Debate: Is ‘Russiagate’ a CIA Hoax? UPDATE:

Eric Zuesse

There now is a public debate regarding whether or not ‘Russiagate’ was/is a CIA-generated hoax, instead of (as it has been reported) a Russian Government hacking operation. Whatever it was, did spark massive U.S. economic and other sanctions against Russia, and is therefore important in today’s U.S. international relations. Had the CIA actually created the “evidence”? Were those sanctions based upon a U.S. Government fraud? That is the question here.

On July 30th, the former Technical Director of the NSA — America’s top position on cyber intelligence including computer-hacking — Bill Binney, summarized, by a ten-minute presentation, the latest up-to-date information that exists regarding, and discussing, the actual sources of the various unauthorized releases, to the public, of emails and other documents from the computers of the Democratic National Committee and of John Podesta who headed the Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Binney alleged there that the raw data prove conclusively — not just speculatively — that the CIA tampered with the evidence, in order to become enabled to accuse Russia as having been involved in those unauthorized information-releases. He further alleged that Robert Mueller’s report on the Democratic Party’s charges that Russia and Trump were involved in these matters was false when it unquestioningly accepted the CIA’s assertions against Russia and on that basis accused the Internet Research Agency, in Russia, as having “hacked” the data. Consequently: if Binney’s case is correct, then recent U.S. history is based upon fraud by the U.S. Government itself. This would be a case like America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, but perhaps even worse.

One of the news-sites that published his presentation was Silver Doctors. A reader-comment there, from an anonymous “Fred,” challenged Binney’s reconstruction of what had occurred. Here below is Fred’s reader-comment, and Binney’s response to it:

• FredOMG, what a quack, I watched the video and as a cyber security professional, the man knows spews a lot of terminology but really knows nothing. First, time stamps can change every time files are moved to a new source. Of course they would be very close to each other when copying in bulk. Emails are mostly text if they don’t have attachments which takes up very little space. Depending on the system  all the emails can be contained in one file, so when that 1 file is transferred and of the contents would be the same time stamp. 2nd, of course data can be transferred at much high rates than 19mbs, what is he living in the 20th century? We have gigabyte internet now., data can be transferred well over 100 mbs. 3rd. he presents no evidence directly linking CIA other than to say, who else could have done it. His whole theory is just an opinion, absolute rubbish. No wonder he’s not taken seriously.Reply
  • 
    Eric Zuesse     Fred“Fred,” I sent your comment to Bill Binney and asked him to respond. His response included an attachment, which probably won’t be able to be included here, but I now am pasting here his reply to you:
  •  Eric, here are my comments to this “professional.”
  •   “OMG, what a quack,”
  • When people don’t have any substance to address,  they throw labels out to try and prejudice the issue.
  • ” I watched the video and as a cyber security professional, the man knows spews a lot of terminology but really knows nothing.”
  • I guess I achieved the position of Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting at NSA by knowing nothing.  Sure!  This is a typical baseless assertion that
  • Sophists make all the time.  And our country has thousands of people like this.
  • “First, time stamps can change every time files are moved to a new source. Of course they would be very close to each other when copying in bulk. Emails are mostly text if they don’t have attachments which takes up very little space. Depending on the system  all the emails can be contained in one file, so when that 1 file is transferred and of the contents would be the same time stamp.”
  • The last modified times on the DNC emails had different times all rounded to the nearest even number.  See attachment.  For comparison, this file contains the DNC email last modified times (LMT) showing FAT file
  • properties and the Pedesta emails LMT’s that do not show FAT file properties.
  • ” 2nd, of course data can beReplyEric Zuesse    Eric Zuesse

    (continued):

  • “2nd, of course data can be transferred at much high rates than 19mbs, what is he living in the 20th century? We have gigabyte internet now., data can be transferred well over 100 mbs.:”
  • While the ISP standard is Mbps = mega bits per second and MBps = mega bytes per second, I believe Fred is referring to mega bytes per second.  What he says is true but only for shorter distances – not
  • across the Atlantic to Europe let alone Russia.  In our testing, the further east we went; the lower speeds we got.  In other words, assuming there was a hacker, he/she would have to have a high speed line
  • all the way from the target to the hackers location.  The WWW does not support that.   If Fred thinks it does, he needs to illustrate/prove where and how that can be achieved.  So far, no one has done that –
  • not even NSA/CIA/FBI or private security companies.
  • ” 3rd. he presents no evidence directly linking CIA other than to say, who else could have done it. His whole theory is just an opinion, absolute rubbish. No wonder he’s not taken seriously.”
  • Does Fred work for CIA?  Or, is he just an advocate for them?  In either case, I pointed out what evidence we have which is circumstantial and not absolute.  But, in terms used in the ICA of CIA/NSA/FBI,
  • I have “high confidence that CIA did it.”
  • Note: all this data including Guccifer 2.0 files and speed calculations have been provided to lawyers in several currently on-going court cases.

Reply

• Fred

[replying to] Eric Zuesse

1 August, 2020

Glad that my comments my the hit parade. Maybe I’m a bit harsh in name calling, I don’t like when others do it either. However, does Mr. Binney understand that we have fiber optic cables under the Atlantic? In many cases you can transfer data quicker to London from Washington then to California. Also the time stamp doesn’t prove anything, so what if they were rounded off. Maybe the hackers tool did that, who knows. Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped

Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?

Reply

• BinneyResponds

Fred

Here’s my reply.

FRED: “Glad that my comments my the hit parade. Maybe I’m a bit harsh in name calling, I don’t like when others do it either. However, does Mr. Binney understand that we have fiber optic cables under the Atlantic?”

BINNEY: You can find all the transoceanic cables and their capacity documented at: Greg’s cable map or https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ plus others. While these sites show capacity to carry data, they do not show service provider capacity provided to users. So, if Fred knows a way to pass data to Russia across the WWW at the speeds of the Guccifer 2.0 evidence posted, then he needs to let all of us know. As I said before, not even NSA/CIA/FBI or any commercial company have come forward to do that.

FRED “In many cases you can transfer data quicker to London from Washington then to California. Also the time stamp doesn’t prove anything, so what if they were rounded off.”

BINNEY: Are you saying that LMT’s rounded to even numbers is not a property of FAT transfers?

FRED: “Maybe the hackers tool did that, who knows.”

BINNEY: And, maybe pigs fly. Talk about conspiracy theories.

FRED: “Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?

BinneyResponds

BINNEY:

the last part of my reply was cut. Here it is.

FRED: “Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?”

BINNEY: I only make assertions based on evidence available for all to examine. In this case, Vault 7 has Marble Framework program used 1 time in 2016. Guccifer 2.0 files from 15 June 2016 had Russian fingerprints while at least 5 of those items posted by Wikileaks did not have those fingerprints. Says, to us, Guccifer 2.0 modified those Podesta emails to make it look like the Russians did it. Note also that the Marble Framework program was documented in Vault 7 as having the capability to frame Russia/China/North Korea/Iran and Arab countries. This is why we have higher confidence in our assertion that CIA did it, than CIA/FBI/NSA did in their (baseless) ICA assertion that the Russians did it.

—

So, we now know that Russiagate was a hoax. However, America’s President, Donald Trump, at least until very recently, has given no indication that he knows it. On 10 July 2020, the Washington Post headlined “Trump confirms, in an interview, a U.S. cyberattack on Russia” and reported that

During an Oval Office interview with me this week, President Trump acknowledged for the first time that, in 2018, he authorized a covert cyberattack against Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll farm that spearheaded Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and was doing the same in the 2018 midterm elections.

Asked whether he had launched the attack, Trump replied: “Correct.”

Trump said that, in 2016, President Barack Obama “knew before the election that Russia was playing around. Or, he was told. Whether or not it was so or not, who knows?

So: Trump authorized in 2018 a cyberattack against Russia for retaliation against a bogus 2016 cyberattack against the Democratic National Committee. And, even as late as July 10th of this year, Trump didn’t know that Russiagate was an Obama Administration scheme, while Obama was President, to frame Trump as being a secret agent of the Kremlin.

On August 3rd, all 12 on the “Steering Group” of VIPS sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi asking her to condemn her fellow Democrats’ promotions of the lies. Headlining “VIPS MEMO: To Nancy Pelosi — Did Russia Hack the DNC Emails?” they damned the New York Times’s and other media’s constant lying against Iraq and now against Russia to ‘justify’ war, and wrote to her:

There were no consequences for those officials who lied about WMD in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld had put one of them, James Clapper, in charge of imagery analysis which, as you know, was the key to finding WMD. Clapper made a stunning admission in his memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence. He wrote that “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help [Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld] that we found what wasn’t really there.”

Nevertheless, with a glowing recommendation from Obama confidant John Brennan, President Obama appointed Clapper director of national intelligence in 2010. He remained in that post for the remainder of Obama’s term despite having misled the Senate in March 2013 about what he later admitted was a “clearly erroneous” testimony, under oath, regarding NSA surveillance of Americans.

Here’s the rub: Clapper and those he conspired with have gone from blissful sans souci to apprehension, acutely aware that they may not have a stay-out-of-jail card this time around.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.