US Punishes Russia for Election Hacking Ejecting Operatives

[Rory]

sorry I don't think that USA today is an acceptable source as far as Nordic is concerned and we all must live by his rules now

but even so it doesn't not say Putty did it all by his lonesome

was that just your creative license?

*CASE CLOSED* Putin what done it. Now WAR!

[seemslikeadream]

oh no Trump is in now ...no war with Russia no matter what

Trump is going to have his own CIA and they will tell him what he wants them to

Gen. Flynn will make sure of that

[seemslikeadream]

here's the report that Trump and all his supporters do not believe

sorry I can't find a Fox News link for it

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

In total there are 92 users online :: 4 registered, 7 hidden and 81 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)

[elfismiles]

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

ETA:

Second sentence in and... SPELLING ERROR:

The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise
bases for its assessments, as the release of such information would reveal sensitive sources or
methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in
the future.

ETA2.0 = I stand corrected... "bases" is the plural of "basis".

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

[liminalOyster]

here's the report that Trump and all his supporters do not believe

sorry I can't find a Fox News link for it

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

The anti-RT stuff is chilling IMHO.

[Rory]

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

ETA:

Second sentence in and... SPELLING ERROR:

The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise
bases for its assessments, as the release of such information would reveal sensitive sources or
methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in
the future.

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

Actual LoL

[seemslikeadream]

FRIDAY, JAN 6, 2017 07:15 AM CST
Why is Donald Trump resisting the Russian hack findings? Michael Flynn may hold the answer
Trump doesn't want to know about Russia. The unhinged alt-right views of Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon may be why
HEATHER DIGBY PARTON

Why is Donald Trump resisting the Russian hack findings? Michael Flynn may hold the answer
(Credit: AP/Gerald Herbert/Evan Vucci/J. Scott Applewhite)

In anticipation of the release of a report commissioned by President Barack Obama, the top brass of the United States intelligence community appeared before Congress on Thursday to testify that the Russian government had interfered in last year’s election. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, declared, “This was a multifaceted campaign. So the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news . . . whatever crack, fissure, they could find in our tapestry . . . they would exploit it.” It’s pretty dramatic stuff.

The report will be provided to President-elect Donald Trump over the weekend, and members of Congress will be briefed next week. An unclassified version is slated for release to the public as well, but details are already being leaked to the news media. Trump was not amused by the media’s access as he indicated in a tweet:


Apparently, he is unfamiliar with the time-honored Washington practice of leaking, but he had better get used to it.

There is plenty of skepticism about the intelligence community’s conclusions along all sides of the political spectrum. Trump is dismissing it out of hand. Most of the Republicans are keeping their powder dry, although hawkish Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham seem convinced, as do most Democrats. And after witnessing the weapons of mass destruction analysis prior to the invasion of Iraq in the past decade, many people on the left are naturally suspicious of the intelligence agencies.

Now is probably a good time to revisit that episode and remind ourselves of how it unfolded. Seymour Hersh’s original New Yorker article, “The Stovepipe,” exploring the way it all went down, still holds up today. The intelligence agencies got it wrong, for sure. But, as he explained, there was a specific reason:

What the Bush people did was dismantle the existing filtering process that for fifty years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information. They created stovepipes to get the information they wanted directly to the top leadership. Their position is that the professional bureaucracy is deliberately and maliciously keeping information from them.

This was why members of the left championed truth tellers deeply enmeshed in the Republican establishment and the intelligence community, like former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame, when they boldly stepped up.

As I wrote for Salon earlier, this episode wasn’t the first time some players on the right were unhappy that the intelligence didn’t show them what they wanted. The pattern goes back decades.

Concerning last year’s allegations nobody has yet made a decent case explaining why the intelligence community would make a claim about a Russian attempt to undermine our election if they didn’t have good evidence for it. The intelligence agencies are concerned with cyberattacks, to be sure, and like all bureaucracies they undoubtedly want more money and power to tackle the challenges. But they don’t need to make this be about Russia to make a case, and it is certainly not in their interest to make an enemy of Donald Trump. They could be wrong, of course. But they have no rational reason to make this up, which suggests that they are genuinely convinced by their evidence.

It’s easy to understand why Trump is reluctant to accept that the Russian government might have interfered in the election on his behalf. It just doesn’t look right for a super-tough, macho candidate to be the favorite of a country that many people consider a rival to ours. Needless to say, a man with his ego cannot admit that anything but his own personal greatness brought him victory. (Yes, for all we know, Trump is in hock to Russian banks up to his eyeballs or just loves Vladimir Putin for his strength and manliness. Trump’s stance on this issue is a enigma for sure.)

But there is a factor that looms large in this story that may simply explain some of Trump’s behavior: former general Michael Flynn. When it comes to the intelligence community, Flynn serves as Trump’s eyes and ears. The president-elect literally knows nothing about the workings of matters of intelligence, and there’s is no evidence that he’s spent any time trying to bone up. He has said he doesn’t need daily briefings and seems to have outsourced taking in these updates to his trusted aide Flynn. And Flynn is an angry man with a major ax to grind.

Dana Priest has written for The New Yorker of Flynn’s brief checkered career as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, in charge of all military attachés and defense-intelligence collection around the world. He had come into the job after some years on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, having success as a clandestine officer and creating new ways of using disparate pieces of information to target suspected terrorists. He was seen as undisciplined and somewhat reckless, but his mentor, former general Stanley McChrystal, had understood how to keep his quirkier personality traits under control.

Then Flynn got the big promotion and made a hash of it almost immediately, creating irrational and impractical changes and behaving erratically on the job. He sought out the Washington spotlight but apparently became lured into the right-wing fever swamps and started spouting outrageous falsehoods in public — including Islamophobic conspiracy theories— which his subordinates called “Flynn facts.” And Flynn started to manifest a serious anger management problem. The agency had to create what Priest called a “parallel power structure” to keep the place running properly. After 18 months of this, Flynn was fired — by James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, who is now leading the charge on the Russian hacking story. According to Priest, Flynn was “livid.”

When Trump started getting classified briefings, Flynn accompanied him. It has been reported that four different sources say he became unruly and repeatedly interrupted the briefers, challenging their facts to the point where New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who was also at the meeting, had to tell him to calm down. Flynn’s response when asked about it was that the story was “total bullshit. . . . They’re lying.” He is apparently is still angry and convinced that his “Flynn facts” are correct.

Flynn may have an ally in another important Trump administration figure, Steve Bannon, who is associated with the “alt-right” movement, for which Russia has become increasingly important and its president, Vladimir Putin, is often seen as a sympathetic figure. Bannon has a special affiliation with Russian history, however superficial and insincere. It’s entirely possible he would back Flynn’s denunciation of intelligence analyses for his own purposes, lending Flynn even more credibility with Trump.

All of this is “Kremlinology,” of course — meaning that a certain amount of guesswork is involved, since trying to sort out what’s really going on requires reading between the lines. But there’s a reason why Trump is so adamant that the intelligence agencies are wrong and that he knows things they don’t know. And there’s really only one person in his close circle who would be telling him such things. If ever there was a president who needed a steady hand to guide him on these important, delicate matters, it’s Donald Trump. Too bad the man he’s leaning on is Michael Flynn.
http://www.salon.com/2017/01/06/why-is- ... he-answer/

[elfismiles]

So again ... no evidence about the hacking or actual covert / conspiracy efforts ... just plain old PERCEPTION MANAGEMENT.

here's the report that Trump and all his supporters do not believe

sorry I can't find a Fox News link for it

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

In total there are 92 users online :: 4 registered, 7 hidden and 81 guests (based on users active over the past 5 minutes)

[seemslikeadream]

that's ok Trump's in charge now...he will have his own CIA soon enough and then he can tell them what he wants them to tell him and no one will believe that either

except for the loyal Trumpettes


and all Trump's money in Russia is save and sound now

[seemslikeadream]

POLITICS | Fri Jan 6, 2017 | 5:26pm EST
U.S. intel report: Putin directed cyber campaign to help Trump

By Steve Holland and Mark Hosenball | WASHINGTON
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Republican Donald Trump's electoral chances by discrediting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign, U.S. intelligence agencies said in an assessment on Friday.

Russia's objectives were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former secretary of state Clinton, make it harder for her to win and harm her presidency if she did, an unclassified report released by the top U.S. intelligence agency said.

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election," the report said. "We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments."

The agencies believe Russian military intelligence used intermediaries such as WikiLeaks, DCLeaks.com and the Guccifer 2.0 personal to release emails that it had acquired from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and top Democrats as part of the effort. It said the operation went for "targets associated with both major US political parties."

The report assessed with "high confidence" that the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency, had used those intermediaries to release "US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks."

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and top Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta from "a state party." Assange did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party.

Russian actors were not found to have targeted U.S. systems that are involved in tallying votes, the report said. The report was produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency.

Russia denies the U.S. government's allegations of hacking during the election campaign.

Trump, who has developed a rocky relationship with U.S. spy agencies, defended the legitimacy of his election victory after he received a nearly two-hour briefing on their conclusion that Russia had staged cyber attacks during the 2016 campaign.

Clinton won the nationwide popular vote but lost in the Electoral College that formally elects the president.

In a statement after the briefing, Trump did not squarely address whether he was told of the agencies' belief Russia carried out the hacking.

Instead, he said: "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations" including the DNC.

The New York businessman, who is to be inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, also said he would appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days of taking office on how to prevent cyber attacks but suggested that he would keep their recommendations secret.

"The methods, tools and tactics we use to keep America safe should not be a public discussion that will benefit those who seek to do us harm," Trump said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-r ... SKBN14Q1T8

[seemslikeadream]

I thank you for always being respectful to me .....and thanks for the clarification

I cherish your friendship

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

ETA:

Second sentence in and... SPELLING ERROR:

The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise
bases for its assessments, as the release of such information would reveal sensitive sources or
methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in
the future.

ETA2.0 = I stand corrected... "bases" is the plural of "basis".

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

Actual LoL

jumped on that band wagon a bit too fast

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions
in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber
Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

ETA:

Second sentence in and... SPELLING ERROR:

The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise
bases for its assessments, as the release of such information would reveal sensitive sources or
methods and imperil the ability to collect critical foreign intelligence in
the future.

This report is a declassified version of a highly classified assessment; its conclusions are identical to those in the highly classified assessment but this version does not include the full supporting information on key elements of the influence campaign.

Actual LoL

[MacCruiskeen]

John Harwood Verified Account
@JohnJHarwood, Washington, DC: a Dad who covers Washington, the economy and national politics for CNBC and the New York Times.
Find my Speakeasy interviews at http://cnbc.com/Speakeasy

[brekin]

here's the report that Trump and all his supporters do not believe

sorry I can't find a Fox News link for it

Background to “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

The anti-RT stuff is chilling IMHO.

Just curious about how you think the anti-RT stuff is chilling? Chilling in its condemnation or chilling it in its evidence as a Kremlin front?
I think the report being fluffy in many aspects was actually pretty cogent on RT being a large anti-US prograganda mill.
My sense is the finding in the report is accurate, they just can't reveal smoking guns without losing the access and means of getting those smoking guns.

[liminalOyster]

The talking points of the alleged "strategic messaging" are nearly identical to the moral stance of the American progressive left:

-- The US is not a democracy and has no "moral right to teach the rest of the world."
-- Pro OWS
-- The US is a "surveillance state" with widespread drone use, police brutality and civil liberties infringement
-- "Corporate Greed" etc

Elsewhere in the report, RT's coverage of third party candidates is given as evidence of attempts to undermine US democracy. Plus, too many more or less respectable progressive voices have graced RT (Thom Hartmann, Richard Wolff, Naomi Klein, etc) to believe it's in any predominant way a Kremlin propaganda mill.

[tapitsbo]

Remind e how he investigation into the murdered RT founder went again?

Anyone de facto defending the US propaganda mills on these issues can't really throw stones at the glass windmills of the day with much credibility...