attack in Hue: “ . . . . As Dang Sy and his security officers were approaching the area in armored cars about fifty meters away, two powerful explosions blasted the people on the veranda of the station, killing seven on the spot and fatally wounding a child. At least fifteen others were injured. . . .”

2. Forensic analysis of the wounds of the victims: “ . . . Dr. Le Khac Quyen, the hospital director at Hue, said after examining the victims’ bodies that he had never seen such injuries. The bodies had been decapitated. He found no metal in the corpses, only holes. There were no wounds below the chest. In his official finding, Dr. Quyen ruled that ‘the death of the people was caused by an explosion which took place in mid-air, blowing off their heads and mutilating their bodies.’ . . . ”

3. Dr. Quyen’s conclusions about the source of the victims’ wounds in the 1963 attack: “ . . . . The absence of any metal in the bodies or on the radio station’s veranda pointed to powerful plastic bombs as the source of the explosions. . . .”

4. Analysis of the 1952 bombing in Saigon: “ . . . . Who did possess such powerful plastic bombs? An answer is provided by Graham Greene’s prophetic novel The Quiet American, based on historical events that occurred in Saigon eleven years before the bombing in Hue. Greene was in Saigon on January 9, 1952, when two bombs exploded in the city’s center, killing ten and injuring many more. A picture of the scene, showing a man with his legs blown off, appeared in Life magazine as the ‘Picture of the Week.’ The Life caption said the Saigon bombs had been ‘planted by Viet Minh Communists’ and ‘signaled general intensification of the Viet Minh violence.’ In like manner, the New York Times headlined: ‘Reds’ Time Bombs Rip Saigon Center.’ . . .”

5. In the 1952 bombing, the operational coordination between U.S. media outlets and the perpetrators of the attack is noteworthy for our purposes: “ . . . . General The’s bombing material, a U.S. plastic, had been supplied to him by his sponsor, the Central Intelligence Agency. Greene observed in his memoir, Ways of Escape, it was no coincidence that ‘the Life photographer at the moment of the explosion was so well placed that he was able to take an astonishing and horrifying photograph which showed the body of a trishaw driver still upright after his legs had been blown off.’ The CIA had set the scene, alerting the Life photographer and Times reporter so they could convey the terrorist bombing as the work of ‘Viet Minh Communists’ to a mass audience. . . .”

6. South Vietnamese investigation of the May, 1963 attack, arrived at a conclusion similar to Graham Greene’s discovery in the 1952 attack: “ . . . . According to an investigation carried by the Catholic newspaper Hoa Binh. . . . a Captain Scott . . . . had come to Hue from Da Nang on May 7, 1963. He admitted he was the American agent responsible for the bombing at the radio station the next day. He said he used ‘an explosive that was still secret and known only to certain people in the Central Intelligence Agency, a charge no larger than a matchbox with a timing device.’. . . .”

FTR #946 In Your Facebook: A Virtual Panopticon, Part 2

In FTR #718 (recorded on Independence Day weekend of 2010), we noted that the new social medium–Facebook-might very well be the opposite of the liberating, empowering entity many believed it to be.

On the contrary, we said–it received financial backing from the CIA, permits unprecedented gathering and databasing of users’ personal information, and might very well be a “panopticon”–a type of prison in which the interned can never see his or her jailers, but their keepers can see the interned at all times.

In particular, we noted the prominent position of major Facebook investor Peter Thiel in “Mondo Zuckerberg.” Of German (and probable I.G. Farben) origins, we opined that Thiel was Underground Reich. Opposed to democracy because he feels it is inimical to wealth creation and doesn’t believe women should be allowed to vote, Thiel has now emerged as one of the most prominent of Donald Trump’s supporters, transition team creators and influential policy wonks.

Whereas we explored the “virtual panopticon” concept of Facebook with a question mark in 2010, we now feel affirmatively on the issue.

A very important story from New York magazine sets forth Facebook’s role in the just-concluded election. ” . . . . Facebook’s size, reach, wealth, and power make it effectively the only one that matters. And, boy, does it matter. At the risk of being hyperbolic, I think there are few events over the last decade more significant than the social network’s wholesale acquisition of the traditional functions of news media (not to mention the political-party apparatus). Trump’s ascendancy is far from the first material consequence of Facebook’s conquering invasion of our social, cultural, and political lives, but it’s still a bracing reminder of the extent to which the social network is able to upend existing structure and transform society — and often not for the better. . . .

” . . . . Facebook’s enormous audience, and the mechanisms of distribution on which the site relies — i.e., the emotionally charged activity of sharing, and the show-me-more-like-this feedback loop of the news feed algorithm — makes it the only site to support a genuinely lucrative market in which shady publishers arbitrage traffic by enticing people off of Facebook and onto ad-festooned websites, using stories that are alternately made up, incorrect, exaggerated beyond all relationship to truth, or all three. . . .

” . . . . And at the heart of the problem, anyway, is not the motivations of the hoaxers but the structure of social media itself. Tens of millions of people, invigorated by insurgent outsider candidates and anger at perceived political enemies, were served up or shared emotionally charged news stories about the candidates, because Facebook’s sorting algorithm understood from experience that they were seeking such stories. Many of those stories were lies, or ‘parodies,’ but their appearance and placement in a news feed were no different from those of any publisher with a commitment to, you know, not lying. As those people and their followers clicked on, shared, or otherwise engaged with those stories — which they did, because Trump drives engagement extremely bigly — they were served up even more of them. The engagement-driving feedback loop reached the heights of Facebook itself, which shared fake news to its front page on more than one occasion after firing the small team of editorial employees tasked with passing news judgment. . . .

” . . . . Something like 170 million people in North America use Facebook every day, a number that’s not only several orders of magnitude larger than even the most optimistic circulation reckonings of major news outlets but also about one-and-a-half times as many people as voted on Tuesday. Forty-four percent of all adults in the United States say they get news from Facebook . . . ”

Symptomatic of Facebook’s filter of what its users see concerns the social medium’s recent non-coverage of the women’s march:

” . . . . We don’t usually post on Pando at the weekend, but this is too topical and too shameful to wait until Monday. As you certainly know, today is the day of the Women’s March on Washington in protest of Donald Trump. The main event is in DC, where something close to 500,000 protesters of all genders and ages have packed the streets — but there are also major protests in Chicago, New York and around the world. Including Antarctica.

You certainly know this because the protest march is the top story on every major news outlet, and because updates and photos from the event are flooding your Twitter and Facebook feeds.

And yet, here’s what Facebook’s trending news feed looked like at the height of the march…

And here’s its trending politics feed…

Notice anything missing?

Like, say, a half million women? . . .

In case you think I’m seeing something different from the rest of the world, be assured I’m not….”

Facebook has changed its algorithm, no longer factoring in “likes” and other personal preferences in determining its news feed.

This, however, does not bode as well as Facebook would like us to believe. Facebook has promoted, among others, Campbell Brown, to an important position in structuring its news feed: ” . . . . Brown has longstanding ties not just to the traditional news media, but also to conservative politics, although she describes herself as a political independent. She is a close personal friend of Betsy DeVos, the Republican megadonor who is Donald Trump’s nominee for Education Secretary, and is married to Dan Senor, a former top advisor to Mitt Romney who also served as spokesperson for the Coalition Provisional Authority in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. . . .

. . . . And alongside her mainstream media experience, Brown is familiar with the world of non-traditional news outlets springing up online. In 2014, she founded a nonprofit news site, The 74, which bills itself as nonpartisan but which critics have said functions as advocacy journalism, tilted in favor of charter schools and against teachers’ unions. The site was launched with money from donors including the foundation run by DeVos, Trump’s proposed Education Secretary. When the nomination was announced, Brown said she would recuse herself from The 74’s coverage of DeVos. . .”

Brown is joined by Tucker Bounds, a former John McCain adviser and spokesman for the McCain/Palin campaign.

Exemplifying the terrifying possibilities of the virtual panopticon, we examine the nexus of Cambridge Analytica, its principal investors, Robert and Rebekah Mercer and Steve Bannon, a key member of the firm’s board of directors and a political guru to Rebekah. ” . . . . For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism ‘psy ops’ work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes. Respondents — by now hundreds of thousands of us, mostly female and mostly young but enough male and older for the firm to make inferences about others with similar behaviors and demographics — get a free look at their Ocean scores. Cambridge Analytica also gets a look at their scores and, thanks to Facebook, gains access to their profiles and real names.

“Cambridge Analytica worked on the ‘Leave’ side of the Brexit campaign. In the United States it takes only Republicans as clients: Senator Ted Cruz in the primaries, Mr. Trump in the general election. Cambridge is reportedly backed by Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire and a major Republican donor; a key board member is Stephen K. Bannon, the head of Breitbart News who became Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman and is set to be his chief strategist in the White House. . .

” . . . . Their [the Mercers] data firm, Cambridge Analytica, was hired by the Cruz campaign. They switched to support Trump shortly after he clinched the nomination, and he eventually hired Cambridge Analytica, as well. Their top political guru is Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart News chairman and White House chief strategist. They’re close, too, with Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, who also has a senior role in the White House. They never speak to the press and hardly ever even release a public statement. Like Trump himself, they’ve flouted the standard playbook for how things are done in politics. . . .”

Bannon’s influence on Rebekah Mercer is particularly strong: ” . . . Another of the Republican operatives described Bannon as the ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ to Rebekah Mercer, and a third was even more pointed: ‘Svengali.’ Bannon is ‘really, really, really influential’ with Mercer, said the former Breitbart employee. The Mercers, the former employee said, made their wishes known through Bannon, who would sometimes cite the company’s financial backers as a reason for Breitbart not to do a story. Bannon didn’t respond to a request for comment about this. . . .”

In turn, the influence of Steve Bannon within the Facebook virtual panopticon is even more sinister considering Bannon’s political outlook: ” . . . . But, said the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about Bannon, ‘There are some things he’s only going to share with people who he’s tight with and who he trusts.’

Bannon’s readings tend to have one thing in common: the view that technocrats have put Western civilization on a downward trajectory and that only a shock to the system can reverse its decline. And they tend to have a dark, apocalyptic tone that at times echoes Bannon’s own public remarks over the years—a sense that humanity is at a hinge point in history. . . .”

One of the influences on Bannon is Curtis Yarvin, aka Mencius Moldbug, who has actually opened a backchannel advisory connection to the White House: ” . . . . Before he emerged on the political scene, an obscure Silicon Valley computer programmer with ties to Trump backer and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel was explaining his behavior. Curtis Yarvin, the self-proclaimed ‘neoreactionary’ who blogs under the name ‘Mencius Moldbug,’ attracted a following in 2008 when he published a wordy treatise asserting, among other things, that ‘nonsense is a more effective organizing tool than the truth.’ When the organizer of a computer science conference canceled Yarvin’s appearance following an outcry over his blogging under his nom de web, Bannon took note: Breitbart News decried the act of censorship in an article about the programmer-blogger’s dismissal.

Moldbug’s dense, discursive musings on history—’What’s so bad about the Nazis?’ he asks in one 2008 post that condemns the Holocaust but questions the moral superiority of the Allies—include a belief in the utility of spreading misinformation that now looks like a template for Trump’s approach to truth. ‘To believe in nonsense is an unforgeable [sic] demonstration of loyalty. It serves as a political uniform. And if you have a uniform, you have an army,’ he writes in a May 2008 post.’It’s been a while since I posted anything really controversial and offensive here,’ he begins in a July 25, 2007, post explaining why he associates democracy with ‘war, tyranny, destruction and poverty.’

Moldbug, who does not do interviews and could not be reached for this story, has reportedly opened up a line to the White House, communicating with Bannon and his aides through an intermediary, according to a source. Yarvin said he has never spoken with Bannon. . . .”

After discussing Facebook’s new AI technology being employed to search users’ photos, the program concludes with the shift of Silicon Valley money to the GOP.

Program Highlights Include: review of Steve Bannon’s role on the NSC; review of the martial law contingency plans drawn up by Oliver North during the Reagan administration, involving the deputizing of paramilitary right-wingers; review of Erik Prince’s relationship to the Trump administration and Betsy De Vos, Trump’s education secretary.

FTR #930 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 9: Alfa Males, Part 3 (German Ostpolitik, Part 3)

With the (justifiable) outrage swirling around FBI director (and Mitt Romney backer) James Comey’s public discussion of the discovery of more of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails having been discovered, another election-related investigation has gone largely unexamined. Indeed, the importance of the investigation has been downplayed.

Computer experts discovered a link between a server registered to the Trump organization and two servers registered to the Alfa Bank in Moscow, a bank that is part of the Alfa conglomerate discussed in FTR #’s 530 and 573.

In the Foer piece, and in attempted discrediting articles of same, it is apparent that the investigators do not understand the nature of the entity they are investigating. The journalistic “spin” put on Alfa in the coverage is “Russia/Putin/Kremlin” new Cold War context. Alfa is very, very different.

In FTR #’s 530, 573 we examnined the nature of Alfa’s history, operations and institutional and economic foundations. It is anything BUT “Kremlin/Putin/Russia.”

It appears to be Underground Reich, all the way, with evidentiary tributaries running in the direction of: the Iran-Contra scandal; the Iraqgate scandal; the oil-for-food scam vis a vis Iraq; malfeasanace by a coterie of GOP bigwigs including Dick Cheney and others close to George W. Bush, and Haley Barbour; money-laundering by powerful international drug syndicates; Chechen warlords and drug-trafficking syndicates; the Royal family of Liechtenstein; the Bank al-Taqwa (which helped finance al-Qaeda); the Marc Rich operations; Eastern European and Russian associates of Wolfgang Bohringer, one of Mohamed Atta’s close associates in South Florida; and the Carl Duisberg Fellowship, which brought Mohamed Atta to Germany from Egypt and may have helped him into the U.S.

The program highlights major aspects of the investigation into the Alfa/Trump link:

The Trump/Alfa link was not a malware attack, as some of the computer scientists initially thought: ” . . . . The researchers quickly dismissed their initial fear that the logs represented a malware attack. The communication wasn’t the work of bots. The irregular pattern of server lookups actually resembled the pattern of human conversation—conversations that began during office hours in New York and continued during office hours in Moscow. It dawned on the researchers that this wasn’t an attack, but a sustained relationship between a server registered to the Trump Organization and two servers registered to an entity called Alfa Bank. . . .”

The set-up was highly unusual: ” . . . . The researchers had initially stumbled in their diagnosis because of the odd configuration of Trump’s server. ‘I’ve never seen a server set up like that,’ says Christopher Davis, who runs the cybersecurity firm HYAS InfoSec Inc. and won a FBI Director Award for Excellence for his work tracking down the authors of one of the world’s nastiest botnet attacks. ‘It looked weird, and it didn’t pass the sniff test.’ The server was first registered to Trump’s business in 2009 and was set up to run consumer marketing campaigns. It had a history of sending mass emails on behalf of Trump-branded properties and products. Researchers were ultimately convinced that the server indeed belonged to Trump. (Click here to see the server’s registration record.) But now this capacious server handled a strangely small load of traffic, such a small load that it would be hard for a company to justify the expense and trouble it would take to maintain it. ‘I get more mail in a day than the server handled,’ Davis says. . . .”
The article details more unusual aspects of the link: ” . . . . That wasn’t the only oddity. When the researchers pinged the server, they received error messages. They concluded that the server was set to accept only incoming communication from a very small handful of IP addresses. . . . Eighty-seven percent of the DNS lookups involved the two Alfa Bank servers. ‘It’s pretty clear that it’s not an open mail server,’ Camp told me. ‘These organizations are communicating in a way designed to block other people out.’ . . . .”

Paul Vixie–one of the premier experts in the field–felt the connection was highly unusual: ” . . . . Earlier this month, the group of computer scientists passed the logs to Paul Vixie. In the world of DNS experts, there’s no higher authority. Vixie wrote central strands of the DNS code that makes the internet work. After studying the logs, he concluded, ‘The parties were communicating in a secretive fashion. The operative word is secretive. This is more akin to what criminal syndicates do if they are putting together a project.’ Put differently, the logs suggested that Trump and Alfa had configured something like a digital hotline connecting the two entities, shutting out the rest of the world, and designed to obscure its own existence. . . .”

The available evidence indicates that the hookup indicated “human-level communication”: ” . . . I put the question of what kind of activity the logs recorded to the University of California’s Nicholas Weaver, another computer scientist not involved in compiling the logs. ‘I can’t attest to the logs themselves,’ he told me, ‘but assuming they are legitimate they do indicate effectively human-level communication.’ . . . ”

More about the nature of the communication, from the scientist using the code-name “Tea Leaves”: ” . . . . Tea Leaves and his colleagues plotted the data from the logs on a timeline. What it illustrated was suggestive: The conversation between the Trump and Alfa servers appeared to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States. ‘At election-related moments, the traffic peaked,’ according to Camp. There were considerably more DNS lookups, for instance, during the two conventions. . . .”

The scientists attempted to get the public to pay attention to their investigation and New York Times writers turned their attention to the case: ” . . . In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story.* (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. . . .”

Things got “interesting” after that. According to the computer scientists, the Trump Organization shut down the server! As the brilliant Berkeley researcher Peter Dale Scott noted, in a different context, “The cover-up obviates the conspiracy. ” . . . . In September, the scientists tried to get the public to pay attention to their data. One of them posted a link to the logs in a Reddit thread. Around the same time, the New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers began chasing the story.* (They are still pursuing it.) Lichtblau met with a Washington representative of Alfa Bank on Sept. 21, and the bank denied having any connection to Trump. . . . The computer scientists believe there was one logical conclusion to be drawn: The Trump Organization shut down the server after Alfa was told that the Times might expose the connection. Weaver told me the Trump domain was ‘very sloppily removed.’ Or as another of the researchers put it, it looked like ‘the knee was hit in Moscow, the leg kicked in New York.’. . . . Four days later, on Sept. 27, the Trump Organization created a new host name, trump1.contact-client.com, which enabled communication to the very same server via a different route. When a new host name is created, the first communication with it is never random. To reach the server after the resetting of the host name, the sender of the first inbound mail has to first learn of the name somehow. It’s simply impossible to randomly reach a renamed server. ‘That party had to have some kind of outbound message through SMS, phone, or some noninternet channel they used to communicate [the new configuration],’ Paul Vixie told me. The first attempt to look up the revised host name came from Alfa Bank. ‘If this was a public server, we would have seen other traces,’ Vixie says. ‘The only look-ups came from this particular source.’According to Vixie and others, the new host name may have represented an attempt to establish a new channel of communication. But media inquiries into the nature of Trump’s relationship with Alfa Bank, which suggested that their communications were being monitored, may have deterred the parties from using it. Soon after the New York Times began to ask questions, the traffic between the servers stopped cold. . . .”

Not surprisingly, the FBI has dismissed the relevance of the computer link.

This dismissal comes against the background of several late-breaking developments:

The unsuccessful attempt by Alfa subsidiary Crown Resources to buy Marc Rich’s commodities firm: ” . . . A deal to sell the Swiss-based commodities operation of former U.S. fugitive financier Marc Rich to Russia-owned energy trading group Crown Resources is off. . . . Crown is owned by the Alfa Group conglomerate. . . . .”

The subsequent successful attempt by Alfa player Mikhail Fridman to purchase the Marc Rich firm: ” . . . Mikhail Fridman: ‘Defendant Mikhail Fridman currently serves as Chairman of the Board of Directors of co-conspirator Alfa Bank and as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Defendant Consortium Alfa Group. Fridman further served on the Board of VimpelCom, a NYSE company, and has control over Golden Telecom, a NASDAQ company … purchased the United States trading firm owned by American, Mark Rich, the one time commodities baron pardoned by President Clinton with much controversy. . . .”

The FBI’s long-dormant Twitter account began tweeting files about Bill Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, shortly after the official dismissal of investigations into the Alfa/Trump link: ” . . . . Now, a new interagency mystery is raising questions about whether the F.B.I. has become politicized, just days before the presidential election. On Sunday, a long-dormant F.B.I. Twitter account suddenly sprung to life, blasting out a series of links to case files that cast the Clintons in a decidedly negative light. . . . Then, on Tuesday, the “FBI Records Vault” account—which had not tweeted at all between October 2015 and Sunday—published a link to records related to the 15-year-old, long-closed investigation into former President Bill Clinton’s pardoning of onetime commodities trader turned fugitive Marc Rich. The post, which was quickly retweeted thousands of times, links to a heavily redacted document that repeatedly references the agency’s “Public Corruption” unit—less-than-ideal optics for Hillary Clinton, who has spent her entire campaign fighting her image as a corrupt politician. . . .”

FBI Director James Comey was in charge of the original Marc Rich investigation and the pardon of Rich by Bill Clinton. Is there a connection between the official dismissal of the investigation into the Alfa/Trump link by the FBI, the tweeting by the FBI of the files on the Clinton pardon of Marc Rich and the fact that it was Comey who presided over the Marc Rich investigations? ” . . . . In 2002, Comey, then a federal prosecutor, took over an investigation into President Bill Clinton’s 2001 pardon of financier Marc Rich, who had been indicted on a laundry list of charges before fleeing the country. The decision set off a political firestorm focused on accusations that Rich’s ex-wife Denise made donations to the Democratic Party, the Clinton Library and Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign as part of a plan to get Rich off the hook. Comey ultimately decided not to pursue the case. The kicker: Comey himself had overseen Rich’s prosecution between 1987 and 1993. . . .”

Program Highlights Include: details of the Carl Duisberg Society’s links to Atta and to major German corporations; discussion of the Alfa Fellowhip against the background of German Ostpolitik discussed in FTR #’s 918 and 919; detailed analysis of Viktor Kozeny associates Fridman and (Pyotr) Aven (Kozeny employed Bohringer as a pilot); a summary analysis of the major points in FTR #’s 530 and 573.

Still Supporting Jihadis After All These Years

Al-Qaeda linked jihadists continue to dominate the so-called “moderate” opposition in Syria. The U.S. and Western tactic of using Muslim Brotherhood-linked combatants as proxy warriors and armed heralds of corporatist economics began well before the 9/11 attacks and has continued apace ever since. Failure to pursue the Operation Green Quest investigation looms ever larger.

FTR #913 Miscellaneous Articles and Updates

Bringing up to date topics covered in previous programs and posts, this broadcast begins with further coverage of the development of UFOs–so-called “flying saucers.” They were observed at the Roswell and Area 51 military bases and described as having been developed by the CIA, not “space aliens.”

In numerous posts and programs, we have noted that the GOP/Underground Reich element of U.S. intelligence has used Muslim Brotherhood-derived jihadis as proxy warriors and armed heralds of corporatist economics. In that context, we highlight the frankly suspicious release of Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s immigration file–only 206 of 651 pages were released in their entirety.

The use of Islamists as proxy warriors also bears consideration in light of law enforcement’s casual attitude toward 17 Muslim men who fired “hundreds of shots” and were “chanting” in the early morning hours in a park in San Bernardino County in California. Why wasn’t the FBI more concerned?

With tensions rising in the Western Pacific between the U.S. and China, newly-elected Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte harbors deep resentment of the U.S. over the extraction of a self-proclaimed CIA agent who incurred criminal charges in Mindanao while apparently looking for Golden Lily loot in the Islands.

After detailing yet another “suicide” of a key executive of Swiss Re, we present a significant analysis of the recent replacement of the head of the Israeli Defense Force with Avigdor Lieberman, the head of a far-right wing Israeli political party: “Israel has been ‘infected by the seeds of fascism,’ he [former Prime Minister Ehud Barak] said.”

Program Highlights Include: The CIA’s use of Gerhard von Mende, Nazi Germany’s top official coordinating Islamist forces working for the Third Reich; The Carl Duisberg Society’s sponsorship of Mohamed Atta associate and Chechen jihadi Mohamedou Ould Slahi.

FTR #903 Daniel Hopsicker on Donald Trump and How He Is Going to Make America Great Again

Donald Trump’s entire business career–his “art of the deal”–derives from highly questionable dealings with a pantheon of organized crime figures, corrupt financiers and intelligence-connected operatives. From his early entrepreneurial career in Atlantic City to his undertakings in Florida to his operations in Western cities like Las Vegas, one finds Trump associated with Jimmy-Hoffa linked Mafia figures, people from the milieu of Howard Hughes and Iran-Contra players such as Adnan Khashoggi. Trump has projected financier Carl Icahn as his Secretary of the Treasury, ignoring Icahn’s link to what Daniel has called “Cocaine One” and the mysterious, nefarious Skyway airlines. Trump’s Atlantic City deals involved mob-linked figures like Dan Sullivan, Kenneth Shapiro, “Fat Tony Salerno” and Nicky Scarfo. More significantly, the State of New Jersey, Atlantic City officials, and the Holiday Inn interests have aided Trump in highly questionable ways. In Las Vegas, Trump has been the heir to figures from the Meyer Lansky and Howard Hughes interests, such as Louis Lesser. Trump’s larger circle of friends links to individuals and institutions involved with the Marcos family in the Philippines, whose largesse derived from the Golden Lily loot secreted by the Japanese in World War II. Program Highlights Include: Craig Lesser (Louis Lesser’s son) and his role in accessing some of the Golden Lily loot in the Philippines; Iran-Contra figure Adnan Khashoggi’s sale of his personal yacht to Donald Trump; Khashoggi’s links to Imelda Marcos; Trump’s flipping of a luxury Palm Beach (Florida) property to Russian mobster Dimitry Rybolovlev; Trump’s use of “offshoring” tactics to render his dealings opaque.

What’s Up with This? Muslim Men “Firing Hundreds of Shots” and “Chanting” in San Bernardino County! No Arrests Made

In San Bernardino County, California, 17 Muslim men fired hundreds of shots and were heard chanting, yet no arrests were made. With the transnational/GOP/Underground Reich faction of U.S. intelligence funding jihadists as proxy warriors and armed heralds of corporatist economics, we wonder if these men might have been trainees, with protection by covert action sponsors? We wonder if “Islamic terrorists/ISIS” will be allowed to do to isolationist and maverick Trump what was done to Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and George Wallace in 1972? This would make Obama look “weak” and “soft on terrorism,” at the same time as eliminating Trump, enraging his followers and channeling them toward the GOP candidate of choice. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.

Brussels “Blowback” Background: The Belgian Muslim Brotherhood (The Killer B’s)

Predictably ignored by the media are the profound links between the jihadist milieu in Belgium, the milieu of the Bank Al-Taqwa and the Muslim Brotherhood. Also ignored–again predictably–are the evidentiary tributaries leading from the most important Belgium Muslim Brother–Bassem Hatahet–and the Syrian jihadists, backed by elements of Western intelligence. All of the contents of this website as of 12/19/2014–Dave Emory’s 35+ years of research and broadcasting–as well as hours of videotaped lectures are available on a 32GB flash drive. Dave offers his programs and articles for free–your support is very much appreciated.

FTR #890 Tracking from the Far Right: Update on the Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook

QUICK: Who said this?: “ ‘It seems like the [United States Dollar] and [Great Britain’s Pound] are both likely to go the way of the zim­babwe dol­lar,’ he sug­gested in March 2009. ‘Espe­cially with that cock­bag Bernanke decid­ing to mag­i­cally print 1.2T more dollars.’ . . . Obama was ‘plan­ning to devalue the cur­rency absolutely as fast as the­o­ret­i­cally pos­si­ble,’ he wrote. . . .” Ted Cruz? Donald Trump? Marco Rubio? Paul Ryan? Rand Paul? No, it is Edward Snowden. Note how this jibes with Paul Krugman’s description of the GOP primary field: ” . . . . After all, Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, not only berated Ben Bernanke, Ms. Yellen’s predecessor, for policies that allegedly risked inflation (which never materialized), but he also dabbled in conspiracy theorizing, accusing Mr. Bernanke of acting to “bail out fiscal policy.” . . . But Wall Street isn’t the only source of malign pressure on the Fed, and in the actually existing U.S. political situation, such a bill would essentially empower the cranks — the gold-standard-loving, hyperinflation-is-coming types who dominate the modern G.O.P., and have spent the past five or six years trying to bully monetary policy makers into ceasing and desisting from their efforts to prevent economic disaster.” This program highlights the far-right, fascistic forces underlying Eddie the Friendly Spook. Much of the program consists of excerpts of past programs, stretching back to the late 1990’s. The electronic “vacuum cleaner” approach of NSA and GCHQ has been on the public record for years. In the 1990’s NSA, GCHQ and the ECHELON/Five Eyes network came under joint assault by Germany and the Free Congress Foundation. The latter is very close to Nazi alumni of the Third Reich, the OUN/B in particular, and is an element deeply involved in projecting the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations back into the former U.S.S.R. and Eastern Europe. GOP bigwig Grover Norquist has been a vociferous opponent of NSA spying, as well as shepherding Muslim Brotherhood-linked elements in the United States. Program Highlights Include: Mr. Emory’s first post on “L’Affaire Snowden,” in which he wondered aloud what all the fuss was about, since this has been on the public record for years; review of the fact that other European countries do the same thing as NSA/GCHQ; Review of Snowden’s views on Social Security: ” . . . Snow­den wrote that the elderly ‘wouldn’t be fuck­ing help­less if you weren’t send­ing them fuck­ing checks to sit on their ass and lay in hos­pi­tals all day.’ ”