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Electors demand intelligence briefing before Electoral College vote
The request represents the latest effort by Democratic electors to look to the Electoral College as a possible bulwark against a Trump presidency.
By KYLE CHENEY and GABRIEL DEBENEDETTI 12/12/16 10:13 AM EST Updated 12/12/16 01:02 PM EST
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In its first show of public support for efforts questioning the legitimacy of Donald Trump's victory, Hillary Clinton’s campaign said it is supporting a request by members of the Electoral College for an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election.

“The bipartisan electors' letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” Podesta said in a statement Monday. “Electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

“Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” he said. “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

Podesta’s statement follows an open letter from 10 members of the Electoral College, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine and a former member of Congress, who are demanding a briefing from U.S. intelligence officials on any ongoing investigations into Donald Trump’s ties to Russia.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the electors — nine Democrats and one Republican — argue that they require the information ahead of Dec. 19, when the Electoral College is set to meet and select the next president.

“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” they wrote. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”

The letter is signed by electors from five states and the District of Columbia. In addition to Christine Pelosi — a California elector — it includes a signature from one former members of Congress: New Hampshire’s Carol Shea-Porter.

Shea-Porter’s three other New Hampshire colleagues — Terie Norelli, Bev Hollingsworth and Dudley Dudley — also signed the letter. D.C. Councilwoman Anita Bonds, former Rhode Island gubernatorial candidate Clay Pell and Maryland activist Courtney Watson round out the nine Democratic signatories. Colorado Democratic elector Micheal Baca, leader of an effort to turn the Electoral College against Trump, is also on the list. Texas' Chris Suprun, an emergency responder who has been a vocal critic of Trump, is the only Republican elector to sign on.

“Yes, we the Electors should have temporary security clearance to perform our constitutional duty in reviewing the facts regarding outside interference in the US election and the intelligence agencies should declassify as much data as possible while protecting sources and methods so that the American people can learn the truth about our election,” said Pelosi.

Though the letter doesn’t explicitly endorse a separate effort by electors in Colorado, Washington and California to stop Trump from winning the presidency, it represents the latest effort by Democratic electors to look to the Electoral College as a possible bulwark against a Trump presidency. The letter follows on the heels of two Democratic congressmen — David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Jim Himes of Connecticut — who suggested this weekend that the Electoral College should consider whether to block Trump’s election.

Hillary Clinton, her top advisers and former President Bill Clinton, who’s an elector from New York, have remained notably silent on the various Electoral College machinations.

The signatories of Monday's letter represent some prominent party names. Pelosi's mother is the highest-ranking House Democrat, Bonds is a member of the Washington, D.C., city council, Norelli is a former speaker of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, and Shea-Porter was recently elected to her old seat in Congress. Pell, the grandson of Democratic Sen. Claiborne Pell, ran unsuccessfully for governor in 2014. His wife, the former figure skater Michelle Kwan, was a senior staffer in Clinton's presidential campaign.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell backed calls for a probe into Russian interference in the U.S. election.
McConnell backs congressional investigation into Russian interference
By SEUNG MIN KIM and BURGESS EVERETT
The letter begins with a lengthy defense of the Electoral College’s role in the election process. The Democrats argue that it’s their duty not simply to rubber-stamp the Election Day results but to “investigate, discuss, and deliberate with our colleagues about whom to vote for.” They point to Trump’s repeated refutation of intelligence assessments suggestion Russia’s meddling in the election, as well as his suggestion during the campaign that Russia should unearth some of Hillary Clinton’s missing emails. And, they note, Trump has dismissed reports over the weekend that the U.S. intelligence community had determined Russia intervened in the election to help him win.

“Trump’s willingness to disregard conclusions made by the intelligence community and his continuing defense of Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin demand close scrutiny and deliberation from the Electoral College,” they write.

The 538 members of the Electoral College are slated to meet in their state capitals on Dec. 19 to cast the only official vote for president. Trump won the popular vote in states that include 306 electors, while Clinton won states that include 232 electors. Anti-Trump forces are working to convince at least 37 Republican electors to turn on Trump, which would block his immediate election and send the final decision to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/e ... sia-232498

Bipartisan Electors Ask James Clapper: Release Facts on Outside Interference in U.S. Election

Open Letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:

We are Electors who were selected by the voters of our states to represent them in the Electoral College on December 19, 2016. We intend to discharge our duties as Electors by ensuring that we select a candidate for president who, as our Founding Fathers envisioned, would be “endowed with the requisite qualifications.” As Electors, we also believe that deliberation is at the heart of democracy itself, not an empty or formalistic task. We do not understand our sole function to be to convene in mid-December, several weeks after Election Day, and summarily cast our votes. To the contrary, the Constitution envisions the Electoral College as a deliberative body that plays a critical role in our system of government — ensuring that the American people elect a president who is constitutionally qualified and fit to serve. Accordingly, to fulfill our role as Electors, we seek an informed and unrestrained opportunity to fulfill our constitutional role leading up to December 19th — that is, the ability to investigate, discuss, and deliberate with our colleagues about whom to vote for in the Electoral College.
We further emphasize Alexander Hamilton’s assertion in Federalist Paper #68 that a core purpose of the Electoral College was to prevent a “desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils.” The United States intelligence community has now concluded with “high confidence” that a foreign power, namely Russia, acted covertly to interfere in the presidential campaign with the intent of promoting Donald Trump’s candidacy. During the campaign Russia actively attempted to influence the election outcome through cyber attacks on our political institutions and a comprehensive propaganda campaign coordinated through Wikileaks and other outlets.
Allegations that Donald Trump was receiving assistance from a hostile foreign power to win the election began months before Election Day. When presented with information that the Russian government was interfering in the election through the course of the campaign, both in private briefings and public assessment, Donald Trump rejected it, refused to condemn it, and continued to accept their help. Donald Trump even made a direct plea to the Russian government to interfere further in the election in a press conference on July 27, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.”
According to reports in the Washington Post, New York Times, and other outlets, the United States intelligence community has now concluded definitively that the Russian interference was performed to help Donald Trump get elected, yet even today Mr. Trump is refusing to accept that finding. In response to the reports, the Trump transition office instead released a statement which called into question the validity of United States intelligence findings, and declared the election over despite the Electoral College not yet casting its votes. Trump’s willingness to disregard conclusions made by the intelligence community and his continuing defense of Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin demand close scrutiny and deliberation from the Electoral College.
Separate from Mr. Trump’s own denials of Russian involvement in the election, the confirmed communication between Trump’s aides and those associated with the Russian election interference activity raise serious concerns that must be addressed before we cast our votes. Trump-confidant Roger Stone confirmed during the campaign that he was engaged in back-channel communications with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, responsible for releasing much of the Russian-hacked Democratic communications, and indicated that he was aware of the hacked content prior to its release. Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page reportedly visited Moscow in July of this year, just prior to the release of hacked DNC communications, during which it was believed he met with the Putin aide in charge of Russian intelligence on the U.S. election. Page returned to Moscow this week where he claimed to be meeting with Russian business and thought leaders.
In addition to Donald Trump and his aides’ conduct, revelations about their further involvement with the Russian government over the course of the campaign demand further investigation, as well as full disclosure of findings from any ongoing or closed investigative efforts:
Russian government officials revealed that they had maintained contact with the Trump campaign during the election, and stated that they were familiar with most of the individuals associated with Mr. Trump.
Media inquiries into whether the FBI was investigating Donald Trump’s July plea for Russian interference in the election resulted in a “Glomar response” neither confirming nor denying the existence of an investigation, rather than the more typical response of denying the request outright.
U.S. intelligence officials reportedly probed Trump foreign policy advisor Carter Page in regard to travel to his Moscow during the campaign.
The FBI reportedly began an inquiry into Trump associates following reports of a multi-million dollar business relationship with pro-Putin figures in Ukraine and Russia, and reports of an effort to sway American public opinion in favor of Ukraine’s pro-Putin government.
Michael Flynn, Trump campaign aide and the announced incoming National Security Advisor, traveled to Russia in December of 2015 for a gala event celebrating RT, a state-controlled propaganda network, at which he was seated next to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations. We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.
Additionally, the Electors will separately require from Donald Trump conclusive evidence that he and his staff and advisors did not accept Russian interference, or otherwise collaborate during the campaign, and conclusive disavowal and repudiation of such collaboration and interference going forward.
We hope that the information and actions described in this letter will be provided in an expeditious manner, so that we can fulfill our constitutional duty as Electors.
Signed,
Christine Pelosi (CA)
Michael Baca (CO)
Anita Bonds (DC)
Courtney Watson (MD)
Dudley Dudley (NH)
Bev Hollingworth (NH)
Terie Norelli (NH)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
Clay Pell (RI)
Chris Suprun (TX)
Presidential electors interested in adding their names to this letter should contact ElectoralCollege16@gmail.com.

https://medium.com/@electoralcollege16/ ... .chixr78rv

Did the Russians “hack” the election? A look at the established facts

No smoking gun, but evidence suggests a Russian source for the cyber attacks on Democrats.
Sean Gallagher - 12/12/2016, 11:13 PM

President-elect Donald Trump continues to discount or attempt to discredit reports that the intelligence community has linked the hacking of the DNC, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and related information operations with a Russian effort to prevent Clinton from winning the election—thus assuring Trump's victory. In his latest of a stream of tweets, Trump posted:

Unless you catch "hackers" in the act, it is very hard to determine who was doing the hacking. Why wasn't this brought up before election?

The hacking was brought up well before the election. And it was monitored as it was happening—by the intelligence and law enforcement communities and by private information security firms.

"CrowdStrike's Falcon endpoint technology did catch the adversaries in the act," said Dmitri Alperovitch, chief technology officer of Crowdstrike. "When the DNC brought us in to conduct an investigation in May 2016, we deployed this technology on every system within DNC's corporate network and were able to watch everything that the adversaries were doing while we were working on a full remediation plan to remove them from the network."

Much of the evidence from Crowdstrike and other security researchers has been public since June and July. But while the hackers may have been caught in the act digitally, the details by themselves don't offer definitive proof of the identity of those behind the anti-Clinton hacking campaign. Public details currently don't offer clear insight into the specific intent behind these hacks, either.

What is indisputable, however, is the existence of genuine hacking evidence. And this information certainly does provide enough to give the reported intelligence community findings some context.

The evidence

The FBI warned the DNC of a potential ongoing breach of their network in November of 2015. But the first hard evidence of an attack detected by a non-government agency was a spear-phishing campaign being tracked by Dell SecureWorks. That campaign began to target the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and others in the middle of March 2016, and it ran through mid-April.

This campaign was linked to a "threat group" (designated variously as APT28, Sofacy, Strontium, Pawn Storm, and Fancy Bear) that had previously been tied to spear-phishing attacks on military, government, and non-governmental organizations.

"[SecureWorks] researchers assess with moderate confidence that the group is operating from the Russian Federation and is gathering intelligence on behalf of the Russian government," the report from SecureWorks concluded.

The DNC's information technology team first alerted party officials that there was a potential security problem in late March, but the DNC didn't bring in outside help until May. This is when CrowdStrike's incident response team was brought in. CrowdStrike identified two separate ongoing breaches, as detailed in a June 15, 2016 blog post by CrowdStrike CTO Dmitri Alperovitch. The findings were based both on malware samples found and a monitoring of the breach while it was in progress.

One of those attacks, based on the malware and command and control traffic, was attributed to Fancy Bear. The malware deployed by Fancy Bear was a combination of an agent disguised as a Windows driver file (named twain_64.dll) in combination with a network tunneling tool that allowed remote control connections.

The other breach, which may have been the breach hinted at by the FBI, was a long-running intrusion by a group previously identified as APT29, also known as The Dukes or Cozy Bear. Cozy Bear ran SeaDaddy (also known as SeaDuke, a backdoor developed in Python and compiled as a Windows executable) as well as a one-line Windows PowerShell command that exploited Microsoft's Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) system. The exploit allowed attackers to persist in WMI's database and execute based on a schedule. Researchers at Fidelis who were given access to malware samples from the hack confirmed that attribution.

In addition to targeting the DNC and the Clinton campaign's Google Apps accounts, the spear-phishing messages connected to the campaign discovered by SecureWorks also went after a number of personal Gmail accounts. It was later discovered that the campaign had compromised the Gmail accounts of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and a number of other individuals connected to the Clinton campaign and the White House. Many of those e-mails ended up on DC Leaks. The Wikileaks posting of the Podesta e-mails include an e-mail containing the link used to deliver the malware.

After Crowdstrike and the DNC revealed the hacks and attributed them to Russian intelligence-connected groups, some of the files taken from the DNC were posted on a website by someone using the name Guccifer 2.0. While the individual claimed to be Romanian, documents in the initial dump from the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 were found to have been edited using a Russian-language version of Word and by someone using a computer named for Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police. (The documents are linked in this article by Ars' Dan Goodin.)

In addition to publishing on his or her own WordPress site, Guccifer used the DC Leaks site to provide an early look at new documents to The Smoking Gun using administrative access. The Smoking Gun contacted one of the victims of the breach and confirmed he had been targeted using the same spear-phishing attack used against Podesta.

The DC Leaks site also contains a small number of e-mails from state Republican party operatives. Thus far, no national GOP e-mails have been released. (The New York Times reports that intelligence officials claim the Republican National Committee was also penetrated by attackers, but its e-mails were never published.)

Attribution and motive

There are several factors used to attribute these hacks to someone working on behalf of Russian intelligence. In the case of Fancy Bear, attribution is based on details from a number of assessments by security researchers. These include:

Focus of purpose. The methods and malware families used in these campaigns are specifically built for espionage.

The targets. A list of previous targets of Fancy Bear malware include:

* Individuals in Russia and the former Soviet states who may be of intelligence interest

* Current and former members of NATO states' government and military
Western defense contractors and suppliers

* Journalists and authors

Fancy Bear malware was also used in the spear-phishing attack on the International Olympic Committee to gain access to the World Anti Doping Agency's systems. This allowed the group to discredit athletes after many Russian athletes were banned from this year's Summer Games.

Long-term investment. The code in malware and tools is regularly and professionally updated and maintained—while maintaining a platform approach. The investment suggests an operation funded to provide long-term data espionage and information warfare capabilities.

Language and location. Artifacts in the code indicate it was written by Russian speakers in the same time zone as Moscow and St. Petersburg, according to a FireEye report.

These don't necessarily point to Fancy Bear being directly operated by Russian intelligence. Other information operations out of Russia (including the "troll factory" operated out of St. Petersburg to spread disinformation and intimidate people) have had tenuous connections to the government.

Scott DePasquale and Michael Daly of the Atlantic Council suggested in an October Politico article that the DNC hack and other information operations surrounding the US presidential campaign may have been the work of "cyber mercenaries"—in essence, outsourcing outfits working as contractors for Russian intelligence. There is also an extremely remote possibility that all of this has been some sort of "false flag" operation by someone else with extremely deep pockets and a political agenda.

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange has insisted that the Russian government is not the source of the Podesta and DNC e-mails. That may well be true, and it can still be true even if the Russian government had a hand in directing or funding the operation. But that is all speculation—the only way that the full scope of Russia's involvement in the hacking campaign and other aspects of the information campaign against Clinton (and for Trump) will be known is if the Obama administration publishes conclusive evidence in a form that can be independently analyzed.

Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee
June 15, 2016Dmitri AlperovitchFrom The Front Lines
Intrusion Into The Democratic National Committee
Follow @CrowdStrike and @DAlperovitch for the latest on these threats

June 15, 2016 UPDATE:
CrowdStrike stands fully by its analysis and findings identifying two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network in May 2016. On June 15, 2016 a blog post to a WordPress site authored by an individual using the moniker Guccifer 2.0 claimed credit for breaching the Democratic National Committee. This blog post presents documents alleged to have originated from the DNC.

Whether or not this posting is part of a Russian Intelligence disinformation campaign, we are exploring the documents’ authenticity and origin. Regardless, these claims do nothing to lessen our findings relating to the Russian government’s involvement, portions of which we have documented for the public and the greater security community.



There is rarely a dull day at CrowdStrike where we are not detecting or responding to a breach at a company somewhere around the globe. In all of these cases, we operate under strict confidentiality rules with our customers and cannot reveal publicly any information about these attacks. But on rare occasions, a customer decides to go public with information about their incident and give us permission to share our knowledge of the adversary tradecraft with the broader community and help protect even those who do not happen to be our customers. This story is about one of those cases.

CrowdStrike Services Inc., our Incident Response group, was called by the Democratic National Committee (DNC), the formal governing body for the US Democratic Party, to respond to a suspected breach. We deployed our IR team and technology and immediately identified two sophisticated adversaries on the network – COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR. We’ve had lots of experience with both of these actors attempting to target our customers in the past and know them well. In fact, our team considers them some of the best adversaries out of all the numerous nation-state, criminal and hacktivist/terrorist groups we encounter on a daily basis. Their tradecraft is superb, operational security second to none and the extensive usage of ‘living-off-the-land’ techniques enables them to easily bypass many security solutions they encounter. In particular, we identified advanced methods consistent with nation-state level capabilities including deliberate targeting and ‘access management’ tradecraft – both groups were constantly going back into the environment to change out their implants, modify persistent methods, move to new Command & Control channels and perform other tasks to try to stay ahead of being detected. Both adversaries engage in extensive political and economic espionage for the benefit of the government of the Russian Federation and are believed to be closely linked to the Russian government’s powerful and highly capable intelligence services.

COZY BEAR (also referred to in some industry reports as CozyDuke or APT 29) is the adversary group that last year successfully infiltrated the unclassified networks of the White House, State Department, and US Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition to the US government, they have targeted organizations across the Defense, Energy, Extractive, Financial, Insurance, Legal, Manufacturing Media, Think Tanks, Pharmaceutical, Research and Technology industries, along with Universities. Victims have also been observed in Western Europe, Brazil, China, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Turkey and Central Asian countries. COZY BEAR’s preferred intrusion method is a broadly targeted spearphish campaign that typically includes web links to a malicious dropper. Once executed on the machine, the code will deliver one of a number of sophisticated Remote Access Tools (RATs), including AdobeARM, ATI-Agent, and MiniDionis. On many occasions, both the dropper and the payload will contain a range of techniques to ensure the sample is not being analyzed on a virtual machine, using a debugger, or located within a sandbox. They have extensive checks for the various security software that is installed on the system and their specific configurations. When specific versions are discovered that may cause issues for the RAT, it promptly exits. These actions demonstrate a well-resourced adversary with a thorough implant-testing regime that is highly attuned to slight configuration issues that may result in their detection, and which would cause them to deploy a different tool instead. The implants are highly configurable via encrypted configuration files, which allow the adversary to customize various components, including C2 servers, the list of initial tasks to carry out, persistence mechanisms, encryption keys and others. An HTTP protocol with encrypted payload is used for the Command & Control communication.

FANCY BEAR (also known as Sofacy or APT 28) is a separate Russian-based threat actor, which has been active since mid 2000s, and has been responsible for targeted intrusion campaigns against the Aerospace, Defense, Energy, Government and Media sectors. Their victims have been identified in the United States, Western Europe, Brazil, Canada, China, Georgia, Iran, Japan, Malaysia and South Korea. Extensive targeting of defense ministries and other military victims has been observed, the profile of which closely mirrors the strategic interests of the Russian government, and may indicate affiliation with Главное Разведывательное Управление (Main Intelligence Department) or GRU, Russia’s premier military intelligence service. This adversary has a wide range of implants at their disposal, which have been developed over the course of many years and include Sofacy, X-Agent, X-Tunnel, WinIDS, Foozer and DownRange droppers, and even malware for Linux, OSX, IOS, Android and Windows Phones. This group is known for its technique of registering domains that closely resemble domains of legitimate organizations they plan to target. Afterwards, they establish phishing sites on these domains that spoof the look and feel of the victim’s web-based email services in order to steal their credentials. FANCY BEAR has also been linked publicly to intrusions into the German Bundestag and France’s TV5 Monde TV station in April 2015.

At DNC, COZY BEAR intrusion has been identified going back to summer of 2015, while FANCY BEAR separately breached the network in April 2016. We have identified no collaboration between the two actors, or even an awareness of one by the other. Instead, we observed the two Russian espionage groups compromise the same systems and engage separately in the theft of identical credentials. While you would virtually never see Western intelligence agencies going after the same target without de-confliction for fear of compromising each other’s operations, in Russia this is not an uncommon scenario. “Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services”, a recent paper from European Council on Foreign Relations, does an excellent job outlining the highly adversarial relationship between Russia’s main intelligence services – Федеральная Служба Безопасности (FSB), the primary domestic intelligence agency but one with also significant external collection and ‘active measures’ remit, Служба Внешней Разведки (SVR), the primary foreign intelligence agency, and the aforementioned GRU. Not only do they have overlapping areas of responsibility, but also rarely share intelligence and even occasionally steal sources from each other and compromise operations. Thus, it is not surprising to see them engage in intrusions against the same victim, even when it may be a waste of resources and lead to the discovery and potential compromise of mutual operations.

The COZY BEAR intrusion relied primarily on the SeaDaddy implant developed in Python and compiled with py2exe and another Powershell backdoor with persistence accomplished via Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) system, which allowed the adversary to launch malicious code automatically after a specified period of system uptime or on a specific schedule. The Powershell backdoor is ingenious in its simplicity and power. It consists of a single obfuscated command setup to run persistently, such as:

powershell.exe -NonInteractive -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -EncodedCommand ZgB1AG4AYwB0AGkAbwBuACAAcABlAHIAZgBDAHIAKAAkAGMAcgBUAHIALAAgACQAZABhAHQAYQApAA0ACgB7AA0


https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears- ... committee/

The real reason Trump's denial that Russia hacked Democrats’ emails is so worrying
Updated by Andrew Prokop Dec 13, 2016, 8:30am EST

The spin war President-elect Donald Trump and his subordinates are waging over the question of Russian election-related hacking is raising serious questions about how his administration will function — because they’re sending the message that the White House will refuse to accept facts that doesn’t meet its own propaganda narrative.

In response to the Washington Post and New York Times’s Friday reports on a secret CIA assessment that the Russian government deliberately intervened to help Trump win, the Trump team has pushed back very hard, attacking the agency as a whole and repeatedly questioning whether the Russians were involved in the hackings at all.

To be clear: An anonymously leaked CIA assessment should certainly not be taken for the gospel truth, and indeed there appears to be an interagency dispute over whether Russia’s aims in hacking the email accounts of various notable Democrats here were specifically to elect Trump president (as the new CIA assessment suggests) or whether they could also have been to generally cause chaos and interfere with the US’s election (which is reportedly the FBI’s position). And Reuters reported Monday that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence also has “not embraced” the CIA’s assessment of Russia’s motives.

But there appears to be no interagency dispute on whether the Russian government (or at least entities closely tied to the Russian government) “directed” the hacking. That is a conclusion accepted by 17 different US intelligence agencies and public since October. And yet Trump and his team have repeatedly and publicly tried to cast doubt on just this conclusion, saying again and again that they’re not sold on Russian culpability.

The bigger picture here is that Trump’s actions over the past few days have sent an unmistakably clear signal across the government, and among those who will soon staff it. People who agree with the consensus conclusion of those 17 agencies will likely now feel distinctly unwelcome in the new administration, and fear political pressure to deny evidence and realities that are inconvenient to Trump. That helps ensure that people who have no compunctions about lying to advance Trump’s agenda, will fill top posts. And intelligence agencies will feel pressure to cook their findings.

Overall, the heart of the problem is that Americans in swing states have elected someone president who is accustomed to lying casually without consequence, and has signaled that he will continue to do so in the White House.

That means it’s likely up to those outside the executive branch to keep our politics at least somewhat tethered to reality — specifically Senate Republicans who have some sway. Senate committees can investigate controversial topics, and Senate confirmation hearings provide ample opportunity to ensure Trump is appointing qualified, reasonably honest people and to test whether they’d speak truth to power when they testify on certain issues.

It would be very inconvenient for Trump if credit for his victory was attributed to Russia
Now, Trump’s motivation for pushing back so hard on this topic is quite clear: Trump has long been obsessed with defining himself as a “winner,” and therefore he is very thin-skinned about any suggestion that his election victory is illegitimate.

Signs of this include his absurd overreaction to Jill Stein’s recount efforts even though they were overwhelmingly likely to further confirm his victory, his campaign manager’s annoyance whenever his popular vote loss is mentioned, and his team’s repeated and completely bogus assertions that he won in an electoral vote “landslide” (his electoral vote win is the 46th biggest out of 58 in US history).

Naturally, then, when the Washington Post and New York Times reported Friday on a secret CIA assessment that Russian hackers intervened in the election to help Trump win, the Trump team very quickly decided to attack the CIA for even coming to that conclusion (combining this with, again, that bonus false claim that Trump had won “one of the biggest Electoral College victories in history”).


On a call with reporters Monday, transition spokesperson Jason Miller made the subtext text by saying this was part of a “narrative in the news” that amounted to "an attempt to delegitimize President-elect Trump's win."

Also on Monday morning, Trump made an even more bizarre attempt to rewrite history with the claim that hacking “wasn’t brought up” before the election.


Of course, it was talked about constantly, not least by Donald Trump himself, who in July openly urged Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails from her private server.

Trump was also repeatedly asked about the DNC hacks during the election, and refused to endorse the reported conclusions of US intelligence agencies that Russia was behind them. "It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?" he said at the first general election debate in September.

Then in October, the US Intelligence Community released a statement saying it was “confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” But that wasn’t enough for Trump. “Maybe there is no hacking," he mused during the second debate. So this has been going on for some time.

Trump is signaling to his whole administration-in-waiting that this is the party line
What’s perhaps most worrying is that candidates for top jobs in the Trump administration have gotten the message that if they want the gig, they’d better follow Trump’s line here.

John Bolton — who’s reportedly the frontrunner to be deputy secretary of state — has gone on television in recent days making the argument that the hacks could be a “false flag,” that the hacking could have been done by some other country, and that he didn’t trust “politicized” intelligence from the Obama administration.

And Carly Fiorina, a reported contender for director of national intelligence, told reporters Monday that she and Trump spoke about “hacking, whether it’s Chinese hacking or purported Russian hacking” — another apparent attempt to cast doubt on the US intelligence community’s consensus finding.

In one sense, this is no big surprise. Trump is going to hire people who are willing to defend what he says, regardless of how absurd or flatly false it is. So if you’re auditioning for a Trump administration job, you’re going to back up Trump’s latest statements.

But in another sense, it’s extremely troubling. Potential Russian interference in US elections is a very serious matter. And again, the consensus conclusion of 17 intelligence agencies is that the Russian government or entities closely tied to it are behind the hackings. Yet Trump’s team is making it loud and clear that their conclusions will not be accepted, because they aren’t what the president-elect wants to hear.

And while there are often controversies about the alleged politicization of intelligence in administrations — the Bush administration pressured intelligence agencies to find information that would justify war with Iraq, while Obama has been criticized for downplaying the threat of ISIS because it didn’t fit with his message that the threat of terror was declining — it’s startling and likely unprecedented for a president-elect to be going to war with an intelligence agency before he’s even sworn in.

The Senate needs to keep Trump tethered to reality
Despite Trump’s thin skin about the legitimacy of his victory, he is the winner and he is set to be president. The findings of these investigations will not change that.

So to prevent us all from being mired in a fact-free zone for the next four years, the Senate has a responsibility to exercise its independence and prevent the Trump administration from advancing baldfaced lies unchallenged.

First off, the Senate needs to grill top Trump foreign policy appointees — his director of national intelligence, CIA director, secretary of state, secretary of defense, and all their relevant deputies — on the issue of Russian hacking. It needs to ensure those appointees aren’t mere Trump cronies but are respected and independent figures.

Second, the relevant Senate committees (or some special committee) also need to carry out their own bipartisan investigations on the matter. And while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled Monday that he would support investigations, the devil is in the details here. For instance, Politico’s Austin Wright suggests that if the investigation is relegated to the congressional intelligence committees, final reports might never be released to the public.

Third, on future matters where the Trump administration seems set on denying reality, the Senate needs to step in. If Trump’s team remains so hell-bent on twisting the facts for its propaganda purposes, the bar for the Senate to create an independent commission or launching a serious investigation should be lowered. If the administration shows it can’t be trusted to be honest on basic matters, serious, continuous oversight is necessary.

Still, there is only so much the Senate — particularly if Democrats remain in the minority — can do. Trump is who he is, and his appointees will in large part say and do what he wants. The most his critics can do is make sure he pays a political price for it.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/ ... tion-trump

How To INSTANTLY Tell If Russia Hacked the Election
Posted on December 10, 2016 by WashingtonsBlog

Anonymous CIA officials claim that Russia hacked the U.S. election by accessing emails from top Democratic officials and then leaking them to Wikileaks.

But the Washington Post notes:

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) voiced doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to officials present.

***

A senior U.S. official said there were minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the agency’s assessment, in part because some questions remain unanswered.

For example, intelligence agencies do not have specific intelligence showing officials in the Kremlin “directing” the identified individuals to pass the Democratic emails to WikiLeaks ….

***

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has said in a television interview that the “Russian government is not the source.” [The former intelligence analyst, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, and chancellor of the University of Dundee (Craig Murray) – who is close friends with Wikileaks’ Assange – said he knows with 100% certainty that the Russians aren’t behind the leaks.]

***

“I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence — even now,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a member of the Trump transition team. “There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.”


Indeed, some cybersecurity consultants claim that it’s impossible to ever know for sure who is behind hacks of this nature.

But that’s wrong …

In reality, it would be child’s play to determine whether or not the Russians really hacked the Dem emails and shared them with Wikileaks.

Specifically, Edward Snowden says the NSA could easily determine who hacked the Democratic National Committee’s emails:

Edward Snowden ‏@Snowden Jul 25

Even if the attackers try to obfuscate origin, #XKEYSCORE makes following exfiltrated data easy. I did this personally against Chinese ops.
51 replies 674 retweets 888 likes

Edward Snowden Verified account
‏@Snowden

Evidence that could publicly attribute responsibility for the DNC hack certainly exists at #NSA, but DNI traditionally objects to sharing.

Retweets
733
Likes
731
7:03 AM - 25 Jul 2016

But don’t trust Snowden …

The NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees, the 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker, who mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”) – confirmed to Washington’s Blog that the NSA would definitely know who the hacker was.

Binney told Washington’s Blog in July:

Snowden is right and the MSM is clueless.

***

Do they have evidence that the Russians downloaded and later forwarded those emails to wikileaks? Seems to me that they need to answer those questions to be sure that their assertion is correct.

***

You can tell from the network log who is going into a site. I used that on networks that I had. I looked to see who came into my LAN, where they went, how long they stayed and what they did while in my network.

Further, if you needed to, you could trace back approaches through other servers etc. Trace Route and Trace Watch are good examples of monitoring software that help do these things. Others of course exist … probably the best are in NSA/GCHQ and the other Five Eyes countries. But, these countries have no monopoly on smart people that could do similar detection software.

In October, Binney told us:

If the idiots in the intelligence community expect us to believe them after all the crap they have told us (like WMD’s in Iraq and “no we don’t collect data on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans”) then they need to give clear proof of what they say. So far, they have failed to prove anything.

Which suggests they don’t have proof and just want to war monger the US public into a second cold war with the Russians.

After all, there’s lots and lots of money in that for the military-industrial-intelligence-governmental complex of incestuous relationships.

***

If you recall, a few years ago they pointed to a specific building in China that was where hacks on the US were originating. So, let’s see the same from the Russians. They don’t have it. That’s why they don’t show it. They want to swindle us again and again and again. You can not trust these intelligence agencies period.

That same month, Binney told Newsweek:

U.S. officials “know how many people [beyond the Russians] could have done this but they aren’t telling us anything. All they’re doing is promoting another cold war.”

Binney … compared allegations about Russian hacks to previous U.S. fabrications of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the bombing of North Vietnam in 1964.

“This is a big mistake, another WMD or Tonkin Gulf affair that’s being created until they have absolute proof” of Russian complicity in the DNC hacks, he charged during a Newsweek interview. He noted that after the Kremlin denied complicity in the downing of a Korean Airlines flight in 1983, the U.S. “exposed the conversations where [Russian pilots] were ordered to shoot it down.” Obama officials “have the evidence now” of who hacked the DNC, he charged. “So let’s see it, guys.“

Last month, Binney explained:

If it were the Russians, NSA would have a trace route to them and not equivocate on who did it. It’s like using “Trace Route” to map the path of all the packets on the network. In the program Treasuremap NSA has hundreds of trace route programs embedded in switches in Europe and hundreds more around the world. So, this set-up should have detected where the packets went and when they went there.

In other words, there’s no need to speculate on whether the Russians were the hackers. The NSA could easily determine who was behind the hacks.

Of course, in an era where challenging officials to provide evidence may get one labeled as a Russian propagandist, the question is how many people will stand up for the all-American value of questioning the proclamations of those in power:

Adam Schiff Calls for ‘Thorough Investigation’ of Russian Hacking by House and Senate
By Hrafnkell Haraldsson on Sat, Dec 10th, 2016 at 3:30 pm
"There's overwhelming evidence of Russian hacking of our elections. By denying it Trump has essentially become a propaganda piece for Kremlin"


http://www.politicususa.com/2016/12/10/ ... enate.html

Tucker Carlson: Anyone Who Points Out White Privilege ‘Is By Definition A Racist’
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/tuck ... -a-racist/

Alex Jones And Tucker Carlson Trash ‘Hippo’ Huma Abedin
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/alex ... ma-abedin/

Tucker Carlson won’t allow anyone at his Daily Caller website to criticize Fox News because he works at Fox News and he just “doesn’t know what to do about” that obvious conflict.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/righ ... acks-4215/

It was a Monday night and I was sitting in bed, laptop propped open, watching the debut of Tucker Carlson’s new show, Tucker Carlson Tonight, on Fox News. The Daily Caller, the conservative Web site that Carlson himself co-founded and still runs, would later praise the show for its “epic ratings premiere,” but Tucker Carlson Tonight wasn’t doing it for me. I know Tucker a little bit, and in person he is completely uncensored, unpredictable, and highly entertaining. On his new television program, however, he was the opposite: he recycled the same stories, largely covered elsewhere, and asked the same questions that virtually every other conservative media outlet had covered that day.
To be fair, I was a bit of a burnout case. Tucker Carlson Tonight represented the end of a weeklong experiment. Every day, from the morning to my final waking hour, I would be restricted to take in only right-wing media—Fox News, sure, but also Web sites ranging from VDARE, named for the first English child reportedly born in the New World, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as a haven for “articles by prominent white nationalists, race scientists, and anti-Semites,” to The National Review, the progeny of William F. Buckley, which became the last foxhole of the Never Trumpers; in the meantime, I would listen to conservative talk-radio hosts such as Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. My goal was to better understand their world.
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/11/ ... dia-vortex

4 worst right-wing moments of the week — Tucker Carlson and his brother are total creeps
http://www.salon.com/2015/03/30/4_worst ... _the_week_—%C2%A0tucker_carlson_and_his_brother_are_total_creeps_partner/

US spy chiefs not sold on CIA assessment of Russian hacking: report
By Rebecca Savransky - 12/13/16 08:16 AM EST

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has not endorsed a CIA assessment that concluded Russia intervened in the U.S. presidential race to help Donald Trump win the presidency, Reuters reported.

The ODNI, which oversees the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, believes there is not conclusive evidence Russia was looking to help Trump, three American officials told Reuters.

"ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can't prove intent," said one of the three U.S. officials.

"Of course they can't, absent agents in on the decision-making in Moscow."

The officials told Reuters the FBI declined to accept the CIA assessment for the same reasons.

One of the officials said the CIA conclusion was a "judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked."

"(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment," the official added.

The president-elect has strongly rebuked the CIA assessment, calling it "ridiculous" that Russia would intervene to help him win.

During an interview Sunday, Trump said he thinks it's just "another excuse," adding he doesn't "believe it."

A group of bipartisan senators on Sunday called for a congressional investigation into the matter, and have been pushing for the investigation over the past few days.

In a statement, the group of senators said Russian interference in the election should "alarm every American," adding that the recent cyberattacks "have cut to the heart of our free society."

On Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Ky.) rejected bipartisan calls for his panel to open a new investigation into the matter. In a statement, he argued that new probes "would duplicate" his committee's efforts and pointed to its "vigorous oversight" of current investigations into cyber attacks connected to the campaign.

Tucker Carlson’s 'Daily Caller' Website Bankrolled by Climate Change Denier
By Brendan DeMelle • Tuesday, January 12, 2010 - 13:49


The primary funder of Tucker Carlson’s new website ‘The Daily Caller’ is climate change denier and GOP bankroller Foster Friess, and Carlson has reportedly lined up sponsorship from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and Southern Company, all major opponents of meaningful action to curb climate change.

Friess donated $3 million to Carlson’s site, which is run out of an office a “stone’s throw from the White House” by a 21-person staff. ‘The Daily Caller’ is the brainchild (if you can call it that) of Carlson and his college roommate Neil Patel, a former Dick Cheney aide. The site’s opinion editor is former RNC press secretary Moira Bagley, immediately calling into question Carlson’s insistence that ‘The Daily Caller’ won’t cater to the right-wing crowd.
https://www.desmogblog.com/tags/tucker-carlson

In The Clash Between US Intelligence Agencies And Russia, Fox's Tucker Carlson Picks Russia
Blog ››› 5 hours 13 min ago ››› NICK FERNANDEZ

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly downplayed the claims that Russia was involved in interfering in the 2016 presidential election, and in several interviews over the last week he attacked those supporting reports from the government agencies that found Russia played a role in getting Donald Trump elected. But Carlson’s personal effort to spin away the Russian interference in the American political system downplays its severity and runs counter to the warnings issued by American and international intelligence experts.

On the December 7 edition of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight, Carlson hosted Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, to discuss Russian interference in the presidential election. Throughout the contentious interview, Carlson downplayed the U.S. intelligence community’s allegations that Russian intelligence services interfered in the American election, claiming the reports were made “without any evidence.” He also chastised Schiff for providing his evaluation of the classified evidence, saying, “I just think if you’re going to make a serious allegation about an actual country with an actual government, you ought to know what you’re talking about. And you don’t.”


Since his interview with Schiff, Carlson has hosted two Democratic strategists on his show to relitigate the Schiff interview, prefacing the segments with a clip from the combative discussion earlier in the week. In both segments, Carlson downplayed the significance of a foreign power intervening in our election, suggesting that the reaction to the findings has been “disingenuous” because, as Carlson admitted, “There’s almost no institution in Washington that hasn't been hacked, probably in some cases by the Russians. Also the Chinese. And yet, you haven't seen any kind of response like this.” Carlson also argued that because “bad intelligence” led the United States into Iraq in 2003, he is correct to be skeptical.

During Carlson’s appearance on the December 12 edition of Fox & Friends -- his first since The Washington Post reported that “Intelligence agencies have identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided WikiLeaks with thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman” -- he argued that the cyberattacks actually provided a public benefit because “voters got more information than they would have had otherwise.” He also again acknowledged Russian interference by saying the Russians have been hacking Americans “for years” and “so have the Chinese.” Later that day on his own show, Carlson hosted Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and asked him indignantly why he should trust the intelligence community “that missed the fall of the Soviet Union,” adding, “It's pretty lame if that's your job and you miss like, everything.”

Given Carlson’s previous praise for Putin and his ongoing failure to acknowledge Russia's confirmed role in the presidential election, his most recent unwillingness to accept the findings of the American intelligence community is not surprising. Carlson has made a point of repeatedly and unequivocally insisting that the U.S. intelligence community was pushing “an utterly unsubstantiated claim from the Clinton campaign that” the cyberattacks on American political institutions are “a Russian propaganda effort.” But considering the intelligence community’s findings since the election, Carlson’s repeated denials of the severity of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election seem to be getting more and more desperate.

While Carlson fails to accept the CIA’s conclusions, the allegations of Russian hacking have been corroborated by intelligence agencies in the United States and internationally. The Department Of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on election security stating that the “U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.” And the intelligence services of various American allies also allege that Russian cyberattacks “represent a fundamental threat to … sovereignty” and “should be a concern to all those who share democratic values.” Even Republican senators on Capitol Hill have issued warnings and called for investigations into the matter, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who stated that the Russians “are not our friends.”

While many have rallied around the idea that Russia’s role in the election requires investigation, at least Carlson will have one ally in his opposition. Earlier this year, like Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the hack was “important” because the “content [of the hacked emails] was given to the public.” Considering Carlson’s role as a prime-time TV news host, his failure to inform his viewers of the seriousness of the intelligence community’s evaluations on Russian interference in the 2016 election -- and his defense of Russia and echoing of the Russian president -- are especially problematic. And they provide the Russian government with a major defender in American media.
https://mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/1 ... sia/214806

Morty » Tue Dec 13, 2016 3:11 pm wrote:
Of course, in an era where challenging officials to provide evidence may get one labeled as a Russian propagandist, the question is how many people will stand up for the all-American value of questioning the proclamations of those in power:

I wonder what delights 2017 will bring. Maybe a nationwide Heaven's Gate or an actual Rapture.