Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'Vladimir Putin' is associated with 37 posts.

Cyber Attribution, the Macron hacks, and the Existential Threat of Unwarranted Certainty

Did you hear the big new hack­ing news? It’s the The news about ‘Fan­cy Bear’ already get­ting ready to wage a new hack­ing cam­paign against US politi­cians? If not, here’s a brief sum­ma­ry: Trend Micro, a Japan­ese cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm, just issued a new report pur­port­ing to show that ‘Fan­cy Bear’ has already set up mul­ti­ple phish­ing web­sites intend­ed to cap­ture the login cre­den­tials to the US Sen­ate’s email sys­tem. And Trend Micro is 100 per­cent con­fi­dent this is the work of ‘Fan­cy Bear’, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence hack­ing team. What led to Trend Micro’s 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty that these phish­ing sites were set up by ‘Fan­cy Bear’? It appears to be based on the sim­i­lar­i­ty of this oper­a­tion to the Macron email hack that impact­ed hit French elec­tion last year. The same hack that the French cyber­se­cu­ri­ty agency said was so unso­phis­ti­cat­ed that any rea­son­ably skilled hack­ers could have pulled them off. And the same hacks com­i­cal­ly includ­ed the name of a Russ­ian gov­ern­ment secu­ri­ty con­trac­tor in the meta-data and were traced back to Andrew ‘weev’ Auern­heimer. That’s the hack that this cur­rent Sen­ate phish­ing oper­a­tion strong­ly mim­ics that led to Trend Micro’s 100 per­cent cer­tain­ty that this is the work of ‘Fan­cy Bear.’ So how cred­i­ble is this 100 per­cent cer­tain cyber attri­bu­tion? Well, it’s pos­si­ble Trend Micro is cor­rect, it’s also extreme­ly pos­si­ble they aren’t cor­rect. That’s going to be the top­ic if this post, because Trend Micro is far from alone in mak­ing cyber attri­bu­tion an exer­cise in gam­bling with exis­ten­tial risks.


Oh What Tangled Webs We “Weev”: Ukraine, Hacking, Nukes and Serpent’s Walk

With our media accept­ing the “Rus­sia did it” non­sense about the high-pro­file hacks, the alle­ga­tion that Rus­sia attempt­ed to hack U.S. nuclear pow­er plants should awak­en deep, deep fear. Recent­ly, a Nazi (and nation­al guards­man) named Bran­don Rus­sell was arrest­ed with radioac­tive mate­r­i­al and bomb-mak­ing com­po­nents. Rus­sell was appar­ent­ly plan­ning to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant: ” . . . Rus­sell stud­ied how to build nuclear weapons in school and is ‘some­body that lit­er­al­ly has knowl­edge of how to build a nuclear bomb.’ . . . . they had a plan to fire mor­tars loaded with nuclear mate­r­i­al into the cool­ing units of a nuclear pow­er plant near Mia­mi.” ” . . .The FBI said Rus­sell ‘admit­ted to his neo-Nazi beliefs’ and said he was a mem­ber of a group called Atom­waf­fen, which is Ger­man for ‘atom­ic weapon.’ Major Caitlin Brown, spokes­woman for the Flori­da Nation­al Guard, con­firmed Rus­sell was a cur­rent mem­ber of the Flori­da Nation­al Guard. . . .”


FTR #967 Update on Ukrainian Fascism, the “Russia-Gate” Psy-Op and the Possibility of a Third World War

This pro­gram affords a vista on sev­er­al crit­i­cal polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty land­scapes, includ­ing the use of nuclear pow­er plants as an eco­nom­ic weapon and sab­o­taged via phys­i­cal inter­dic­tion or cyber-inter­fer­ence.

After exam­in­ing a sup­posed “Russ­ian-med­dling” inci­dent which was actu­al­ly an ANTI-Russ­ian inci­dent to use Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plants to super­sede the old Sovi­et pow­er grid in for­mer republics of the U.S.S.R., we note the con­tin­ued dom­i­nance of the Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal land­scape by vir­u­lent fas­cists evolved from the World War II era OUN/B.

We con­clude with a ter­ri­fy­ing look at the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the sabotaging/hacking of nuclear pow­er plants could lead to a Third World War.

With the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments turn­ing hand­springs over “Rus­sia-gate,” we exam­ine in detail one of the inci­dents promi­nent in the pre­sen­ta­tion of the sup­po­si­tion that “our democ­ra­cy” was manip­u­lat­ed by the Rus­sians.

In late Jan­u­ary, Trump point man for “mat­ters Russian”–CIA/FBI oper­a­tive Felix Sater, a long-time asso­ciate of his and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen and a Ukrain­ian par­lia­men­tar­i­an named Andrii Arte­menko were propos­ing a cease-fire/­peace plan for Ukraine. This has been spun by our media as con­sti­tut­ing yet anoth­er of the “Rus­sia con­trols Trump” man­i­fes­ta­tions.

The facts, how­ev­er, reveal that this was not a “pro-Russ­ian” gam­bit but an ANTI-Russ­ian gam­bit! In addi­tion to the CIA/FBI affil­i­a­tion of Sater, it should be not­ed that Arte­menko was part of the Pravy Sek­tor milieu in Ukraine, one of the most vir­u­lent of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in pow­er in that benight­ed nation.

Sater, Arte­menko and oth­ers were work­ing on a plan to reha­bil­i­tate Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plants in order to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty for Ukraine and the Baltic states, free­ing those for­mer Sovi­et republics from their old Sovi­et elec­tri­cal pow­er grids. The aging Sovi­et grids are a remain­ing ele­ment for poten­tial Russ­ian influ­ence in these areas.

Andrii Arte­menko:

1.-” . . . is a pop­ulist politi­cian with ties to the far-right Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary-polit­i­cal group “Right Sec­tor” and a mem­ber of the pro-West­ern oppo­si­tion par­lia­men­tary coali­tion led by for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yulia Tymoshenko’s par­ty. . . .. . . . Arte­menko, who is a staunch ally of Valen­tyn Naly­vaichenko, a for­mer head of Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty ser­vice with lofty polit­i­cal ambi­tions, has aligned him­self with oth­er West-lean­ing pop­ulists like Tymoshenko. . . .”
2.-” . . . . has a wife who is a mod­el, he served 2.5 years in prison with­out a tri­al, he has busi­ness in U.S and he is involved in the mil­i­tary trade to the war zones in the Mid­dle East. At home, he has close ties with the ultra-nation­al­is­tic Right Sec­tor. . . .”
3.-” . . . accord­ing to his pre­vi­ous e‑declaration in 2015, Arte­menko has a wife, mod­el Oksana Kuch­ma and four chil­dren, includ­ing two with U.S. cit­i­zen­ship — Edward Daniel, Amber Kather­ine. . . .”
4.-” . . . . found­ed sev­er­al com­pa­nies that pro­vid­ed mil­i­tary logis­tics ser­vices into the con­flict zones and trav­eled to Sau­di Ara­bia, Syr­ia, and Qatar for busi­ness trips. . . .”
5.-” . . . . is the deputy head of the Euro­pean Inte­gra­tion Com­mit­tee and respon­si­ble for diplo­mat­ic con­nec­tions with Sau­di Ara­bia, Qatar, Unit­ed States, Kuwait, Lithua­nia and Belarus. . . .”
6.-” . . . . joined the Right Sec­tor polit­i­cal par­ty and was rumored to be one of the spon­sors of its leader, Dmytro Yarosh, dur­ing his pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign in 2014. There is even a pho­to of Arte­menko, seat­ing among the Right Sec­tor Par­ty founders at the first par­ty meet­ing in March 2014. Right Sec­tor spokesper­son Artem Sko­ropad­sky told the Kyiv Post on Feb. 20 that he couldn’t con­firm or deny whether Arte­menko financed the Right Sec­tor Par­ty. . . .”

Any­thing but a “pro-Russ­ian” agent. Again, he was work­ing with Trump point man for mat­ters Russ­ian Felix Sater on this deal to pro­vide nuclear-gen­er­at­ed elec­tric­i­ty to some for­mer Sovi­et republics. Again, an anti-Russ­ian plot, NOT a pro-Russ­ian plot!

Next, we note that June 30th has been estab­lished as a com­mem­o­ra­tive cel­e­bra­tion in Lvov [Lviv]. It was on June 30, 1941, when the OUN‑B announced an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state in the city of Lviv. That same day marked the start of the Lviv Pograms that led to the death of thou­sands of Jews.

The hol­i­day cel­e­brates Roman Shukhevych, com­man­der of the Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion that car­ried out the mass killings. The city of Lviv is start­ing “Shukhevy­ch­fest” to be held in Lviv on June 30th, com­mem­o­rat­ing the pogrom. Shukhevy­ch’s birth­day. Shukhevych was named a “Hero of the Ukraine” by Vik­tor Yuschenko.

In past posts and pro­grams, we have dis­cussed Volodomir Vya­tro­vich, head of the Orwellian Insti­tute of Nation­al Remem­brance. He defend­ed Shukhevych and the pub­lic dis­play­ing of the sym­bol of the Gali­cian Divi­sion (14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion.)

Return­ing to Sater col­lab­o­ra­tor Andrii Arte­menko, we note that he is part of push by Pravy Sek­tor and oth­er OUN/B suc­ces­sor orga­ni­za­tions in Ukraine to oust Poroshenko.

A major, ter­ri­fy­ing part of the pro­gram focus­es on nuclear pow­er plants, the phys­i­cal and/or cyber sab­o­tag­ing of those plants and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this could lead to a Third World War. Against the back­ground of the drum­beat of anti-Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da to which we are being sub­ject­ed, the charge that “Russ­ian hack­ers” attempt­ed to gain access to U.S. nuclear pow­er plants using a spearfish­ing attack is to be viewed with alarm.

“. . . . The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Sat­ur­day that U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials have already pinned the recent nuclear cyber intru­sions on Rus­sia. . . . Ana­lysts remain quick to tamp down asser­tions that Russia’s fin­ger­print on the lat­est attack is a sure thing. . . . Still, it’s a pret­ty alarm­ing sit­u­a­tion regard­less of who was behind it, in part because it’s an exam­ple of how poten­tial­ly vul­ner­a­ble things like nuclear plants are to any hack­er, state-backed or not: . . . . Still, the source said a well-resourced attack­er could try sneak­ing in thumb dri­ves, plant­i­ng an insid­er or even land­ing a drone equipped with wire­less attack tech­nol­o­gy into a nuclear gen­er­a­tion site. Reports indi­cate that the infa­mous Stuxnet worm, which dam­aged Iran­ian nuclear cen­trifuges in the late 2000s, prob­a­bly snuck in on remov­able media. Once inside the “air gapped” tar­get net­work, Stuxnet relied on its own hard-cod­ed instruc­tions, rather than any remote com­mands sent in through the inter­net, to cause cost­ly and sen­si­tive nuclear equip­ment to spin out of con­trol. . . .”

The above-excerpt­ed sto­ry should be viewed against the back­ground of a fright­en­ing devel­op­ment in Flori­da. Devon Arthurs – a neo-Nazi-turned-Muslim–murdered two of his neo-Nazi room­mates back in May. Nation­al Guard sol­dier Bran­don Rus­sell – Arthurs’s sur­viv­ing third room­mate, was found with bomb-mak­ing mate­ri­als, radioac­tive sub­stances and a framed pic­ture of Tim­o­thy McVeigh after police searched their res­i­dence.

Rus­sell:

1.-Planned to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant. ” . . . . He said Rus­sell stud­ied how to build nuclear weapons in school and is ‘some­body that lit­er­al­ly has knowl­edge of how to build a nuclear bomb.’ . . . He also said they had a plan to fire mor­tars loaded with nuclear mate­r­i­al into the cool­ing units of a nuclear pow­er plant near Mia­mi. He said the dam­age would cause ‘a mas­sive reac­tor fail­ure’ and spread ‘irra­di­at­ed water’ through­out the ocean. . . .”
2.-Belonged to a Nazi group called “Atom­waf­fen.” ” . . . The FBI said Rus­sell “admit­ted to his neo-Nazi beliefs” and said he was a mem­ber of a group called Atom­waf­fen, which is Ger­man for ‘atom­ic weapon.’ . . .”
3.-Was in the Nation­al Guard. Recall that, in the Nazi tract Ser­pen­t’s Walk, the Under­ground Reich gains con­trol of the opin­ion-form­ing media, infil­trates the U.S. mil­i­tary and takes over the coun­try after it is dev­as­tat­ed by a series of ter­ror­ist inci­dents involv­ing Russ­ian WMDs. The stage is set for a Nazi flase flag oper­a­tion that could be blamed on Rus­sia.

Rus­sell, and the rest of Atom­waf­fen, received a wring­ing endorse­ment from bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer. Auern­heimer is a skilled hack­er who may very well have the abil­i­ty to trig­ger a nuclear melt down some­day. Writ­ing of the mur­der of Rus­sel­l’s room­mates Auern­heimer, the two killed room­mates were “friends of friends” and the “Atom­waf­fen are a bunch of good dudes. They’ve post­ed tons of fliers with absolute­ly killer graph­ics at tons of uni­ver­si­ties over the years. They gen­er­al­ly have a lot of fun and par­ty.”

The point, here, is that Aueren­heimer is part of the Nazi milieu that was look­ing to sab­o­tage a nuclear pow­er plant. With our media hyp­ing “Russ­ian hack­ing,” includ­ing the sup­posed attempt to hack U.S. nuclear pow­er plants, the pro­pa­gan­da stage is set for some­one with Aueren­heimer’s for­mi­da­ble com­put­er skills to sab­o­tage a nuke plant, there­by [very pos­si­bly] start­ing World War III.

This post con­cludes with a detailed arti­cle referred to briefly at the end of the broad­cast. It delves into the tech­ni­cal­ly com­pli­cat­ed dis­cus­sion about the high-pro­file hacks.

Against the back­ground of the reports of Russ­ian hack­ing of U.S. nuclear pow­er plants, the “Atom­waf­fen” link to Ukraine-based Andrew Aueren­heimer, writer Jef­frey Car­r’s reflec­tions are to be weighed very seri­ous­ly:

” . . . . Here’s my night­mare. Every time a claim of attri­bu­tion is made—right or wrong—it becomes part of a per­ma­nent record; an un-ver­i­fi­able prove­nance that is built upon by the next secu­ri­ty researcher or start­up who wants to grab a head­line, and by the one after him, and the one after her. The most sen­sa­tion­al of those claims are almost assured of inter­na­tion­al media atten­tion, and if they align with U.S. pol­i­cy inter­ests, they rapid­ly move from unver­i­fied the­o­ry to fact.

Because each head­line is informed by a report, and because indi­ca­tors of com­pro­mise and oth­er tech­ni­cal details are shared between ven­dors world­wide, any State or non-State actor in the world will soon have the abil­i­ty to imi­tate an APT group with State attri­bu­tion, launch an attack against anoth­er State, and gen­er­ate suf­fi­cient harm­ful effects to trig­ger an inter­na­tion­al inci­dent. All because some com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies are com­pelled to chase head­lines with sen­sa­tion­al claims of attri­bu­tion that can­not be ver­i­fied. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The CIA/State Depart­ment back­ground of Kurt Volk­er (nice Anglo-Sax­on name, that), Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and an advo­cate of sell­ing weapon­ry to that benight­ed state; Andrii Arte­menko and Felix Sater’s would-be asso­ciate in the Ukrain­ian nuclear pow­er plant scheme, Robert Armao; Armao’s links to Nel­son Rock­e­feller, Marc Rich and Francesco Pazien­za (a fig­ure in the inves­ti­ga­tions into P‑2, the shoot­ing of Pope John Paul I and the col­lapse of the Ban­co Ambrosiano); Review of James Comey’s role in inves­ti­gat­ing Bill Clin­ton’s par­don of Marc Rich; review of the revival of the FBI’s Twit­ter account and its dis­sem­i­na­tion of Marc Rich mate­r­i­al on the eve of the elec­tion; review of Felix Sater’s CIA/FBI back­ground; Aueren­heimer’s obses­sion with Tim­o­thy McVeigh; Bran­don Rus­sel­l’s fas­ci­na­tion with Tim­o­thy McVeigh..


FTR #966 Dramatis Personae of the Russia-Gate Psy-Op

Devel­op­ing infor­ma­tion about the cast of char­ac­ters in the “Rus­sia-Gate” psy-op, we high­light the polit­i­cal alle­giance of “Team Trump”–the oper­a­tives involved with Trump’s cam­paign and busi­ness deal­ings with Rus­sia, as well as Robert Mueller, for­mer FBI chief and a very spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor indeed.

Although Trump cer­tain­ly had links to Russ­ian mob fig­ures, they are by no means the prime movers in this dra­ma.

Most impor­tant­ly, we detail the polit­i­cal resumes and deep pol­i­tics under­ly­ing the cast of char­ac­ters in this dra­ma, track­ing the oper­a­tional links back to Joe McCarthy and the red-bait­ing spe­cial­ists from the first Cold War.

Joe McCarthy legal point man Roy Cohn is, to a con­sid­er­able extent, the spi­der at the cen­ter of this web. Cohn:

1.-Was Trump’s attor­ney for much of “The Don­ald’s” pro­fes­sion­al life.
2.-Introduced Trump cam­paign man­ag­er and dirty tricks spe­cial­ist Roger Stone to the seat­ed Pres­i­dent.
3.-Was instru­men­tal in arrang­ing for a bribe which made “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York. Cohn and Stone’s asso­ciate in this oper­a­tion was Antho­ny “Fat Tony” Salerno–one of Cohn’s mob clients and among Don­ald Trump’s orga­nized crime asso­ciates as well.
4.-Was the point man for intro­duc­ing Rupert Mur­doch to Ronald Rea­gan and forg­ing the right-wing media attack machine that dom­i­nates today, the most promi­nent ele­ment of which is Fox News.

Roger Stone is anoth­er fig­ure who weaves through­out this con­cate­na­tion. Stone:

1.-Was Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign man­ag­er and lat­er dirty tricks oper­a­tive, who net­worked with Wik­iLeaks go-between for the Trump/Alt-right crew.
2.-Was tout­ing Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty can­di­date Gary John­son. John­son and Jill Stein were advo­cat­ed for by Stone as par­tic­i­pants in the debates between Hillary Clin­ton and Trump. (John­son and Stein’s com­bined vote total helped Trump win in sev­er­al key states.)
3.-Worked with Roy Cohn to put “inde­pen­dent” Repub­li­can John Ander­son the Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date for the Lib­er­al Par­ty in New York. This gam­bit gave Rea­gan a key vic­to­ry in New York, as not­ed above.

The point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent. As the media firestorm around “Rus­sia-gate” builds, it is impor­tant not to lose sight of Sater. ” . . . . He [Sater] also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .” We won­der if help­ing the “Rus­sia-Gate” op may have been one of those.

Beyond Sater, oth­er key play­ers in this con­cate­na­tion do not track back to “Kremlin/Putin/FSB/KGB.” Rob Goldstone–the pub­li­cist whose over­ture to Don­ald Trump, Jr. ini­ti­at­ed the lat­est “Rus­sia-gate jour­nal­is­tic feed­ing fren­zy in the media, began his career a jour­nal­is­tic foot sol­dier for Rupert Mur­doch, the very same Rupert Mur­doch whose chris­ten­ing as a GOP/right-wing pro­pa­gan­dist was ini­ti­at­ed by Roy Cohn.

Gold­stone con­tact­ed Don­ald Trump Jr., dan­gling the bait that there might be dirt on Hillary avail­able if he met with some asso­ciates. Fore­most among those is a Russ­ian attor­ney, Natal­ie Vesel­nit­skaya. Her appar­ent pur­pose in this meet­ing was not to offer up dirt on Hillary Clin­ton but to work toward eas­ing a media lock­down on a doc­u­men­tary about the Mag­nit­sky affair.

Spun in the West, the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar, as a clas­sic exam­ple of ham-fist­ed Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and vio­lence, the Mag­nit­sky affair was revealed in the film doc­u­men­tary to be an exam­ple of U.S. cor­rup­tion, not Russ­ian.

Craft­ed by Putin polit­i­cal oppo­nent Andrei Nekrasov, the film revealed an unex­pect­ed dynam­ic: ” . . . . Nekrasov dis­cov­ered that a woman work­ing in Browder’s com­pa­ny was the actu­al whistle­blow­er and that Mag­nit­sky – rather than a cru­sad­ing lawyer – was an accoun­tant who was impli­cat­ed in the scheme. . . .”

Attempt­ing to lift the media black­out on Nekrasov’s film was Vesel­nit­skaya’s goal, not dis­sem­i­nat­ing dirt on Hillary Clin­ton.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: the financ­ing of Joe McCarthy’s career by Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er Wal­ter Har­nischfeger, part of the Ger­man-Amer­i­can Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try which was at the fore­front of the dis­cus­sion in FTR #‘s 918, 919; McCarthy’s use of a post­war Nazi net­work head­ed by Gen­er­al Karl Wolff, SS chief Hein­rich Himm­ler’s per­son­al adju­tant; Spe­cial Pros­e­cu­tor Robert Mueller’s role in cov­er­ing up the BCCI scan­dal and the over­lap­ping Oper­a­tion Green Quest inves­ti­ga­tion pur­suant to 9/11.


FTR #965 Are We Going to Have a Third World War?

Recent devel­op­ments are sug­ges­tive of the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of an immi­nent Third World War. We present some new infor­ma­tion and recap and fur­ther ana­lyze sto­ries cov­ered in pre­vi­ous pro­grams in order to under­score and high­light the poten­tial dev­as­ta­tion of these events.

As the furor (“fuehrer”?) sur­round­ing the poten­tial­ly lethal polit­i­cal hoax known as “Rus­sia-gate” gains momen­tum, it should be not­ed that the point man for the Trump busi­ness inter­ests in their deal­ings with Rus­sia is Felix Sater. A Russ­ian-born immi­grant, Sater is a pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nal and a con­vict­ed felon with his­tor­i­cal links to the Mafia. Beyond that, and more impor­tant­ly, Sater is an FBI infor­mant and a CIA con­tract agent: “. . . . There is every indi­ca­tion that the extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lenient treat­ment result­ed from Sater play­ing a get-out-of-jail free card. Short­ly before his secret guilty plea, Sater became a free­lance oper­a­tive of the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency. One of his fel­low stock swindlers, Sal­va­tore Lau­ria, wrote a book about it. The Scor­pi­on and the Frog is described on its cov­er as ‘the true sto­ry of one man’s fraud­u­lent rise and fall in the Wall Street of the nineties.’ Accord­ing to Lauria–and the court files that have been unsealed–Sater helped the CIA buy small mis­siles before they got to ter­ror­ists. He also pro­vid­ed oth­er pur­port­ed nation­al secu­ri­ty ser­vices for a report­ed fee of $300,000. Sto­ries abound as to what else Sater may or may not have done in the are­na of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”

Sater was active on behalf of the Trumps in the fall of 2015: “. . . . Sater worked on a plan for a Trump Tow­er in Moscow as recent­ly as the fall of 2015, but he said that had come to a halt because of Trump’s pres­i­den­tial cam­paign. . . .”

Sater was ini­ti­at­ing con­tact between the Rus­sians and “Team Trump” in Jan­u­ary of this year: “ . . . . Nev­er­the­less, in late Jan­u­ary, Sater and a Ukrain­ian law­mak­er report­ed­ly met with Trump’s per­son­al lawyer, Michael Cohen, at a New York hotel. Accord­ing to the [New York] Times, they dis­cussed a plan that involved the U.S. lift­ing sanc­tions against Rus­sia, and Cohen said he hand-deliv­ered the plan in a sealed enve­lope to then-nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Michael Fly­nn. Cohen lat­er denied deliv­er­ing the enve­lope to any­one in the White House, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. . . .”

A stun­ning devel­op­ment con­cerns extreme ret­i­cence on the part of the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty:

The Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence had an “inter­est­ing” response to a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act law­suit demand­ing the release of the clas­si­fied report giv­en to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma back in Jan­u­ary pur­port­ing to show the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind the hacks. Accord­ing to the ODNI, the request­ed doc­u­ment would present a risk to human intel­li­gence sources by reveal­ing the com­par­a­tive weight giv­en to human vs tech­ni­cal evi­dence, risk­ing US sources and meth­ods. But the ODNI went fur­ther, sug­gest­ing that even releas­ing a ful­ly redact­ed doc­u­ment would present sim­i­lar risks!

It is NOT easy to see the ODNI’s reluc­tance to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed copy of the report as any­thing but disin­gen­u­ous. In the con­text of poten­tial­ly dev­as­tat­ing dete­ri­o­ra­tion of Russian/U.S. rela­tions over Syr­ia, Ukraine, and the Russ­ian “elec­tion-hack­ing” uproar, the ODNI’s behav­ior can­not be any­thing but dis­qui­et­ing:

” . . . . The intel­li­gence offi­cial argued that a redact­ed ver­sion of the orig­i­nal report would allow a trained eye to assess ‘com­par­a­tive weight’ of human intel­li­gence and sig­nals intel­li­gence report­ing includ­ed in the com­pendi­um. Release of some of the infor­ma­tion the pri­va­cy-focused orga­ni­za­tion wants made pub­lic ‘could prove fatal to U.S. human intel­li­gence sources,’ [Deputy Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence for Intel­li­gence Inte­gra­tion Edward] Gis­taro warned.

Gis­taro also appears to argue that even if offi­cials blacked out the whole report, high­ly clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion would be at risk.

‘I agree with the [Nation­al Intel­li­gence Coun­cil] that a heav­i­ly or even ful­ly redact­ed ver­sion of the clas­si­fied report can not be pub­licly released with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion prop­er­ly clas­si­fied as SECRET or TOP SECRET,’ he wrote. . . . ‘The ODNI should release the com­plete report to EPIC so that the pub­lic and the Con­gress can under­stand the full extent of the Russ­ian inter­fer­ence with the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion,’ EPIC’s Marc Roten­berg told POLITICO Tues­day. ‘It is already clear that gov­ern­ment secre­cy is frus­trat­ing mean­ing­ful over­sight. The FBI, for exam­ple, will not even iden­ti­fy the states that were tar­get­ed by Rus­sia.’ . . . ”

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 no indi­ca­tion that Putin went off the deep end.

Also augur­ing a pos­si­ble 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.

What did the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty know about the attack? The Russ­ian and Syr­i­an air force had informed the US in advance of that airstrike that they had intel­li­gence that top lev­el lead­ers of Ahrar al-Sham and Jab­hat al-Nus­ra were meet­ing in that build­ing and they informed of the US of the attack plan in advance of the attack and that it was on a “high-val­ue” tar­get. And the attack involved the unusu­al use of a guid­ed bomb and Syria’s top pilots. ” . . . . Russ­ian and Syr­i­an intel­li­gence offi­cials, who coor­di­nate oper­a­tions close­ly with the Amer­i­can com­mand posts, made it clear that the planned strike on Khan Sheikhoun was spe­cial because of the high-val­ue tar­get. ‘It was a red-hot change. The mis­sion was out of the ordi­nary – scrub the sked,’ the senior advis­er told me. ‘Every oper­a­tions offi­cer in the region’ – in the Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, CIA and NSA – ‘had to know there was some­thing going on. The Rus­sians gave the Syr­i­an Air Force a guid­ed bomb and that was a rar­i­ty. They’re skimpy with their guid­ed bombs and rarely share them with the Syr­i­an Air Force. And the Syr­i­ans assigned their best pilot to the mis­sion, with the best wing­man.’ The advance intel­li­gence on the tar­get, as sup­plied by the Rus­sians, was giv­en the high­est pos­si­ble score inside the Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty. . . .”

Fol­low­ing the attack, US intel­li­gence con­clud­ed that there was no sarin gas attack, Assad wouldn’t have been that polit­i­cal­ly sui­ci­dal. The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . ‘This was not a chem­i­cal weapons strike,’ the advis­er said. ‘That’s a fairy tale. . . .”

The symp­toms of chem­i­cal poi­son­ing fol­low­ing the bomb­ing was like­ly due to a mix­ture of chlo­rine, fer­til­iz­ers, and oth­er chem­i­cals stored in the build­ing that was tar­get­ed by the Syr­i­an air­force cre­at­ed by sec­ondary explo­sions from the ini­tial bomb­ing. ” . . . . A Bomb Dam­age Assess­ment (BDA) by the U.S. mil­i­tary lat­er deter­mined that the heat and force of the 500-pound Syr­i­an bomb trig­gered a series of sec­ondary explo­sions that could have gen­er­at­ed a huge tox­ic cloud that began to spread over the town, formed by the release of the fer­til­iz­ers, dis­in­fec­tants and oth­er goods stored in the base­ment, its effect mag­ni­fied by the dense morn­ing air, which trapped the fumes close to the ground. . . .”

The behav­ior of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion was not only in direct con­flict with intel­li­gence on the attack, but rein­forced pro­pa­gan­da by some of the Al-Qae­da-linked jihadists the West has been using as proxy war­riors in Syr­ia and else­where: ” . . . . ‘The Salafists and jihadists got every­thing they want­ed out of their hyped-up Syr­i­an nerve gas ploy,’ the senior advis­er to the U.S. intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty told me, refer­ring to the flare up of ten­sions between Syr­ia, Rus­sia and Amer­i­ca. ‘The issue is, what if there’s anoth­er false flag sarin attack cred­it­ed to hat­ed Syr­ia? Trump has upped the ante and paint­ed him­self into a cor­ner with his deci­sion to bomb. And do not think these guys are not plan­ning the next faked attack. Trump will have no choice but to bomb again, and hard­er. He’s inca­pable of say­ing he made a mis­take.’ . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Review of a Trump admin­is­tra­tion warn­ing of anoth­er sup­posed, impend­ing “Syr­i­an chem­i­cal weapons strike”–a warn­ing that has since been retract­ed; dis­cus­sion of bril­liant Nazi hack­er Andrew Aueren­heimer’s orches­tra­tion of an “Alt-right” online intim­i­da­tion cam­paign against CNN employ­ees; Aueren­heimer’s cur­rent res­i­dence in Ukraine; the omi­nous pos­si­bil­i­ty of the activation/manipulation of the NSA cyber-weapons installed on Russ­ian com­put­er net­works by a third par­ty (per­haps some­one with the capa­bil­i­ties of the bril­liant Aueren­heimer); review of the obser­va­tions by a Ger­man professor–opposed to Nazism/Hitler–who described the essence of what it was like, sub­jec­tive­ly, to live through the rise of Hitler–his obser­va­tion pre­sent­ed in the con­text of the ODNI’s deci­sion not to release even a ful­ly-redact­ed ver­sion of the intel­li­gence report on “Russ­ian med­dling” in the U.S. elec­tion: ” . . . . . . . . What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand because of nation­al­i­ty secu­ri­ty, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. . . .”


FTR #943 The Gehlen Gang, the High-Profile Hacks and the New Cold War

With a new Cold War gain­ing momen­tum and charges of Russ­ian inter­fer­ence in the U.S. elec­tion, this pro­gram takes stock of infor­ma­tion point­ing in the oth­er direc­tion. After review­ing pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sion of why the DNC, John Podes­ta and NSA “hacks” do not with­stand scruti­ny, the broad­cast sets forth infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing that Ukrain­ian fas­cists and relat­ed ele­ments may well be the authors of a “cyber false-flag” oper­a­tion.

Not only is the so-called “evi­dence” char­ac­ter­is­tic of a rel­a­tive­ly clum­sy false-flag operation–albeit one con­duct­ed on the internet–but the so-called “experts,” link to the milieu of the Rein­hard Gehlen “Org.”

The joint CIA/FBI/NSA declas­si­fied ver­sion of the Intel­li­gence Report on Russ­ian hack­ing came out. There is no sub­stan­tive detail in the report:“ . . . . To sum­ma­rize, the report says that the CIA, FBI, and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency believe that Russ­ian hackers—directed ulti­mate­ly by Vladimir Putin—hacked email accounts belong­ing to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee and to Clin­ton cam­paign chair­man John Podes­ta and then passed the mate­r­i­al they obtained on to Wik­iLeaks through a third par­ty. This was done, the report asserts, because the Rus­sians believed that Don­ald Trump would be friend­lier to their country’s inter­ests, as pres­i­dent, than Hillary Clin­ton. And … that’s about it. Not count­ing intro pages or appen­dices, the report is five pages long and does not include any descrip­tion of the actu­al evi­dence that Russ­ian actors were respon­si­ble for the DNC/Podesta hacks (an asser­tion that’s sup­port­ed by pub­licly avail­able evi­dence ana­lyzed by third par­ties) or the asser­tion that Putin ulti­mate­ly direct­ed the release of hacked mate­r­i­al in order to help elect Don­ald Trump (an asser­tion that’s hard­er to ver­i­fy inde­pen­dent­ly). . . . .”

The Bit­ly tech­nol­o­gy used in the hacks enabled the entire world to see what was going on! This strong­ly indi­cates a cyber-false flag oper­a­tion: ” . . . . Using Bit­ly allowed ‘third par­ties to see their entire cam­paign includ­ing all their tar­gets— some­thing you’d want to keep secret,’ Tom Finney, a researcher at Secure­Works, told Moth­er­board. It was one of Fan­cy Bear’s ‘gravest mis­takes,’ as Thomas Rid, a pro­fes­sor at King’s Col­lege who has close­ly stud­ied the case, put it in a new piece pub­lished on Thurs­day in Esquire, as it gave researchers unprece­dent­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into the activ­i­ties of Fan­cy Bear, link­ing dif­fer­ent parts of its larg­er cam­paign togeth­er. . . .”

It should be not­ed that while this report is signed off on by the CIA, NSA, and FBI, the FBI nev­er exam­ined the DNC’s hacked serv­er. Instead, accord­ing to the DNC, the job was out­sourced to Crowd­Strike! Nei­ther the FBI, nor any oth­er U.S. gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem! ” . . . Six months after the FBI first said it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Committee’s com­put­er net­work, the bureau has still not request­ed access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US gov­ern­ment enti­ty has run an inde­pen­dent foren­sic analy­sis on the sys­tem, one US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . . .The FBI has instead relied on com­put­er foren­sics from a third-par­ty tech secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny, Crowd­Strike, which first deter­mined in May of last year that the DNC’s servers had been infil­trat­ed by Rus­sia-linked hack­ers, the U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News. . .‘Crowd­Strike is pret­ty good. There’s no rea­son to believe that any­thing that they have con­clud­ed is not accu­rate,’ the intel­li­gence offi­cial said, adding they were con­fi­dent Rus­sia was behind the wide­spread hacks. . . It’s unclear why the FBI didn’t request access to the DNC servers, and whether it’s com­mon prac­tice when the bureau inves­ti­gates the cyber­at­tacks against pri­vate enti­ties by state actors, like when the Sony Cor­po­ra­tion was hacked by North Korea in 2014. Buz­zFeed News spoke to three cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies who have worked on major breach­es in the last 15 months, who said that it was “par for the course” for the FBI to do their own foren­sic research into the hacks. None want­ed to com­ment on the record on anoth­er cyber­se­cu­ri­ty company’s work, or the work being done by a nation­al secu­ri­ty agency. . . .”

The FBI claims that the DNC denied them access to the servers! Right! Note the promi­nence of Crowd­Strike in this imbroglio. More about them below. ” . . . . The FBI struck back at the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee on Thurs­day, accus­ing it of deny­ing fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors access to its com­put­er sys­tems and ham­string­ing its inves­ti­ga­tion into the infil­tra­tion of DNC servers by Rus­sia-backed hack­ers. ‘The FBI repeat­ed­ly stressed to DNC offi­cials the neces­si­ty of obtain­ing direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the ini­tial com­pro­mise had been mit­i­gat­ed. This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third par­ty for infor­ma­tion,’ a senior law enforce­ment offi­cial told Buz­zFeed News in a state­ment. ‘These actions caused sig­nif­i­cant delays and inhib­it­ed the FBI from address­ing the intru­sion ear­li­er.’ . . . The war­ring state­ments are the lat­est twists in an extra­or­di­nary stand­off between the Democ­rats and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors that reached a fever pitch over the bureau’s probe into Demo­c­ra­t­ic nom­i­nee Hillary Clinton’s pri­vate email serv­er. . . . The FBI announced it was inves­ti­gat­ing the hack of the DNC’s servers in July, after a third-par­ty com­put­er secu­ri­ty firm, Crowd­strike, said it had evi­dence of Krem­lin-backed hack­ers infil­trat­ing its sys­tem. . . .”

The DNC respond­ed to the FBI’s counter-asser­tion by reassert­ing that it’s giv­ing the FBI full access to what­ev­er it request­ed. If there’s a prob­lem with the FBI get­ting access to that serv­er, it’s a prob­lem between the FBI and Crowd­strike: ” . . . The FBI had pre­vi­ous­ly told law­mak­ers on the Hill that the DNC had not allowed fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors to access their servers. After Buz­zFeed News report­ed on Wednes­day that the DNC claimed FBI agents had nev­er asked for the servers, con­gres­sion­al offi­cials pres­sured the FBI for answers. A senior law enforce­ment offi­cial issued a pub­lic state­ment on the mat­ter Thurs­day night. ‘Some­one is lying their ass off,’ a US intel­li­gence offi­cial said of the war­ring state­ments. But offi­cials with the DNC still assert they’ve ‘coop­er­at­ed with the FBI 150%.They’ve had access to any­thing they want. Any­thing that they desire. Any­thing they’ve asked, we’ve coop­er­at­ed,’ the DNC offi­cial said. ‘If any­body con­tra­dicts that it’s between Crowd­strike and the FBI.’ . . .With­out direct access to the com­put­er net­work, anoth­er US intel­li­gence offi­cial told Buz­zFeed, fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors had been forced to rely on the find­ings of the pri­vate cyber­se­cu­ri­ty firm Crowd­strike for com­put­er foren­sics. From May through August of 2016, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee paid Crowd­strike $267,807 dol­lars for main­te­nance, data ser­vices and con­sult­ing, among oth­er things, accord­ing to fed­er­al records. . . .”

An impor­tant arti­cle under­scores that many tech experts dis­agree with the gov­ern­men­t’s so-called analy­sis: ” . . . . Yet despite the scores of breath­less media pieces that assert that Russia’s inter­fer­ence in the elec­tion is ‘case closed,‘might some skep­ti­cism be in order? Some cyber experts say ‘yes.’ . . . Cyber-secu­ri­ty experts have also weighed in. The secu­ri­ty edi­tor at Ars Tech­ni­ca observed that ‘Instead of pro­vid­ing smok­ing guns that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment was behind spe­cif­ic hacks,’ the gov­ern­ment report ‘large­ly restates pre­vi­ous pri­vate sec­tor claims with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port for their valid­i­ty.’ Robert M. Lee of the cyber-secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny Dra­gos not­ed that the report ‘reads like a poor­ly done ven­dor intel­li­gence report string­ing togeth­er var­i­ous aspects of attri­bu­tion with­out evi­dence.’ Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty con­sul­tant Jef­frey Carr not­ed that the report ‘mere­ly list­ed every threat group ever report­ed on by a com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­ny that is sus­pect­ed of being Russ­ian-made and lumped them under the head­ing of Russ­ian Intel­li­gence Ser­vices (RIS) with­out pro­vid­ing any sup­port­ing evi­dence that such a con­nec­tion exists.’ . . .”

CrowdStrike–at the epi­cen­ter of the sup­posed Russ­ian hack­ing con­tro­ver­sy is note­wor­thy. Its co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Dmit­ry Alper­ovitch is a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil, financed by ele­ments that are at the foun­da­tion of fan­ning the flames of the New Cold War: “In this respect, it is worth not­ing that one of the com­mer­cial cyber­se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies the gov­ern­ment has relied on is Crowd­strike, which was one of the com­pa­nies ini­tial­ly brought in by the DNC to inves­ti­gate the alleged hacks. . . . Dmitri Alper­ovitch is also a senior fel­low at the Atlantic Coun­cil. . . . The con­nec­tion between [Crowd­strike co-founder and chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer Dmitri] Alper­ovitch and the Atlantic Coun­cil has gone large­ly unre­marked upon, but it is rel­e­vant giv­en that the Atlantic Council—which is is fund­ed in part by the US State Depart­ment, NATO, the gov­ern­ments of Latvia and Lithua­nia, the Ukrain­ian World Con­gress, and the Ukrain­ian oli­garch Vic­tor Pinchuk—has been among the loud­est voic­es call­ing for a new Cold War with Rus­sia. As I point­ed out in the pages of The Nation in Novem­ber, the Atlantic Coun­cil has spent the past sev­er­al years pro­duc­ing some of the most vir­u­lent spec­i­mens of the new Cold War pro­pa­gan­da. . . . ”

There was an update back in Decem­ber from the Ger­man gov­ern­ment regard­ing its assess­ment of the 2015 Bundgestag hacks (attrib­uted to “Fan­cy Bear” and “Cozy Bear,” as men­tioned in the San­dro Gay­ck­en post above) that it attrib­uted to APT28 and Rus­sia: while it asserts the hacks did indeed take place, the leaked doc­u­ments were lat­er deter­mined to be an insid­er leak (via Google trans­late). “ . . . . Accord­ing to the report, fed­er­al secu­ri­ty author­i­ties are con­vinced that not hack­ers had stolen the 2420 doc­u­ments pub­lished by the Inter­net plat­form Wik­ileaks in ear­ly Decem­ber. There was cer­tain­ly no evi­dence that the mate­r­i­al had been stolen in the cyber attack on the Bun­destag in 2015, it was called into secu­ri­ty crises. . . . ”

Anoth­er arti­cle details at length the skep­ti­cism and out­right scorn many cyber­se­cu­ri­ty experts feel con­cern­ing the report. ” . . . . Did the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment hack the DNC and feed doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks? There are real­ly two ques­tions here: who hacked the DNC, and who released the DNC doc­u­ments? These are not nec­es­sar­i­ly the same. An ear­li­er intru­sion into Ger­man par­lia­ment servers was blamed on the Rus­sians, yet the release of doc­u­ments to Wik­iLeaks is thought to have orig­i­nat­ed from an insid­er. [35] Had the Rus­sians hacked into the DNC, it may have been to gath­er intel­li­gence, while anoth­er actor released the doc­u­ments. But it is far from cer­tain that Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices had any­thing to do with the intru­sions. Julian Assange says that he did not receive the DNC doc­u­ments from a nation-state. It has been point­ed out that Rus­sia could have used a third par­ty to pass along the mate­r­i­al. Fair enough, but for­mer UK diplo­mat Craig Mur­ray asserts: ‘I know who the source is… It’s from a Wash­ing­ton insid­er. It’s not from Rus­sia.’ [We won­der if it might have been Tul­si Gabbard–D.E.] [36] . . . .”

Exem­pli­fy­ing some of the points of dis­sen­sion in the above-linked sto­ry: ” . . . . Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty ana­lyst Robert Gra­ham was par­tic­u­lar­ly blis­ter­ing in his assess­ment of the government’s report, char­ac­ter­iz­ing it as “full of garbage.” The report fails to tie the indi­ca­tors of com­pro­mise to the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. ‘It con­tains sig­na­tures of virus­es that are pub­licly avail­able, used by hack­ers around the world, not just Rus­sia. It con­tains a long list of IP address­es from per­fect­ly nor­mal ser­vices, like Tor, Google, Drop­box, Yahoo, and so forth. Yes, hack­ers use Yahoo for phish­ing and mal­ad­ver­tis­ing. It doesn’t mean every access of Yahoo is an ‘indi­ca­tor of com­pro­mise’.’ Gra­ham com­pared the list of IP address­es against those accessed by his web brows­er, and found two match­es. ‘No,’ he con­tin­ues. ‘This doesn’t mean I’ve been hacked. It means I just had a nor­mal inter­ac­tion with Yahoo. It means the Griz­zly Steppe IoCs are garbage. . . .”

The source code used in the attacks traces back to Ukraine! ” . . . . In con­junc­tion with the report, the FBI and Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty pro­vid­ed a list of IP address­es it iden­ti­fied with Russ­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices. [22] Word­fence ana­lyzed the IP address­es as well as a PHP mal­ware script pro­vid­ed by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty. In ana­lyz­ing the source code, Word­fence dis­cov­ered that the soft­ware used was P.A.S., ver­sion 3.1.0. It then found that the web­site that man­u­fac­tures the mal­ware had a site coun­try code indi­cat­ing that it is Ukrain­ian. [Note this!–D.E.] The cur­rent ver­sion of the P.A.S. soft­ware is 4.1.1, which is much new­er than that used in the DNC hack, and the lat­est ver­sion has changed ‘quite sub­stan­tial­ly.’ Word­fence notes that not only is the soft­ware ‘com­mon­ly avail­able,’ but also that it would be rea­son­able to expect ‘Russ­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tives to devel­op their own tools or at least use cur­rent mali­cious tools from out­side sources.’ To put it plain­ly, Word­fence con­cludes that the mal­ware sam­ple ‘has no appar­ent rela­tion­ship with Russ­ian intel­li­gence.’ . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with a fright­en­ing piece of leg­is­la­tion signed into law by Barack Oba­ma in Decem­ber. It is an omi­nous por­tent of the use of gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary pow­er to sup­press dis­sent­ing views as being “Russ­ian” pro­pa­gan­da tools! “. . . . The new law is remark­able for a num­ber of rea­sons, not the least because it merges a new McCarthy­ism about pur­port­ed dis­sem­i­na­tion of Russ­ian ‘pro­pa­gan­da’ on the Inter­net with a new Orwellian­ism by cre­at­ing a kind of Min­istry of Truth – or Glob­al Engage­ment Cen­ter – to pro­tect the Amer­i­can peo­ple from ‘for­eign pro­pa­gan­da and dis­in­for­ma­tion.’ . . . As part of the effort to detect and defeat these unwant­ed nar­ra­tives, the law autho­rizes the Cen­ter to: ‘Facil­i­tate the use of a wide range of tech­nolo­gies and tech­niques by shar­ing exper­tise among Fed­er­al depart­ments and agen­cies, seek­ing exper­tise from exter­nal sources, and imple­ment­ing best prac­tices.’ (This sec­tion is an appar­ent ref­er­ence to pro­pos­als that Google, Face­book and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies find ways to block or brand cer­tain Inter­net sites as pur­vey­ors of ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’ or ‘fake news.’) . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: review of infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous pro­grams link­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks to the milieu of Ukrain­ian fas­cism; review of Alexan­dra Chalu­pa’s role in dis­sem­i­nat­ing the “Rus­sia did it” meme; review of “Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den’s role in the dis­in­for­ma­tion about the high-pro­file hacks; the imple­men­ta­tion of a fright­en­ing new law autho­riz­ing the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies to act to counter any infor­ma­tion seen as “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.”


FTR #939 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 13: Unsettling In (German Ostpolitik, Part 4)

Con­tin­u­ing dis­cus­sion of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion as the trans­for­ma­tion of the Under­ground Reich into an above-ground mass move­ment, we return to the sub­ject of the sup­posed Russ­ian “hacks” dur­ing the elec­tion, Ger­man Ost­poli­tik and an appar­ent strug­gle between the Amer­i­can “Deep State” and the Trumpenkampfver­bande.

Cit­ing the exten­sive capa­bil­i­ties of the NSA, a group of vet­er­an intel­li­gence offi­cers has con­clud­ed that the “evi­dence” of Rus­sia hav­ing hacked the DNC is not cred­i­ble: ” . . . The var­i­ous ways in which usu­al­ly anony­mous spokes­peo­ple for U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies are equiv­o­cat­ing – say­ing things like ‘our best guess’ or ‘our opin­ion’ or ‘our esti­mate’ etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been ‘hacked’ can­not be traced across the net­work. Giv­en NSA’s exten­sive trace capa­bil­i­ty, we con­clude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked. The evi­dence that should be there is absent; oth­er­wise, it would sure­ly be brought for­ward, since this could be done with­out any dan­ger to sources and meth­ods. Thus, we con­clude that the emails were leaked by an insid­er – as was the case with Edward Snow­den and Chelsea Man­ning. Such an insid­er could be any­one in a gov­ern­ment depart­ment or agency with access to NSA data­bas­es, or per­haps some­one with­in the DNC. . . .”

In the con­text of the high-pro­file hacks, the pro­gram reviews infor­ma­tion from pre­vi­ous dis­cus­sions in FTR #‘s 917, 923, 924, 925, 926 deal­ing with Wik­iLeaks, Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone, Edward Snow­den, the DNC hack and the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” and the “paint­ing of Oswald Red,” including:The fact that Trump’s dirty tricks oper­a­tive Roger Stone was in direct con­tact with Julian Assange pri­or to, and dur­ing, Wik­iLeaks’ pub­lish­ing of the e‑mails from DNC and John De Podesta;The fact that Stone promised an “Octo­ber Sur­prise” from Wik­iLeaks that would affect the cam­paign; The fact that avail­able evi­dence does NOT impli­cate the Rus­sians in the DNC hack at all; The fact that the Shad­ow Bro­kers access­ing of NSA hack­ing tech­nolo­gies was prob­a­bly not a hack at all, but a leak by an insid­er using a thumb dri­ve; Edward Snow­den’s sus­pi­cious and, frankly, damn­ing sup­port for the unten­able “the Rus­sians did it” inter­pre­ta­tion of the DNC pen­e­tra­tion and the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” Snow­den’s curi­ous tweet issued after the DNC hack and just before the Shad­ow Bro­kers surfaced–Snowden said “It’s time,” which has nev­er been explained (we sus­pect that it may have been a sig­nal to release the ANT/TAO mate­r­i­al;) the fact that Wik­iLeaks asso­ciate Jacob Apple­baum, who appears to have assist­ed Snow­den’s flight from Hawaii to Hong Kong, is seen as a sus­pect in the Shad­ow Bro­kers “non-hack;” Apple­baum’s and Snow­den’s affil­i­a­tion with the CIA.

Next, the pro­gram high­lights the alle­ga­tion that a DNC insid­er leaked the e‑mails to Wik­iLeaks: “. . . . And, even though The New York Times and oth­er big news out­lets are report­ing as flat fact that Rus­sia hacked the Demo­c­ra­t­ic email accounts and gave the infor­ma­tion to Wik­iLeaks, for­mer British Ambas­sador Craig Mur­ray, a close asso­ciate of Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange, told the Lon­don Dai­ly Mail that he per­son­al­ly received the email data from a “dis­gust­ed” Demo­c­rat. [Might that have been Tul­si Gabbard?–D.E.] . . . Mur­ray added that his meet­ing was with an inter­me­di­ary for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic leak­er, not the leak­er direct­ly. [Might that have been Roger Stone?–D.E.]. . .”

In the con­text of a pos­si­ble Trump mole inside the DNC, pos­si­bly assist­ing the “hacks,” we high­light Tru­menkampfver­bande links to the for­mer DNC Deputy Chair­per­son Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii) and to Naren­dra Mod­i’s BJP, a polit­i­cal front and cat’s paw for the Hin­du nationalist/fascist RSS. The salient points include:

Trump’s busi­ness links with mem­bers of Mod­i’s BJP. “. . . . Mr. Trump’s part­ner in the Trump Tow­er Mum­bai is the Lod­ha Group, found­ed by Man­gal Prab­hat Lod­ha, vice pres­i­dent of the Bharatiya Jana­ta Par­ty — cur­rent­ly the gov­ern­ing par­ty in Par­lia­ment — in Maha­rash­tra State. . . . His part­ner in an office com­plex in Gur­gaon, near New Del­hi, is IREO, whose man­ag­ing direc­tor, Lalit Goy­al, is the broth­er-in-law of a Bharatiya Jana­ta mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Sud­han­shu Mit­tal. . . .”

a) Trump’s inter­view of Gab­bard for a pos­si­ble cab­i­net posi­tion.
b) Steven K. Ban­non’s affin­i­ty for Gab­bard: ” . . . . Stephen Ban­non, Trump’s chief strate­gist, report­ed­ly likes Gab­bard because of her stance on guns, refugees and Islam­ic extrem­ism . . .”
c) Ban­non’s strong affin­i­ty for Modi: ” . . . The campaign’s chief exec­u­tive, Stephen K. Ban­non, is a stu­dent of nation­al­ist move­ments. Mr. Ban­non is close to Nigel Farage, a cen­tral fig­ure in Britain’s move­ment to leave the Euro­pean Union, and he is an admir­er of India’s prime min­is­ter, Naren­dra Modi, a Hin­du nation­al­ist Mr. Ban­non has called ‘the Rea­gan of India.’ It may be pure coin­ci­dence that some of Mr. Trump’s words chan­nel the nation­al­is­tic and, some argue, anti-Mus­lim sen­ti­ments that Mr. Modi stoked as he rose to pow­er. But it is cer­tain­ly not coin­ci­den­tal that many of Mr. Trump’s biggest Hin­du sup­port­ers are also some of Mr. Modi’s most ardent back­ers. . . .”
d) Gab­bard’s asso­ci­a­tion with Modi and the BJP: “. . . . Tul­si Gab­bard, the first Hin­du Amer­i­can in the US Con­gress, called on vis­it­ing Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi here Sun­day and pre­sent­ed him with a gin­ger flower gar­land from Hawaii. Gab­bard, a strong sup­port­er of Modi, is a Demo­c­rat Con­gress­woman from Hawaii. . . . She has also been involved in the plan­ning of Modi’s US vis­it and had last month met two BJP lead­ers Vijay Jol­ly and MP Rajyavard­han Rathore in that con­nec­tion. . . .”
e) Gab­bard’s asso­ci­a­tion with the RSS: ” . . . As she hob­nobbed with the Indi­an prime min­is­ter and for­eign min­is­ter among oth­ers, The Tele­graph, a Kolkata-based news­pa­per, called her “the Sangh’s mas­cot” in the US. The Sangh, a moniker for the Rashtriya Swayam­se­vak Sangh (RSS), is a right-wing hin­dut­va organ­i­sa­tion and the ide­o­log­i­cal guardian of the BJP par­ty that rules India now. . . .”

The FBI has weighed in on the “hacks,” opin­ing that it was Rus­sia try­ing to ele­vate Trump. If so, that would place the FBI and Rus­sia on the same page, as the bureau’s naked­ly par­ti­san behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign is quite obvi­ous at this point. When the FBI sup­pos­ed­ly detect­ed Rus­sia hack­ing the DNC, it called the IT “Help Desk” and the call was treat­ed by the recep­tion­ist as a prank call. ” . . . So I was sur­prised to read in the New York Times that when the FBI dis­cov­ered the Russ­ian attack in Sep­tem­ber 2015, it failed to send even a sin­gle agent to warn senior Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee offi­cials. Instead, mes­sages were left with the DNC IT ‘help desk.’ As a for­mer head of the FBI cyber divi­sion told the Times, this is a baf­fling deci­sion: ‘We are not talk­ing about an office that is in the mid­dle of the woods of Mon­tana.’ . . . ”

VICE News has filed a law­suit against the FBI request­ing infor­ma­tion about a num­ber of sub­jects which could prove very explo­sive IF the bureau divulges the full extent of the infor­ma­tion it has on the sub­jects. “ . . . The suit also seeks all FBI emails men­tion­ing Bill Clin­ton, Hillary Clin­ton, for­mer Clin­ton cam­paign vice chair Huma Abe­din, Abedin’s estranged hus­band Antho­ny Wein­er, Trump, for­mer New York City may­or Rudy Giu­liani, Trump advis­ers Corey Lewandows­ki, Roger Stone and Kellyanne Con­way, CNN com­men­ta­tor Jef­frey Lord, Fox News host Sean Han­ni­ty, or Fox News anchor Bret Baier, among oth­ers. . . . ”

The lat­ter part of the pro­gram high­lights a num­ber of top­ics that will be cov­ered at greater length in FTR #940.

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

a) Trump’s appoint­ment of anoth­er “Alt-Right” fig­ure (Stephen Miller) as a top advis­er.
b) The appar­ent role of Ukrain­ian fas­cists in gen­er­at­ing the “Rus­sia did it” dis­in­for­ma­tion about the DNC hack.
d) The Aus­tri­an Free­dom Par­ty’s net­work­ing with Trump Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er-des­ig­nate Michael Fly­nn and their sup­port for lift­ing Russ­ian sanc­tions.
e) Sec­re­tary of State-des­ig­nate Rex Tiller­son­’s oppo­si­tion to sanc­tions against Rus­sia.
f) The Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work’s mas­sive hold­ings in Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey (Exxon, now Exxon Mobil.)
g) Indi­ca­tions that Ukrain­ian fas­cist net­works may be involved with the “Rus­sia did it” meme on the high-pro­file hacks.


FTR #938 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 12: Settling In, Part 2 (The Underground Reich Comes Into Plain View, Part 5)

In FTR #‘s 891 and 895, we high­light­ed the Broad­cast­ing Board of Gov­er­nors, a Con­gres­sion­al fig leaf insti­tut­ed to dilute CIA con­trol over Amer­i­can for­eign broad­cast out­lets such as Radio Free Europe, Voice of Amer­i­ca and Radio Free Asia. In addi­tion to the broad­cast out­lets dis­cussed in the sto­ry that fol­lows, we note that the change from a “board of gov­er­nors” to a “CEO” to be appoint­ed by Trump also gives the nom­i­nee pow­er over Radio Free Asi­a’s Open Tech­nol­o­gy Fund, devel­op­er of numer­ous apps and oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal method­olo­gies favored by the so-called “pri­va­cy advo­cates.”

The replace­ment of the gov­er­nors is seen as a poten­tial boon to the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. “ . . . . ‘There’s some fear among the folks here, that the fire­wall will get dimin­ished and attacked and this could fall vic­tim to pro­pa­gan­da,’ the Repub­li­can offi­cial said. ‘They will hire the per­son they want, the cur­rent CEO does not stand a chance. This will pop up on Steve Bannon’s radar quick­ly. They are going to put a friend­ly per­son in that job.’ . . . . ”

The change will affect domes­tic broad­cast media as well. ” . . . . Because of the mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the Smith-Mundt Act in 2013, the BBG can now broad­cast in the U.S., too. But the influ­ence on the domes­tic mar­ket could be even more sub­tle, the Repub­li­can offi­cial warned. A BBG CEO influ­enced by the admin­is­tra­tion could pen­e­trate estab­lished media out­lets with pack­ages, series or oth­er news prod­ucts pro­duced by the BBG’s net­works but picked up and aired by tra­di­tion­al media like Fox News or Bre­it­bart. Many U.S. out­lets cur­rent­ly use con­tent from VOA. ‘No mon­ey would even change hands, you’ve had no effect on the bud­get,’ the offi­cial said. ‘But it will den­i­grate the prod­uct. . . . ’ ”

In the con­text of the changes made to the BBG, we review the polit­i­cal incli­na­tions of Ban­non: ” . . . The late Andrew Bre­it­bart, founder of the web­site Ban­non went on to lead, called Ban­non the “Leni Riefen­stahl of the Tea Par­ty movement”—a ref­er­ence to the infa­mous cre­ator of Nazi pro­pa­gan­da films. While insist­ing to a Wall Street Jour­nal reporter in 2011 that his work isn’t pro­pa­gan­da, Ban­non went on to cite Riefen­stahl among his main influ­ences . . . ”

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of free trade, on which Trump has had much to say, bash­ing Chi­na and Mex­i­co as coun­tries the U.S. should “put right” in their trade rela­tions with the U.S. It’s worth not­ing we haven’t heard Trump men­tion a trade war with Ger­many despite all his tirades against Chi­na and Mex­i­co. It rais­es the ques­tion of why, since Germany’s unprece­dent­ed and dam­ag­ing sur­plus­es make it such an obvi­ous trade war tar­get.

” . . . . There is one poten­tial trade war, how­ev­er, that few peo­ple have so far noticed — but which could soon be his eas­i­est tar­get. Ger­many. Giv­en the size of its pop­u­la­tion, it runs a far larg­er trade sur­plus than Chi­na — and a mas­sive sur­plus with the U.S. in par­tic­u­lar. Even bet­ter, the indus­tries to pick off are rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple to iden­ti­fy, and would actu­al­ly have a chance of cre­at­ing well-paid Amer­i­can jobs. . . .

“. . . . Germany’s trade sur­plus is absolute­ly mas­sive, and unprece­dent­ed in mod­ern indus­tri­al his­to­ry. Last year it hit 8.9% of gross domes­tic prod­uct, and it is like­ly to break through 9% before the end of 2016. Glob­al­ly, it is sec­ond in size only to China’s, but giv­en that Ger­many is a far small­er coun­try, it is only fair to mea­sure it on a per capi­ta basis — and when you look at it that way, Germany’s sur­plus is sev­en times big­ger than China’s. . . . Much of Germany’s trade sur­plus is clear­ly the result of cur­ren­cy manip­u­la­tion. The euro has depressed the real val­ue of the country’s exports, allow­ing it rack up those huge exports. You can argue about whether China’s cur­ren­cy is real­ly at its fair val­ue or not — but no one can real­ly dis­pute that Germany’s cur­ren­cy is way, way below what it would be if it still had the deutschemark. . . .”

Obvi­ous­ly, part of the answer lies in the fact that Deutsche Bank–a key ele­ment of the Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work and the Under­ground Reich–is owed hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars by Trump. Trump’s oth­er con­nec­tions run in the direc­tion of the Under­ground Reich as well. (The Trump/Deutsche Bank con­nec­tion is dis­cussed, in among oth­er pro­grams, FTR #‘s 920, 921, 922 and 927.)

We note in pass­ing that Ger­many is prepar­ing for a trade war with the U.S.–we don’t think one will real­ly take place, but we may be treat­ed to Trumpian “fake news” and/or pro­pa­gan­da. Ger­many is assert­ing that the fac­tors behind its enor­mous trade sur­plus can not be altered, because it is due to nat­u­ral­ly occur­ring cir­cum­stances like a rapid­ly aging pop­u­la­tion.

” . . . There are plen­ty of rea­sons for that. Germany’s cur­rent account sur­plus has nev­er been as high as it is this year and nev­er before has that sur­plus rep­re­sent­ed such a sig­nif­i­cant share of the country’s gross domes­tic prod­uct. Mak­ing mat­ters worse is the fact that the US is the largest con­sumer of Ger­man exports. . . .

“. . . . As high as it is, though, the cur­rent sur­plus is like­ly to con­tin­ue grow­ing. The recent fall in the euro’s val­ue rel­a­tive to the dol­lar fol­low­ing Trump’s elec­tion makes Ger­man prod­ucts and ser­vices even more com­pet­i­tive. And many econ­o­mists believe that the val­ue of the dol­lar will con­tin­ue to climb, which means that the val­ue of the euro against the dol­lar will shrink cor­re­spond­ing­ly. Their pre­dic­tions are based on recent indi­ca­tions that Trump’s announced eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus poli­cies will push up both America’s sov­er­eign debt load and its inter­est rates. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with analy­sis of how Trump’s con­tin­ued involve­ment in his busi­ness empire (through his chil­dren) leaves him open to manip­u­la­tion. The Philip­pines is a good exam­ple: “ . . . . So, under the deal, Trump’s chil­dren will be paid mil­lions of dol­lars through­out their father’s pres­i­den­cy by Jose E.B. Anto­nio, the head of Cen­tu­ry Prop­er­ties.

“Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . Duterte recent­ly named Anto­nio the spe­cial gov­ern­ment envoy to the Unit­ed States. The con­flicts here could not be more trou­bling or more bla­tant: Pres­i­dent Trump will be dis­cussing U.S. pol­i­cy in South­east Asia with one of his (or his children’s) busi­ness part­ners, a man who is the offi­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a for­eign leader who likens him­self to Hitler. Also note that the Trump fam­i­ly has an enor­mous finan­cial inter­est in Duterte’s dead­ly cam­paign: Root­ing out crime in the Philip­pines is good for the real estate val­ues. . . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Trump’s busi­ness deal­ings in India, where mem­bers of the BJP par­ty fig­ure in the dis­po­si­tion of the oper­a­tions in that coun­try; Trump’s con­sid­er­a­tion of Bernie Sanders sup­port­er Tul­si Gab­bard for a cab­i­net posi­tion; “Alt-Right” king­pin Steve Ban­non’s high regard for Gab­bard; Gab­bard’s strong sup­port for Modi and net­work­ing with the BJP; Gab­bard’s net­work­ing with the RSS, the Indi­an fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion for which the BJP serves as a front.


FTR #931 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 10: Echoes From the Past, Visions of the Future

With the elec­tion over, the Trumpenkampfver­bande is now posi­tioned to solid­i­fy its pri­ma­ry function—the suc­cess­ful tran­si­tion of the Under­ground Reich from a clan­des­tine insti­tu­tion­al ele­ment into a broad-based, above-ground mass move­ment.

Clos­ing his cam­paign with an overt­ly anti-Semit­ic tweet: “ . . . . From a tech­ni­cal and the­mat­ic per­spec­tive it’s a well made ad. It’s also packed with anti-Semit­ic dog whis­tles, anti-Semit­ic tropes and anti-Semit­ic vocab­u­lary. I’m not even sure whether it makes sense to call them dog whis­tles. The four read­i­ly iden­ti­fi­able Amer­i­can bad guys in the ad are Hillary Clin­ton, George Soros (Jew­ish financier), Janet Yellen (Jew­ish Fed Chair) and Lloyd Blank­fein (Jew­ish Gold­man Sachs CEO). . . . This is an anti-Semit­ic ad every bit as much as the infa­mous Jesse Helms ‘white hands’ ad or the Willie Hor­ton ad were anti-African-Amer­i­can racist ads. Which is to say, real­ly anti-Semit­ic. You could even argue that it’s more so, giv­en cer­tain lin­guis­tic sim­i­lar­i­ties with anti-Semit­ic pro­pa­gan­da from the 1930s. But it’s not a con­test. This is an ad intend­ed to appeal to anti-Semi­tes and spread anti-Semit­ic ideas. . .”
Again, Trump has for­mal­ly legit­imized Nazi/white suprema­cist ele­ments: “. . . .‘Trump has shown that our mes­sage is healthy, nor­mal and organ­ic — and mil­lions of Amer­i­cans agree with us,’ said Matthew M. Heim­bach, a co-founder of the Tra­di­tion­al­ist Youth Net­work, a white nation­al­ist group that claims to sup­port the inter­ests of work­ing-class whites. It also advo­cates the sep­a­ra­tion of the races. . . . ‘For racists in this coun­try, this cam­paign has been a com­plete affir­ma­tion of their fears, wor­ries, dreams and hopes,’ said Ryan Lenz, the edi­tor of the Hate­watch blog at the South­ern Pover­ty Law Cen­ter, which tracks such groups from its head­quar­ters in Mont­gomery, Ala. ‘Most things they believe have been legit­imized, or have been giv­en the stamp of approval, by main­stream Amer­i­can pol­i­tics to the point now where it’s no longer shame­ful to be a racist.’ . . . .”

Trump’s cam­paign will include the overt fas­cists who have sup­port­ed him. ” . . . . ‘I have been very sur­prised that we have not seen attrac­tive, well-spo­ken, racial­ly aware can­di­dates run­ning for local office,’ Jared Tay­lor, head of the white nation­al­ist Amer­i­can Renais­sance pub­li­ca­tion and annu­al con­fer­ence, told TPM in a Wednes­day phone call. ‘I think this will be inevitable, and I think that Trump will have encour­aged this. That our peo­ple will run for school board, city coun­cil, may­or, all that I antic­i­pate cer­tain­ly.’ . . . .”

Trump’s “alt-right” cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non is being con­sid­ered for White House Chief of Staff: “Pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump is strong­ly con­sid­er­ing nam­ing his cam­paign CEO Steve Ban­non to serve as his White House chief of staff, a source with knowl­edge of the sit­u­a­tion told CNN on Thurs­day. . . .”

In FTR #906, we not­ed the high­ly par­ti­san posi­tion tak­en by FBI direc­tor James Comey in the cam­paign, as well as not­ing the media promi­nence giv­en to the spu­ri­ous book “Clin­ton Cash,” authored by Koch broth­ers’ pro­tégé Peter Schweiz­er (aid­ed by Bre­it­bart edi­tor and Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Stephen K. Ban­non.)

It turns out that Comey’s (prob­a­bly) deci­sive last-minute inter­ven­tion in the cam­paign may well have been pre­cip­i­tat­ed by a “Trumpenkampfver­bande” fac­tion with­in the FBI, who were tak­ing their cues from “Clin­ton Cash!”

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Trumpenkampfverbande’s com­pi­la­tion of an ene­mies list, a la Richard Nixon; the stun­ning acquit­tal of the Bundy Brigade, after their ille­gal occu­pa­tion of the Mal­heur Nation­al Wildlife refuge; reflec­tions on the impli­ca­tions of that acquit­tal against the back­ground of the mas­sive Trump fac­tion with­in the FBI; Alfa Bank con­sul­tant Richard Burt’s role as a for­eign pol­i­cy advi­sor to Don­ald Trump; Burt’s posi­tion as Regan’s ambas­sador to Ger­many; Burt’s lob­by­ing on behalf of a nat­ur­al gas pipeline financed, in part, by major Ger­man cor­po­ra­tions; review of the links between Alfa Bank and the Trump orga­ni­za­tion; review of the links between Alfa Group and Marc Rich’s oper­a­tions; review of James Comey’s inves­ti­ga­tions of Marc Rich; spec­u­la­tion about the pos­si­ble role of the Alfa/Trump and Alfa/Rich links in Comey’s behav­ior dur­ing the cam­paign.


FTR #920 The Trumpenkampfverbande, Part 3: The Underground Reich Emerges Into Plain View

QUICK: How many Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates can you name who kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speech­es by their bed­side? Don­ald Trump does. For many years, what Mr. Emory terms “The Under­ground Reich” has been a fun­da­men­tal point of dis­cus­sion and analy­sis in these broad­casts and posts. In the third pro­gram ana­lyz­ing the Don­ald Trump cam­paign, we exam­ine the “Trumpenkampfver­bande,” its polit­i­cal antecedents and adher­ents. Exem­pli­fy­ing, and net­work­ing with, gen­er­a­tions of fas­cists and fas­cist orga­ni­za­tions, the Trumpenkampfver­bande embod­ies the emer­gence of the Under­ground Reich into plain view. A sig­na­ture ele­ment of Trump’s cam­paign is his resus­ci­ta­tion of the “Amer­i­ca First” slo­gan and con­cept, a man­i­fes­ta­tion both of his thin­ly-veiled appeal to Nazi and white suprema­cist ele­ments and his will­ing­ness to cede dom­i­nance over world affairs to a Ger­man-dom­i­nat­ed “third pow­er bloc.” The Amer­i­ca First con­cept mobi­lizes pow­er­ful feel­ings among those feel­ing over­whelmed and left behind by polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments glob­al­ly and in the Unit­ed States. We note that the “orig­i­nal” Amer­i­ca First was financed by Nazi Ger­many. Trump’s invo­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca First exem­pli­fies the nature of his polit­i­cal her­itage and alle­giances. One of his top advis­ers Joseph E. Schmitz, “obsessed with all things Ger­man” and, accord­ing to asso­ciates, some­one who “fired the Jews” (from the Pen­ta­gon) and man­i­fest­ed Holo­caust denial. This is not atyp­i­cal of “Team Trump.” One of the most impor­tant fig­ures in main­stream­ing “alt right” (i.e. Nazi, white nation­al­ist and anti-Semit­ic) atti­tudes has been Breitbart’s Steve Ban­non, now essen­tial­ly run­ning the Trump cam­paign. Trump and his cam­paign have a habit of re-tweet­ing infor­ma­tion from “alt right” web­sites and mes­sage boards. Of pri­ma­ry sig­nif­i­cance in ana­lyz­ing Trump con­cerns the main finan­cial backer of his real estate projects–Deutsche Bank. In addi­tion to the fact that this places a poten­tial Pres­i­dent in the posi­tion of owing upwards of $100 mil­lion to an insti­tu­tion that has open­ly defied U.S. reg­u­la­to­ry posi­tions, Deutsche Bank is a pri­ma­ry ele­ment of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann cap­i­tal net­work, about which we speak so often. Pro­gram High­lights Include: Analy­sis of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Trump’s father was in the Ku Klux Klan; review of Trump’s asso­ci­a­tion with for­mer Axis spy Nor­man Vin­cent Peale; review of Trump’s counsel–Senator Joe McCarthy aide Roy Cohn; Trump’s addi­tion­al finan­cial back­ing from George Soros, who got his start in busi­ness “Aryaniz­ing” Jew­ish prop­er­ty dur­ing the Holo­caust; Trump’s tweet­ing of a cam­paign ad fea­tur­ing Waf­fen SS-clad World War II re-enac­tors; The enthu­si­as­tic sup­poprt Trump has received from David Duke.