The Trump impact on US policy

[slapout9]

If you look at the timing of the major WikiLeaks release in July, it was intended to influence the Democratic primary and give Sanders a chance, rather than help Trump edge out Clinton.

Bingo! I think you are correct. They were trying to help Sanders!!!!!! not Trump but few see the connection.

[OUTLAW 09]

The US Response to Russian Cyberwarfare

It is astounding that the White House and Intelligence Community would not count on Russia interfering in the primaries and election.

Snowden revealed that the United States has the best SIGINT and cyberwarfare capabilities in the world, and this was kept secret from the public, who believed for many years that China and Russia were superior in these areas. There is a great deal of discussion on how the DOD and various service branches are creating cyberwarfare units to “catch up” to their opposite numbers in Russia and China, but this discussion misses the point that it was the NSA developing the capabilities. The creation of Cyber Command at the NSA’s headquarters had more to do with legal and political issues than ones of capability.

As for Russian disinformation, it is actually difficult to counter. Putin did not create the machine in order to convince Westerners of anything, which he knew would fail. Instead of taking on the role of a prosecutor, who has to prove a case to the audience, Putin took on the role of defense counsel, where his only task was to create doubt. Russia issues a swarm of positive claims that independently are unbelievable, but in aggregate, and in concert with its negative claims, succeed in creating doubt. Putin isn’t seeking to influence elites in the West. He is seeking to influence the man at a bar or dinner table, having a casual conversation with friends.

Example 1: “Don’t you believe that Russia invaded Ukraine?”  “Yeah, but there are Russians there and…it’s complicated…I just don’t know…we should just stay out of it…”

Example 2: “Not all Syrian rebels are terrorists, you know that right?”  “I know, but it seems that way sometimes…it’s complicated…I just don’t know…we should just stay out of it…”

Putin places the burden of proof on Obama, who would rather “just stay out” of foreign crises if possible. In today’s world of Tweets, how can Obama possible explain the nuances of the Syrian Civil War to the American public? He can either take a pro-Assad or anti-Assad position, and Trump has chosen the former. For the latter, Obama would have to declare that Iran has invaded Syria, is attempting to conquer it and that Iranian aggression, including by their client Assad, must be defeated.

But then this narrative if followed would nullify the JCPOA and lead to a US war with Syria, Iran, Iraq and possibly Russia, with additional insurgencies in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. So Obama has no counter.

The Intelligence Community on Russian Theft and Disclosure of DNC Materials

Again, I believe that the Russians were responsible for the WikiLeaks releases of DNC materials. I have always believed that Snowden, Assange and Manning are Russian agents, because the Russians are probably the best at developing assets whereas the West has to typically wait for defectors to approach.

I agree with the conclusions of Mark Galeotti (http://www.reuters.com/article/us-war-college-trump-podcast-idUSKBN13B2OK) and Paul Gregory (http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2016/12/11/the-battle-over-russian-hacking-is-over-the-legitimacy-of-the-trump-presidency/#590fe7676ed7) on Russia’s interference during the election.

I also believe that the CIA’s conclusion about Russian intentions, leaked to the press by an anonymous official, was intended to insinuate that Trump was an illegitimate president. CIA Director Brennan has stated that he wants to serve under Hillary Clinton (https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-08-03/obama-s-cia-director-wants-to-stick-around-for-clinton), and both Deputy Directors are Democratic operatives with no intelligence or defense experience prior to appointment by Obama.

Also note the list of former intelligence officials who have publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton, and this list does not even include former NSC or DHS officials:


David Shedd (DIA)
John Negroponte (ODNI)
Michael Leiter (ODNI)
Matt Olsen (ODNI)
Michael Hayden (NSA)


CIA alone:


David Petraeus (ex-Director)
Michael Morell (ex-Director)
Michael Hayden (ex-Director)
Robert Gates (ex-Director)
Mike Baker (officer)
Evan McMullin (officer)


Quite an unbiased group of professionals, wouldn't you say? Arguably, the WikiLeaks release of the DNC e-mails was intended to influence the primary and give Sanders a chance.

As with Brexit, the losing side is executing “Project Fear” and attempting to overturn Trump’s election. First, there were accusations that the Russians manipulated the polling machines, which were baseless. Second, there were accusations that Russia swung the election for Trump by manipulating public opinion. Third, Comey was accused of acting for Trump by issuing his letters to Congress. Fourth, there are attempts to change the Electors’ votes so as to trigger a constitutional crisis. Notice that everyone is blamed but Hillary.

Trump’s Response to the CIA’s “Conclusion”

Trump’s response was correct. He knew that the CIA was playing politics. He also knew that Americans would not understand the nuance of: “Yes, the Russians interfered. No, they didn’t necessarily want me elected. No, they weren’t responsible for my win”. Clinton’s insinuation that Trump is a Russian agent, began months ago, is too toxic for Trump to even approach.

We know that intelligence on Operation Inherent Resolve was manipulated to show a higher level of success against Daesh than in actuality. In addition, the CIA and DOD estimates of Daesh's fighting strength in 2014 and 2015 were ridiculously low (~10X lower than Peshmerga estimates). Of course, it wouldn't do for Obama's hasty exit from Iraq to have helped create a larger and worse version of Al Qaeda, now would it? To date, the Coalition has killed more Daesh fighters than originally estimated...

As with Brexit, you are propagating "Project Fear". Do you remember our tête-à-tête over Brexit? If you do, then you should know that I'm not going to roll over for this one either.

You thought that Hillary would give you the more muscular foreign policy you wanted: arms to Ukraine, increased information/intelligence operations against Russia, increased sanctions on Russia, a no-fly and perhaps no-drive zone in Syria, etc. I know you didn't get what you wanted, but it's not worth a constitutional crisis over.

When Obama doesn't do as you like, well, he's throwing the poor Ukrainians and Syrians under the bus, he's in league with Putin and Khamenei to massacre Sunni Arabs, etc.

You can continue to swarm with posts and links, but it doesn't change the fact that Trump won, and Russia's interference didn't change the outcome of the election. It didn't. Not by any measure of electoral chances. If you want to blame someone, blame Comey, or better yet, Hillary herself.

We'll see what Trump does. He might surprise you yet and let the Russians and Iranians have it. If he does, and he earns your absentee ballot, you'll have a lot of deleting to do.

Azor....then what was the sudden shift by the FBI when they were fully and completely read on and into the available CIA evidence that included key foreign intelligence??????

REMEMBER Trump diverted attention from himself and when he knew and his tweet lies...by stating..."see even the FBI and ODNI does not agree with the CIA"...WHAT does he now say....he has actually been totally silent since the ODNI/FBI announcements...

BUT WAIT...really check when WikiLeaks dumped the last key data....Infowars, Alan Jackson...and Bretbart.com were cheering the day that WL stated they would release them BUT suddenly WL did not leak....BUT then they did...LONG after the primaries and Sanders ...so throwing out Sanders is a blatant smokescreen in this debate...stay focused on the actual release dates of hack DNC materials via WL...not assumptions.....dates....real dates....

WHAT you and others fail to see....this is not a specific attack on the DNC...on Clinton and in fact on the RNC...which we know nothing about what they hold in Moscow over the RNC with emails....WHAT they stole in typical Russian active measures fashion was put to good strategic use regardless of the target and the more they could hit with it the better....

THIS is a continuing attack on the US as a whole liberal system....go back and fully understand the current three geopolitical goals of Putin and then rethink just how these active measures was used to support those goals....

Especially in light of the DoD hack of 2015 that virtually crippled DoD until the hack was cleared....and a specific hack on a US power grid late 2015..that has not been talked about in the US.

[Azor]

Firstly, you are ignoring several issues with the CIA’s leaked conclusion as to Russian intent:


The CIA’s mission is foreign not domestic
The CIA is not the technical leader in SIGINT/cyber
How would the CIA have more insight than the FBI, given the latter’s mission?
How would the CIA have more insight than the NSA, given the latter’s capabilities?
How can you dismiss the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by 4 former Directors of the CIA and 2 former officers?
How can you dismiss the support for Hillary Clinton by the current Director or the fact that the Deputy Directors are political operatives?


Secondly, WikiLeaks’s primary release of information (the DNC e-mail correspondence) was prior to the Democratic Primary. The release on Podesta’s e-mails were in October, but had no noticeable effect, given the uproar over the Access Hollywood tape.

Thirdly, I am glad that you are acknowledging that WikiLeaks has ammunition with which to attack both Trump and the GOP.

Fourth, we can agree that Putin wants to undermine American democracy, particularly in order to legitimize Russia’s own “managed democracy”.

Fifth, you will have to post sources on the hacks on the DOD and US power grid in 2015.

Lastly, I am also glad that you are no longer insinuating that Trump is a Russian agent or that his election victory was due to Russian interference.

[OUTLAW 09]

Firstly, you are ignoring several issues with the CIA’s leaked conclusion as to Russian intent:


The CIA’s mission is foreign not domestic
The CIA is not the technical leader in SIGINT/cyber
How would the CIA have more insight than the FBI, given the latter’s mission?
How would the CIA have more insight than the NSA, given the latter’s capabilities?
How can you dismiss the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by 4 former Directors of the CIA and 2 former officers?
How can you dismiss the support for Hillary Clinton by the current Director or the fact that the Deputy Directors are political operatives?


Secondly, WikiLeaks’s primary release of information (the DNC e-mail correspondence) was prior to the Democratic Primary. The release on Podesta’s e-mails were in October, but had no noticeable effect, given the uproar over the Access Hollywood tape.

Thirdly, I am glad that you are acknowledging that WikiLeaks has ammunition with which to attack both Trump and the GOP.

Fourth, we can agree that Putin wants to undermine American democracy, particularly in order to legitimize Russia’s own “managed democracy”.

Fifth, you will have to post sources on the hacks on the DOD and US power grid in 2015.

Lastly, I am also glad that you are no longer insinuating that Trump is a Russian agent or that his election victory was due to Russian interference.

Azor...you must really do research on the IC.....

1. let us get the following out of the way and assume I am correct which BTW I am.......36% of ALL twitter social media proTrump and anti Clinton tweets came from the Russian backed Macedonia trolling company...36%.....

We are still comparing the data but it appears that they were a total of over 404 "fake news sites in the US"...all feeding off of three key fake sites that even Fox and company were even quoting....

AND many of those supporting Trump stated publicly they got their info from social media

2. an American...at least he claims he is one....sitting in France and adamantly claiming he is anti Clinton drove a "fake news site" that was picked up by over these 404 proTrump blogsites...fake news sites....Infowars...Alex Jones...and Brietbart.com.

SO in theory that you think I have not abandoned the idea the Trump was largely supported and helped by Russia...think again...he was in fact supported by Putin and Russia did influence the election....via propaganda...disinformation...proTrump trolling and fake news sites....

You really do need to get a job at both CIA and NSA....yes CIA handles foreign vs the domestic side by the FBI...BUT these Russian hacks and info warfare ALL came from outside the US NOT inside the US.....AND the FBI does not have the overseas collection abilities of the CIA nor can they confirm or deny without assistance from the CIA/NSA...

If you knew the IC then you would have often seen NSA data being used to back up CIA information on the concept of confirm or deny...this allows the NSA to remain in the shadows and not have to release their sources of their information

NOW go back to the Mother Jones article concerning the Russian active measures...THAT got shot to hell by the then MSM and so called experts because they did not want to release the sources of the information BEFORE the election....

THAT information was in fact reconfirmed by the CIA...as it was built off of verified intelligence passed to them from foreign sources...

Ever notice that that particular article has not resurfaced after the CIA report?

IT was used to signal to the CIA.... yes we have info if you are interested and it is verified...and in this business if it is verified you are home free in the HUMINT world.....

BTW...at one time Trump was claiming he had over 280 US Generals and senior officers supporting him BUT he never did reveal their names did he??????...at least those supporting Clinton allowed their names to be printed....

OR was Trump lying about those Generals????

BTW all political nominations must still adhere to the released internal research and reports...BUT this is important ....all political nominees do not and cannot influence the final intel product.....as the reports are conducted by true civil service and contractor types and politics are forbidden in the analysis world....UNLESS you are a Cmdr at CENTCOM using undo influence....which is a military problem....

I assume WL has ammunition on just about anyone and or anything Russia has hacked in the last ten years especially what Snowdon fed them...

BUT you raise an interesting question.... WHY were they one sided and not two sided and release all on all DNC and RNC?????? CORE Question...

DoD hack was in 2015 and the news article carried here in SWC...the power grid hack customer has not authorized the release of the information under non disclosure....

AND yes again I am stating Russia via Putin did influence the Trump election....

FROM today....polling is indicating a full 52% of Trump voters fully believe the Trump lies that he won the general election....right now he is approximately 3M votes behind in the general election numbers.....THAT is not a "win"

He also tweeted that he has a record Electoral College votes...ACTUALLY another lie.... he is 46th in all time votes....NOT the largest as he alludes to in his tweets....

I can post those tweets of his where he alludes to this very thing....

Azor.....BTW...notice how erratic Trump has been with his tweets over the Chinese taking of the research drone


In Beijing on Sunday, the Global Times, a Communist Party-controlled newspaper known for its nationalist town, poked fun at the mixed messages coming from the United States.

“Before Trump’s generous announcement that he didn’t want the drone back, the Pentagon had already announced publicly that they have asked China to return the ‘illegally seized’ [unmanned underwater vehicle] through appropriate governmental channels,” the paper wrote.#“We don’t know, after seeing Trump’s new tweets, if the Pentagon should feel boggled.”

[OUTLAW 09]

Haaretz.com
✔
@haaretzcom
Why Trump's pick for Israel envoy is anti-Israeli | Gideon Levy
http://www.haaretz.com/opinion/.premium-1.759618#

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...you must really do research on the IC.....

1. let us get the following out of the way and assume I am correct which BTW I am.......36% of ALL twitter social media proTrump and anti Clinton tweets came from the Russian backed Macedonia trolling company...36%.....

We are still comparing the data but it appears that they were a total of over 404 "fake news sites in the US"...all feeding off of three key fake sites that even Fox and company were even quoting....

AND many of those supporting Trump stated publicly they got their info from social media

2. an American...at least he claims he is one....sitting in France and adamantly claiming he is anti Clinton drove a "fake news site" that was picked up by over these 404 proTrump blogsites...fake news sites....Infowars...Alex Jones...and Brietbart.com.

SO in theory that you think I have not abandoned the idea the Trump was largely supported and helped by Russia...think again...he was in fact supported by Putin and Russia did influence the election....via propaganda...disinformation...proTrump trolling and fake news sites....

You really do need to get a job at both CIA and NSA....yes CIA handles foreign vs the domestic side by the FBI...BUT these Russian hacks and info warfare ALL came from outside the US NOT inside the US.....AND the FBI does not have the overseas collection abilities of the CIA nor can they confirm or deny without assistance from the CIA/NSA...

If you knew the IC then you would have often seen NSA data being used to back up CIA information on the concept of confirm or deny...this allows the NSA to remain in the shadows and not have to release their sources of their information

NOW go back to the Mother Jones article concerning the Russian active measures...THAT got shot to hell by the then MSM and so called experts because they did not want to release the sources of the information BEFORE the election....

THAT information was in fact reconfirmed by the CIA...as it was built off of verified intelligence passed to them from foreign sources...

Ever notice that that particular article has not resurfaced after the CIA report?

IT was used to signal to the CIA.... yes we have info if you are interested and it is verified...and in this business if it is verified you are home free in the HUMINT world.....

BTW...at one time Trump was claiming he had over 280 US Generals and senior officers supporting him BUT he never did reveal their names did he??????...at least those supporting Clinton allowed their names to be printed....

OR was Trump lying about those Generals????

BTW all political nominations must still adhere to the released internal research and reports...BUT this is important ....all political nominees do not and cannot influence the final intel product.....as the reports are conducted by true civil service and contractor types and politics are forbidden in the analysis world....UNLESS you are a Cmdr at CENTCOM using undo influence....which is a military problem....

I assume WL has ammunition on just about anyone and or anything Russia has hacked in the last ten years especially what Snowdon fed them...

BUT you raise an interesting question.... WHY were they one sided and not two sided and release all on all DNC and RNC?????? CORE Question...

DoD hack was in 2015 and the news article carried here in SWC...the power grid hack customer has not authorized the release of the information under non disclosure....

AND yes again I am stating Russia via Putin did influence the Trump election....

FROM today....polling is indicating a full 52% of Trump voters fully believe the Trump lies that he won the general election....right now he is approximately 3M votes behind in the general election numbers.....THAT is not a "win"

He also tweeted that he has a record Electoral College votes...ACTUALLY another lie.... he is 46th in all time votes....NOT the largest as he alludes to in his tweets....

I can post those tweets of his where he alludes to this very thing....

Azor.....BTW...notice how erratic Trump has been with his tweets over the Chinese taking of the research drone

Azor......just from today........

Last night's electricity blackout in Kiev, Ukraine was caused by a cyber attack:
http://www.interfax.ru/world/541917
In Russian.....

[OUTLAW 09]

BahamasLeaks document highlights Rex Tillerson’s business dealings with Russia
http://bit.ly/2gORWyJ

Leak reveals Rex Tillerson is director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil company -
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/18/leak-rex-tillerson-director-bahamas-based-us-russian-oil-company?CMP=share_btn_tw#


The document showing Tillerson’s directorship of Exxon Neftegas was among more than 12 million leaked files that were provided anonymously to Süddeutsche Zeitung and then shared with ICIJ, resulting in the Panama Papers and Bahamas Leaks investigations.

Question is, did @realDonaldTrump know? And what gems have the Panama Papers yet to reveal about PEOTUS?

[Azor]

Azor...you must really do research on the IC...You really do need to get a job at both CIA and NSA....yes CIA handles foreign vs the domestic side by the FBI...BUT these Russian hacks and info warfare ALL came from outside the US NOT inside the US.....AND the FBI does not have the overseas collection abilities of the CIA nor can they confirm or deny without assistance from the CIA/NSA....

It disappoints me when you start to get personal. It is also amusing considering that a former intelligence analyst who served in both defense and private roles, has Top Secret security clearance, and who served in Afghanistan, agrees with me.

Following your logic, the NSA and ODNI let the CIA speak for it, and the FBI allowed details of an active investigation to be leaked through the CIA. Does this illegal conspiracy to get the truth to the American people make sense, or does it make more sense that the Director of the CIA is playing politics?

You have yet to address any of my points regarding the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by almost all of the retired intelligence and national security community, which you yourself lauded months ago as a demonstration of her worthiness. Now that she has lost, this community is suddenly apolitical and beyond reproach.

We have witnessed the politicization of intelligence to support military operations from Vietnam on, most recently during Operation Inherent Resolve.


…36% of ALL twitter social media proTrump and anti Clinton tweets came from the Russian backed Macedonia trolling company...36%...We are still comparing the data but it appears that they were a total of over 404 "fake news sites in the US"...all feeding off of three key fake sites that even Fox and company were even quoting…AND many of those supporting Trump stated publicly they got their info from social media…2. an American...at least he claims he is one....sitting in France and adamantly claiming he is anti Clinton drove a "fake news site" that was picked up by over these 404 proTrump blogsites...fake news sites....Infowars...Alex Jones...and Brietbart.com.


Which stories were fabricated, exactly?
How can you determine the impact of misinformation on those people that voted for Trump?
Are you claiming that misinformation was absent from presidential election campaigns prior to 2016 and that it is solely from Russia?



SO in theory that you think I have not abandoned the idea the Trump was largely supported and helped by Russia...think again...he was in fact supported by Putin and Russia did influence the election....via propaganda...disinformation...pro-Trump trolling and fake news sites...

There is no evidence that Russian interference had a significant impact on the election. You continue to question Trump’s legitimacy because of your preferences for defense and foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton was the establishment candidate who had the political, financial and security elites on her side, including in the GOP. Trump won in an upset, fighting an uphill battle against his own party, backed by significant grassroots support, and yet now he is suddenly an agent of the Kremlin.

It is curious that you live in Germany and yet deny that Russia has any legitimate grievances with the United States or NATO. Had it not been for the Soviet Union and fear of Communism, Germany would have been more likely to have been subject to the Morgenthau Plan rather than the Marshall Plan.

As China becomes the primary threat to the United States, there will have to be rapprochement with Russia...

Given the sore losing on the part of Democrats, it seems that Russia has indeed discredited American democracy ;)

[OUTLAW 09]

It disappoints me when you start to get personal. It is also amusing considering that a former intelligence analyst who served in both defense and private roles, has Top Secret security clearance, and who served in Afghanistan, agrees with me.

Following your logic, the NSA and ODNI let the CIA speak for it, and the FBI allowed details of an active investigation to be leaked through the CIA. Does this illegal conspiracy to get the truth to the American people make sense, or does it make more sense that the Director of the CIA is playing politics?

You have yet to address any of my points regarding the endorsement of Hillary Clinton by almost all of the retired intelligence and national security community, which you yourself lauded months ago as a demonstration of her worthiness. Now that she has lost, this community is suddenly apolitical and beyond reproach.

We have witnessed the politicization of intelligence to support military operations from Vietnam on, most recently during Operation Inherent Resolve.




Which stories were fabricated, exactly?
How can you determine the impact of misinformation on those people that voted for Trump?
Are you claiming that misinformation was absent from presidential election campaigns prior to 2016 and that it is solely from Russia?




There is no evidence that Russian interference had a significant impact on the election. You continue to question Trump’s legitimacy because of your preferences for defense and foreign policy.

Hillary Clinton was the establishment candidate who had the political, financial and security elites on her side, including in the GOP. Trump won in an upset, fighting an uphill battle against his own party, backed by significant grassroots support, and yet now he is suddenly an agent of the Kremlin.

It is curious that you live in Germany and yet deny that Russia has any legitimate grievances with the United States or NATO. Had it not been for the Soviet Union and fear of Communism, Germany would have been more likely to have been subject to the Morgenthau Plan rather than the Marshall Plan.

As China becomes the primary threat to the United States, there will have to be rapprochement with Russia...

Given the sore losing on the part of Democrats, it seems that Russia has indeed discredited American democracy ;)

This comment has actually now convinced me that you truly do not fully understand the Russian political warfare being carried out against the US using non linear warfare...

Since you have been following the Ukrainian thread the last two years you would have seen my postings of the open source analysis done by GlobalVoices on the proRussian trolling on just twitter.....and how their network link analysis did in fact point to the actual twitter accounts driving over 1500 further accounts and what topics they were driving...

That same software allows for network link analysis on virtually all social media and it allows one to determine who started a particular event and who linked into it and who pushed it along....actually quite interesting to see the analysis....

Unless you fully understand how info warfare and cyber warfare interact with each other ...it is a waste of time to continue.....

BY the way I judge the impact of a particular fake news story by the number of 1) retweets...2) how many social media accounts picked it up..3) did it get picked up by MSM and how many alt right and ultra conservative accounts picked it as well....AND does then that fake story get mentioned during interviews by Trump supporters...granted not scientific but enlightening nevertheless....MORE importantly how fast did it travel from being dropped as a fake news article and or comment to being picked up by MSM.....

EXAMPLE....CNN interviewed five Trump supporters that all "SWORE" that millions of illegal Mexicans had voted in California ...BECAUSE California had passed a law allowing them to vote and they were then bussed in to vote....WHEN pushed that there was no such law/never was such a law and it was a social media myth...they basically refused to accept that it was a lie...ONE person even stated she had read on social media that it had been said even by Obama...when referring to the CA law....

EXAMPLE: there was a massive myth that Clinton/Democracts were involved in a child porno ring being run out of a pizza shop in DC....this myth circulated for a three full months on the ultra right social media sites....then got picked up by Infowars and Alex Jones who pushed out a video to his readers on the subject...then it got picked up by Brietbart.com....EVEN the DC Police chief denied the story as a fake TWICE....and not true

THEN a NC resident decided he wanted to investigate this story and get to the bottom of it..he carried a loaded rifle into the pizza shop and fired off a round and then was totally surprised to find out the story was a myth....when he was arrested for endangering the customers.

THEN Jones decided he might be better off deleting his own video which triggered this random act of violence tied to a fake news story from the ultra right...

BTW you truly do not fully understand just how intel reports are created..shared and used to support the releasing of information BETWEEN the various agencies....simply to avoid having to reveal sources and methods....

I understand that it is hard to believe that our newly elected president who still has not released his tax records...who has not divested himself from his businesses and who has a massive conflict of interest looming over him and who repeatedly lied via his own tweets could have connections to Russia and or received assistance directly from Putin....

Will be interested to see what comes out of the coming Senate investigation on the Russian hacks and who was behind it....

Until this occurs this comment thread is really going nowhere fast...

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's Babysitters tones down skepticism on Russia hacking evidence
http://www.wsj.com/articles/priebus-says-donald-trump-wants-fbi-view-on-russia-hacking-accusations-1482084741#

How Putin’s Fake News Machine Spread From Ukraine Across the#Globe
Outrageous media hoaxes, Internet trolls and repression at home are all key instruments in the Kremlin’s political tool#box
https://warisboring.com/how-putins-f...919#.fqiavxv3i

“Trump tends to echo words of the last person with whom he spoke, making direct access to him even more valuable.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/12/19/why-we-should-be-terrified-of-donald-trumps-decision-making-process/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.ea0db079e3a3#
…

[SWJ Blog]

Trump Taps Billionaire West Point Grad for Army Secretary (http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/trump-taps-billionaire-west-point-grad-for-army-secretary)

Entry Excerpt:



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[Azor]

This comment has actually now convinced me that you truly do not fully understand the Russian political warfare being carried out against the US using non linear warfare...

I fully understand Russia’s information campaign against the West.

On the one hand, you have accused the Republicans and Trump of ignoring or dismissing evidence of Russian interference in the media reporting and social media discussion of the election campaign, an accusation that has merit. On the other hand, you yourself are ignoring or dismissing the Democrats’ attempts to blame Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Russia, when there is no evidence that Russian efforts were decisive.

The fact is that there is reasonable suspicion that the WH and DOJ colluded to help Hillary Clinton win the election and that the WH and CIA have colluded to insinuate that Trump’s victory is illegitimate.

For many months now, you have derided Trump as a charlatan and threat to the national security of the United States. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that others currently serving in the intelligence, justice and national security communities agreed with you, and attempted to either sabotage Trump or aid Hillary out of conviction.


BY the way I judge the impact of a particular fake news story by the number of 1) retweets...2) how many social media accounts picked it up..3) did it get picked up by MSM and how many alt right and ultra conservative accounts picked it as well....AND does then that fake story get mentioned during interviews by Trump supporters...granted not scientific but enlightening nevertheless....MORE importantly how fast did it travel from being dropped as a fake news article and or comment to being picked up by MSM...

Yet these people were not blank canvasses upon which the Russians could paint any picture they chose. Many already believed that:


Planned Parenthood was conspiring to sell fetal body parts
Obama was not born in the United States
Obama was secretly Muslim
Obama was racist towards whites
Obama hated law enforcement and encouraged killing them
Obama encouraged riots in Ferguson and elsewhere
The Clinton Foundation was a slush fund and part of the Clintons’ net worth
Obama and Hillary wanted to ban and confiscate guns
The Democrats wanted to amnesty millions of illegals to gain their votes
Hillary transported weapons and jihadis from Libya and deployed them in Syria against the government
Hillary deliberately allowed the Americans in Benghazi to die


None of these people were interested in examining the veracity of these claims. They simply wanted to reinforce what they already believed.

The arguments over voter fraud were ridiculous as identification at the polling station and registration are two very different things.

I also saw Democratic supporters spreading fake news that Trump was going to deport Muslim Americans and non-whites, that Melania was an illegal herself, that Trump owed billions to Russians and Chinese banks.

Ultimately, Russia helped amplify existing sentiments, but the demographics of Trump's voters were normal Republican shares of conservatives, moderates, liberals, independents, whites, etc.


I understand that it is hard to believe that our newly elected president who still has not released his tax records...who has not divested himself from his businesses and who has a massive conflict of interest looming over him and who repeatedly lied via his own tweets could have connections to Russia and or received assistance directly from Putin...

Both candidates had baggage and conflicts of interest. If Putin was truly determined that Trump should be president, he would have been covert about it. The most effective Russian operation was the WikiLeaks release of DNC e-mails (up to May 2016), which was done prior to the convention and clearly intended to increase Sanders’ odds of being nominated.

Trump was already investigated by the FBI. Or are you claiming that Comey ignored Trump’s ties to Russia and sabotaged Hillary with his letter to Congress?

What also did Hillary in was the fact that the third party vote was 3X higher than in 2012 and 2008, and even double that of 2000...


Will be interested to see what comes out of the coming Senate investigation on the Russian hacks and who was behind it...Until this occurs this comment thread is really going nowhere fast...

I don’t see it getting much further than partisan politics…

[Azor]

Trump's margin of electoral votes over Clinton has grown from 74 to 77.

As far as "faithless" Electors are concerned, 5 Democrats voted against Clinton, and only 2 Republicans voted against Trump. As many Democrat Electors were faithless in 2016 as the total number of faithless Electors from 1972 to 2012.

By the way, this is after the uproar over Russia's information warfare.

Clearly, Hillary Clinton is mistrusted and misliked by her own party, especially as 3 additional faithless Electors voted against Clinton, but had their votes invalidated. Hillary's defections were over 4X more than Trump's, as a proportion of the original electoral votes attributed on November 9. That says a lot.

[OUTLAW 09]

Kyle W. Orton
Verified account
‏@KyleWOrton
John Kerry is now laying out principles that "do not to prejudge but to provide a possible basis" for a final settlement in Israel-Palestine

From what John Kerry has said he seems to fully embrace the 2002 Arab initiative.

Kerry now on a potted history of the Israel-Palestine conflict started at Basel, missed out everything until 1948. Not sure what's happening

It is pretty clear from Kerry's speech that, except for the political price inside the U.S., the Obama admin would have voted for UNSCR 2334

John Kerry speech on Israel-Palestine: "Friends need to tell each other the hard truths."

John Kerry says Obama administration has defended #Israel from attacks on her legitimacy, "fought for its inclusion across the UN system".

John Kerry says he has seen the troubles of the occupation, where checkpoints "can make even the most routine daily trips an ordeal."

John Kerry says facts on the ground are "combing to destroy hopes for peace on both sides ... cementing a one-state reality."

John Kerry says there is only a choice between one state or two states. There are those who argue for three states.

This section from Kerry on condemning the PA's and HAMAS's incitement to terrorism feels like a throat-clearing before criticizing Israel.

John Kerry says the Israeli governing coalition is the "most right-wing in history with the agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

Kerry: "Let's be clear: settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israeli security," some compound security trouble, driven by ideology.

Everything Kerry's said so far doesn't even approach an answer to the question he was asked to answer: Why did you change policy on 23 DEC?

Kerry says current trends would make Israeli occupation permanent, "separate but not equal". Such talk almost designed to antagonize Israel.

Oh wow. Now Kerry is about containing the #Iran|ian revolution, sees a chance for Israel and the Arab states to align against Tehran.

John Kerry: "We could not in good conscience protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement to destroy the two-state solution."

John Kerry says if US vetoed UNSCR 2334 it "would have been giving license to further ... settlement activity that we fundamentally oppose."

John Kerry says that "it is not this resolution that isolates Israel," but the policy of the Israeli government in establishing settlements.

Kerry says there was "absolutely nothing new" in UNSCR 2334 (this is in defending treatment of East Jerusalem in the resolution.)

John Kerry said that UNSCR 2334 was "balanced and fair"; "did not agree with every word" but it reflected "consensus" so didn't block it.

[OUTLAW 09]

Kyle W. Orton
Verified account
‏@KyleWOrton
John Kerry is now laying out principles that "do not to prejudge but to provide a possible basis" for a final settlement in Israel-Palestine

From what John Kerry has said he seems to fully embrace the 2002 Arab initiative.

Kerry now on a potted history of the Israel-Palestine conflict started at Basel, missed out everything until 1948. Not sure what's happening

It is pretty clear from Kerry's speech that, except for the political price inside the U.S., the Obama admin would have voted for UNSCR 2334

John Kerry speech on Israel-Palestine: "Friends need to tell each other the hard truths."

John Kerry says Obama administration has defended #Israel from attacks on her legitimacy, "fought for its inclusion across the UN system".

John Kerry says he has seen the troubles of the occupation, where checkpoints "can make even the most routine daily trips an ordeal."

John Kerry says facts on the ground are "combing to destroy hopes for peace on both sides ... cementing a one-state reality."

John Kerry says there is only a choice between one state or two states. There are those who argue for three states.

This section from Kerry on condemning the PA's and HAMAS's incitement to terrorism feels like a throat-clearing before criticizing Israel.

John Kerry says the Israeli governing coalition is the "most right-wing in history with the agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

Kerry: "Let's be clear: settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israeli security," some compound security trouble, driven by ideology.

Everything Kerry's said so far doesn't even approach an answer to the question he was asked to answer: Why did you change policy on 23 DEC?

Kerry says current trends would make Israeli occupation permanent, "separate but not equal". Such talk almost designed to antagonize Israel.

Oh wow. Now Kerry is about containing the #Iran|ian revolution, sees a chance for Israel and the Arab states to align against Tehran.

John Kerry: "We could not in good conscience protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement to destroy the two-state solution."

John Kerry says if US vetoed UNSCR 2334 it "would have been giving license to further ... settlement activity that we fundamentally oppose."

John Kerry says that "it is not this resolution that isolates Israel," but the policy of the Israeli government in establishing settlements.

Kerry says there was "absolutely nothing new" in UNSCR 2334 (this is in defending treatment of East Jerusalem in the resolution.)

John Kerry said that UNSCR 2334 was "balanced and fair"; "did not agree with every word" but it reflected "consensus" so didn't block it.

Interestingly........

1. this view by Kerry is an actual convergence between the EU and the US as virtually the entire EU and other global players are of this opinion when it concerns the current Israeli government.....

2. we will potentially see a divergence on 20 Jan 2017 between Trump/Israel and the rest of the world on this question.

IMPORTANT.....since Germany allows Israeli citizens immediate residency visas and they no longer need visitor visas the number of younger Israeli's bailing out of Israel into Germany is massive.....ALL because of the current Israeli government and they are tired of the constant conflict inside Israel....

Resolution of the Israeli Palestinian issue will greatly ease tensions across the entire ME....a simple fact....

[OUTLAW 09]

The lid is off. John Kerry in furious frontal assault on Netanyahu policies. Can hardly hide his rage.

But Trump also the target.

[OUTLAW 09]

Kyle W. Orton
Verified account
‏@KyleWOrton
John Kerry is now laying out principles that "do not to prejudge but to provide a possible basis" for a final settlement in Israel-Palestine

From what John Kerry has said he seems to fully embrace the 2002 Arab initiative.

Kerry now on a potted history of the Israel-Palestine conflict started at Basel, missed out everything until 1948. Not sure what's happening

It is pretty clear from Kerry's speech that, except for the political price inside the U.S., the Obama admin would have voted for UNSCR 2334

John Kerry speech on Israel-Palestine: "Friends need to tell each other the hard truths."

John Kerry says Obama administration has defended #Israel from attacks on her legitimacy, "fought for its inclusion across the UN system".

John Kerry says he has seen the troubles of the occupation, where checkpoints "can make even the most routine daily trips an ordeal."

John Kerry says facts on the ground are "combing to destroy hopes for peace on both sides ... cementing a one-state reality."

John Kerry says there is only a choice between one state or two states. There are those who argue for three states.

This section from Kerry on condemning the PA's and HAMAS's incitement to terrorism feels like a throat-clearing before criticizing Israel.

John Kerry says the Israeli governing coalition is the "most right-wing in history with the agenda driven by the most extreme elements."

Kerry: "Let's be clear: settlement expansion has nothing to do with Israeli security," some compound security trouble, driven by ideology.

Everything Kerry's said so far doesn't even approach an answer to the question he was asked to answer: Why did you change policy on 23 DEC?

Kerry says current trends would make Israeli occupation permanent, "separate but not equal". Such talk almost designed to antagonize Israel.

Oh wow. Now Kerry is about containing the #Iran|ian revolution, sees a chance for Israel and the Arab states to align against Tehran.

John Kerry: "We could not in good conscience protect the most extreme elements of the settler movement to destroy the two-state solution."

John Kerry says if US vetoed UNSCR 2334 it "would have been giving license to further ... settlement activity that we fundamentally oppose."

John Kerry says that "it is not this resolution that isolates Israel," but the policy of the Israeli government in establishing settlements.

Kerry says there was "absolutely nothing new" in UNSCR 2334 (this is in defending treatment of East Jerusalem in the resolution.)

John Kerry said that UNSCR 2334 was "balanced and fair"; "did not agree with every word" but it reflected "consensus" so didn't block it.

Bill Kristol
✔
@BillKristol
John Kerry entered public life 45 years ago slandering his fellow American servicemen. He leaves it slandering America's finest ally.

As much as I disagree with Kerry he is a decorated VN who fought for his country and rescued a SF soldier caught in an ambush and floundering in the river after the ambush.....AND that earned him the right to critique the VN war

SOMETHING this so called US conservative never did...serve his country in time of war......nor has he seen US military killed defending US FP whether they supported that FP or not........

WHAT this US conservative seems to have forgotten is the simple fact....the entire ME has been largely intertwined in the Israeli/Palestinian issue since 1946 leading to decades of terrorist attacks and wars....and yet there is still no solution to it...

UNTIL it is resolved the turmoil in the ME will continue....

I once had the opportunity to see the original maps of the Palestinian area in 1945/46 and virtually even village was Arab with limited Jewish settlements...and now compare it to 2016.....

Just as the French and British created the Syrian/Iraqi borders so did the British create this mess as well.....

There can no honest debate - nor progress - on any solution without accepting the reality of both Palestinian terrorism & Israeli occupation


Times of Israel: Netanyahu to be investigated for corruption
http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-netanyahu-to-be-investigated-for-bribery-fraud/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Will Obama's "red line" on Russian cyber attacks have some teeth or again show weakness on US national security
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-white-house-is-scrambling-for-a-way-to-punish-russian-hackers-via-sanctions/2016/12/27/0eee2fdc-c58f-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_cybersanction-1040am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f2ff557de8a1#

[OUTLAW 09]

I noticed this about two years ago - and was really surprised at how many. Particularly considering the country from where they de-facto fled is supposed to be one of 'milk and honey'...

Sure. But, this issue is not going to be solved any time soon.

It is a massive brain drain of their best and brightest...who in reality should be the future of Israel and actually want to be that future.......and who are sick and tired of the current violence inside a very conservative neo right led government also on the orthodox religious side....who controls virtually everything

Healthy dose of reality, as opposed to nationalist-cum-religious fantasy, from the JPost, which ain't no lefty rag.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Jerusalem-Post-Editorial-Bibis-fight-476704#

BREAKING: President Abbas on #Kerry: If Israel halts settlements and implements signed agreements, we're ready to resume final status talks.

[OUTLAW 09]

Bill Kristol
✔
@BillKristol
John Kerry entered public life 45 years ago slandering his fellow American servicemen. He leaves it slandering America's finest ally.

As much as I disagree with Kerry he is a decorated VN who fought for his country and rescued a SF soldier caught in an ambush and floundering in the river after the ambush.....AND that earned him the right to critique the VN war

SOMETHING this so called US conservative never did...serve his country in time of war......nor has he seen US military killed defending US FP whether they supported that FP or not........

WHAT this US conservative seems to have forgotten is the simple fact....the entire ME has been largely intertwined in the Israeli/Palestinian issue since 1946 leading to decades of terrorist attacks and wars....and yet there is still no solution to it...

UNTIL it is resolved the turmoil in the ME will continue....

I once had the opportunity to see the original maps of the Palestinian area in 1945/46 and virtually even village was Arab with limited Jewish settlements...and now compare it to 2016.....

Just as the French and British created the Syrian/Iraqi borders so did the British create this mess as well.....

There can no honest debate - nor progress - on any solution without accepting the reality of both Palestinian terrorism & Israeli occupation


Times of Israel: Netanyahu to be investigated for corruption
http://www.timesofisrael.com/report-netanyahu-to-be-investigated-for-bribery-fraud/#

Kyle W. Orton
Verified account
‏@KyleWOrton
Bibi hints pretty strongly that his information on Obama administration pre-arranging UNSCR 2334 comes from a human source, i.e. a spy.

Netanyahu says he hopes the U.S. will pass no more resolutions in the remaining time of the Obama administration, wants to undo UNSCR 2334.

[davidbfpo]

In view of a recent speech by Secretary Kerry I have moved seven posts from the Syria thread here, as they really sit better here.

Previous discussions on Israel have been sparse and sometimes heated. Forum members have their own reasons for not venturing into that area, so I will be watching in my own way. :wry:

[OUTLAW 09]

Interesting development.....especially after the Yahoo News editorial critique of the Obama move in the UNSC.....causing surprise surprise problems for the incoming new President.

What amazes me is the uproar over the UNSC resolution.....IF one takes into account what young Israeli's say (25-40 year olds) who have massively and basically immigrated into of ALL places Germany...with all of the WW2 baggage...they feel basically safer in Germany than they do in Israel......

WE fully need to understand WHY they feel safer in a country that historically set out to destroy all Jews and now fully welcomes them in ever increasing numbers....

THIS particular development SOMEHOW is totally overlooked in the States....

Anyone who comments here fully understands the current miserable situation in the ME ALL goes back to 1948 and the driving of Palestinians out of their core own territory into a limited area ALL supported by the western democratic nation states....

Until there is a fair and equitable two state solution there will never be peace in the ME....

WHAT Obama actually did was to sustain the idea of a two state solution...WHY it was done if commenters here take the time to fully and completely understand was based again on Trump's own statements....

"move the US Embassy to Jerusalem" which then would have sealed for all times no solution and no two state solution.....

Regardless of what the Trumpists think ...this UNSC move in fact secured a two state solution WHICH even the current Israeli government has stated is also their end state goal....

While the moderator moved a number of the Kerry comments to here...it should have remained at the core of the Syrian thread....

WHY... with heavy Iranian combat forces inside Syria and with large numbers also of Hezbollah inside Syrian and getting closer to the Golan Heights....ALL SWC commenters need to fully and completely understand what Iran and Hezbollah has repeated stated about their desires to eliminate the nation state of Israel.....

It is all intertwined.....

[OUTLAW 09]

"Good governance becomes more challenging when Americans live in parallel universes of facts"
http://wpo.st/a6uO2

This is exactly why fake news and internet trolling used as disinformation and propaganda must be countered hourly...daily and weekly.....

The US should look towards Germany and it's laws on hate speech...a recent releaser of a fake news article was sentenced to three years in prison as it was ruled "hate speech"..........

[OUTLAW 09]

Poor #Russia is just the victim of the evil Obama administration, Russian FM spox claims.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWG26o3zA-s#…

[CrowBat]

Just fresh out of a discussion with certain contact in the DC. The person in question is still argumenting in the way of...


Obama made a defensible decision which is not domestically a real controversy (a bit of grandstanding in Congress aside). A region which spawns anti-Americanism, a region whose people are not our friends, our history of debacles, our government which manages to find every used car salesman with a story to sell; it's a decision in hindsight which is totally understandable. And seeing as we are still stuck in Afghanistan...
That's the very core of the problem.

What happened because of that 'defensive decision' means that the decision was (and remains) anything else but defensible.

15 years of wars and how many trillions spent (?) - for absolutely nothing. No achievement, no progress at all. The USA didn't even learn anything from all of these wars and related affairs.

[OUTLAW 09]

New York Times says it was ‘a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence’

By Benjamin Mullin • December 13, 2016


Buried deep in The New York Times' mammoth investigation into Russia's attempt to sway the election through hacking is a noteworthy show of humility.

Near the story's conclusion, The Times acknowledges that, along with other American news organizations, it spread information extracted from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign by Russian intelligence:

Though Mr. Assange did not say so, WikiLeaks’ best defense may be the conduct of the mainstream American media. Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the D.N.C. and Podesta emails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

Mr. Putin, a student of martial arts, had turned two institutions at the core of American democracy — political campaigns and independent media — to his own ends.

The media’s appetite for the hacked material, and its focus on the gossipy content instead of the Russian source, disturbed some of those whose personal emails were being reposted across the web.

Later, The Times quotes Neera Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress, as saying she "could not believe that reporters were covering" the hacks.

During the election, many wondered whether journalists were justified in publishing information obtained by hackers. By publishing newsworthy information, were they complicit in a shadowy campaign to influence the election?

In analyzing her own newsroom's coverage of the emails, NPR ombudsman Elizabeth Jensen recommended that her colleagues "tread very cautiously" while not ignoring the story altogether:

I believe most of NPR's disclaimers so far have been very clear and admirable. Memmott called the situation "awkward," which may not be satisfying to some listeners and readers, but it is an accurate reflection, in my opinion, of the dilemma that journalists are facing in this case.

And here's where New York Times Public Editor Liz Spayd came down on the issue:

And then there is the unease that comes with feeling used by a foreign superpower. How does the paper avoid becoming an amplifier for a plot that needs the media to work? How does it verify the accuracy of several thousand illegally obtained emails? And most critically, what has it done to try to establish whether Donald Trump was colluding with Russian intelligence, as Clinton suggests?

Considering the journalistic swamp, The Times acquitted itself well on some of these questions. Editors restrained themselves from publishing every email, avoiding the reckless decisions of that some news outlets made. And

The Times made reasonable attempts to determine the accuracy of the emails — though when solid verification couldn’t be had, it went with its gut.

[OUTLAW 09]

To be clear, @realDonaldTrump is dismissing both that Russia ordered 2016 election hacking AND that US can know who hacked anything ever


AND he has a plan to destroy IS??????

[OUTLAW 09]

AND this man has some idea about FP.....????

So Trump's team hears "hatred," "tribalism," "demonize those who are different," and they think, 'that's us!"
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/trump-obama-transition-233023#

[OUTLAW 09]

US imposes new sanctions against #Russia for alleged #hacking in the US:
https://sputniknews.com/us/201612291049119985-us-russia-sanctions/#


Despite a glaring lack of evidence to support allegations that Russia interfered in the US presidential election, the White House has announced that they will be imposing sanctions on the nation.On Thursday, the US sanctioned six Russian individuals, including the head of Russia's main intelligence directorate, as well as five entitities.

The five entities sanctioned are the Autonomous Noncommercial Organization Professional Association of Designers of Data Processing Systems, the Federal Security Service, the Main Intelligence Directorate, the Special Technology Center, and Zorsecurity.

The Federal Security Service is comparable to the US FBI, meaning that this will effective block any counter intelligence operations between the two nations. The allegations about Russian interference and hacking to insure a Donald Trump victory have still not been confirmed by the White House, despite “anonymous sources” feeding claims to various media outlets. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the hacks on the Democratic National Committee or Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

The claims have also been disputed by veterans of both the CIA and the NSA. “If hacking were involved, the NSA would know about it, and so they would also know the sender and the recipient,” former CIA analyst Ray McGovern previously told Loud & Clear on Radio Sputnik. “There’s no reason in God’s world why they wouldn’t reveal that if they had it.”

The Trump transition team has also contested the validity of the claims. "If the CIA Director [John] Brennan and others at the top are serious about turning over evidence … they should do that," Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said on CBS’ Face the Nation earlier in the month. "They should not be leaking to the media. If there's evidence, let's see it." Conway went on to call retaliation against Russia “a political response” at the behest of “Team Hillary.”

"It seems like the president is under pressure from Team Hillary, who can't accept the election results," she said. "It's very clear that President Obama could have 'retaliated' months ago if they were actually concerned about this and concerned about this affecting the election." In November, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the White House to declassify “additional information concerning the Russian Government and the U.S. election,” but they have still not received any response.

President Obama had ordered the intelligence community to prepare a full report on the their findings regarding Russia and the election before he leaves office on January 20. The incoming president-elect has stated that the US needs to “get on with our lives,” in response to the allegations against Moscow.

On Thursday, Russian Foreign Ministry’s special envoy Andrey Krutskikh said that Moscow hopes any sanctions imposed by Obama will be lifted by the incoming administration.

[OUTLAW 09]

THIS is the core problem for Trump....he and his staff and those he has nominated simply forget he lost the general election by approximately 3M votes which is one of the highest loses in the last 50 years on the general election side.

THIS does not give Trump and the Republican Party the right to act as if they have a mandate to speak for all Americans especially those that voted Democratic in the general election...

“I think you have a lot of folks on the left who continue to undermine the legitimacy of his win and the nature of how big that win was,” Spicer said. He called that behavior “unfortunate.”

STILL amazed that those who work for Trump and Trump himself declares those who voted against as "the Left".....EVIDENTLY forgetting those on the right that supported him and voted for Trump....KKK...the US Nazi Party and the "alt right" or "white supremacists"...

[OUTLAW 09]

President Obama Punishes Russia, at Last

No, Mr. Trump, Americans are not going to forget about Russian hacking.

BUT WAIT.....Trump has repeatedly stated "it was not his friend Putin who hacked the US"...BUT WAIT....NOW his spokesman states "well he is willing to hear from the same intel community he stated did not know what they were saying"......


Nothing like finally backing down and admitting he was maybe wrong...BUT WAIT..he has publicly stated "he is smarter than the entire US IC"......

Appears that just maybe "he is not that smart after all"....

[OUTLAW 09]

Donald Trump keeps moving the goal post for economic growth

During the campaign Trump kept repeating..."follow me and you will see 5 and 6% growth over the dismal Obama years...just vote for me as I have these great business ideas for the American worker".........

NOW the economy on it's own via Obama policies hit 3.5% this month AND Trump has not said a single word in his projected growth rates since the election.......

BUT WAIT...his newly appointed Sec. of the Treasury stated this week..."well if we sustain a 3 and 4% growth rate that is excellent news"....

SO did Trump basically lie to the American worker??????

BUT WAIT Trump even took credit for the high level of business confidence that was building under the Obama policies AND he took credit for the American spending of 1T USDs during Christmas....AS a result of his economic policies and YET he is not even President until 20 JAN...

Trump is great about taking credit of others but poor in delivering anything concrete outside of twitter barrages.......

AND those 5000 Sprint jobs that he took credit for delivering to the US worker...WELL they were announced by the investor BACK in APRIL 2016....not in DEC 2016.....

[davidbfpo]

A challenging article by John Schindler, is President-elect Trump ready for this:
It’s important to note that while 2016, the year ending today, has been a dreadful one for Westerners who treasure freedom, with Vladimir Putin’s minions clandestinely subverting our politics, even in the United States, we’ve been here before.
Link:http://observer.com/2016/12/donald-trump-can-stop-putin/

[OUTLAW 09]

A challenging article by John Schindler, is President-elect Trump ready for this:
Link:http://observer.com/2016/12/donald-trump-can-stop-putin/


Trump aide says U.S. sanctions on Russia may be disproportionate
http://reut.rs/2iAbDz5

Meet the SednitGroup, aka "Russian hackers" THAT Trump evidently knows more about than even the CIA/NSA and FBI....

http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-par...

AND for those that do not want to really believe it...yes we are at war....
One of the best write ups on the core Russian state sponsored hacking group with ties to SVR/GRU...who was and still is behind major power grid attack and the DNC attack...

US expulsions put spotlight on Russia's GRU intelligence agency
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/us-expulsions-put-spotlight-on-russias-gru-intelligence-agency?CMP=share_btn_tw#

Why exposing Putin's wealth would be Obama's best revenge, writes @SSestanovich
http://on.wsj.com/2itxiGw

Trump didn't pay a penny in taxes, used his charity as a personal slush fund, and it didn't stick. Do you think the Russian SVR/GRU are idiots?

[OUTLAW 09]

After French Front National, Czech Republic is second example of direct Russian money in top politics.

NYT story:
http://nyti.ms/2iieoUZ

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump aide says U.S. sanctions on Russia may be disproportionate
http://reut.rs/2iAbDz5

Meet the SednitGroup, aka "Russian hackers" THAT Trump evidently knows more about than even the CIA/NSA and FBI....

http://www.welivesecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/eset-sednit-par...

AND for those that do not want to really believe it...yes we are at war....
One of the best write ups on the core Russian state sponsored hacking group with ties to SVR/GRU...who was and still is behind major power grid attack and the DNC attack...

US expulsions put spotlight on Russia's GRU intelligence agency
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/30/us-expulsions-put-spotlight-on-russias-gru-intelligence-agency?CMP=share_btn_tw#

Why exposing Putin's wealth would be Obama's best revenge, writes @SSestanovich
http://on.wsj.com/2itxiGw

Trump didn't pay a penny in taxes, used his charity as a personal slush fund, and it didn't stick. Do you think the Russian SVR/GRU are idiots?


TO those Trump commenters that supported him because he "is smart and knows hacking"......

Wanna appear REALLY knowledgeable? Drop the R in GRU. These days, it's simply called the GU (Glavnoye Upravleniye)
http://structure.mil.ru/structure/ministry_of_defence/details.htm?id=9711@egOrganization#



EXAMPLE....real story that Trump and his advisor of his do not know about the GU....

In the late 70s and early 80s....in the International Herald Tribune the leading American English speaking European newspaper had a series of ads published on a reoccurring basis......for over a one year period

The ad was basic....stated they were looking for paid researchers for specific projects and one had to speak English.....

When one replied it was to a Post Box in Lichtenstein.....if one replied then ne would get a nice letter indicating their interest and what could you suggest for research topics...and they wanted more information on yourself...age....any military experience....education level and any other language abilities and where located in Europe...they were looking for individuals in W Berlin and other major German cities....located near US military bases.....

Then at some point you get a nice letter in the mail coupled with a nice used 50 USD bills usually no more than 3000 USDs and asking you will you are interested in working deeper...with a contact telephone number which if one looked it up was in E Berlin......

Some might say this was a GDR Stasi recruitment attempt..but behind the German voice on the phone was the nicest of Soviet GRU officers you will ever met.....

SO exactly how many young Americans in Europe answered that ad....and were studying aboard during that period AND never reported to US authorities when they returned to the US the recruitment attempts????

So the Trump advisor saying that in tossing out 35 Russian GRU/SVR spies is
inappropriate ABSOLUTELY does not know what he is talking about and that includes Trump himself...

[OUTLAW 09]

Dushanbe Probing Claim Taliban Tanks Being Repaired In Tajikistan by Russian Engineers
http://www.rferl.org/a/russia-taliban-tajikistan-weapons-repair-allegations/28209369.html#

[OUTLAW 09]

Foreign Affairs
✔
@ForeignAffairs
The era of neoliberalism is over. The era of neonationalism is beginning.
http://ow.ly/avOJ307zAQv

[OUTLAW 09]

First Trump suddenly claims via a tweet that he was far smarter when it comes to hacking than say myself who is in this business and he was going to "reveal what others did not now on Tuesday and or Wednesday"......

The Hill
✔
@thehill
Spicer downplays expectation that Trump will reveal new information about Russian election interference
http://ill.cm/95KBLAe

[davidbfpo]

Two contrasting viewpoints on Trump and intelligence. First from Lawfare, so an American author and the Editor's note:
Editor’s Note: The incoming administration's scorn for intelligence professionals is a matter of grave concern to many of us at Lawfare. I, for one, worry that the administration will conduct its foreign policy without understanding the dynamics of foreign governments, their attempts to mislead us, and emerging threats like cyber subversion. Joshua Rovner, a scholar of intelligence at Southern Methodist University, makes me even more concerned. He takes the long view, going beyond the potential for short-term policy catastrophe to explain the long tradition of policymaker suspicion of intelligence and the many potential negative consequences for the intelligence community.
Link:https://www.lawfareblog.com/donald-trump-and-future-intelligence

I do rather like this passage:
New leaders sometimes view intelligence agencies as bureaucratic obstacles—or worse. Intelligence agencies control secret information, and well-timed leaks can undermine policymakers’ plans or damage their political careers. The fear of intelligence subversion is not entirely unwarranted, given the history of intelligence in the United States (http://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01331-1.html) and elsewhere (https://www.harpercollins.co.uk/9780007555444/the-black-door). As a matter of self-preservation, presidents and their advisors may prefer to keep intelligence at arm’s length.

Next from India by a professional SME and a "taster":
Like Trump, Richard Nixon also came to be the president without reading any of CIA’s Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) during transition.

Link:https://www.americanbazaaronline.com/2017/01/08/trump-cant-control-global-security-situation-friendship-putin/

[OUTLAW 09]

Where is Slapout when you need his comments....

There are 100,000+ professional journalists in US. MAYBE *5* are chasing down Trump-Putin collaboration

When the Russian mobster who made Trump president messages you on LinkedIn...

Felix Sater tweeted the author and stated the things you are writing about me are qwrong if you scatch deeper.....wished him and his Family a good Christmas and a NY....highly unusal for a so called Russian investor to do this and not massively push back....and not a subtle threat????

Felix Sater started funneling Russian money to Trump in 2000-when US banks stopped loaning to Trump

Here is New York Times reporting the $12.7 M "off the books" payment from Putin to Trump campaign CEO and not one debate question about this
AUGUST 14 2016

Manafort is still advising Trump-media completely botched following up on his $12M Ukraine ledger payment

Ivanka vacationed with Putins gf this summer. I am still trying to find confirmation that Manafort visited S. Korea Dec/16

Paul Manafort also lives in Trump Tower–again, none of this is a coincidence

Did Manafort pay for his Trump Tower digs with dirty Russian money he was accused of laundering into US real estate?

NOTICE it went extremely quiet for Manafort after the Ukrainian payments were made public ......
After these announcements the Trump campaign stated Manafort was no longer working for them BUT after the election they stated he was still working for them.....

Busted along with Trump partner for sex trafficking–Soviet-born money launderer, major Trump investor, Maskevich

Israeli paper ran a detailed investigation on the sex trafficking ring (Russian, underage) Trump's partner ran

Fugitive Russian mobster Aruif Trump denied knowing was busted for running an illegal gambling, money laundering ring right out of Trump Tower when arresgted by the FBI he had the telephone numbers of Trump and Trump's main Office on him....

Russian mobster/Trump BFF Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov who ran a gambling operation out of Trump Tower.

Meanwhile Tevfik Arik–Putin's pal who brought Trump millions of dollars–was busted in Turkey for running an underage prostitution

KEY NOTES.....
Trump's other partners on SoHo deal? Putin pals Tevfik Arif, ex Deputy Head Soviet Ministry of Commerce and a Soviet emigre, Tamir

Now Sapir sold electronics to KGB agents from his Manhattan storefront and his business partner also happens to be tight with Putin

Kazakh-born Soviet official turned real estate tycoon, Tevfik Arif ran Bayrock/Sapir out of Trump Tower.

Sater worked for him.

Here is Trump with Felix Sater at opening of Trump SoHo which was built with Russian money, brought to Trump by none other than Sater

NOTE.......
Trump denied knowing this person who helped bring millions of Russian dollars to him and is suspected by FBI of being a Russian spy.....
Sergei Millian.......Head of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce....

[OUTLAW 09]

If Congress pursues Trump's Russia ties/grooming, his casino money Here is the smoking gun: US Treasury fined Trump's casinos $10 million for "significant, long standing anti-money laundering violations"

$10M money laundering fine levied on Trump was LARGEST PENALTY FinCen-Financial Crimes Enforcement Network-ever levied against a Casino
laundering investigation holds key answers

Fresh look into the casino books would reveal how far back his Russian ties go, activities money laundering supported

Trump's stock greenmailing practices were so odious, specific NV laws were passed to block him

Trump was notorious for a stock purchase practice called greenmailing
Feds fined him $750K for hiding stock purchases

NOTE
Didn't Martha Stewart go to jail for less?
We know Trump was getting tax benefits for losing people's investments, but now we have this laundering angle

A coincidence that Trump- projects financed with dirty foreign money–SoHo, Baja, Tampa, Ft Lauderdale, Toronto–all ended in failure?

Oh and just *5 days* before the election another Trump project financed by a Russian billionaire pal of Putin went bust in Canada

Here's NYT on the Trump SoHo fraud lawsuit that Trump settled to hide the dirty Russian money trail via Bayrock
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/us/politics/donald-trump-soho-settleme...

NOTE...this settled a FEDERAL CRIMINAL CASE.....
Bayrock-Sapir's signature deal-Trump SoHo-was financed with dirty Kazakh money
(more: https://twitter.com/khanoisseur/status/806710053902262274)

Despite glitzy Trump SoHo promos, heavily featuring Ivanka, the deal soured. Trump was sued for fraud.
90% of deposits were returned.

Trump SoHo slipped into foreclosure (Trump still got tens of millions in dirty money), another Russian oligarch poured $95M into him

While the Russians were nursing Trump back into financial health, they were also grooming a man who would become his campaign CEO-Manafort aPro-Putin Trump adviser who gets little to no scrutiny even in the face of Ukrainian actual corruption documents?

Richard Burt-who helped Putin with oil pipeline Obama opposed
While Richard Burt was helping Putin undermine Obama he was also shaping Trump's Russia alignment

REMEMBER....Burt was the one individual who pushed through the RP Platform Committee the anti Ukrainian proRussian RP platform comments...

IMPORTANT.....
Remember the Trump server secretly communicating with Russia's Alfa Bank?
Guy who shaped Trump's Russia alignment–Richard Burt–advises Alfa


Father of Sater, whose Bayrock brought tens of millions of Russian dollars to Trump, worked for Semion @olgaNYC1211
NOW SEE THE TIE IN.....???????

Manafort, claimed the lawsuit, was bankrolled by a Russian mobster (and Putin pal) on FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, Semion Mogilevich


Turns out, Sater worked for Mogilevich and…this next is dizzying
Felix Sater started funneling Russian money to Trump in 2000-when US banks stopped loaning to Trump @citynightcap

One of the most underreported stories: How Russian money powered Trump's financial comeback, helped him win the White House @Suburb_Flamingo

While US media snoozed, Financial Times did reported on how dirty money flowed into Trump @SamSanderson123 @summerbrennan @Suburb_Flamingo

3rd lien on Trump DC Hotel for unpaid bills-familiar story-Trump/brood + Russian financiers cut ribbons, then cut ties with obligations
Spy magazine, April 1991: "Trump referred to those involved with his Resorts deal as 'OC' -- organized crime". cc @Khanoisseur

After fall of USSR, hundreds of KGB officers entered Russian mafia–which made Brighton Beach, Brooklyn–where Sater lived–its US HQ @thoensen

Danny Leung, VP Foreign Marketing at Trump's casino was ID'd by US Senate as member of organized crime/money laundering outfit 14K Triad

Trump also denied he knew LiButti, racist mobster for whom Trump removed black casino staff

Trump denied knowing mobster LiButti who caused him $850K in fines. Video of them together surfaced last month @m_deandream

Trump rails against companies that hoard cash overseas, but he owns stock in 22 out of Top 30 companies that have most cash stashed overseas

Oh look-Trump has a financial stake in parent of company Carrier he just gave $7 million taxpayer dollars .........250,000 USDs to be exact

[OUTLAW 09]

BOOM!.....ah the smell of cordite in the early morning air surrounds this.....

[OUTLAW 09]

NOW we have an President elect who has taken black money from the Russian mob....has been fined 10M USDs for his casino's laundering foreign money..has done questionable business ventures backed by Russia money and who denies to the end even in the face of the US IC that Russia hacked and influenced his election....

REMEMBER only his surrogates have stated publicly that Trump accepts the IS Russian hacking report....BUT he himself has not issued a single word or tweet to support his surrogates...THUS basically having the wiggle room to still firmly believe it was a 400lb kid on his bed in his bedroom that hacked the poorly internet secured DNC...and he blamed the DNC BTW for this....


18 U.S. Code § 2381 - Treason

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 807; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, § 330016(2)(J), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

Trump's illegal business practices...his money laundering for Russian oligarchs..his warm voiced regards for Putin and his constant denial of Russian hacking is placing Trump close to the edge of this Federal Law....

[OUTLAW 09]

THIS is exactly why this incoming President is somewhere other than in the US .......AND we seriously here at SWC expect some kind of FP to come from him?????

Trump in gaggle at Trump Tower: "Confirmations are going great." They haven't started yet.

The Office of Government Ethnics which must issue certifications that the individual is free of conflicts has not issued a single certification and the RP wants to start Nomination confirmations??????

Trump's transition is running easily four to six weeks to late to take over smoothly the US government.....AND then he will tweet it was Obama's and Clinton's fault.....

BTW....Yesterday the Office of Government ethnic had to tweet Trump in order to inform him that the law of the land is that no confirmation processes can start until the OGE has issued the individual being confirmed a certification that he and or she is conflict of interests free.....

They had to tweet as the emails they were sending to the Trump transition team were not being answered and yet his surrogates and the Senate Republicans were announcing they were starting the confirmation processes.....WHICH OGE indicates again violates "the law of the land" and cannot be simply ignored by Trump or the RP or the Senate.....

[OUTLAW 09]

This proves that Trump has failed to accept the IC Russia Hacking/Influence Ops Report and has used his surrogates to deflect the lack that he has openly and publicly stated he accepts the impact of the report....THEY said he has accepted it....

BUT WAIT...THEN this today.......
NBC's @HallieJackson: “Who do you trust more, Julian Assange or the NSA?”
Trump's response and it is telling.... "We'll talk about that at another time."

SO Trump still rates Assange over the information provided to him by the NSA and CIA....

[OUTLAW 09]

Historic reminder—influence ops: a Soviet invention designed to amplify an adversary's internal political divisions

Stasi's Wagenbreth: "A powerful adversary can be defeated only by carefully and methodically exploiting every crack within its own society"

Wagenbreth was a MfS Stasi COL in charge of Department X for over 25 years...Dept X was the influence operations section responsible for operations in western countries...especially Germany and the US...

Department X was created in 1961 and patterned on similar KGB/GRU operations....

GRU ops "aimed at US election" dated to *March* 2016—statement on intention surprisingly early, given April events (Panama Papers; DCL reg)

New details: Russian intelligence got into DNC earlier, maintained access longer than assumed. Note "at least." Crowdstrike report: 14 June.

INTERESTINGLY USG report quotes open source materials...used to cover actual info confirmed by sensitive methods and means...WAs done often in proving Russian troop involvement in eastern Ukraine...first open source reports then USG confirms...that is exactly how open source intelligence is suppose to work...

Even collating the vast forensic detail *already public* as USG can harm sources, trust, practices (eg: by linking this FBI Flash to APT29)

[OUTLAW 09]

I have had my differences with John over his comments on Clinton..but in the end he was right...I know him for his reputation as a NSA CI type who worked Europe very effectively for years and someone who holds a PhD in history and who has written a number of very good history books AND who speaks four languages all well...he does not beat around the bush and defends the security of the US to the end.....AND he knows the FSB/GRU very very very well.....

When he writes about Trump and the below Trump/Russian mob information/FSB/GRU then it is coming from IC circles and his personal knowledge....he is virtually challenging Trump to sue him......

John Schindler Verifizierter Account 
‏@20committee
Trump, the Russian Mob, and the FSB https://storify.com/Ayei_Eloheichem/trump-the-russian-mob-and-the-fsb …
Kicking off with the below tweet - see whole thread - it's time to have an official CI Tweetstorm on this issue

Only so many hints this counterspy can drop, peeps.

1 more: Mogilevich is, ahem, close with RIS+Putin.

Mogilevich met with Bin Ladens Men to sell nuclear material in 2001 Also look into the Bogatin bros Taiwanchik Trincher

Mogilevich, one of FBI's most wanted people...Oh oh. I wonder if Trump won't end up in jail actually.

Another classic IC joke:
Q: What do you call a big-time Russian businessman, a high-ranking Russian spy, and a Russian mob boss?
A: Yuri

There's an old IC joke about Russian organized crime:
"Who do you think organized them?"
Trump being in bed with ROC = in bed with FSB

Not long after Sasha Litvinenko told reporters about Putin's close links to Mogilevich, FSB gave him atomic tea. Another coincidence.

Also, Mogilevich has a very cozy relationship with Putin & his special services, going back to KGB days. They help each other non-stop

The real issue is how Mogilevich made the Trump Org one of his overseas subsidiaries, de facto, back in the 1990s. FBI knows this too

There are literally dozens of Russian OC scams, some gargantuan, that we know were based at Trump properties -- quite a coincidence
Yaponchik/Ivankov -- for 3 years until the FBI caught up with him -- was dividing his time between Trump Tower & Don's Taj Mahal Casino

In 1992, Mogilevich sent a capo to NYC to run his US show. That was Yaponchik AKA Vyacheslav Ivankov, who was murdered in Moscow in 2009

Mogilevich launders money in the West, including the USA, on a gargantuan scale; he is clever and good at this. FBI knows all about it.

Mogilevich is the biggest mob boss in Russia -- maybe the world -- and his capos+footprints are all over the Trump Org since early 1990s

You need to understand real estate finance, and Russian organized crime

AND Russian intelligence...if you do, the picture is quite clear.

Moreover, actually grasping what the Trump Org does -- which Don works hard at anyone getting a look at -- requires a lot of knowledge

MSM has been reluctant to seriously explore Trump's Kremlin ties because Don loves suing everyone. And his Russia mafia pals kill people ALERT
BREAKING:
WELCOME TO THE RUSSIAN WEBSITE OF DONALD J TRUMP
http://donald-trump.ru

The drip drip drip of coming IC leaks will be a death by a thousand cuts and Trump does not believe he can be touched......

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia's billionaires are already $29bln richer thanks to @realdonaldtrump:
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-elite-29-bln-richer-after-trump-election-victory-56765#


Russia’s wealthiest have seen their fortunes grow by $29 billion since the election of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump in November, Forbes magazine reported Tuesday.

The country’s elite have seen their combined bank balance grow by 7.1 percent thanks to a rise in stock prices and the rapidly strengthening ruble.

Businessman Gennady Timchenko was among Russia’s wealthy beneficiaries, gaining $1.8 billion from his shares in Russian energy giant Novatek.

Timchenko, a close ally of Russian President Putin with a net worth of $15.1 billion, is believed to hold a 23 percent stake in Novatek. The company’s shares have seen a 16 percent boost since Trump’s shock victory.

Fellow Novatek investor Leonid Mikhelson also saw his net worth grow by an estimated $1.9 billion in the weeks after the election, retaining his title of Russia’s richest man. Mikhelson remains Russia’s richest man, worth $18.2 billion.

Russian billionaires aren’t the only ones to feel the benefit of the Republican candidate’s impending inauguration. According to Forbes, America’s wealthiest have also enjoyed a modest post-Trump boom of 2.8 percent.

The U.S. President-elect himself, who has taken a number of steps to distance himself from his business empire before assuming office, has a net worth of $3.7 billion.Interesting that this Russian article indicates Trump has distanced himself from his businesses....HE has not done such a move...he keeps saying he will but he does nothing..

[OUTLAW 09]

PERFECT EXAMPLE OF THE LACK OF INTERNAL TRADE KNOWLEDGE BY TRUMP AND HIS TRANSITION TEAM....

Britain in 'front seat' for U.S. trade deal, top Republican says
http://reut.rs/2j2UZbp

As long as UK is a member of the EU no EU member can conclude a separate trade agreement outside of the EU otherwise heavily penalized via tariff and fines for the amount of trade conducted while a EU member.....

UK knows this and has been repeatedly told that by EU and maybe Trump does not know?????

The earliest UK can do a bilateral trade deal in the first quarter 2020.....

AND then any deal depends on the final trade alignment UK wants with EU...if one market still then that nixes any US deal.....if outside single trade zone then WTO trade rules and tariffs apply otherwise both US/UK could end up in WTO court with heavy costs...

[OUTLAW 09]

Reference the coming kleptocracy of Trump with his son-in-law.....

As this graphic notes, so much Russian $$ pours into Trump in FL, "coastal Miami becomes Little Moscow"

NEW Trump-Russia link: Son-in-law's $295M deal with Putin pal Lev Leviev, Soviet-born billionaire

Kushner bought property from Leviev, Putin associate.

Leviev formerly employed Rotem Rosen, the Trump SOHO investorPoint is Donald "no Russia ties" Trump lied, plus his advisers met with people on US sanctioned list

Putin paid Manafort millions for Ukraine's Yanukovych's image makeover.

Was Burnett paid for Trump's re-invention?

Burnett met with Putin before re-inventing Trump in (Putin's?) "Apprentice" and now stage-managing his inauguration ....he was the one that blocked release of tapes from the filming of The Apprentice which were rumored to worse than the released 2005 video of Trump and his language towards women....

2001 NYT article on how Mark Burnett, who reinvented Trump as reality star, is also tied to Putinhttp://partners.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/20010128mag-burnett.html#… (h/t @Khanoisseur)

[OUTLAW 09]

BOOM!.....ah the smell of cordite in the early morning air surrounds this.....

IS this the conduit from Russian black money into the Trump businesses in the US??????

Two Trump Companies Discovered In Cyprus, EU's Russian Off-Shore Banking Haven
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/two-trump-companies-discovered-in-cyprus-eus-russian_us_5856c248e4b0d5f48e1650ac?ncid=engmodush pmg00000004#

Cyprus banking system almost went into bankruptcy due to the simple fact they were overly dependent on Russian black money....there are the two top Russian backs there as well....

[OUTLAW 09]

"Trump will find most of his goals are out of reach of an America acting alone. Deals are no substitute for allies." https://www.ft.com/content/ae092214-d36f-11e6-b06b-680c49b4b4c0#

[OUTLAW 09]

Ah...Carter Page again at work...was recently in Moscow.....

Trump foreign policy aide tells Kremlin propaganda arm that US intel can't be trusted.
https://www.rt.com/usa/373139-carter-page-rt-odni-hacking/#

WHEN he was in Moscow he claimed to have been a Trump advisor when he was not suppose to be one...as the Trump transition team was asked about his Moscow comments...they denied he was an advisor....

Republican intel chairman Burr: "No reason to doubt" CIA/FBI/NSA findings that Russia intervened in the US election in favor of Trump.

[OUTLAW 09]

Spencer Ackerman
✔
@attackerman
Warner wants intel cmte to include in review "contact between the Russian government & its agents, & associates of any campaign & candidate"

[OUTLAW 09]

Breaking News: Donald Trump wants Republicans to repeal Obamacare immediately and replace it "shortly thereafter"
http://nyti.ms/2jfaGKa

BUT WAIT...repeal health insurance for 20M US citizens and then replace it with what...the republicans have absolutely no a single plan on the table....

SO the 20M plus just sit there with no insurance....?????

BUT WAIT...the Trump transition team was pushing for no repeal until there was a full and complete insurance plan replacement in place...WHICH there is none....

[OUTLAW 09]

Cited in part:
If Congress pursues Trump's Russia ties/grooming, his casino money Here is the smoking gun: US Treasury fined Trump's casinos $10 million for "significant, long standing anti-money laundering violations"

Wow. Sen. Wyden asks Comey whether FBI has investigated relationships between Trump associates & Russians. Comey won't say.

Comey: evidence that hacking directed at state level orgs, campaigns and rnc, but old domains of rnc. info was harvested from there

SO RNC was in fact hacked...BUT WAIT not a single email has been released on the RNC...so what do they fear being released.....

Comey: There were intrusions at state-level voter registration databases. Purpose of intrusions not clear, but "no doubt" Russians took info

FBI Director Comey says there was successful penetration of GOP groups/campaigns, esp on the state level, and on some RNC domains

Spencer Ackerman
✔
@attackerman
Comey says, re FBI investign Trump/Russia contacts, "I wd never comment on investigations whether open or not in a public forum" EYES EMOJI

[OUTLAW 09]

Wow. Lindsey Graham asked Jeff Sessions if he believes Russia was responsible for hacking. Sessions won't answer.

AND he is to be the AG of the US enforcing anti hacking laws....

BUT WAIT.....this is like the Trump myth that it was a 400lb kid who hacked DNC......

RU ambassador to US: "I wouldn't exclude that some trigger-happy hacker did hack .. but my country had nothing to do"

[TheCurmudgeon]

Trump Received Unsubstantiated Report That Russia Had Damaging Information About Him


WASHINGTON — The chiefs of America’s intelligence agencies last week presented President Obama and President-elect Donald J. Trump with a summary of unsubstantiated reports that Russia had collected compromising and salacious personal information about Mr. Trump, two officials with knowledge of the briefing said.

The summary is based on memos generated by political operatives seeking to derail Mr. Trump’s candidacy. Details of the reports began circulating in the fall and were widely known among journalists and politicians in Washington.

The two-page summary, first reported by CNN, was presented as an appendix to the intelligence agencies’ report on Russian hacking efforts during the election, the officials said. The material was not corroborated, and The New York Times has not been able to confirm the claims. But intelligence agencies considered it so potentially explosive that they decided Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders needed to be told about it and informed that the agencies were actively investigating it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/10/us/politics/donald-trump-russia-intelligence.html?_r=0

[TheCurmudgeon]

Donald Trump 'briefed on former British spy's report that Russia claims to have damaging information about him'

A former British spy reportedly tipped off US intelligence that Russian operatives are claiming to have compiled compromising information about Donald Trump, it emerged on Tuesday night. ...

They included factual errors, as well as allegations that Russia was aware of “sexual perversion” engaged in by Mr Trump during a visit to Moscow. According to Buzzfeed, the dossier was prepared for Mr Trump’s political rivals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/donald-trump-briefed-former-british-spys-report-russia-claims/

This article has a link to images of the report.

[OUTLAW 09]

Donald Trump 'briefed on former British spy's report that Russia claims to have damaging information about him'

A former British spy reportedly tipped off US intelligence that Russian operatives are claiming to have compiled compromising information about Donald Trump, it emerged on Tuesday night. ...

They included factual errors, as well as allegations that Russia was aware of “sexual perversion” engaged in by Mr Trump during a visit to Moscow. According to Buzzfeed, the dossier was prepared for Mr Trump’s political rivals.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/donald-trump-briefed-former-british-spys-report-russia-claims/

This article has a link to images of the report.

Interestingly this source was part of the Rolling Stone article that hit in first June and then shortly before the election BUT was shredded by US MSM and proTrump commenters....

BUT even more interesting is the simple fact that some veterans of the NSA/CIA CI side who spent years battling the KGB then FSB tended to agree that compromising materials do in fact exist...

Followed by the extensive now available from key investigative journalists backed by the FT...on massive Russian financial involvement with Trump.

There is this very old saying..."where there is indeed smoke there is indeed a fire"....and the "smoke" around Trump is heavy and thick...

Secondly, it is interesting that the FBI did confirm yesterday that the RNC and elements of State RNC groups were equally hacked by the Russians...

AND materials were taken BUT the Russians have not leaked a single RNC document...

THEN REMEMBER Trump has been lying in his tweets WHEN he compared the lax DNC computer security to the super strong RNC security BECAUSE RNC was not hacked...

WHICH we know since yesterday via the FBI that this was a Trump tweet lie....

WHAT is really interesting is this was HUMINT and as with all HUMINT...the rating quality of the info is F6 until confirmed and or denied...BUT HUMINT is usually a tip off to something that in fact exists....

THIS UK former spy has a very good track record in the past and has been reporting over the years quite accurately....so one should not push his information to the side...

AND if one takes the time to read the open report the sources are 1. SIGINT....2. HUMINT and really interestingly 3. OSINT...the IC seems to be quite sure of the OSINT otherwise they would not be referring to it....

[OUTLAW 09]

Buzzfeed published 35pp memos on #Russia having compromising evidence of #Trump in perverted sex acts #GoldenShowers https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.edVZX26DV#.rrJ8M9N4q#…

"there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian govt" @CNN

NOTE:...it is interesting that carter Page showed up in Paris meeting Russian reps and talked supposedly about Syria....and then Page being in Moscow recently claiming to be an advisor for Trump when the transition team was stating he was not....

Hackers in Romania and Bulgaria worked to hack Clinton camp under Kremlin's direction and were paid in cash by BOTH Trump & Russian sources.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (married to Russian) was Kremlin liaison for damage control, covering up scandals re Russia's op, Manafort, Page

Sechin so wanted sanctions lifted, he offered Page/Trump 19% brokerage stake in Russia's Rosneft. Page agreed

[OUTLAW 09]

More breathtaking diplomacy from spokesperson of Russia's Foreign Ministry: God created the world in 7 days, and Obama has 9 to destroy it.

[OUTLAW 09]

Buzzfeed published 35pp memos on #Russia having compromising evidence of #Trump in perverted sex acts #GoldenShowers https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.edVZX26DV#.rrJ8M9N4q#…

"there was a continuing exchange of information during the campaign between Trump surrogates and intermediaries for the Russian govt" @CNN

NOTE:...it is interesting that carter Page showed up in Paris meeting Russian reps and talked supposedly about Syria....and then Page being in Moscow recently claiming to be an advisor for Trump when the transition team was stating he was not....

Hackers in Romania and Bulgaria worked to hack Clinton camp under Kremlin's direction and were paid in cash by BOTH Trump & Russian sources.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen (married to Russian) was Kremlin liaison for damage control, covering up scandals re Russia's op, Manafort, Page

Sechin so wanted sanctions lifted, he offered Page/Trump 19% brokerage stake in Russia's Rosneft. Page agreed

@MichaelCohen212 you don't deny meeting Russia during the campaign to discuss hacks of Democrats?

[Azor]

Thus far, it's a load of drivel.

I could concoct a story about how Hillary Clinton was beholden to and compromised by the Al-Thanis, deliberately attempted to steer US foreign policy as Secretary to serve the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood (e.g. Egypt, Libya, Syria) and was backed by the Al-Thanis throughout the nomination process and presidential campaign. And do you know what? It would be more factual than this unverified story written by unknown persons on behalf of Clinton and the Democrats.

[OUTLAW 09]

Thus far, it's a load of drivel.

I could concoct a story about how Hillary Clinton was beholden to and compromised by the Al-Thanis, deliberately attempted to steer US foreign policy as Secretary to serve the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood (e.g. Egypt, Libya, Syria) and was backed by the Al-Thanis throughout the nomination process and presidential campaign. And do you know what? It would be more factual than this unverified story written by unknown persons on behalf of Clinton and the Democrats.

BUT WAIT....does not negate the massive real estate deals done by Tump and Russian oligarchs...does not negate the 10M USD fine for laundering money...largely Russian...

AND does not negate why the FBI FISA request was turned down for four major Trump Russian associated advisors does it...ESPECIALLY since in 38,000 FISA requests over the years ONLY 12 have been rejected...WHY were these four rejected and they had travels to Russia and tight connections to Russia.

Kleptocracy...Russian black money and US real estate deals.....

Kleptocracy Intv. @KleptocracyIntv
Must-read from @HarvardIR on the link between kleptocrats, anonymous companies, and US real estate:
http://hir.harvard.edu/lifestyles-rich-infamous-confronting-dirty-money-us-real-estate/#

[TheCurmudgeon]

Thus far, it's a load of drivel.

I could concoct a story about how Hillary Clinton was beholden to and compromised by the Al-Thanis, deliberately attempted to steer US foreign policy as Secretary to serve the interests of the Muslim Brotherhood (e.g. Egypt, Libya, Syria) and was backed by the Al-Thanis throughout the nomination process and presidential campaign. And do you know what? It would be more factual than this unverified story written by unknown persons on behalf of Clinton and the Democrats.

You are missing the point. Here is a Trump Tweet from today:
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?

Trump sees this as a personal attack on him by the U.S. Intelligence Community!

So how do you expect Trump will receive word from his intelligence agencies that the Russians have little green men in Estonia or that they are secretly moving troops into Latvia? From here on out, the Russians will have a free hand in Eastern Europe.

[Azor]

You are missing the point. Here is a Trump Tweet from today:

"Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to "leak" into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?"

Trump sees this as a personal attack on him by the U.S. Intelligence Community!

So how do you expect Trump will receive word from his intelligence agencies that the Russians have little green men in Estonia or that they are secretly moving troops into Latvia? From here on out, the Russians will have a free hand in Eastern Europe.

Considering that the current and former CIA Directors going back a number of years endorsed Hillary Clinton, along with various CIA officers and Republican members of the national security community, Trump may well have a point.

It is clear that people were hoping that Hillary would allow for more CIA intervention in Syria and Ukraine...

[TheCurmudgeon]

Considering that the current and former CIA Directors going back a number of years endorsed Hillary Clinton, along with various CIA officers and Republican members of the national security community, Trump may well have a point.

It is clear that people were hoping that Hillary would allow for more CIA intervention in Syria and Ukraine...

The people who do the work in the CIA/NSA are not political appointees. They are career civil servants, many of whom put their life on the line to do what they do. If they thought it was a problem, it was a problem.

[Azor]

The people who do the work in the CIA/NSA are not political appointees. They are career civil servants, many of whom put their life on the line to do what they do. If they thought it was a problem, it was a problem.

The CIA Directors are all career civil servants?

Brennan became a political appointee years ago and his two Deputy Directors are operatives with no experience in intelligence.

I cannot think of an administration in which the CIA was not politicized, so this is nothing new, really.

As for the dossier, there are good reasons why the major news outlets refused to publish it and why BuzzFeed did so only with big caveats.

Ultimately, it revolves around whether or not there is evidence of Trump paying prostitutes to have a "golden shower".

The rest is simply a rehash of Clinton campaign talking points with some cloak and dagger bits thrown in for excitement.

I'm sure that Putin found the dossier helpful in determining who in the FSB, and Finance and Foreign Ministries are traitors... *eye roll*

[Azor]

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137239/watch-live-trump-holds-first-press-conference-as-president-elect

I see that CNN has determined that Michael Cohen was not in Prague secretly meeting with the Russians...

[OUTLAW 09]

Considering that the current and former CIA Directors going back a number of years endorsed Hillary Clinton, along with various CIA officers and Republican members of the national security community, Trump may well have a point.

It is clear that people were hoping that Hillary would allow for more CIA intervention in Syria and Ukraine...

Azor...here is the core problem you are missing...AND this was not carried by say CNN...and or mentioned by Trump it in his critique of the US IC....

Here is the story behind the story so to speak....NOTICE the accompanying documents supporting the original unredacted report that went to the FBI via McCain NO ONE has seen EVEN Trump is not aware of what was passed...

Notice the last phase of the article...the FBI included info on the unverified report out of TWO possible concerns......

1. one they were afraid of it leaking and they not having mentioned it would come back to haunt them as did the Clinton email issue OR AND THIS is what I believe.....IMHO as one who knows how such agencies handle HUMINT...

2. After 30 years of monitoring Trump activities especially lately between him and his real estate sales to Russian oligarch THEY felt there was something to the unverified report...MEANING...something in that report was verified by something hard they held in their hands and held in the hands of the CIA....

HUMINT comes in all shapes and sizes BUT it is in the end always rated as a F6 meaning information is Humint in nature thus unverified until otherwise determined.

NOW here is the kicker that Trump and his team did not fully understand today at his press conference....AND Flynn knows this... FOR an F6 document to land in a highly classified report is in itself strange as the paragraph mentioning it would have been classified as unclassified and clear to all that the information has been unverified....

NOTICE no one is indicating what classification was given to the paragraph in the classified report which if it was anything other than Unclassified (U) would indicate that in fact elements of the report had been confirmed and verified....and that would have then rated a higher classification depending on what hard evidence was used to confirm it....

REMEMBER the FBI Counter Intelligence Division is highly separated inside the FBI....and never really leaks so the FBI fear of a leak is highly unlikely so that reason for including is out the window because of possible leaks as far as I am concerned...UNLESS there is something out there and by releasing the fact that it is known to exist ie a video the video becomes for most purposes not usable for blackmail....this occurred years ago when a high level IC officer who was gay and the GRU discovered he was gay...the IC allowed him to remain an continue to hold his clearance if he came out of the closet and informed all..at that point he was not blackmailable

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/11/trump-russia-report-opposition-research-john-mccain

The extraordinary but unverified documents published on Tuesday on Donald Trump’s ties with Moscow began life as a piece of opposition research, which has become as much a part of US politics as yard signs and coloured balloons.

There is a small industry of research and investigative firms in Washington, typically staffed by a mix of former journalists and security officials, adept at finding information about politicians that the politicians would rather stay hidden. The firms often do not know who exactly is hiring them; the request could come from a law firm acting on behalf of a client from one of the parties.

In this case, the request for opposition research on Donald Trump came from one of his Republican opponents in the primary campaign. The research firm then hired one of its sub-contractors who it used regularly on all things Russian: a retired western European former counter-intelligence official, with a long history of dealing with the shadow world of Moscow’s spooks and siloviki (securocrats).

By the time the contractor had started his research, however, the Republican primary was over. The original client had dropped out, but the firm that had hired him had found a new, Democratic client. This was not necessarily the Hillary Clinton campaign or the Democratic National Committee. Opposition research is frequently financed by wealthy individuals who have donated all they can and are looking for other ways to help.

By July, the counter-intelligence contractor had collected a significant amount of material based on Russian sources who he had grown to trust over the years – not just in Moscow, but also among oligarchs living in the west. He delivered his reports, but the gravity of their contents weighed on him. If the allegations were real, their implications were overwhelming.

He delivered a set to former colleagues in the FBI, whose counter-intelligence division would be the appropriate body to investigate. It is believed he also passed a copy to his own country’s intelligence service, but it felt constrained in what action it could take and left it up to the Americans to do their own investigation and draw their own conclusions.

As summer turned to autumn, the investigator was asked for more information by the FBI but heard nothing back about any investigation. The bureau seemed obsessed instead with classified material that flowed through a private email server set up by Clinton’s aides. The FBI’s director, James Comey, threw the election into a spin 11 days before the vote by announcing his investigators were examining newly discovered material.

The former intelligence official grew concerned that there was a cover-up in progress. On a trip to New York in October, he decided to pass the material to the press. He met David Corn, the Washington editor of Mother Jones, who first reported its existence on 31 October.

The FBI however continued to refuse to comment on the issue, despite reports that it had requested and perhaps acquired a warrant for further investigation from the Foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court. The silence was not altogether surprising. The FBI counter-intelligence division, headquartered in Washington, is extremely secretive, much more so than the New York field office, which had strong links to former prosecutor and mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was by then working for Trump.

The threat of leaks from New York about Clinton emails had reportedly pushed Comey into making his October surprise announcement.

In mid-November, the documents took another route into Washington that ultimately led to them being mentioned in the joint intelligence report on Russian interference that was delivered to President Obama and President-elect Trump. On 18 November, the annual Halifax International Security Forum opened in the Canadian city, bringing together serving and former security and foreign policy officials from around the world.

Senator John McCain, a hawkish Republican, was there and was introduced to a former senior western diplomat who had seen the documents, knew their source and thought him highly reliable. McCain decided the implications were sufficiently alarming to dispatch a trusted emissary, a former US official, to meet the source and find out more.

The emissary hastily arranged a transatlantic flight and met the source at the airport as arranged. (The Guardian has agreed not to specify the city or country where the meeting took place.) The meeting had a certain cold war tradecraft to it, as he was told to look for a man with a copy of the Financial Times. Having found each other, the retired counter-intelligence officer drove the emissary to his house, where they discussed the documents and their background.

The emissary flew back within 24 hours and showed McCain the documents, saying it was hard to impossible to verify them without a proper investigation. McCain said he was reluctant to get involved, lest it be perceived as payback for insulting remarks Trump had made about him during his rambunctious campaign.

However, on 9 December, McCain arranged a one-on-one meeting with Comey, with no aides present, and handed them over.

“Upon examination of the contents, and unable to make a judgment about their accuracy, I delivered the information to the Director of the FBI. That has been the extent of my contact with the FBI or any other government agency regarding this issue,” the senator said in a statement on Wednesday morning.

It is not clear what underpinned the FBI’s decision to include a summary of the documents in its highly classified briefing to the president and president-elect and their top staff, before the bureau had completed its investigation. It may have been as a defensive measure, to prove for posterity that it was not involved in a cover-up, or because its investigators believed them to be credible.

Whatever the motive, it was quickly leaked – first to CNN, which reported on the material on Wednesday. That triggered a controversial decision by BuzzFeed to publish an unredacted version of the documents on its website.

It is unclear where the BuzzFeed version came from. The author of the reports had been insistent on blotting out references to his Russian sources in the copies he gave to the press, including the Guardian, out of fear for their safety.

The unredacted version could have come from the original client, who commissioned the research, or from intermediaries between the counter-intelligence contractor and the client.

[OUTLAW 09]

Wall Street Journal Reportedly Identifies Source Of New Trump Dossier
19:52 (GMT)

http://www.interpretermag.com/live-updates-new-allegations-emerge-that-russia-is-blackmailing-donald-trump/?pressId=15920

The 35 page dossier detailing allegations that Donald Trump is being blackmailed by the Russians was, according to the news agencies that broke the story, compiled by a former British intelligence officer whom US intelligence agencies believe is "credible."

Now The Wall Street Journal has reportedly identified the author as#Christopher Steele, director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., who runs the firm with the other director, Christopher Burrows.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Orbis Business Intelligence was formed in 2009 by former British intelligence professionals, it says on its website. U.K. corporate records say Orbis is owned by another company that in turn is jointly owned by Messrs. Steele and Burrows. It occupies offices in an ornate building overlooking Grosvenor Gardens in London’s high-end Belgravia neighborhood.

The firm relies on a “global network” of experts and business leaders, provides clients with strategic advice, mounts “intelligence-gathering operations” and conducts “complex, often cross-border investigations,” its website says.#

Speaking about corporate-intelligence work in general terms, Mr. Burrows said “the objective is to respond to the requirements set out by our clients. We have no political ax to grind.”

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...now becomes the interesting times...as I first indicated the article was produced in UK...thus if Trump wanted to follow his normal self...he should be threatening to sue them for liable...which is easier to do in UK than the US....BUT he has not...

IMHO that will never occur as he then must consider the point that confirming and or supporting documents exist that would come out in UK court....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor..REMEMBER what I just posted....on what might have driven FBI to place a Trump called so called fake story into record....

THIS is in fact a very reputable UK journalist with a solid track record who would not go over the edge and fully understands "fake stories"....

Ben Judah ‏@b_judah 2h
2 hours ago

Listen to Paul Wood, BBC News, speaking of his multiple sources talking on Trump kompormat: tapes, audio and video.
https://youtu.be/KyFTRVvhM5M

Ben Judah ‏@b_judah 2h
2 hours ago

Here's a quick summary of where we stand according to the BBC.

1. Rumours have been circulating for months and dossier complied by ex-British intellignece has been circulating at least since October.

2. The ex-British intelligence officer, who compielled this whilst working on research for the opposition, is NOT the only source for this.

3. BBC heard from "member" of US intelligence that the head of East European intelligence service told him Russia had "kompromat" on Trump.
If this is true, then it might (must) be Estonian Information Board.
If this is the source then it's 100% credible. EIB has one of the best current Russian intelligence departments bar none....

4. The BBC has heard from US intelligence - "there is more than one tape, in more than one place, with video and audio as well."

5. Nobody at the BBC has seen these tapes and this is from an anonymous intelligence agent but, BBC says, it is seen as credible from CIA.

6. BBC says that Congressional Republicans are looking at investigations and that Congressional Democrats are talking about impeachments.

7. BBC says former British intelligence officer was working first for a SuperPac supporting Jeb Bush and then an anonymous Democrat donors.


WikiLeaks
Verified account
‏@wikileaks
35 page PDF published by Buzzfeed on Trump is not an intelligence report. Style, facts & dates show no credibility.

Wikileaks attacking a leak that is not in the Russian interest, again.

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...this goes to what I have been saying about raw HUMINT information being F6....meaning source unknown info cannot be confirmed given to every single Intelligence Information Report on the US side....

I spent years writing such reports out of Berlin...and even when I knew the info being provided was wrong you still have to send it up to be confirmed or denied..as that is what the source is actually saying..when a HUMINT collector is good you soon learn to filter what you send up....by confirming or denying at the collector levels....which is easy in most cases.

BUT this HUMINT was being paid for thus not filtered....

NOW jump forward to the opinion of a very good US former CI type who has worked Europe and knows very well Russian intel ops....

Really worth reading the entire article as it was long....

Donald Trump Addresses Dossier’s Pedestrian Claims
Putin and his spies have no need for clandestine meetings in Central European capitals

http://observer.com/2017/01/donald-trump-press-conference-prague-michael-cohen/
By John R. Schindler • 01/11/17 1:25pm



Just 10 days before his inauguration as our 45th president, Donald Trump’s nascent administration has been turned upside down by new accusations of secret Russian machinations that aided his election. These new allegations are largely unsubstantiated#and salacious to a degree never seen before about any American president.

First, CNN fired a shot across Trump’s bow late yesterday with a report alleging deep links between the president-elect and the Kremlin. Specifically, CNN stated that the heads of our Intelligence Community, who recently briefed Trump on Russian hacking and propaganda during 2016 that tried to influence our election, also informed the president-elect that Russian intelligence has compromising materials on him.

Kompromat, as they call it in Moscow, is the mother’s milk of Kremlin espionage, and given Trump’s larger-than-life persona, with its decades of dodgy finances and edgy dalliances with women, it should surprise no one that Russian spies have juicy information there which the public hasn’t seen, particularly given the president-elect’s numerous trips to Russia going back to 1987.

CNN noted that a dossier compiled by a former British intelligence official with long experience in Russian matters had been circulating in Washington since late last year, and was causing heartburn for American spies, since its allegations were explosive. Most seriously, it posited an on-going clandestine relationship between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin to swing the election Trump’s way.

Just as the commentariat began to shudder at the implications of this bombshell, Buzzfeed released the actual dossier, 35 pages crammed with allegations of grave wrongdoing, including espionage by Trump surrogates against fellow Americans. This was a rather standard example of raw human intelligence reporting, a mishmash of claims, some of them obviously untrue.

But the essence of its case—that Trump has been playing footsie with Vladimir Putin for years and knowingly accepted his secret help to win the White House—may well turn out to be true.

The media, unaccustomed to seeing raw HUMINT reports, acted aghast at#the salacious nature of some of the claims in the dossier: Trumpian sex romps caught on camera by Russian spies, our new commander-in-chief paying prostitutes to urinate on a hotel bed where President Obama had slept.

Whether those particular claims are true or not—and they ought to be looked at with immense skepticism and even the PEOTUS himself said today that his infamy as a germophobe, which way predates these accusations, ought to raise concerns about some of these tales—there’s no doubt that Putin’s Federal Security Service, the all-seeing FSB, keeps close tabs on foreign VIP’s when they’re on their turf. If Trump was unwise enough to engage in randy behavior in Russia, the FSB unquestionably has it on video.

Some of the dossier’s other claims are almost pedestrian. Putin long ago showed his hand, so the idea that he ordered his spy-minions to help Trump move into the White House isn’t exactly shocking, even if the alleged details of that sordid game may be. Moreover, claims that people like Paul Manafort and Carter Page, who were both officially purged from the Trump campaign last year for their glaringly obvious Kremlin links, kept talking to the Russians, sub rosa, right up to election day, are wholly credible.

The media is focusing on the juicy aspects of the dossier at the expense of the only truly important and potentially game-changing one. That’s the allegation that Trump’s representatives had clandestine meetings last summer with Russian government representatives—that’s the nice way of saying spies—to coordinate their secret anti-Hillary activities.

The report names several Russian representatives said to have met with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, including Oleg Solodukhin, who serves in Prague, posing as a diplomat, but is actually well known to Czech counterintelligence as a Kremlin spy. So far, so plausible—particularly since Prague is a hotbed of Russian espionage, and the number of Kremlin spies pretending to be diplomats there is remarkably high.

It’s time for some clarity. If Trump’s lawyer secretly met with Russian spies to coordinate anti-Hillary activities, it’s difficult to term that activity anything but treasonous, not to mention the “smoking gun” that links the president-elect to Putin. This claim, if true, would sink the Trump presidency before it even begins.

But did the meeting actually happen?

It’s looking less and less likely.

Jake Tapper from CNN, which has been very tough on Trump, tweeted before the press conference that “Government source confirms different Michael Cohen was in Prague.” Then Trump himself said his team had asked Cohen for his passport and confirmed that he had never been to the Czech Republic, a stance Cohen himself had taken by tweeting a picture of his passport—a bizarre gesture since any stamps indicating he had been to the Czech Republic would be inside the passport, not on the front jacket. If Michael Cohen, well known as a Trump loyalist and highly recognizable, had visited Prague in the summer, some proof of that trip would have likely surfaced by now. And it would have been incredibly reckless, even for a risk-taker like Trump, to state affirmatively that Cohen had not been in Prague if he actually had.

So it’s more than likely that charge—the most damaging in the dossier, if not the most lurid—is false. But that doesn’t mean all the rest of the charges are false.

This invariably brings to mind another strange saga of an alleged meeting in Prague. Back in 2002, as the Bush White House assembled an intelligence case to sell invading Saddam’s Iraq, reports circulated of a supposed rendezvous in the Czech capital, a few months before 9/11, between Iraqi intelligence and Mohammed Atta, the ringleader of Al-Qaida’s Planes Operation.

This was exactly what the White House wanted to hear, since it tied Saddam to 9/11, and it was hardly implausible on the face of it. Atta really had moved around Europe a lot—where exactly nobody could be sure—and Iraqi intelligence had a robust presence in Prague, where they surveilled American diplomatic facilities in a sinister fashion. However, hard evidence of any meeting was lacking.

White House pressure on the Intelligence Community mounted—I got caught up in it too, searching vainly for proof of Atta’s secret trip to Prague—and the hunt grew intense. The Czechs eventually backed away, their security service, known as BIS, officially deciding that Atta had not been in Prague and therefore could not have met with Iraqi spies. It all appeared to be a case of honest misunderstanding combined with circular reporting—and a Bush administration desperate for the the story to be true.

Back to today: on cue, right-wing social media has come to the president-elect’s defense, absurdly claiming that the dossier is an Internet hoax that fooled anti-Trump Republicans. There is as much evidence for this claim as for the assertion that the dossier was compiled by Jimmy Hoffa with help from Bigfoot.

For their part, the Russians are denying everything. Castigating the dossier as “pulp fiction” and a “clear attempt to damage relations,’ the Kremlin is following the “fake news” path illuminated by Trump’s fans in the West. This lives up to the old spy wag that you should only believe any report when Moscow publicly denies it.

Continued....

As usual, the president-elect is denying anything and everything, howling gigantic curses via Twitter against his foes and their “fake news.” He has pointed the finger at the Intelligence Community, bizarrely comparing 2017 America to Nazi Germany.

Trump’s online meltdown has included a lot of tweeting in capital letters, and has cited the Kremlin as proof of his innocence. We’re in a new and uncharted era when the soon-to-be-president thinks Moscow is to be taken at face value in espionage matters.

In truth, the provenance of the 35-page dossier is well known in proper channels. Some of its assertions have been made by other NATO intelligence agencies, privately. Some of its claims are false, some are true, and some may linger between truth and fiction indefinitely. [B]What’s important here is that the IC leadership decided to brief a small circle of the most senior American officials on that dossier’s findings. They don’t do that, ever—treating raw private intelligence reports by foreigners as worthy of briefing to “the top”—unless they can corroborate significant portions of it.

Continued.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor....there is more to this Trump so called fake story than we are reading.....


@peterjukes Cambridge Analytica (with Steve Bannon as board member) ran #Trump's campaign. Note Oleg Gordievski's comments.

Richard Dearlove pulled out of the Cambridge Intel group over "Russian infiltration", @peterjukes
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/16/intelligence-experts-cut-ties-cambridge-spy-seminars-amid-claims/#

[Azor]

http://www.interpretermag.com/live-updates-new-allegations-emerge-that-russia-is-blackmailing-donald-trump/?pressId=15920

Selected Excerpts:


The memo has clearly been cobbled together from various different reports, and if it is true that the reports originated in a firm owned by a former British MI6 agent, there are few Briticisms at all in the report, either in spelling or lexicon ("programmes" is on page 4, "organisation" on page 18). So it has been summarized and rewritten, perhaps with mistakes introduced along the way...

...we have to point out that certain episodes in this report do not seem consistent with what we know about Russia, and either they are bizarre enough to be true or evidence that it is false in part or in whole...

...But what's most odd about the claims for that meeting are that Sechin allegedly offered Page/Trump the 19.5% of shares in Rosneft that eventually went to Qatar and Glencore. It just doesn't make sense that Sechin would offer these shares to either a small American energy company or an American real estate mogul who do not have the cash for such a big investment (it sold for more than $11 billion) and who are not even in the oil business...It just doesn't seem plausible that they could ever have been offered to Americans in any form, especially these Americans. And to get Trump on their side, the Russians wouldn't need to force him to spend money he didn't have on an oil company in Russia where he would stick out like a sore thumb...

The weirdest part of the memo for Russia-watchers is the notion that Russian presidential administration spokesman Dmitry Peskov was handed this very sensitive dossier of Trump kompromat [compromising material] to manage, and then supposedly overplayed his hand, and he and others suffered the consequences...it makes no sense to have the PR voice of the presidential administration handling a dossier of this nature -- he wouldn't have compiled it as part of his job description, and it would be handled by intelligence agencies, either the FSB (Federal Security Service] or SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service]. He might be an end user of parts of such a dossier, but he himself didn't publicize them (unless he did so as part of his office's job telling state media what and what no to write)...

The Trump memo...evidence that the dossier is fake since the authors don't realize how the Kremlin works. If Putin did not trust his own intelligence agencies to handle such a sensitive matter and wanted personal control over it, he would not likely give the job to Peskov or even Ivanov, but rather he might bring in Viktor Zubkov, his former body guard -- former head of the Federal Protection Service which guards the leaders and the Kremlin grounds, and who is now head of the National Guard.

The part that has the most attention is the least substantiated. Could it be that someone as important as Trump orders prostitutes for the presidential suite, and they all disappear and are silent after taking bribes? Really? This seems bizarre and meant as a red herring. Trump has always been careful to surround himself with aides and lawyers who keep scandal away. We're to believe that he'd be indiscreet enough in Russia to hire prostitutes?

Of course, the entire memo could be yet another Russian disinformation operation of its own, as now total chaos has broken out in the media over it.

Gazeta.ru has questioned a key element of the memo, that Trump was assigned the job of providing intelligence on what Russian oligarchs do abroad. We found that odd as well, as we were unable to find any actual ties between major oligarchs and Trump, although he became involved with second-tier wealthy Russian businessmen like Arif Agalarov in the Miss Universe beauty pageant in Russia. Gazeta said they didn't think Trump would have anything to contribute that Russia's own networks would not report. They also expressed doubts about the sexual allegations.

[OUTLAW 09]

We already know the Trump campaign was in contact with RIS. What do you think Wikileaks is?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/02/trump-adviser-clinton-emails-wikileaks-roger-stone#

Trump adviser reveals how Assange ally warned him about leaked Clinton emails

Roger Stone told the Guardian he was briefed about the embarrassing and sensitive leaked emails by a ‘mutual friend’ of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange



A key confidante of Donald Trump has provided new details about the “mutual friend” of Julian Assange who served as a back channel to give him broad tips in advance about WikiLeaks’ releases of emails to and from key allies of Hillary Clinton.
Roger Stone, a longtime unofficial adviser to the Republican presidential nominee, was briefed in general terms in advance about the sensitive and embarrassing leaked Democratic emails by an American libertarian who works in the media on the “opinion side”, he told the Guardian in an interview.

Stone claims his American source, whom he declined to identify, has met with Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, in London and is a “mutual friend” of Stone and Assange. The WikiLeaks source, Stone said, is not tied in any way to the Trump campaign but has served as a back channel for Stone, who is an outside adviser to the Republican presidential candidate, allowing the adviser to tweet and comment very broadly prior to some key WikiLeaks disclosures.

Follow the aftermath of the publication of explosive unverified allegations that Donald Trump had secret contacts with Moscow and that Russia has personally compromising material on the president-elect

A source close to Trump Tower also told the Guardian that Stone once boasted to him of meeting with Assange himself and told the source, who is active in GOP political circles, that WikiLeaks would be “coming down like a ton of bricks” on Clinton. Stone adamantly denied meeting with Assange (“Your source is bull####ting u” he wrote in an email) or having any direct contact with Assange or anyone with WikiLeaks.

Despite Stone’s advance tweets and comments about some major WikiLeaks disclosures – including recent ones in October relating to Clinton campaign chair John Podesta and the Clinton Foundation – the self-styled “rabble rouser” and onetime Watergate dirty tricks operative said the FBI had not contacted him in its investigation into the illegal computer hacking of private Democratic emails, and he was not worried.

“There is nothing to investigate,” Stone said. The Obama administration has accused Russia of being the source of the hack.
But Stone’s tweets and comments about forthcoming WikiLeaks releases have put him in the media spotlight and is just one of the controversial ways he has played a role as an outside Trump booster and adviser, after a several-month stint last year as a key campaign insider.
In August, well before WikiLeaks released Podesta’s emails, Stone tweeted: “Trust me, it will soon Podesta’s time in the barrel.”

After thousands of Podesta’s emails were published last month, Podesta told reporters: “It’s a reasonable conclusion that Mr Stone had advanced warning and the Trump campaign had advanced warning about what Assange was going to do.”

In response to Podesta’s comments, Stone told the conservative Daily Caller: “I’ve admitted I’ve been in communication with Assange through an intermediary,” adding: “They don’t tell me what they’re going to release.”

[B]Likewise in August, Stone told a Florida audience: “I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.”

Last month, WikiLeaks released thousands of internal emails about the Clinton Foundation, including ones alleging a gender pay gap.
But Stone dismissed suggestions by Podesta and some congressional Democrats that he may have played a role in WikiLeaks releases or the hacking, stressing that he has no financial or client ties to Russia.

Roger Stone was in the crowd when Donald Trump introduced Mike Pence as his running mate. Photograph: LR/Pacific Press/Barcroft Images
Stone, who said he talked to Trump about once a week on average, is a regular on Infowars and other conservative talk radio shows, pushing conspiracy theories and espousing the unsubstantiated view, as Trump does, that the elections are rigged. “The entire election has been rigged, including the debates,” Stone told the Guardian.

Given that premise, Stone has been leading a controversial exit poll project in nine cities that has been attacked as potential “voter suppression” by independent experts, spawned a lawsuit from Democrats, and prompted one GOP operative who knows Stone to exclaim: “It’s right out of a Roger playbook as an example of voter suppression.”

Moreover, Stone said he “totally supports” Trump’s position of waiting until after the election to say whether he will accept the results if he loses. “It will depend solely on whether the election has been fairly conducted.”

“Roger operates by a different set of rules, and his object is to disrupt,” Peter Kelly, a former lobbying partner and a Democrat, told the Guardian. “He traffics in the unusual.”

Stone was a junior figure in Richard Nixon’s dirty tricks operation during the president’s re-election campaign in 1972 when, aged only 19, he pulled off two political scams, according to the 1973 congressional hearings on Watergate, hiring a GOP operative to infiltrate the campaign of Democrat George McGovern and making contributions to Republican Pete McCloskey in the name of the Young Socialist Alliance.

After Stone’s covert operations were revealed, he was sacked from his job on Senator Bob Dole’s staff. He has a tattoo of Nixon’s face on his back.
Several unsuccessful attempts were made to contact Assange for comment on any direct or indirect contact with Stone he may have had.

[OUTLAW 09]

POLITICO
✔
@politico
At his press conference, Trump filled the room with paid staffers who clapped and cheered as he blasted the mediahttp://politi.co/2jkBubF

No discipline, no strategy, no sense of irony or reality. Trump trainwreck press conference & a clueless presidencyhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/11/trumps-trainwreck-press-conference-ushers-in-a-clueless-presidency?CMP=share_btn_tw#

Remember when everybody said Trump was a media genius who could play the MSM effortlessly?
Also, we learned why he avoids press conferences.

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137239/watch-live-trump-holds-first-press-conference-as-president-elect

I see that CNN has determined that Michael Cohen was not in Prague secretly meeting with the Russians...

Appears there was in fact a M Cohen was in Prague on that date...but different person same name...Although it would be easy for him to go to the local FBI office sit down and explain exactly where he was....

There is though some indications that it was actually the correct Cohen and his passport photo was a stunt.....

[OUTLAW 09]

White House invokes birther claims after Trump bemoans 'fake news'

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/white-house-invokes-birther-claims-after-trump-bemoans-fake-news/ar-BByaAms?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

[Azor]

Rumours have been circulating for months and dossier complied by ex-British intelligence has been circulating at least since October. The ex-British intelligence officer, who compiled this whilst working on research for the opposition, is NOT the only source for this.

You mean the dossier compiled by a private investigator working for Jeb Bush and then various unknown Democrats?


BBC heard from "member" of US intelligence that the head of East European intelligence service told him Russia had "kompromat" on Trump. If this is true, then it might (must) be Estonian Information Board. If this is the source then it's 100% credible. EIB has one of the best current Russian intelligence departments bar none... The BBC has heard from US intelligence - "there is more than one tape, in more than one place, with video and audio as well."

Firstly, you are claiming that the BBC learnt from an unnamed US intelligence official or officer that the EIB claimed that Russia had compromising material on Trump. Then you are claiming the EIB and the US source as two separate corroborating sources…

You are attempting to create the appearance of multiple, credible and corroborating sources for this dossier when they don’t exist e.g. the BBC, Guardian and Observer.

As for the efficacy of Estonian intelligence, you might want to ask Herman Simm or those five intelligence officers convicted of embezzlement.

[Azor]

Appears there was in fact a M Cohen was in Prague...but different person same name...Although it would be easy for him to go to the local FBI office sit down and explain exactly where he was....

There is though some indications that it was actually the correct Cohen and his passport photo was a stunt.....

No, there are no indications, and even The Observer tried to backtrack and claim that Cohen didn't have to physically meet the Russians to be in contact. The Interpreter also craps all over this claim.

[TheCurmudgeon]

The CIA Directors are all career civil servants?

Brennan became a political appointee years ago and his two Deputy Directors are operatives with no experience in intelligence.

... and none of them came up with the intelligence. Nor would they ever come up with the intelligence. As you have pointed out, they are simply political appointees. They are not the dedicated civil servants of whom I have served with - of which I speak.

What seems clear is your total lack of understanding of how intelligence is gathered, processed, and presented.

[Azor]

... and none of them came up with the intelligence. Nor would they ever come up with the intelligence. As you have pointed out, they are simply political appointees. They are not the dedicated civil servants of whom I have served with - of which I speak.

What seems clear is your total lack of understanding of how intelligence is gathered, processed, and presented.

Well, aren't you being Curmudgeonly today...

Like it or not, political appointees speak for the US Intelligence Community.

What is most interesting in all of this is that the ODNI report contains no mention of Sanders, who WikiLeaks' main revelations gave a fighting chance at the Democratic National Convention, even after Clinton had secured the support of a clear majority of the super-delegates.

The report and various insinuations all imply that Trump is effectively a Russian agent and has been prior to launching his bid for the White House. Yet Putin would presumably have been satisfied with Sanders as President, who was both isolationist and in favor of slashing military spending. Unfortunately, Russia's preferences - which make sense - have been twisted into de-legitimizing Trump.

Also note the list of former intelligence officials who have publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton, and this list does not even include former NSC or DHS officials:


David Shedd (DIA)
John Negroponte (ODNI)
Michael Leiter (ODNI)
Matt Olsen (ODNI)
Michael Hayden (NSA)


CIA alone:


John Brennan (current Director)
David Petraeus (ex-Director)
Michael Morell (ex-Director)
Michael Hayden (ex-Director)
Robert Gates (ex-Director)
Mike Baker (officer)
Evan McMullin (officer)


I agree that Trump needs a good relationship with the US Intelligence Community, but that does not mean that Hillary's bitter partisans are not still running interference.

During Bill Clinton's tenure, it was said that the DCI would have to crash a helicopter into the White House to get an audience with Bubba, and yet we hear nothing about how Clinton ignored a CIA plan to destroy Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, or how the pretext for the Kosovo War was a complete sham.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Well, aren't you being Curmudgeonly today...



I agree that Trump needs a good relationship with the US Intelligence Community, but that does not mean that Hillary's bitter partisans are not still running interference.


Azor, get over your Hillary complex. She is not the President and she is not in the picture. If people don't like Trump, it is because they don't like Trump. Hillary did not tell Trump to ask the Russian to hack America to find Hillary's missing emails as a political ploy. Hillary did not tell Trump to deny that the Russian hacked the DNC. Hillary did not tell Trump to attack the Intelligence Community for doing their sworn duty. Hillary did not tell Trump to not release his financial information, so no one really knows if there is something there that the Russians can threaten him with. Hillary did not tell Trump to make this all about him, as if he is more important than than the people he will soon be sworn to serve (and not the other way around). Nope, that is all Trump. This is Trump's fault. Period.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Trump can solve half of this problem by simply releasing his tax returns and financial records. The shear fact that he does not indicates that there is something he wants to keep from the American people. This is not even secret information. Any number of accounting firms had the information (any of which were probably targets of hacking). So now, the Russians don't need to threaten him. They can go to his son-in-law, his close advisor, who is also financially tied to the Trump holdings, and threaten him. If he does not recommend policies the Russians like, then the Russians will release damaging financial information. This is all Espionage 101. Even if they don't know anything - even if they have absolutely no information, the threat alone will get a response. Nothing you did not get in you OPSEC training.

All Trump has to do to deflate the threat is release his financials. Yep that is it.

Oh, and Hillary is not telling him not to do that, in case you want to blame her.

Now do you see why what Trump is doing threatens our National Security? Now do you see why, even if the information from the British source is unsubstantiated, it can still be a threat and needs to be brought to his attention so he can deal with that threat like a responsible servant of the people (rather than calling the people trying to protect both him and the nation Nazis)?

(Yes, I use the handle TheCurmudgeon for a reason.)

[Azor]

Azor, get over your Hillary complex. She is not the President and she is not in the picture. If people don't like Trump, it is because they don't like Trump. Hillary did not tell Trump to ask the Russian to hack America to find Hillary's missing emails as a political ploy. Hillary did not tell Trump to deny that the Russian hacked the DNC. Hillary did not tell Trump to attack the Intelligence Community for doing their sworn duty. Hillary did not tell Trump to not release his financial information, so no one really knows if there is something there that the Russians can threaten him with. Nope, that is all Trump. This is Trump's fault. Period.

I'm not the one here with a complex bud.

Interesting that you point out Trump's joke but ignore the context that Hillary put classified materials at risk, and that it is not verified whether or not some of these were accessed by foreign powers.

According to the memo, the Russians have a video of the "golden shower" incident as Trump supposedly eschewed financial inducements, so tell me: will that appear on his tax returns?

Will his personal tax returns illustrate all of the foreign assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses of all of his companies and subsidiaries? Will they provide beneficial ownership information for all of these entities? Has the FBI done no vetting of Trump?

As there is absolutely zero evidence of Russia having any leverage over Trump, and as these insinuations began because of complimentary exchanges between Putin and Trump seized upon by the DNC and Clinton, you don't really have a point do you?

[TheCurmudgeon]

I'm not the one here with a complex bud.

Interesting that you point out Trump's joke but ignore the context that Hillary put classified materials at risk, and that it is not verified whether or not some of these were accessed by foreign powers.

According to the memo, the Russians have a video of the "golden shower" incident as Trump supposedly eschewed financial inducements, so tell me: will that appear on his tax returns?

Will his personal tax returns illustrate all of the foreign assets, liabilities, revenues, expenses of all of his companies and subsidiaries? Will they provide beneficial ownership information for all of these entities? Has the FBI done no vetting of Trump?

As there is absolutely zero evidence of Russia having any leverage over Trump, and as these insinuations began because of complimentary exchanges between Putin and Trump seized upon by the DNC and Clinton, you don't really have a point do you?

... and yet, you go straight to Hillary.

This is no longer an exchange of ideas. I wish you luck in you future endeavors.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Azor,

Do you know how the first openly gay linguist at the NSA was able to keep his security clearance?

"officials believed that a talented NSA linguist might be gay and stripped him of his security clearance, according to James Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace," a history of the code-breaking agency. But the linguist, represented by gay rights attorney Franklin E. Kameny, fought back. NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman agreed to a deal: The linguist could keep his job if he signed a document stating that he was gay, and if members of his family signed it, too, eliminating any possibility of blackmail."

Once information is open to the public, there is no longer a threat of blackmail. As long as personal information is withheld from the public ... well, you get the idea.

[Azor]

... and yet, you go straight to Hillary.

This is no longer an exchange of ideas. I wish you luck in you future endeavors.

Interesting, considering you replied to my post. Here are your ideas:



Azor, get over your Hillary complex.


What seems clear is your total lack of understanding of how intelligence is gathered, processed, and presented.


You are missing the point.


Oh, and I forgot your bit about how Trump was going to allow Putin to just waltz into the Baltics, although I forgot to query you on why he would need his "little green men" if Article V was a dead letter...

You as well.

[TheCurmudgeon]

Interesting, considering you replied to my post. Here are your ideas:









Oh, and I forgot your bit about how Trump was going to allow Putin to just waltz into the Baltics, although I forgot to query you on why he would need his "little green men" if Article V was a dead letter...

You as well.

Thanks. I am glad we can at least be civil.

[Azor]

Azor,

Do you know how the first openly gay linguist at the NSA was able to keep his security clearance?

"officials believed that a talented NSA linguist might be gay and stripped him of his security clearance, according to James Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace," a history of the code-breaking agency. But the linguist, represented by gay rights attorney Franklin E. Kameny, fought back. NSA Director Bobby Ray Inman agreed to a deal: The linguist could keep his job if he signed a document stating that he was gay, and if members of his family signed it, too, eliminating any possibility of blackmail."

Once information is open to the public, there is no longer a threat of blackmail. As long as personal information is withheld from the public ... well, you get the idea.

I actually am aware of that story, although I had forgotten the name of the person and the agency.

But I don't see the relevance here.

With respect to Trump and Russia, the compromising materials are already in the public forum, right? Much of the damage is done as millions of Americans now believe that Trump is not only a Russian agent but sexually perverted as well. In many respects this is a rather ironic reversal of the "birther" movement, albeit one that cannot be so easily dispelled.

The burden of proof is on Trump, despite the fact that his die-hard followers will dismiss the allegations. How does one disprove something that doesn't exist and is supposedly in the hands of a rival that denies it?

[TheCurmudgeon]

Oh, and I forgot your bit about how Trump was going to allow Putin to just waltz into the Baltics, although I forgot to query you on why he would need his "little green men" if Article V was a dead letter...

I stand by this statement. Let's watch what happens in the Baltics over the next two years.

Lets see if Trump continues Obama's expansion of our European Reassurance Initiative, or if the money for American rotational Brigades in Poland and Estonia dries up.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I actually am aware of that story, although I had forgotten the name of the person and the agency.

But I don't see the relevance here.

With respect to Trump and Russia, the compromising materials are already in the public forum, right? Much of the damage is done as millions of Americans now believe that Trump is not only a Russian agent but sexually perverted as well. In many respects this is a rather ironic reversal of the "birther" movement, albeit one that cannot be so easily dispelled.

The burden of proof is on Trump, despite the fact that his die-hard followers will dismiss the allegations. How does one disprove something that doesn't exist and is supposedly in the hands of a rival that denies it?

Actually no. None of the financial information is in the public forum.

Trump was always a sexual pervert. That was never in question. Nor does he really care about that (that I can tell). He never claimed that the tapes of him talking about groping women was false. I think he (and his big hands), rather enjoy the notoriety. What he cares about is his image as a business mogul. Now, should his financials show that he is not actually a billionaire, but simply a multi-millionaire, that would hurt his image.

To be perfectly honest, I don't care if he likes to have sex with goats. I care about whether he is vain enough to make decisions based on a threat of releasing negative information. I care about whether, once he takes the oath to support and defend the Constitution, he will place his personal vanity above that oath.

He disproves it by making all the relevant data public. He disproves it by releasing his financial data.

[Azor]

I stand by this statement. Let's watch what happens in the Baltics over the next two years. Let’s see if Trump continues Obama's expansion of our European Reassurance Initiative, or if the money for American rotational Brigades in Poland and Estonia dries up.

Presently, only Poland and Estonia seem to be taking the threat from Russia seriously enough to devote 2% or more of their GDP to defense.

Nevertheless, none of these countries are taking the Russian threat as seriously as Americans would believe, or else you would see defense expenditures rise well above 2% of GDP, perhaps more in line with South Korea and Israel. Moreover, many in Germany, France, Italy and Greece aren't particularly interested in Eastern European concerns, although they are in no hurry to shrug off the American umbrella.

The European Reassurance Initiative for just that, reassurance of the Europeans, rather than for the deterrence of the Russians. Yet there are no indications that Putin is not fully aware of the differences between NATO and non-aligned countries, and if he was intending on a small and restricted conflict in order to break NATO’s political will, then why would he have to strike in Narva or the Suwalki Gap? Why not settle any outstanding Arctic disagreements with Canada, Denmark or Norway? After all, some military posturing over uninhabited ice floes and unexploited undersea energy resources is a far cry from turning Narva into Donetsk. The ERI is no more than a tripwire and Washington would have to abrogate the CFE Treaty (already withdrawn from by Moscow) in order to deploy the necessary heavy brigades to the Baltic region and possibly change the Russian military calculus.


Actually no. None of the financial information is in the public forum.

The accusations of his indebtedness to Russia are. Again, has the FBI not vetted him?


Trump was always a sexual pervert. That was never in question. Nor does he really care about that (that I can tell). He never claimed that the tapes of him talking about groping women was false. I think he (and his big hands), rather enjoy the notoriety. What he cares about is his image as a business mogul. Now, should his financials show that he is not actually a billionaire, but simply a multi-millionaire, that would hurt his image. To be perfectly honest, I don't care if he likes to have sex with goats. I care about whether he is vain enough to make decisions based on a threat of releasing negative information. I care about whether, once he takes the oath to support and defend the Constitution, he will place his personal vanity above that oath. He disproves it by making all the relevant data public. He disproves it by releasing his financial data.

In my personal opinion, his reluctance to release the tax returns is due to having a lower income than one would ascribe to a person with a nine-figure net worth. He is a "businessman", but makes his money on branding himself.

Nor do I think that the Russia issue will be put to bed if he releases his tax returns.

As for personal vanity, well…that was a given no matter who you voted for on November 8th.

[TheCurmudgeon]

The accusations of his indebtedness to Russia are. Again, has the FBI not vetted him?


Who, The President Elect? No, the FBI does not vet him.

[TheCurmudgeon]

In my personal opinion, his reluctance to release the tax returns is due to having a lower income than one would ascribe to a person with a nine-figure net worth. He is a "businessman", but makes his money on branding himself.

Nor do I think that the Russia issue will be put to bed if he releases his tax returns.

The shear fact that he does not release them means that it is important enough to him that it can be used against him. I don't care what his personal reasons are. Reality is, he does not want them released. The only question is, how far will he go to keep them private.

[Azor]

Who, The President Elect? No, the FBI does not vet him.

I thought that the FBI did some background checking...

Perhaps they should in the future.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I thought that the FBI did some background checking...

Perhaps they should in the future.

under what provision of the Constitution? As long as he is thirty-five years of age, born in the U.S, and elected by the Electoral College, there is nothing any other agency can do to limit his powers as the president. It would not matter if the FBI came out and said "We have evidence of Trump taking bribes from the Russians," he would still get the highest level security clearance and access to all information until his impeachment.

[TheCurmudgeon]

I really hope I am wrong. Even though I have personal disdain for Trump on a multitude of levels, I would really rather eat crow and take back my words when I find out that he becomes the best President since Reagan. Even though I am bound by my oath to obey his orders. I really worry that he will place his own interests above his duty as a public servant.

This is just my humble opinion based on what I have observed so far.

When it comes to matters of National Security, I am not a republican, democrat, nor an independent. I am an American.

Blame it on the scotch (Glenmorangie 12 year old Quinta Ruban), but that is just the way I feel.

[TheCurmudgeon]

When it comes to matters of National Security, I am not a republican, democrat, nor an independent. I am an American.

Blame it on the scotch (Glenmorangie 12 year old Quinta Ruban), but that is just the way I feel.

Okay, I admit that being an American, I should prefer Bourbon over Scotch, but what can I say ... I am an Anglophile. :D

[Azor]

I really hope I am wrong. Even though I have personal disdain for Trump on a multitude of levels, I would really rather eat crow and take back my words when I find out that he becomes the best President since Reagan. Even though I am bound by my oath to obey his orders. I really worry that he will place his own interests above his duty as a public servant.

This is just my humble opinion based on what I have observed so far.

When it comes to matters of National Security, I am not a republican, democrat, nor an independent. I am an American.

Blame it on the scotch (Glenmorangie 12 year old Quinta Ruban), but that is just the way I feel.

Trump's certainly not ideal. Even after Bush's, McCain's and Palin's gaffes, if you had told me in 2008 that Trump would become president in 2016, I would have laughed it off as insane. Romney would have been a good President, albeit uninspiring...

I do hope that Trump rises to the occasion or at least that his administration does.

In many respects, once you take away the "infotainment" aspect of modern governance, Trump seems as though he might be the Reagan to Carter's Obama. Carter was a highly underrated President and Reagan highly overrated; much of the criticism of the former and lionizing of the latter is due more to style than substance, especially where defense and foreign policy are concerned.

Both Trump and Clinton ran scorched earth campaigns, and had Clinton won, she would be subject to the same attempts to de-legitimize her win (substitute Russia for Qatar) as well as calls for impeachment on day one.

It is my suspicion that this dossier is simply unused ammunition left over from the election campaign, but I may be wrong. Either way, it needs to be dealt with.

Whether by Putin's hand or not, faith in American democracy has taken some body blows in 2016...

[Azor]

Okay, I admit that being an American, I should prefer Bourbon over Scotch, but what can I say ... I am an Anglophile. :D

Americans developed a taste for sweeter whiskeys during Prohibition, when they were forced to turn to Canadian whiskey which was far from rye...

I'll take Bourbon, Scotch or Rye. It is Winter, after all...

[TheCurmudgeon]

Trump's latest tweet explains my disdain:

Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is "A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE." Very unfair!

Okay, I did not receive $100,000,000 from my father. Nor did I receive an education at special prep schools, nor have my college education paid for. I earned everything I have through my own effort.

Obviously Trump's idea of what is "very unfair" and mine are not the same.

This distinction makes me wonder what he thinks his oath means? Will it be "very unfair" for him to have to put the good of the nation above his own personal interests?

[OUTLAW 09]

Interesting, considering you replied to my post. Here are your ideas:









Oh, and I forgot your bit about how Trump was going to allow Putin to just waltz into the Baltics, although I forgot to query you on why he would need his "little green men" if Article V was a dead letter...

You as well.

Azor...will give you a short lesson on just how humint works...someone presents you information...first question is "access" meaning just how they got it..next question how long do you know the individual who is reporting and last one is can you verify anything that is being provided.....

Here we have a retired and evidently quite successful MI6 agent known for his Russian intel quality that comes to a degree out of the Russian community in east and west and business types....

THEN we have the issue with what CNN and others have pointed out ...Cohen was not in Prague...BUT WAIT...appears that the Czech BIS is confirming that indeed a M. Cohen was in fact in Prague on the stated day..more they are not saying.

Could it be a second Cohen ...my full name minus middle initial is in Berlin on any given day a minimum of three times...

Trump and his team thus defined the entire report "fake news" the easiest way to push back and he is still using this...TRYING desperately to deflect/dismiss/distort the report....THREE of the Russian SIX Ds of propaganda....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 38m
38 minutes ago

We had a great News Conference at Trump Tower today. A couple of FAKE NEWS organizations were there but the people truly get what's going on


BTW...ask yourself the simple question WHY is Trump spending an amazing amount of time trying to discredit US MSM.....???

BUT to a huminter the single fact that yes the name did in fact exist and was in Prague on that stated date verifies to a degree what they individual is saying thus the rest of the report takes on a new quality.....

I get going back to my previous comments.....WHY was the report credible enough to be included by the FBI AND vetted by the ODNI and accepted by the ODNI??????

THAT Trump has not answered.....NOR has the IC.....

REMEMBER they knew Trump's opinion of them as he has repeated his distrust bordering virtually on dislike of them SO WHY include something that reinforces that opinion????

UNLESS you are sending him a clear and concise warning....

REMEMBER Trump and his natsec...uttered nothing about this AFTER their own specific briefing...

IF it was you and or me...we would be screaming this to the heavens when we came out of that briefing IF we were in fact innocent in order to get ahead of potential damage.....

BUT DID we hear a single word about this...nothing...until people started digging in the unclassed version and found the short para where it was vaguely mentioned...and when that did not grap the US MSM then came Buzzfeed to break the news....

THEN we get hammered by the Trump crew about this mistake or that mistake thus FAKE NEWS.....even CNN actually failed to mention in several of their comments...the simple caveat "this report is raw intelligence information"....

I will give you an example...I had someone come to me who wanted to talk about the local Salafist insurgent groups in Baqubah Iraq then the literal Wild West..during those talks I was amazed at the vast and wide knowledge the person was trying to tell me...first I was skeptical as I had not heard of many of the groups nor their leader names and numbers of fighters.....

BUT when I dug into the story it was determined that the person was always cooking for those who were using the house for their meetings...the person knew virtually everything....then we raided one site to confirm and or deny the information and it was a major success and then we raided on everything that was provided rolling up group after group driving almost all Salafist groups out of Baqubah...normally one does not raid on what is referred to as "single source information".........

So treat this report with the same skepticism I initially did until I reread it a number of times BUT do not rule out the simple fact...portions of it might in fact be totally correct....AND even a few things being correct that is massively bad.....

THIS is the approach BBC is taking....and if you really want to become knowledgeable on Trump's Russian money flows PAY close attention to the reports being published and largely ignored by US MSM by Financial Times....extremely detailed and thorough and fact checked that reinforce the Buzzfeed article....

[Azor]

Reviewing the dossier in greater detail, it can be distilled into the following themes:


Trump sought to do business in Russia, but was rebuffed. He settled for sexual services instead

Trump declined financial inducements from the Kremlin in the way of "sweetener real estate business deals", but was compromised by a sex tape involving prostitutes and "golden showers"

Trump has been in contact with the Kremlin for 5-8 years plotting this campaign for the presidency

Trump has received Russian intelligence on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. In exchange, Trump has provided intelligence on Russian oligarchs residing in the US

Putin encouraged and supported Trump’s bid for the presidency in order to render the US more isolationist, weaken NATO and give Russia a freer hand internationally

Trump was pleased to have the election campaign revolve around US-Russian relations because he had extensive and corrupt business dealings in China and various emerging markets


My brief analysis

Aside from the well-worn accusations about Manafort, Stone, Cohen and Page, some of which are true (e.g. Manafort’s work for Yanukovych) and some of which are false (e.g. Cohen’s secret meeting in Prague), the only new allegations are as follows:

The supposed existence of a sex tape involving Trump and prostitutes
The assertion that Trump does not have business dealings in or illicit financial arrangements with Russia
rump’s supposed corrupt business dealings in China and other emerging markets

My Response

1. & 2. Unless the sex tape is made public, it’s existence is impossible to prove or disprove. Given that this is the major charge of the dossier and given that it conveniently fits with the Clinton narrative of Trump being misogynistic and Hillary’s campaigning on gender identity, it must be treated suspiciously. Supposedly the Kremlin needed the sex tape as leverage because Trump refused financial inducements, which is very curious because financial inducements would produce evidence of suspicious transactions. In addition, why would Trump require the services of Russian prostitutes, as opposed to American ones? Why would Trump pursue corrupt deals in other emerging markets but not Russia?

3. If Trump was engaging in corrupt transactions in China and other emerging markets (excluding Russia), why would Steele/Orbis not hunt that lead down? Why rely upon the say-so of various Russian informers who are not involved in those transactions? Surely the investigation could have been widened to encompass China and other countries…

In the final analysis, this dossier revolves around a sex tape, which is used as the honeypot (no pun intended) to lead the public to a mere regurgitation of allegations made against Trump and his advisors during his campaign against Clinton.

Given that The Interpreter, which is funded by RFE/RL and which is decidedly opposed to Putin, has dismantled the dossier’s credibility, there isn’t much to be gleaned by following the repetition in the mainstream media, which is more interested in the salaciousness of the story than its veracity.

[Azor]

RE: Chris Steele

This is an ex-intelligence officer who now works for whoever pays him, correct? Not unlike a police officer who becomes a private detective. Steele has admittedly worked for the Jeb Bush campaign and then unnamed Democrats following Bush’s withdrawal from contention. This seems to me to be unused ammunition left over from the Hillary-Trump war that was not used because perhaps the Democrats wanted to “go high” as Michelle Obama would have it, or perhaps because they feared dirty tricks blow-back.

When I think about an ex-SIS officer involving himself in the presidential campaign, I am reminded of Obama's involvement in the Remain campaign. Remember "back of the queue"? That was clearly written by the British and spoken by Obama as a favor to Cameron. What is to say that the US defense, foreign policy and intelligence hawks, all of whom sided with Hillary, didn't have their cousins across the pond do them a similar favor?

RE: Michael Cohen in Prague

Cohen denies being there or even having ever visited Prague, and there are suggestions that he was confused with another Michael Cohen or an “M. Cohen”. The denial is fairly unequivocal and so unless evidence comes to light that would make Cohen a complete liar, I will take him at his word for now. Trust, but verify.

RE: Trump and the MSM

The MSM, FOX aside, threw their hats in the ring with Clinton and got to work on “Project Fear”:


Trump will crater the US economy
Trump will start a nuclear war with Russia
No. Trump won’t be assertive enough with Russia and let them take over
Trump will dismantle NATO and then Russia and China will take over
No. Trump will be too confrontation with China and risk war
Trump is beholden to Russia
No. Trump is actually beholden to China
Trump is a racist and xenophobe
No. Trump is overly supportive of Israel
Trump is too isolationist
No. Trump will be too confrontational with Iran and too harsh in attacking Daesh
All of the above


What did they expect? They played hardball and now they’re complaining that there’s another Nixon in the White House…

RE: Trump Dossier

The IC did not claim that the dossier was “credible”, merely that the allegations were making the rounds and that Trump should be aware. Trump quickly decried the allegations and then attacked the media and whoever in the IC leaked the dossier to Buzz Feed.

As for “Russian money flows”, the dossier alleged that the compensation to Trump was in the form of intelligence and sexual services from prostitutes.

[OUTLAW 09]

Reviewing the dossier in greater detail, it can be distilled into the following themes:


Trump sought to do business in Russia, but was rebuffed. He settled for sexual services instead

Trump declined financial inducements from the Kremlin in the way of "sweetener real estate business deals", but was compromised by a sex tape involving prostitutes and "golden showers"

Trump has been in contact with the Kremlin for 5-8 years plotting this campaign for the presidency

Trump has received Russian intelligence on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton. In exchange, Trump has provided intelligence on Russian oligarchs residing in the US

Putin encouraged and supported Trump’s bid for the presidency in order to render the US more isolationist, weaken NATO and give Russia a freer hand internationally

Trump was pleased to have the election campaign revolve around US-Russian relations because he had extensive and corrupt business dealings in China and various emerging markets


My brief analysis

Aside from the well-worn accusations about Manafort, Stone, Cohen and Page, some of which are true (e.g. Manafort’s work for Yanukovych) and some of which are false (e.g. Cohen’s secret meeting in Prague), the only new allegations are as follows:

The supposed existence of a sex tape involving Trump and prostitutes
The assertion that Trump does not have business dealings in or illicit financial arrangements with Russia
rump’s supposed corrupt business dealings in China and other emerging markets

My Response

1. & 2. Unless the sex tape is made public, it’s existence is impossible to prove or disprove. Given that this is the major charge of the dossier and given that it conveniently fits with the Clinton narrative of Trump being misogynistic and Hillary’s campaigning on gender identity, it must be treated suspiciously. Supposedly the Kremlin needed the sex tape as leverage because Trump refused financial inducements, which is very curious because financial inducements would produce evidence of suspicious transactions. In addition, why would Trump require the services of Russian prostitutes, as opposed to American ones? Why would Trump pursue corrupt deals in other emerging markets but not Russia?

3. If Trump was engaging in corrupt transactions in China and other emerging markets (excluding Russia), why would Steele/Orbis not hunt that lead down? Why rely upon the say-so of various Russian informers who are not involved in those transactions? Surely the investigation could have been widened to encompass China and other countries…

In the final analysis, this dossier revolves around a sex tape, which is used as the honeypot (no pun intended) to lead the public to a mere regurgitation of allegations made against Trump and his advisors during his campaign against Clinton.

Given that The Interpreter, which is funded by RFE/RL and which is decidedly opposed to Putin, has dismantled the dossier’s credibility, there isn’t much to be gleaned by following the repetition in the mainstream media, which is more interested in the salaciousness of the story than its veracity.

Azor... really rethink your comments....while virtually everyone you think including Trump has declared it "fake news"...what are the comments by very good ex spy types with years of experience in this type of Russian/Czech approach...as the Czechs had perfected it....

They are skeptical BUT they then state....some makes sense let's wait to see what else pops up and quietly they are waiting for more to pop up....they view these leaks as a series of not so subtle warnings to Trump and his four Russian advisors....

If one or two items in the report prove to be correct then they will take a totally different and more positive view....

BUT I am more interested in the words Trump and his team use.......in their deflection of this article as it goes to the words they used throughout the campaign....

Paula Chertok @PaulaChertok
I've analyzed some of Trump's propaganda toolkit. His use of language to divide & conquer is truly insidious
https://paulachertok.com/2016/10/24/trump-orwell-rigged-campaign-putin-russia-propaganda-playbook-language/#

[Azor]

Azor... really rethink your comments....while virtually everyone you think including Trump has declared it "fake news"...what are the comments by very good ex spy types with years of experience in this type of Russian/Czech approach...as the Czechs had perfected it....

They are skeptical BUT they then state....some makes sense let's wait to see what else pops up and quietly they are waiting for more to pop up....they view these leaks as a series of not so subtle warnings to Trump and his four Russian advisors....

If one or two items in the report prove to be correct then they will take a totally different and more positive view...

Note that I haven't called the dossier fake news. It was written and exists, but I do believe that is a fabrication where Trump personally is concerned. This of course, may change.

Well, first it was the Estonians who had outstanding intelligence and now it is the Czechs... Yet the BIS claims that Prague is overrun by GU and SVR officers, and the Czech government is one of the EU and NATO members most friendly toward Russia.

These leaks are hardly warnings. How is it, that Chris Steele and Orbis uncovered this plot that had been ongoing for 5-8 years, but no European intelligence agency did (including the SIS), or if they did, they failed to alert the CIA? Brennan and the CIA were decidedly in favor of Hillary winning the election, and so why would they sit on such a dossier or not create one of their own? This information could have swung the election, and Brennan was not shy about differing from the ODNI line, just as Comey was not shy (allegedly) about ignoring DOJ instructions...

[OUTLAW 09]

No, there are no indications, and even The Observer tried to backtrack and claim that Cohen didn't have to physically meet the Russians to be in contact. The Interpreter also craps all over this claim.

Azor...even your recital of 20@committee presentation is wrong...go back and thoroughly this time reread the article...you might actually have a different assumption at the end of what he wrote....

You thoroughly do not fully and completely understand just how especially HUMINT is gathered....written up and then processed inside the intel chain of analysis....

I will give you something that in the end was verified by national level agencies much to their surprise and for which I got laughed at all the way up the national intel chain...that laughter was heard all the way back to Berlin and I had to grin and bear it.....but that is the way HUMINT sometimes works...sometimes you win some and sometimes who lose some....

I once wrote a report taken from a local farmer...country remains unnamed....who in my conversations about farming life and farmer shortages suddenly started rambling about a train silver in color that would race through his village on unannounced days usually around 0200/0300 in the morning making so much noise due to the speed that he could not sleep...that was what he was complaining about......well there was a rail line near his house for starters but listed as largely unused...but at least a rail line .....BTW..largely listed as unused but in great condition for an unused line which was strange at that time thus the report..

Well up went the report of this "unidentified silver bullet train traveling on an unused rail line" single report.....from Berlin to DC they thought I had lost my mind....but what is said is reported in the HUMINT business...

After several months the laughter died out BUT six months later I get an urgent call from the DC analysts ..can you recontact the farmer and ask the following additional questions...l.....

Appears that the bullet train was in fact the Soviet mobile rail launched ICBM system that Russia has now put back into service and I had stumbled by accident onto the rail line being used at that time...then the train was in fact verified and was actually silver in color....DC was no longer laughing....

REFERENCE this Buzzfeed report...in the HUMINT business one must report what is heard and or stated....letting others confirm or deny...

HUMINT is so important....why...satellites and SIGINT cannot tell you what is behind door four on the fifth underground floor of a bunker complex....nor what officers say during exercise discussions or what is being produced in a side factory located nowhere on a map...behind three other factories.....

THIS report is interesting because in fact what is being reported has not been actually denied as having occurred nor has it be confirmed.......

Will give you a hint...sometimes that even happens with a polygraph test....we cannot tell if he is lying or telling the truth....and you are forced to make a judgment call based largely on your years of experience in this business.

Or as the Navy tells aircraft pilots on their last seconds of the carrier approach..."call the ball"...meaning it is all yours now....you make the call that is what you are paid for.....

It all depends on the quality of the sources being used.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor..this caught my attention as it goes to what I have been virtually preaching to you....the WHY was it included.....?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/intel-officials-defend-briefing-trump-on-allegations/ar-AAlMfTB?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

CHECK the highlighted para.....


Reporters from various news outlets also had sought confirmation of the information with Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist, but he hadn’t seen a copy of the document before Tuesday and denied passing any copies to U.S. intelligence.

“Many, many, many (people saw the report) in recent months because it’s a small enough circle of people and reporters and others are running into each other and crossing trails as they went through this thing,” Wilson#said Wednesday.

The U.S. official with knowledge of the matter confirmed Wednesday that McCain gave material to the FBI. The same documents, however, had been in the possession of the bureau months before McCain's contact, said the official who is not authorized to comment publicly.

Authorities have been examining the information since it was first obtained, but the official said that the salacious contents of it have remained unsubstantiated. As authorities became aware of the raw document's widening circulation and the imminent possibility that could be made public, top officials decided to include the summary as an appendix to the packet compiled to brief the president-elect on Russia's efforts to influence the U.S. election.

"These presidential briefings are always evolving and changing based on who occupies the office,'' said former FBI assistant director Ron Hosko. "But I think there is a naivete on the part of the public and press about the kind of influence campaigns that countries like Russia and China are pursuing. These are nation states who are all about getting an advantage in our world. Even if this information is unsubstantiated, it ought to be included (in a briefing) as something that could be used against a president.''

NOTICE the following formulation....

Authorities have been examining the information since it was first obtained, but the official said that the salacious contents of it have remained unsubstantiated

THIS tells me one clear and concise point...everything outside of the sex tape/tapes WAS in fact substantiated....

BUT somehow that got overlooked by Trump and his staff did it not????

BTW...this below is what I have been trying to get you to fully understand....comment from social media here in Europe....

I personally feel my walls of paranoia just crumbled & I changed to believers camp.

[OUTLAW 09]

FOX & friends
✔
@foxandfriends
EXCLUSIVE: Rudy Giuliani announces he's forming a cyber security group on behalf of Trump administration

THIS is the same exact Giuliani that announced before the FBI did that the FBI has going to reinvestigate Clinton..did he not AND the same Giuliani who "knew" about the WikiLeaks email dump that was coming but no one else knew about it....

AND the same Giuliani what then stated he knew the Russians had not been hacking the US and the DNC.....

This is the same Giuliani right?????

[OUTLAW 09]

The US has no censorship of the press and has freedom of press right?????

Trump employees were peaking over reporters' shoulders and checking their notes today.
https://www.ft.com/content/2af60a20-d835-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e#
… from @GaryRSilverman

BTW...this is the same UK media outlet that is doing extensive reporting on the Trump Russia money trail.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...one thing this has been good for is that now EU especially Germany has fully awoken to the Russian influence and hacking operations and has caught the curve.....

MFA Russia 🇷🇺
✔
@mfa_russia
#Zakharova:Germany continues to whip up hysteria over #Russia’s alleged attempts to meddle in political processes in #Germany |@RusBotschaft

MFA Russia 🇷🇺
✔
@mfa_russia
#Zakharova: We regret that #Berlin decided to follow in the steps of the #US without thinking how it could affect Russian-German relations

[OUTLAW 09]

Note that I haven't called the dossier fake news. It was written and exists, but I do believe that is a fabrication where Trump personally is concerned. This of course, may change.

Well, first it was the Estonians who had outstanding intelligence and now it is the Czechs... Yet the BIS claims that Prague is overrun by GU and SVR officers, and the Czech government is one of the EU and NATO members most friendly toward Russia.

These leaks are hardly warnings. How is it, that Chris Steele and Orbis uncovered this plot that had been ongoing for 5-8 years, but no European intelligence agency did (including the SIS), or if they did, they failed to alert the CIA? Brennan and the CIA were decidedly in favor of Hillary winning the election, and so why would they sit on such a dossier or not create one of their own? This information could have swung the election, and Brennan was not shy about differing from the ODNI line, just as Comey was not shy (allegedly) about ignoring DOJ instructions...

Azor...you mentioned Steele a number of times....his reports are actually when a EU based journalist working in Russia reflect the tone and words used when he deals with his sources for information.....
'
Christo Grozev @christogrozev
Too early to call. I think some of @MarkGaleotti's concerns are excessive. For ex, that's how I talk to my sources in RU.

Christo Grozev ‏@christogrozev
Surprise, surprise. Guess who co-founded/funded the Prisma app, which last year I identified as a huge security risk? Yep, this same Gubarev

Evidence was initially provided by ex MI6 officials; @CIA and @FBI vetted individual and sources enough to present to Prez & PrezE

Reference second point taken from Buzzfeed report.....
THIS part I can confirm from my own unrelated source

[OUTLAW 09]

@juliaioffe in @theatlantic about kompromat, the particularly Russian art of blackmail
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/01/kompromat-trump-dossier/512891/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...he is mirroring what I am saying..Trump is way in over his head and he does not realize it yet....

When you decide to cross of the dark side as Trump has with Russian money and influence you are constantly looking over your shoulder to see when the next shoe drops and it will always drop....

John Schindler
✔
@20committee
Going to war with the IC & the MSM at the same time while publicly gloating about your pals in the Kremlin.

There's no way that ends badly.

US to #Israel: "Don't share intelligence with us under #Trump or #Putin will know."
Let this melt in your mouth.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4906642,00.html#…

[OUTLAW 09]

Creeping authoritarianism watch - member of Congress calls on reporter to be fired/banned for asking questions of president-elect. Not good.

REMEBER THIS...go back to the actual recording of this exchange between Trump and the CNN reporter...IF anything Trump was totally and completely disrespect...

[OUTLAW 09]

DOES the US now have a vengeful President in the form of a Nixon 2.0????

AT&T is seeking to buy Time Warner, including CNN. A few minutes after the AT&T execs arrived, Trump sent his anti-CNN tweet.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago

.@CNN is in a total meltdown with their FAKE NEWS because their ratings are tanking since election and their credibility will soon be gone!

[OUTLAW 09]

Instead of a true Commander in Chief..we now have a Commander of Sales...question is does he own stock in the company?????

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 2h
2 hours ago

Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean.

[OUTLAW 09]

"early symptoms of several of the shortcomings afflicting unconsolidated democracies and competitive authoritarian regimes around the world"

Trump Shows How to Smother a Scandal: With a Bigger Story
https://nyti.ms/2jzIBwe#

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump falsely says DNI Clapper said the dossier was phony, in fact he said the IC had not made a determination about its reliability.

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor....UPDATE to the Buzzfeed article.....

1. the Buzzfeed article is built on 17 individual humint raw intel reports....

BUT those released 17 were evidently copied from the original Steele produced reports WHICH carried his company logos and correctly identified as being reports from his company backed up by UK sources supporting documentation were possible....that explains sometimes wrong spelling....typos and or different type set...

The ongoing question is who copied them.....

2. SO what Trump critiqued Buzzfeed on was not what he was presented by the US IC...

3. UK former intel types are saying the Steele company is small but has years of experience in Russia and their sources are considered to be of quality

4. same types are also saying out of the 17 reports one or two might not be fully correct BUT that does not reflect on all of them which they feel based on what was read is in fact totally possible....

WHAT the UK ex spy indicated that is extremely interesting and might in fact explain why the FBI allowed the inclusion of the document.....the original Steel document indicates that a number of Russian émigrés residing in the US were used by the GRUFSB as money funnels into the Trump campaign when funds were low due to poor fundraising on the part of the Trump campaign n and black money was often used to push rallies and overall costs.....he went to say that a few investigative journalists were already tracking that report down and were close to releasing their research....

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump calls BuzzFeed a “failing pile of garbage” which is wildly unfair as we are a succeeding pile of garbage.

[OUTLAW 09]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/13/trump-s-man-stephen-ban...
Steve Bannon’s Dream: A Worldwide Ultra-Right
Bannon and Breitbart are looking to build a Trumpian media empire in Europe by courting its most mediagenic right-wing extremists.

Christopher Dickey
Asawin Suebsaeng
11.13.16 10:06 PM ET


PARIS—Never mind that the French cable television report#on Stephen Bannon made him look like one of the winos living on grates in Paris, or that it compared Bannon, Donald Trump’s grizzled éminence grise and newly-named White House chief strategist, to Adolf Hitler’s propaganda chief Josef Goebbels.#

And never mind the program’s citations of rampant sexism on Bannon’s pseudo-news service, Breitbart. All he had to do in that clip was say he’d like to expand Breitbart’s operations to France and allude to Marion Maréchal-Le Pen as “the new rising star” on the French version of the alt-right and she started gushing on Twitter in English:#

Interestingly, the citations from Bannon on that broadcast by the mainstream LCI network did not mention Marine Le Pen, the 48-year-old woman who has turned her father’s fringe right-wing party, the National Front, into the most dynamic and aggressive political force in the country.#
The reference cited was to “the Le Pen women” generally, as if there were so many, and then to the comely Marion, a member of the French parliament who is only 26 years old and has the xanthachroidal allure of a younger Ann Coulter or Laura Ingraham.

Must be something in the air, l’esprit du temps, as they say. Let’s take a breath and look at what’s really going on here.

Bannon’s support for European far-right parties runs far deeper than his interest in Marion Maréchal-Le Pen or the National Front.#He brags about his international Breitbart operation as “the platform” for the American alt-right, and has for years been thinking globally, with an affinity for#the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), Alternative for Germany (AfD), and the Party for Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands, all of which have earned glowing coverage on the pages of Breitbart.

But the election of Bannon’s man Donald Trump as president of the United States has made the globalization of Breitbart and its message infinitely more plausible than it ever was before, and politicians once considered
Europe’s deplorables are now rushing to bask in the gilded glow of Trump and Bannon.

On Saturday, Britain’s Nigel Farage, whose blatant and acknowledged lies helped convince his countrymen to opt out of the European Union in the Brexit vote, visited the president-elect in his eponymous Fifth#Avenue tower.#
Farage emerged from the meeting looking like he’d just won the jackpot at one of the pre-bankruptcy Trump casinos,#suggesting#that the new president’s “inner team” was not too happy with Tory Prime Minister Theresa May, since she’d been skeptical of Brexit before the vote. Would that “inner team” be Bannon? In our post-factual world, maybe we can say, “People say…”

Breitbart, which currently has operations in London and Jerusalem, certainly has plans to expand in France and Germany with new bureaus to cultivate and promote the populist-nationalist lines there.

“He has long wanted to work with all of those parties, but that was only in promoting them with Breitbart,” a source close to Bannon told The Daily Beast. “Now he has the power of the White House to do it.”

Bannon, elevated Sunday night from the head of Trump’s favorite public-relations outfit masquerading as news outlet#to a White House senior counselor, is right now the direct line between the European far-right and Donald J. Trump, leader of the free world.

“If Stephen gets the offer to be Chief of Staff and says yes, then he runs the show,” a Trump aide told The Daily Beast before Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus was picked for that job, and Bannon received his very, very senior position.

That’s more than a little bit disturbing, considering that Bannon was#openly influenced by Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl, who rose to prominence as a blonde bombshell before producing such masterpieces of propaganda as “Triumph of the Will.”

But again, the Trumpian zeitgeist makes us digress.

So strong are the winds of right-wing change at the moment—even if it’s not clear whether they’re just gusts or sustained—that when the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, convened EU foreign ministers for an urgent dinner Sunday night to discuss the impact of the Trump victory, two quickly declined: Britain’s once and future Brexiteer, Boris Johnson, which was not much of a surprise; and France’s Jean-Marc Ayrault, who demurred as if he had something better to do.

In fact, his Socialist government is scrambling to find right-wing credibility before elections next spring: a Sisyphean task given polls showing President François Hollande now has an approval rating of 4 percent (you read that right: 4 percent).

From the Netherlands, The Daily Beast’s Nadette De Visser reports that Geert Wilders (famous for his dyed blonde hair) is tapping into Trump's one-liners: “We will make the Netherlands great again,” he tweets, adding:#“I will give the Netherlands back to the Dutch because the Netherlands is our country.”

“Everywhere democratic revolutions are underway. They will drive the elites from power,” says Wilders, whose Twitter feed seems to mirror Trump’s—or is it Bannon's?—at every turn.

Similartly, Wilders has no qualms about using the Kremlin’s RT television network to broadcast his message. In an interview with RT, Wilders said, “Politics will never be the same and what I call the ‘patriotic spring’ is an enormous incentive. What I say to the Europeans is, ‘Look at America, what America can do, we can do as well.’”#

And up to a point the strategy appears to be working. Geert Wilders’s PVV is on the rise in some of the polls, which suggest it will be the biggest political party in the Netherlands. After Trump’s victory, the PVV went from 27 to 29 potential seats in the Dutch parliament, which would make it the single biggest bloc. But Wilders's record shows he’d find it almost impossible to pull together coalition partners in the 150-seat assembly.

So where he’ll continue to build his notoriety will be on the international stage—a mission Breitbart is likely to make very possible.

Barbie Latza Nadeau reports from Rome that Matteo Salvini of the Northern League, who may be the most blatantly racist and xenophobic#of all the West European wingnuts, says he’s offered to help Trump make inroads in European politics. “If Brexit teaches us something, if the election of Donald Trump teaches us something,” Salvini tweeted, “it is that today we get going to take over the power.”

But not everybody is as flattered by Trump/Bannon’s attentions as Marion Maréchal-Le Pen, Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders, and Matteo Salvini have shown themselves to be. And the least flattered, most offended of all may be the European leader most often compared to Donald Trump in terms of background and style.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is patently offended by the analogy. “Of course there are some similarities in that he is an entrepreneur who decided to use his expertise to help his country,” Berlusconi said of Trump to Corriere della Sera. “But I have never opted for protectionist or isolationist policies that would hurt the country,” and “politics has taught me that people are not judged by programs, but by their behavior. Let’s see him at work.”

Good idea. And once the Trump tsunami has passed, let’s see what is left of Europe.

Entire Russian government funded media jumps to the defence of Donald Trump.

[OUTLAW 09]

French far right leader Marine Le Pen seen at Trump Tower
http://reut.rs/2jnCAnb

.@seanspicer tells me Marine le Pen is NOT meeting w/ PEOTUS or anyone else from transition team. Adds “Trump Tower is open to the Public”

Yesterday Trump compared US intelligence community to Nazis. Today leader of France fascism Marine Le Pen spotted in Trump Tower.

SO Le Pen flies all the way from Paris just to do coffee in Trump Tower?...oh come on...Spicer can get better at lying.....

BUT WAIT maybe she did fly just for the excellent Kenyan coffee....?

Outside Mattis hearing, Inhofe says Trump's comments comparing intel leaks to "Nazi Germany" show the president elect's "sense of humor."

[OUTLAW 09]

RE: Chris Steele

This is an ex-intelligence officer who now works for whoever pays him, correct? Not unlike a police officer who becomes a private detective. Steele has admittedly worked for the Jeb Bush campaign and then unnamed Democrats following Bush’s withdrawal from contention. This seems to me to be unused ammunition left over from the Hillary-Trump war that was not used because perhaps the Democrats wanted to “go high” as Michelle Obama would have it, or perhaps because they feared dirty tricks blow-back.

When I think about an ex-SIS officer involving himself in the presidential campaign, I am reminded of Obama's involvement in the Remain campaign. Remember "back of the queue"? That was clearly written by the British and spoken by Obama as a favor to Cameron. What is to say that the US defense, foreign policy and intelligence hawks, all of whom sided with Hillary, didn't have their cousins across the pond do them a similar favor?

RE: Michael Cohen in Prague

Cohen denies being there or even having ever visited Prague, and there are suggestions that he was confused with another Michael Cohen or an “M. Cohen”. The denial is fairly unequivocal and so unless evidence comes to light that would make Cohen a complete liar, I will take him at his word for now. Trust, but verify.

RE: Trump and the MSM

The MSM, FOX aside, threw their hats in the ring with Clinton and got to work on “Project Fear”:


Trump will crater the US economy
Trump will start a nuclear war with Russia
No. Trump won’t be assertive enough with Russia and let them take over
Trump will dismantle NATO and then Russia and China will take over
No. Trump will be too confrontation with China and risk war
Trump is beholden to Russia
No. Trump is actually beholden to China
Trump is a racist and xenophobe
No. Trump is overly supportive of Israel
Trump is too isolationist
No. Trump will be too confrontational with Iran and too harsh in attacking Daesh
All of the above


What did they expect? They played hardball and now they’re complaining that there’s another Nixon in the White House…

RE: Trump Dossier

The IC did not claim that the dossier was “credible”, merely that the allegations were making the rounds and that Trump should be aware. Trump quickly decried the allegations and then attacked the media and whoever in the IC leaked the dossier to Buzz Feed.

As for “Russian money flows”, the dossier alleged that the compensation to Trump was in the form of intelligence and sexual services from prostitutes.

Read all 17 individual reports which the 35 pages summarize.....read the Russian oligarch names and then the Alfa Bank and then talk to me about money flows.....

REMEMBER the so called "talking server between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank which was in fact detected and once mad public suddenly went off line...THAT has never come up again and suddenly Alpha Bank is in these 35 pages....

[OUTLAW 09]

One of #Russian banks financially meddling /w US elections was Alfa Bank. What could have been the second?
https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/819393472561983488#

[Azor]

Azor...even your recital of 20@committee presentation is wrong...go back and thoroughly this time reread the article...you might actually have a different assumption at the end of what he wrote...

I actually did not see that the article in The Observer was by John Schindler of The XX Committee, who has also entertained allegations that the NSA hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server as well as the DNC, and that there was collusion between Clinton, the FBI and the DOJ. Therefore, one would have to take Schindler’s imprimatur on the Orbis Dossier with a crack rock-sized grain of salt. In addition, Schindler suggests that Trump’s “secret ties to Russia is about money, not espionage”, and yet the Orbis Dossier asserted that Trump had no financial ties to Russia.


You thoroughly do not fully and completely understand just how especially HUMINT is gathered…

Yes, I keep hearing that from both you and TheCurmudgeon, although I have yet to see my line of reasoning derailed. This is the same reasoning that deduced that Manning, Assange and Snowden were agents in the service of Russia whether wittingly or unwittingly, during the period when these people were lionized by many Democrats, particularly those who would go on to support Sanders.

Your tale about the SS-24 is interesting and reminds me of LeCarre’s The Looking Glass War. I would imagine that the country in question was the Federal Republic’s more democratic brother, as Moscow could exert more control over the SS-24 as it traipsed around the bloc like a modern-day backpacker using EurRail, and why not have it as near to NATO as possible?

As for HUMINT, what say you about the suggestion that Penkovsky and Polyakov were triple-agents?


THIS tells me one clear and concise point...everything outside of the sex tape/tapes WAS in fact substantiated...

No, it doesn’t follow. The IC has been consistent that the Orbis Dossier is unsubstantiated thus far, which is confirmed in your MSN link. Given that the Dossier claims that the Putin-Trump ties are non-financial in nature and that the sex tape is the Kremlin’s only leverage, the Dossier does revolve around the “salacious” allegation. The alleged intelligence sharing between Trump and Putin did not result in any private information on Clinton or the DNC being revealed during the election campaign by either Trump or his advisors. Trump relied upon the WikiLeaks releases, as did many opposed to Clinton’s candidacy, as well-worn insinuations about her server and foundation. The Dossier is about a sex tape padded with long-standing allegations from the campaign…


Read all 17 individual reports which the 35 pages summarize...read the Russian oligarch names and then the Alfa Bank and then talk to me about money flows...

I did, thank you, and I focused on the reports dealing specifically with Trump, not the filler about Russia’s international web of corruption or influence operations, which I am well aware of.


WHAT the UK ex spy indicated that is extremely interesting and might in fact explain why the FBI allowed the inclusion of the document.....the original Steel document indicates that a number of Russian émigrés residing in the US were used by the GRUFSB as money funnels into the Trump campaign when funds were low due to poor fundraising on the part of the Trump campaign n and black money was often used to push rallies and overall costs.....he went to say that a few investigative journalists were already tracking that report

Again, you are extrapolating from the Dossier assertions that it did not make, namely that the Russians funded Trump’s campaign. That would contradict the basis of Russia’s leverage, which is the sex tape.

The Dossier has been effective at casting doubt as to the legitimacy of Trump’s election, but upon further inspection is full of contradictions and outright falsehoods. Clinton’s information warfare during and after the campaign closely resembles how the Kremlin treated the MH17 incident and its involvement in Syria.

If Putin’s goal was to reduce faith in American democracy, he certainly succeeded.

[OUTLAW 09]

BREAKING: Justice Dept. Inspector General launches review of FBI and DOJ actions ahead of 2016 presidential election
http://abcnews.com/politics

[OUTLAW 09]

Giuliani better get the Trump proposed hacking group up to speed in a hurry.....

Israeli Controversial Phone-Hacking Firm "Cellebrite" Got Hacked; 900GB Of Data Stolen
http://thehackernews.com/2017/01/mobile-hacking-cellebrite.html#

[OUTLAW 09]

I actually did not see that the article in The Observer was by John Schindler of The XX Committee, who has also entertained allegations that the NSA hacked Hillary Clinton’s private server as well as the DNC, and that there was collusion between Clinton, the FBI and the DOJ. Therefore, one would have to take Schindler’s imprimatur on the Orbis Dossier with a crack rock-sized grain of salt. In addition, Schindler suggests that Trump’s “secret ties to Russia is about money, not espionage”, and yet the Orbis Dossier asserted that Trump had no financial ties to Russia.



Yes, I keep hearing that from both you and TheCurmudgeon, although I have yet to see my line of reasoning derailed. This is the same reasoning that deduced that Manning, Assange and Snowden were agents in the service of Russia whether wittingly or unwittingly, during the period when these people were lionized by many Democrats, particularly those who would go on to support Sanders.

Your tale about the SS-24 is interesting and reminds me of LeCarre’s The Looking Glass War. I would imagine that the country in question was the Federal Republic’s more democratic brother, as Moscow could exert more control over the SS-24 as it traipsed around the bloc like a modern-day backpacker using EurRail, and why not have it as near to NATO as possible?

As for HUMINT, what say you about the suggestion that Penkovsky and Polyakov were triple-agents?



No, it doesn’t follow. The IC has been consistent that the Orbis Dossier is unsubstantiated thus far, which is confirmed in your MSN link. Given that the Dossier claims that the Putin-Trump ties are non-financial in nature and that the sex tape is the Kremlin’s only leverage, the Dossier does revolve around the “salacious” allegation. The alleged intelligence sharing between Trump and Putin did not result in any private information on Clinton or the DNC being revealed during the election campaign by either Trump or his advisors. Trump relied upon the WikiLeaks releases, as did many opposed to Clinton’s candidacy, as well-worn insinuations about her server and foundation. The Dossier is about a sex tape padded with long-standing allegations from the campaign…



I did, thank you, and I focused on the reports dealing specifically with Trump, not the filler about Russia’s international web of corruption or influence operations, which I am well aware of.



Again, you are extrapolating from the Dossier assertions that it did not make, namely that the Russians funded Trump’s campaign. That would contradict the basis of Russia’s leverage, which is the sex tape.

The Dossier has been effective at casting doubt as to the legitimacy of Trump’s election, but upon further inspection is full of contradictions and outright falsehoods. Clinton’s information warfare during and after the campaign closely resembles how the Kremlin treated the MH17 incident and its involvement in Syria.

If Putin’s goal was to reduce faith in American democracy, he certainly succeeded.

You then missed the Alfa Bank comments..was misspelled though...check the posting now on Alfa Bank and then tell me there as not connection being assumed...

Intelligence sources vouch for credibility of Russia dossier author
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author?CMP=share_btn_tw

Orbis founder worked as #Russia expert for 20 years at MI6, sent to Moscow as spy in 1990.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/11/former-mi6-officer-produced-donald-trump-russian-dossier-terrified/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw#…

[OUTLAW 09]

French far right leader Marine Le Pen seen at Trump Tower
http://reut.rs/2jnCAnb

.@seanspicer tells me Marine le Pen is NOT meeting w/ PEOTUS or anyone else from transition team. Adds “Trump Tower is open to the Public”

Yesterday Trump compared US intelligence community to Nazis. Today leader of France fascism Marine Le Pen spotted in Trump Tower.

SO Le Pen flies all the way from Paris just to do coffee in Trump Tower?...oh come on...Spicer can get better at lying.....

BUT WAIT maybe she did fly just for the excellent Kenyan coffee....?

Outside Mattis hearing, Inhofe says Trump's comments comparing intel leaks to "Nazi Germany" show the president elect's "sense of humor."

You have to wonder if Donald Trump was dumb enough to invite the Russia funded Marie Le Pen to Trump Tower. 21M euros was the loan until the Putin suggested bank went into bankruptcy and now Russia is demanding back the first 9M Euros paid out....and she is asking for another 20M Euros as her Party is out of funds for the coming election....

Great way to start off your relations with current French government.

[Azor]

Steele was an intelligence officer for the SIS posted to Moscow during the 1990s, working under the legal diplomatic cover of the FCO at the British Embassy.

He admits that he and his late wife were harassed by the KGB and subsequently the FSB, because of his work in Moscow, and apparently a tank barrel was pointed at their apartment, although this probably had more to do with the bloody "Constitutional Crisis" of 1993 rather than a KGB attempt at intimidation.

As people in the intelligence community are well aware, illegal intelligence officers are much more effective, albeit at much greater personal risk. Although embassies and consulates do benefit from walk-ins from time to time, these are typically under full surveillance, as are the diplomats attached to them, which would apply to Steele. Certainly, Steele would have been able to make the rounds of various events and meetings, but he would have been watched and any important Russian he had contact with would be investigated.

Suffice to say, Steele is probably an expert on Russia and on the mafia state that developed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but does he have the deep agents in the Kremlin, MFA and FSB that he claims?

These contacts informed Steele about an astounding intelligence operation being run directly from the Kremlin to insert an agent into the White House, and yet they didn't tell him of:


How Russia would react to a Georgian offensive to recapture South Ossetia

How Russia would react to Ukraine striking an association agreement with the EU

How Russia would react to potentially being expelled from Crimea

Russia's intentions with regard to Russian-speakers and ethnic Russians in Donbas

The extent of Russian support for Assad in Syria


Quite frankly, I don't think that Steele has any deep contacts inside the Russian government and I don't think that he accomplished very much in Russia during his time there. Notice that Putin wasn't rounding up foreign spies in 2008, 2014 or 2015, but instead had switched to typewriters in order to avoid SIGINT, which is the West's strength.

His supposed flight to safety is laughable considering that Russia already was well aware that he was an SIS officer. If anything, his dossier has exposed his sources in Moscow who can be found out by a process of elimination, a polite euphemism for pliers and a blowtorch.

Personally, I became active on social media to counter the rampant anti-Americanism that proliferated in the wake of the Iraq War and to counter the Russian propaganda machine that swung into gear from 2008 on.

Yet the bitter rearguard fighting by the interventionist crowd, who was salivating at the chance to have Hillary Clinton greenlight whatever operations in Ukraine, Syria, Africa, the South China Sea, Central Asia, etc., that they had been denied under Obama, is deeply, deeply troubling.

When I look back to the hard choices made throughout the Cold War, all I can say is that there is an interventionist constituency that was typically divided between misguided humanitarians and cynical imperialists (for want of a better term), and this election has seen them band together in an alarming way.

[Azor]

From The Washington Times: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-412000-dnc-insider-ukraine-officials-spread-dirt-on-trump/article/2611650


A veteran Democratic National Committee and former Clinton administration official worked with Ukrainian officials to push dirt about President-elect Trump to journalists in a bid to help Hillary Rodham Clinton win, according to a new report.

The lengthy investigative report, which described Ukraine as concerned that Trump would favor Russia if he won, said that the effort was coordinated with the Clinton campaign, raising questions of foreign involvement similar to the charges that Russia worked to help Trump.

"Donald Trump wasn't the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country," said the Politico investigation (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446).

The story identifies Alexandra Chalupa as the leader of the effort, a DNC consultant, former Clinton aide and "Ukrainian-American operative." She was paid $412,000 from 2004-June 2016.

It said that she pushed information about Trump's former campaign chief Paul Manafort to reporters including Yahoo. Manafort was replaced by Trump amid concerns about his work for Ukraine's former leader, Viktor Yanukovych.

Said the report:


In an interview this month, Chalupa told Politico she had developed a network of sources in Kiev and Washington, including investigative journalists, government officials and private intelligence operatives. While her consulting work at the DNC this past election cycle centered on mobilizing ethnic communities — including Ukrainian-Americans — she said that, when Trump's unlikely presidential campaign began surging in late 2015, she began focusing more on the research, and expanded it to include Trump's ties to Russia, as well.

She occasionally shared her findings with officials from the DNC and Clinton's campaign, Chalupa said. In January 2016 — months before Manafort had taken any role in Trump's campaign — Chalupa told a senior DNC official that, when it came to Trump's campaign, "I felt there was a Russia connection," Chalupa recalled. "And that, if there was, that we can expect Paul Manafort to be involved in this election," said Chalupa, who at the time also was warning leaders in the Ukrainian-American community that Manafort was "Putin's political brain for manipulating U.S. foreign policy and elections."

Unlike the Russia hack story based on intelligence assumptions and reports, Politico's story shows a direct tie to Ukrainian officials, the Clinton campaign and the DNC. In the story, a Ukrainian official said, "They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa."

Republican officials expressed dismay at the story.

In a statement today, Republican National Committee Deputy Communications Director Raj Shah said that the report "provides a detailed rundown – with participants of this effort going on the record – showing how Democrats coordinated with the Ukrainian embassy to drive negative stories about President-elect Donald Trump. The cozy relationship with a foreign government, had it been uncovered of Republican operatives, would have sparked outrage. But in this case, the Democrats aren't even denying it, and it seems like the media is letting them get away with it."

[Azor]

Reading the stories from The Washington Examiner (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-412000-dnc-insider-ukraine-officials-spread-dirt-on-trump/article/2611650) and Politico (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446), it is rather amusing to find out that both Kiev and Moscow were vying to influence the US election in order to have the next US president take their side in the crisis in Ukraine.

Now, I don't believe that Trump is a Russian agent anymore than Clinton is a Ukrainian one.

What I do believe is that Russia preferred Sanders, Stein, Johnson and Trump to the other contenders, and then Trump solely once he secured the nomination. I also believe that Ukraine preferred Cruz, Rubio and Clinton to the other contenders, and then Clinton solely once she secured the nomination.

I also believe that Russia preferred a dysfunctional US government, with an obstructionist and divided Congress and an isolationist White House, and that Ukraine preferred a united US government that could take decisive action.

Politico's report is interesting, given that it has a slight Democratic or liberal bias...

[OUTLAW 09]

Reading the stories from The Washington Examiner (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/report-412000-dnc-insider-ukraine-officials-spread-dirt-on-trump/article/2611650) and Politico (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446), it is rather amusing to find out that both Kiev and Moscow were vying to influence the US election in order to have the next US president take their side in the crisis in Ukraine.

Now, I don't believe that Trump is a Russian agent anymore than Clinton is a Ukrainian one.

What I do believe is that Russia preferred Sanders, Stein, Johnson and Trump to the other contenders, and then Trump solely once he secured the nomination. I also believe that Ukraine preferred Cruz, Rubio and Clinton to the other contenders, and then Clinton solely once she secured the nomination.

I also believe that Russia preferred a dysfunctional US government, with an obstructionist and divided Congress and an isolationist White House, and that Ukraine preferred a united US government that could take decisive action.

Politico's report is interesting, given that it has a slight Democratic or liberal bias...

Azor...here is the interesting point....about Ukraine...the Manafort paper trail that they do indeed have for at least 12.7M USDs in payments to him from the former President have never been requested by the FBI...even though they were informed they could be transferred with a courier to the FBI....

THEN yesterday the DOJ Inspector General announces an investigation into the FBI's email issue right before the election and why the Russian connections into the Trump campaign were not investigated any further...

Everyone knows the NYC FBI office is hard Republican and definitely anti Clinton and the email reinvestigation was being driven by this office...

BTW....C-SPAN 'investigating' why congressional livestream switched to Russia Today
http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2017/01/c-span-livestream-suddenly-switches-to-russia-today-livestream-233557?cmpid=sf#

Russian Propaganda Channel RT Mysteriously Cut Into C-SPAN's Web Feed and No One Knows Why
http://gizmodo.com/russian-propaganda-mysteriously-cut-into-c-spans-web-fe-1791133632#

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...this is a few of the social media comments against that article that indicate just how many know little about Putin's KGB duties while stationed in Dresden before the Wall came down....What this commenter means is Putin was not a SVR field agent but he definitely "ran" recruited from him agents....

Maybe they should have been in Germany in the late 80s early 90s...even I knew of his activities in Dresden while in Berlin AND what is not known is just how close he was involved with a special Russian personnel protection unit based near Fuerstenwalder the fore rider of spetsnaz.....


J Michael Waller @JMichaelWaller
Sloppy reporting. Putin was never a "KGB agent." He did no "special operations." He was an internal security officer.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author?CMP=share_btn_tw#

[Azor]

With respect to Manafort, there is no question that he worked for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions from 2004 to 2010. However, Manafort also worked for the Republican Party for twenty years, on behalf of the Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Dole campaigns. Yet even during that period, he was used as a liaison between various Republican presidents and rather unsavory anti-Communist allies in the developing world. After Dole’s defeat to Clinton in 1996, it seems that Manafort was forced to get creative to keep the money rolling in, and lacking a master but retaining his penchant for working with brutal and corrupt clients, found himself in the service of the Kremlin, which was reeling from the Orange Revolution as well as other “color revolutions” throughout the post-Soviet space. As far as Manafort and Trump go, I believe that Trump was the only Republican candidate who would have Manafort, and Manafort was one of the few Republican operatives that would work for Trump’s campaign. Quite frankly, Trump had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for Republican advisors, given that the party elite was decidedly opposed to his candidacy.

As for the investigation of Comey, that is entirely due to Comey’s letters to Congress regarding the investigation into Clinton’s server, not whether or not the investigation itself was malicious or whether the FBI was deliberately ignoring Russian subversion. Your allegations about FBI bias are curious, given that there was blatant collusion between the AG and Clinton, that the CIA effectively endorsed her, and that Republican Neo-Conservatives allied with Democratic humanitarian interventionists to support her, with obvious ripples throughout the DOD, IC, think tanks, etc.

So Putin was an officer of the Ninth Chief Directorate? That would not be surprising. The KGB kept a close eye on the StaSi, had liaison offices in every StaSi district and had enjoyed the same powers in the DDR as the StaSi did since 1978. In all probability, Putin’s role was providing security for KGB personnel and property in Dresden, which was a major hub. Note that the successors of the Ninth Chief Directorate have been transformed over time to become Putin’s Praetorian Guard. The KGB was a massive organization and even during the height of “active measures” against the West, most of its manpower was spent on internal security and administration. In comparison, the SVR officers must feel a certain pride that the very acronym says it all: they don’t need to explain which directorate or department.

[OUTLAW 09]

With respect to Manafort, there is no question that he worked for Yanukovych and the Party of Regions from 2004 to 2010. However, Manafort also worked for the Republican Party for twenty years, on behalf of the Ford, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Dole campaigns. Yet even during that period, he was used as a liaison between various Republican presidents and rather unsavory anti-Communist allies in the developing world. After Dole’s defeat to Clinton in 1996, it seems that Manafort was forced to get creative to keep the money rolling in, and lacking a master but retaining his penchant for working with brutal and corrupt clients, found himself in the service of the Kremlin, which was reeling from the Orange Revolution as well as other “color revolutions” throughout the post-Soviet space. As far as Manafort and Trump go, I believe that Trump was the only Republican candidate who would have Manafort, and Manafort was one of the few Republican operatives that would work for Trump’s campaign. Quite frankly, Trump had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for Republican advisors, given that the party elite was decidedly opposed to his candidacy.

As for the investigation of Comey, that is entirely due to Comey’s letters to Congress regarding the investigation into Clinton’s server, not whether or not the investigation itself was malicious or whether the FBI was deliberately ignoring Russian subversion. Your allegations about FBI bias are curious, given that there was blatant collusion between the AG and Clinton, that the CIA effectively endorsed her, and that Republican Neo-Conservatives allied with Democratic humanitarian interventionists to support her, with obvious ripples throughout the DOD, IC, think tanks, etc.

So Putin was an officer of the Ninth Chief Directorate? That would not be surprising. The KGB kept a close eye on the StaSi, had liaison offices in every StaSi district and had enjoyed the same powers in the DDR as the StaSi did since 1978. In all probability, Putin’s role was providing security for KGB personnel and property in Dresden, which was a major hub. Note that the successors of the Ninth Chief Directorate have been transformed over time to become Putin’s Praetorian Guard. The KGB was a massive organization and even during the height of “active measures” against the West, most of its manpower was spent on internal security and administration. In comparison, the SVR officers must feel a certain pride that the very acronym says it all: they don’t need to explain which directorate or department.

Azor...this goes to the heart right now of what many suddenly are saying about Steele and seem to forget about Putin...

1. ever notice that before the Buzzfeed no one heard of Orbis and or Steele accept those in the intel dark side of CI....where their opinion of him is high based on his CI work in Moscow...and Russia in general

2.Orbis became a small Mercedes Benz among the top tier of the business intel world by virtue of their work quality and Russian sources

Suddenly now we have tons of experts coming out of the wool stating this and or that about both Orbis and Steele largely to discredit him...and distract from the bulk of the 17 reports.....

3. Putin was a central figure inside the Dresden Stasi which was extremely active during the ramp up of demonstrations in Dresden prior to the Wall coming down...he was not just some second rate figure..so he had experience already with "color revolts".....

4. Some say Putin adhered to the Party way to tight and did not participate in the ongoing KGB corruption inside the GDR and many went home with tons of money...Putin with 400 USDs and a wash machine....

Loyalty is something he learned then and demands now BTW....

BTW...missing completely from those that try to discredit Steels and his past....UK and US types that were assigned to the Soviet Union in those days spoke fluent Russian and had extensive surveillance and counter surveillance training before arriving in Moscow...and it was spy combat from the day they hit the ground running in those days of Moscow...so Steele is of that generation as is BTW Schneider from 20@committee....

BTW...the basis for the 17 reports was a total of 137 memos from his field sources...someone I know from that business world indicated that is massive for Russia and reflects research that went on far longer.... actually appears to have been started before Trump was even in the race....

REMEMBER if Schneider is correct and I am assuming he is mirroring for the current CI intel world...then Trump has bee in the cross hairs of CI for going on 30 years...

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia's state-sponsored TV: "In response to leaks, Trump might investigate the outgoing White House admin for creating & supporting ISIS."

BUT WAIT ...there is more than ample...actually massive real evidence of Russian...Iranian and Assad support to IS in their early days continuing up to now with the lack of Russian and Assad air strikes on IS...

APPEARS Russian state TV has the wrong subject matter...MAYBE should be ..Russian involvement in and with IS...especially the long years in the illegal oil trade business out of Syria for starters....

So is Trump now taking his instructions directly from Russian state media?????

[OUTLAW 09]

German government statistics on Russian hacking for 2016....there were an average of 20 hard attacks a month and one of the attacks was usually straight forward espionage ....on German government networks/computers....

German military as a whole had for 2016 a total of 9M hacking attempts UP from 8.5M in 2015....all largely detected and defeated...

French DoD admits to 65K attacks for 2016.....

So we now have Giuliani in charge of the Trump computer response group ...the same man who leaked that the FBI had something new of Clinton's emails TWO full days before the official FBI announcement occurred...AND who denied vehemently initially Russia had anything to do with hacking during the elections...that man is now in charge of computer security?????

[OUTLAW 09]

THIS is exactly just how "fake news" gets spread and yet Trump and company do not believe Russian involvement in "fake news" is an issue these days nor did it "help him in the election".....

How #fakenews was laundered through fringe websites and reported by Russian media as fact
https://medium.com/@DFRLab/three-thousand-fake-tanks-575410c4f64d#.5mqpporiq#

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...this goes to the heart right now of what many suddenly are saying about Steele and seem to forget about Putin...

1. ever notice that before the Buzzfeed no one heard of Orbis and or Steele accept those in the intel dark side of CI....where their opinion of him is high based on his CI work in Moscow...and Russia in general

2.Orbis became a small Mercedes Benz among the top tier of the business intel world by virtue of their work quality and Russian sources

Suddenly now we have tons of experts coming out of the wool stating this and or that about both Orbis and Steele largely to discredit him...and distract from the bulk of the 17 reports.....

3. Putin was a central figure inside the Dresden Stasi which was extremely active during the ramp up of demonstrations in Dresden prior to the Wall coming down...he was not just some second rate figure..so he had experience already with "color revolts".....

4. Some say Putin adhered to the Party way to tight and did not participate in the ongoing KGB corruption inside the GDR and many went home with tons of money...Putin with 400 USDs and a wash machine....

Loyalty is something he learned then and demands now BTW....

BTW...missing completely from those that try to discredit Steels and his past....UK and US types that were assigned to the Soviet Union in those days spoke fluent Russian and had extensive surveillance and counter surveillance training before arriving in Moscow...and it was spy combat from the day they hit the ground running in those days of Moscow...so Steele is of that generation as is BTW Schneider from 20@committee....

BTW...the basis for the 17 reports was a total of 137 memos from his field sources...someone I know from that business world indicated that is massive for Russia and reflects research that went on far longer.... actually appears to have been started before Trump was even in the race....

REMEMBER if Schneider is correct and I am assuming he is mirroring for the current CI intel world...then Trump has bee in the cross hairs of CI for going on 30 years...

Azor...this is just how badly those in the US have forgotten the good ole Soviet days which was say only 36 years ago....AND believe me the those listening and video recording devices stayed in place after say 1991 and the Wall coming down....they just got smaller...lighter and more powerful....the Berlin MfS Stasi Headquarters museum has a large number of such devices on display from that period...

The New York Times
✔
@nytimes
For decades, hotels across the former Soviet Union were equipped with bugging devices and cameras by the KGB
http://nyti.ms/2ipQAOG

Even the camping grounds that I stayed at during two camping trips for over 12 weeks to the Soviet Union in the early 70s had KGB personnel running them and observing everything and I even found a old style bug in one of the electrical outlets in a room I was booked into by the GDR Intertour...in those days it was the electrical outlets and the table and ceiling lights one had to worry about....

I had a West Berlin business friend doing business in the SU in those days...was an engineer for Varta the battery maker who had sold a production line into the SU...when he was in Moscow for business meetings he demanded his Russian counterpart get into a running shower with him to discuss business info or engineering info that is how bad it was in 1983....

[OUTLAW 09]

Wonder if Trump and his entire team remember this from 1991.....????

On Jan 13, 1991 Soviet tanks rolled in Vilnius and 14 bright souls lost lives as brave people of Lithuania defended their right to be free

[OUTLAW 09]

SO is the American media and the American people getting a "massive snow job" during the Trump nominee confirmation hearings...APPEARS we are.....

Important statements from Mattis but Spicer says, "at the end of day, each one of them is going to pursue a Trump agenda and a Trump vision".

So SoS and SecDef and future CIA Director are hard on Russia BUT Trump is Putin friendly.....

SO will they walk if called out and must change their state views because of the Trump proRussian tilt...

87 US tanks and troops in Poland are a threat, #Russia says.

How many Russian tanks are in Ukraine, BTW?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38592448#

Russian tanks in eastern Ukraine....over 800

BUT WAIT...the new Trump Chief of Staff Preibus stated...they can have their opinions but Trump sets the agenda and vision....WHICH is for his friend Putin ....the lifting of Crimea sanctions and working together in Syria with Assad is again exactly not what the SoS..SecDef and CIA Director stated this week.....in full public and in front of TV cameras.

[OUTLAW 09]

Telling is it not......Trump and his staff stated they expect over 20M people to come..not so sure just how they all play to fit in 200 buses......

200 buses have applied for city parking on Inauguration Day. 1,200 have applied for the Women’s March.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2017/01/12/200-buses-have-applied-for-city-parking-on-inauguration-day-1200-have-applied-for-the-womens-march/#


AND the Women's March is in protest to Trump and his staff often stated anti woman policies.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Eager to please Trump, Fox sounds like RT:
"Thousands of U.S. troops crept up on Russia's doorstep" - are you on Russia's side, @FoxNews???

AT least they did not copy RT on the statement that there were hundreds of US tanks sent as well.....ALL 76 of them....

APPEARS that Fox did not take the time to fact check exactly how many troops a ABCT has ...max 3600...NOT thousands ...AND BTW this is just a speed bump....WHILE Russia Today was stating this the Russian Mod announced the creation of the Soviet days...1st Tank Army basing it directly at the Polish border region.....a FULL Russian tank army against a single ABCT....and the ABCT is a threat?????

[OUTLAW 09]

Fake source calls intelligence authorities for their "fake evidence". Why not.

Alleged Russian Hacker ‘Guccifer 2.0’ Is Back After Months Of Silence

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/alleged-russian-hacker-guccifer-20-is-back-after-months-of-silence



"I’d like to make it clear enough that these accusations are unfounded. I have totally no relation to the Russian government. I’d like to tell you once again I was acting in accordance with my personal political views and beliefs,” Guccifer 2.0 wrote. “The technical evidence contained in the reports doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. This is a crude fake.”

Russian hacker claiming to be Romanian who yet cannot speak Romanian telling the US he is not Russia and telling the US IC that YES he did hack DNC..BUT yet he is not Russian nor works for GRU.....

Interesting the Russians roll him out to support Trump's view on the 400lb kiddie hacker on his bed hacking DNC....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...and there is absolutely no connections between Trump and his staff and Russians.....?????

Steele got it right.....why is it strange to think otherwise....I once had an excellent HUMINT trainer who had served as a German Army intelligence officer (LT) on the East Front during WW2 (he was part of the Gehlen intelligence group who later formed the German BND) who when I asked him something that sounded strange...his reply...."what do you think"...meaning his view is that the human is capable of a lot of things and if I the huminter felt that it was possible write it up because 9 out of 10 times it will be correct and the one time being wrong is acceptable in the humint business....

Wow, the Post's David Ignatius on Flynn and the Russians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-obama-dawdle-on-russias-hacking/2017/01/12/75f878a0-d90c-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.ae8d7e453fff#

REMEMBER Flynn is not yet officially a representative of the US government nor is Trump yet ...YET both he and Trump act as if they are now running the government....

[OUTLAW 09]

Soldatov weighs in saying "Trump dossier" methods ring true (not to be confused with endorsement of actual content).
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/12/donald-trump-russia-dossier-frighteningly-true?CMP=share_btn_tw#


Marine Le Pen spotted at Trump tower today. Here's why it matters
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/an-existential-moment-for-the-euro-american-alliance/2017/01/05/23407646-d360-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html?utm_term=.ed5c24dcf15a#

BUSTED: Marine Le Pen’s fixer lives in Trump Tower, says Steve Bannon OK'd her visit
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/12/steve-bannon-knew-about-marine-le-pen-s-trump-tower-party-organizer-claims.html#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

JΞSTΞR ✪ ΔCTUAL³³º¹ @th3j35t3r
Trump on his use of email:
"I don't use email."
http://cnet.co/2i3JOjc

Jester on Trumps use of email:
"You sure as heck do."

[OUTLAW 09]

Possibility of Germany pursuing its own nuclear weapons if #NATO were to break up due to Trump
http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/12/06/sudden-german-nuke-flirtation-pub-66366#

[OUTLAW 09]

Looks like the Russian FSB did not silence all witnesses as of yet.....

John Schindler ‏@20committee 8m
8 minutes ago

What kompromat?

BREAKING: Hungarian model tells of how @realDonaldTrump tried to seduce her in 2013 - in Moscow

In Hungarian
http://444.hu/2016/11/19/donald-trump-megprobalta-felszedni-sarka-katat

Note that the model, Kata Sarka, told her story back in May, long before

Trump kompromat was a Thing....seems credible

Wasn't Trump just telling the world he's totally aware of how Russian hotel rooms are wired so be a good boy? Was I imagining that?

So either Trump is a pathological liar (very possible) or he knowingly makes sex videos for the FSB. No 3rd option anymore

THERE is in fact a 2013 video by Trump himself explaining his ties to Putin...REMEMBER he kept denying he had any ties to Putin during the election...this video was released AFTER the 2013 alleged Hungarian model encounter

All the M. Steep bashing tweets...the LL Bean support/sales tweets and the bashing of the IC tweets and calling the Buzzfeed trash tweets are nothing more that a bad attempt to deflect from the real story of his compromising by the Russian FSB....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...now I am more than convinced the bulk of the materials released are valid....his sources were largely business types and that explains the look and feel that the access of the individuals reporting had and seems they were involved in actual conversations and or near ongoing conversations where they could overhear information...common for HUMINT collection.....

BUT this below seals the accuracy of the memo's...if he handled as a MI6 case officer this particular cross over Russian high level agent then the MI6 placed him into a different league....only the best in this business handle such high level cross overs....

But West did say that Steele is not dispassionate when it comes to Vladimir Putin, noting that he was the MI6 case office for former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was fatally poisoned with radiation in 2006 after seeking asylum in the United Kingdom.
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago
It now turns out that the phony allegations against me were put together by my political opponents and a failed spy afraid of being sued....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 57m
57 minutes ago
Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 47m
47 minutes ago
What are Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 52m
52 minutes ago
released by "Intelligence" even knowing there is no proof, and never will be. My people will have a full report on hacking within 90 days!
BLUF....NOW APPEARS Trump and his group are going to rewrite the US IC Russian hacking report???????
APPEARS he evidently lied at his own press conference when he stated he had accepted the IC report on Russian hacking....

Concerns the individual behind the recently 17 raw humint intelligence report on Trump

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/christopher-steele-trump-dossier-author-is-a-real-life-james-bond/ar-AAlPxqy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp



The former British intelligence agent at the center of the maelstrom over a 35-page dossier about Donald Trump and the Russians is named Christopher Steele, but an ex-colleague refers to him by a more familiar moniker.

"He's James Bond," said Nigel West, the intelligence historian and spy-novel author. "I actually introduced him to my wife as James Bond."
Like the movie character, the 52-year-old Steele attended Cambridge University, where he was president of the Cambridge Union Debating Society.

He was recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service, Britain's counterpart to the CIA, better known as MI6, right out of university, West said.

He was posted to Moscow in the early 1990s and then Paris, according to people who knew him at the time. One of his more recent responsibilities was running a course for new agents, West said. About eight years ago, he left Her Majesty's service and co-founded his own security firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, with partner Christopher Burrows.

Unlike James Bond, Steele wasn't a household name — until he burst into the public consciousness this week after being unmasked as the author of a sensational, unverified report commissioned and circulated by unknown clients opposed to Trump.

Steele — described as a compact, clean-cut man with an intense manner — has not commented on the uproar that was unleashed when media outlets reported the dossier had been presented to both Trump and President Obama and, in one case, published the document.

But those who know Steele or his work say that the widowed father of three children enjoyed a reputation as a meticulous professional among current and former members of the intelligence community.

"He's a squared-away guy," said former senior CIA officer John Sipher, who was posted to Russia in the 1990s and helped manage its efforts against Moscow before retiring in 2014.

To some, the dossier's errors and far-out claims stand in stark contrast to Steele's usual approach to intelligence-gathering. West noted that only one intelligence officer was listed as a direct source.
"Nobody is saying he believes in any of this," West said. "What he was hired to do was write a series of reports based on info he could glean from his contacts. His contacts are very good but they're more in the business community than the intel community."
"He's highly professional, very effective," West added. "He's an impressive individual, knows a lot of the people about whom he speaks — but he's got to earn a living like the rest of us."

But West did say that Steele is not dispassionate when it comes to Vladimir Putin, noting that he was the MI6 case office for former KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was fatally poisoned with radiation in 2006 after seeking asylum in the United Kingdom.
"He feels very strongly that the Putin Kremlin tore up the rule book and the convention by which intelligence agencies do not attack each other's personnel," West said of Steele."He also feels passionately about what you'd call the Kremlin kleptocracy. He doesn't believe there is a business deal in the past 10 years that has been legit."

[OUTLAW 09]

Germany reacts to misleading ′Breitbart′ fake news - that's @realDonaldTrump 's preferred fake news source....
http://ln.is/m.dw.com/en/germany-/fusyL#

[OUTLAW 09]

*After* housing bubble burst, Putin pal severely overpays Trump for mansion–then never moves in

Trump denied the deal, then admitted it. The mansion was itself was purchased for Putin pal via a front group. Why?

BTW....the UK has recently passed a law requiring the registering of who exactly purchases property and then does not move in as the Russians were pouring billions of USDs into UK luxury real estate and then never moving in...was the core element on Russian money laundering of black money...most of the UK purchases were being done via off shore unregistered accounts....

[OUTLAW 09]

Tracking the dirty money is hugely time consuming, expensive-few newsrooms have the budget for this

During negotiations to finance Trump Florida properties, Kriss alleges Bayrock favored Putin-backed Russians over Icelandic competitors

Bayrock, headed by Russian mobster Sater and former Soviet official, Arif pumped hundreds of millions into Trump

Trump never opened up his taxes. He has 96 LLCs and shell companies-none release audited financial statements

The lawsuit names Trump as a “material witness” in evasion of taxes on as much as $250 million in income, and laundering $ to Russia.

Tax fraud case NY AG greenlighted notes that Trump did not report tens of millions he got from Bayrock on his tax returns

What's more astonishing than Russian money backing half-baked Bayrock-Trump projects? Intricate maze of companies involved in the scheme.

[OUTLAW 09]

Ethics Chief Critical of Trump. Now House Committee Boss Threatens to Investigate Ethics Office-Perhaps Shut it Down
https://nyti.ms/2iqziBd

He was concerned the OGE sent Trump a tweet directly because Trump and his staff were not replying to OGE emails....so they reached out via twitter

Maybe the good Congressman should read some of the postings above concerning Trump/Russian money deals....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...another prove real piece of truth in the Buzzfeed article.....

Confirmed by a few European IT security companies mine included....

Russians use their free games to implant malware.
Prisma app has backdoor for #FSB/#GRU
Azor...more indirect confirmation that the memos are in fact real and thus valid

Mark Urban ‏@MarkUrban01 16h
16 hours ago

MI6 source tells me "a lot lot of people are feeling exposed in Moscow", under suspicion of giving Chris Steele the info in his Trump memos

NOW Trump and Russia Today both are apparently right..."there is a witch hunt underway BUT in Moscow not the US"......

[OUTLAW 09]

REMEMBER Putin's own spokesperson stated on Wednesday that Russia collects no compromising materials...HECK even Trump quoted them in a recent tweet of his....BUT MABE he did not know this about Putin.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Stop Fake @StopFakingNews
Think reporting on Trump is hard? Try being a journalist in Donetsk
http://www.stopfake.org/en/think-reporting-on-trump-is-hard-try-being-a-journalist-in-donetsk/#

[OUTLAW 09]

More Evidence CNN Was Right: Multiple Outlets Confirm Comey Personally Briefed Trump on Dossier | RedState
http://www.redstate.com/patterico/2017/01/12/evidence-cnn-right-multiple-outlets-confirm-comey-personally-briefed-trump-dossier/#

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 11
We had a great News Conference at Trump Tower today. A couple of FAKE NEWS organizations were there but the people truly get what's going on

[OUTLAW 09]

Tracking the dirty money is hugely time consuming, expensive-few newsrooms have the budget for this

During negotiations to finance Trump Florida properties, Kriss alleges Bayrock favored Putin-backed Russians over Icelandic competitors

Bayrock, headed by Russian mobster Sater and former Soviet official, Arif pumped hundreds of millions into Trump

Trump never opened up his taxes. He has 96 LLCs and shell companies-none release audited financial statements

The lawsuit names Trump as a “material witness” in evasion of taxes on as much as $250 million in income, and laundering $ to Russia.

Tax fraud case NY AG greenlighted notes that Trump did not report tens of millions he got from Bayrock on his tax returns

What's more astonishing than Russian money backing half-baked Bayrock-Trump projects? Intricate maze of companies involved in the scheme.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 11
Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA - NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

So is he blatantly lying or did he simply "forget something"???????

[OUTLAW 09]

REMEMBER Putin's own spokesperson stated on Wednesday that Russia collects no compromising materials...HECK even Trump quoted them in a recent tweet of his....BUT MAYBE he did not know this about Putin.....

Donald J. Trump
Verified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

BUT WAIT....did Trump actually place a qualifying ...Probably....... at the end of his tweet...sounds like he is not so sure that they might not have something or is he signaling that they should not try to release it......?

Probably ........as used here in a tweet...is an afterthought.......

[OUTLAW 09]

Looks like the Russian FSB did not silence all witnesses as of yet.....

John Schindler ‏@20committee 8m
8 minutes ago

What kompromat?

BREAKING: Hungarian model tells of how @realDonaldTrump tried to seduce her in 2013 - in Moscow

In Hungarian
http://444.hu/2016/11/19/donald-trump-megprobalta-felszedni-sarka-katat

Note that the model, Kata Sarka, told her story back in May, long before

Trump kompromat was a Thing....seems credible

Wasn't Trump just telling the world he's totally aware of how Russian hotel rooms are wired so be a good boy? Was I imagining that?

So either Trump is a pathological liar (very possible) or he knowingly makes sex videos for the FSB. No 3rd option anymore

THERE is in fact a 2013 video by Trump himself explaining his ties to Putin...REMEMBER he kept denying he had any ties to Putin during the election...this video was released AFTER the 2013 alleged Hungarian model encounter

All the M. Steep bashing tweets...the LL Bean support/sales tweets and the bashing of the IC tweets and calling the Buzzfeed trash tweets are nothing more that a bad attempt to deflect from the real story of his compromising by the Russian FSB....

Donald J. Trump
Verified account
‏@realDonaldTrump
Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

[OUTLAW 09]

Joshua Yaffa @yaffaesque
Hmm, in curious turn of events, the head of FSB's cybersecurity unit is on verge of being fired.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2017/01/13/fsb-s-cybersecurity-supervisor-may-soon-be-sacked#

[OUTLAW 09]

Looks like the Russian FSB did not silence all witnesses as of yet.....

John Schindler ‏@20committee 8m
8 minutes ago

What kompromat?

BREAKING: Hungarian model tells of how @realDonaldTrump tried to seduce her in 2013 - in Moscow

In Hungarian
http://444.hu/2016/11/19/donald-trump-megprobalta-felszedni-sarka-katat

Note that the model, Kata Sarka, told her story back in May, long before

Trump kompromat was a Thing....seems credible

Wasn't Trump just telling the world he's totally aware of how Russian hotel rooms are wired so be a good boy? Was I imagining that?

So either Trump is a pathological liar (very possible) or he knowingly makes sex videos for the FSB. No 3rd option anymore

THERE is in fact a 2013 video by Trump himself explaining his ties to Putin...REMEMBER he kept denying he had any ties to Putin during the election...this video was released AFTER the 2013 alleged Hungarian model encounter

All the M. Steep bashing tweets...the LL Bean support/sales tweets and the bashing of the IC tweets and calling the Buzzfeed trash tweets are nothing more that a bad attempt to deflect from the real story of his compromising by the Russian FSB....

Trump "was not her type" -- details for those who don't know magyar /5
http://bbj.hu/culture/hungarian-celeb-claims-trump-invited-her-to-his-room-in-moscow-in-2013_127296#…

Apparently Trump's legendary germophobia goes away when he lands in Russia. Is there an FSB spray? Could PEOTUS be a medical case-study?

John Schindler ‏@20committee 2h
2 hours ago

I really don't care about Trump grabbin' p,,,,, -- but if he did in Russia, which he JUST denied ever doing, or even contemplating....

Remember: all the #natsec wonks who boarded the TrumpTrain are wondering if they're under FBI investigation too. Hence their panicky tweets.

If the new White House is gonna have Kremlin moles, why not a serial plagiarist too? Go big or go home.

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...and there is absolutely no connections between Trump and his staff and Russians.....?????

Steele got it right.....why is it strange to think otherwise....I once had an excellent HUMINT trainer who had served as a German Army intelligence officer (LT) on the East Front during WW2 (he was part of the Gehlen intelligence group who later formed the German BND) who when I asked him something that sounded strange...his reply...."what do you think"...meaning his view is that the human is capable of a lot of things and if I the huminter felt that it was possible write it up because 9 out of 10 times it will be correct and the one time being wrong is acceptable in the humint business....

Wow, the Post's David Ignatius on Flynn and the Russians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-obama-dawdle-on-russias-hacking/2017/01/12/75f878a0-d90c-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.ae8d7e453fff#

REMEMBER Flynn is not yet officially a representative of the US government nor is Trump yet ...YET both he and Trump act as if they are now running the government....

John Schindler ‏@20committee
Biggest deal about last night's Flynn story is that as career MI he surely knows calls to the RUEMBDC are intercepted. He simply didn't care.

AND that is dangerous for someone with a TS/SCI clearance who has already once violated massively security regulations causing the deaths of two Americans in AFG

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...now I am more than convinced the bulk of the materials released are valid....his sources were largely business types and that explains the look and feel that the access of the individuals reporting had and seems they were involved in actual conversations and or near ongoing conversations where they could overhear information...common for HUMINT collection.....

BUT this below seals the accuracy of the memo's...if he handled as a MI6 case officer this particular cross over Russian high level agent then the MI6 placed him into a different league....only the best in this business handle such high level cross overs....


Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1h
1 hour ago
It now turns out that the phony allegations against me were put together by my political opponents and a failed spy afraid of being sued....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 57m
57 minutes ago
Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 47m
47 minutes ago
What are Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 52m
52 minutes ago
released by "Intelligence" even knowing there is no proof, and never will be. My people will have a full report on hacking within 90 days!

BLUF....NOW APPEARS Trump and his group are going to rewrite the US IC Russian hacking report???????
APPEARS he evidently lied at his own press conference when he stated he had accepted the IC report on Russian hacking....


Concerns the individual behind the recently 17 raw humint intelligence report on Trump

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/christopher-steele-trump-dossier-author-is-a-real-life-james-bond/ar-AAlPxqy?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartanntp

Do you realize when Trump says "my people," he is specifically not referring to US-IC? Who are "his people," then?

The FSB/GRU????? OR Breitbart and company or the KKK or the alt right???

[OUTLAW 09]

A PERFECT EXAMPLE of true FAKE NEWS for Trump to read and it comes from his very own supporters via Russia.....
https://twitter.com/Usainflames

Usa In Flames
‏@Usainflames
Mexico Quietly Agrees To Build Donald Trump’s Border Wall After All
http://viid.me/qoZeUC

Usa In Flames
@Usainflames
I have it, all about news of the moment with a fresh scent , follow me and you will have a lot of information in minutes IS NOT SPAM, WE ARE NEWS

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Interestingly this site is hosted server wise OUTSIDE the US

[OUTLAW 09]

There is a brave New World out there and I am afraid both Trump and Giuliani are not up for it....
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/01/13/mystery-hackers-blow-up...

Mystery Hackers Blow Up Secret NSA Hacking Tools in ‘Final F--k You’
A gang of elite hackers, believed by many to be Russian, say they’re quitting—just as Donald Trump gets ready to enter the Oval Office.

Kevin Poulsen
01.13.17 7:13 AM ET

A mysterious hacking group has been bedeviling the U.S. intelligence community for months, releasing a tranche of secret NSA hacking tools to the public while offering to sell even more for the right price. Now with barely a week to go before Donald Trump’s inauguration, the self-styled “Shadow Brokers” on Thursday announced that they were packing it in.

“So long, farewell peoples. TheShadowBrokers is going dark, making exit,” the group wrote on its darknet site. “Continuing is being much risk and bull####, not many bitcoins.” The message was accompanied by a parting gift, described by the group as a “final #### you”: an apparently-complete NSA backdoor kit targeting the Windows operating system. The kit is comprised of 61 malicious Windows executables, only one of which was previously known to anti-virus vendors.

The Shadow Brokers emerged in August with the announcement that they’d stolen the hacking tools used by a sophisticated computer intrusion operation known as the Equation Group, and were putting them up for sale to the highest bidder.

It was a remarkable claim, because the Equation Group is generally understood to be part of the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations program and is virtually never detected, much less penetrated. The Equation Group was, in a sense, the rough equivalent to the Russian “Cozy Bear” crew, now blamed for the DNC hacks.

Except the American hackers operated for at least 14 years as virtual ghosts, until 2015 when the Russia-based cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Labs gathered enough evidence to prove that they exist.

It soon emerged that the Shadow Brokers really had the goods. Released along with the announcement was a huge cache of specialized malware, including dozens of backdoor programs and 10 exploits, two of them targeting previously-unknown security holes in Cisco routers—a basic building block of the internet.

While Cisco and other companies scrambled for a fix, security experts pored over the Shadow Brokers tranche like it was the Rosetta Stone. “It was the first time, as threat intelligence professionals, that we’ve had access to what appears to be a relatively complete toolkit of a nation-state attacker,” says Jake Williams, founder of Rendition Infosec. “It was excitement in some circles, dismay in other circles, and panic and a rush to patch if you’re running vulnerable hardware.”

Virtually nobody, though, believed the Shadow Brokers’ claim that they were mere hackers trying to sell the exploits for a quick fortune. For one thing, the group had released far more material for free than necessary to prove their bona fides. And the mechanics of their bitcoin “auction” were laughable—losing bidders, the group said, would not get their money back.

The Shadow Brokers would release the whole cache to the public for the arbitrary, Dr. Evil-esque price of 1 million bitcoins, nearly $600 million at the time. They group later broke down the hacking tools into a revised al la carte buy-it-now price list, but the prices weren’t low enough to attract buyers. As of Thursday, the Shadow Brokers had pulled in a total of 10 bitcoins.

In an email interview with The Daily Beast early this week, the Shadow Brokers expressed frustration that they weren’t getting rich off the code, and hinted that they might be retiring soon. “Many rich hackers. Many rich hacker companies. $100k, $1,000,000, $10,000,000 is pennies to theritepeoples [sic]… TheRitePeoples who not caring about money. TheRitePeoples who just caring about really cool ####. Equation Group really cool ####. Equation Group really cool #### only theshadowbrokers is selling.”

The group also explained they are not activists, and they gave away the initial tranche of files purely as a marketing move. “NOT for [a] silly cause. Douchebags uses causes for trying to get laid. TheShadowBrokers is getting plenty laid, no need for cause douchbaggery. Leaving that to those straight men who looking, acting like gay men, thinking its called hipsters.”

The most popular Shadow Brokers theories in computer security and intelligence circles have nothing to do with money or getting laid. In one, the Shadow Brokers is an NSA insider gone rogue; on the other, it’s the Russian government. Last year the FBI investigated and arrested an NSA contractor named Hal Martin, who had allegedly been illegally stockpiling agency secrets in his house. But as Martin cooled his heels in federal custody, the Shadow Brokers continued to post messages and files, and the rogue insider theory withered.

The more persuasive theory, supported by no less than Edward Snowden, is that the Shadow Brokers are one of the same Russian government hacking groups now accused of targeting the U.S. election. Coincidently, the same day the Shadow Brokers said goodbye, the hacker who claimed responsibility for penetrating the DNC suddenly re-emerged after nearly two months of silence.

In the spy-versus-spy world of hacks and counterhacks, both the U.S. and Russia sometimes lose their code to the other side. The risk is unavoidable, because NSA malware has little value sitting safely on the agency’s classified network. Just as a spy plane must fly, even at risk of being shot down and reverse-engineered, the NSA’s exploits must be fired at targeted networks to be of use. Its backdoor “implants” must be installed in other people’s servers.

As the first step in this process, the NSA sets up its tools on special “staging” servers on the internet—machines that are owned, leased, or otherwise controlled by the U.S., but with no connection to the NSA. From there, the individual programs are smuggled to wherever they’re needed.
The Russians could have traced a U.S. hacking campaign back to one or more of these staging servers, and collected the massive Shadow Brokers cache.

Under this theory, the Shadow Brokers were part of a ###-for-tat in the intelligence world. The group emerged just as the U.S. began confronting Russia over its election hacking, and then seemed to release its secrets in time with the public thrusts and parries between the two countries. On December 15th, for example, Obama announced to NPR that the U.S. would retaliate for the election hacks—“we need to take action.” On the 16th, the Shadow Brokers broke six weeks of silence to publish a tweetstorm of screenshots showing off its unreleased NSA files.

The message: Russia would do to the NSA what it was doing to the Democratic Party. It would dump sensitive stolen files to the internet, while hiding behind just enough of a cover-story that it could maintain public deniability.

Now, with a new, friendlier administration coming in, Vladimir Putin may be pressing the reset button. “The timing is interesting,” says Williams.
The Shadow Brokers, though, insist they have nothing to do with global affairs.

“TheShadowBrokers is dumb asses thinking found golden ticket sitting on server and just wanting cash out without dying or go to prison,” the group wrote. “TheShadowBrokers is wanting to win and exit. Starting to looking like epic fail. TheShadowBrokers still proud of very large balls for to taking risk. Is not many peoples can be saying same? Mostly cattle fed just enough by masters.”

[OUTLAW 09]

The @FEC just sent Trump a 250 page letter listing what appear to be illegal campaign contributions. Read it here:
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/964/201701100300074964/201701100300074964.pdf#

Azor...would be interesting to see if Russian émigré names are this list of 250 pages...as the Buzzfeed alludes to Russian émigrés in the US funneling election funds to Trump

[OUTLAW 09]

So are Trump and Flynn now getting their instructions from the US Russian Ambassador.....

Russia Today panel says #Trump must "decapitate" anti-Trump leakers in the intel community, purge the State Department, the #CIA and the #Pentagon.

Flynn and Trump both have talked about a reorg of CIA so the RT request is not far fetched as it seems....

[OUTLAW 09]

The @FEC just sent Trump a 250 page letter listing what appear to be illegal campaign contributions. Read it here:
http://docquery.fec.gov/pdf/964/201701100300074964/201701100300074964.pdf#

Azor...would be interesting to see if Russian migr names are this list of 250 pages...as the Buzzfeed alludes to Russian migrs in the US funneling election funds to Trump

Reference this Trump tweet.....
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 12
Thank you to Linda Bean of L.L.Bean for your great support and courage. People will support you even more now. Buy L.L.Bean. @LBPerfectMaine

This tweet would violate White House ethics policy.
And Bean made an illegal $30k donation to a pro-Trump super PAC.

[OUTLAW 09]

Ever notice that most of Trump's incessant tweeting fits this.....?????


Populism seeks to divide people into 2 groups: the "real" people & those "against" them. We see this repeatedly

[OUTLAW 09]

MAYBE Trump should have checked with his son...ONE of the sons supposedly taking over his companies and supposedly not a conflict of interest.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump's personal and special advisor Bannon is hard at work here in Europe....

Breitbart: Intelligence Source: Albanian Islamic State Fighters Will Strike Italy
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/01/11/albanian-islamic-state-fighters-will-strike-italy/#

So exactly just how does Breitbart know this when the entire EU intel system does not.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...and there is absolutely no connections between Trump and his staff and Russians.....?????

Steele got it right.....why is it strange to think otherwise....I once had an excellent HUMINT trainer who had served as a German Army intelligence officer (LT) on the East Front during WW2 (he was part of the Gehlen intelligence group who later formed the German BND) who when I asked him something that sounded strange...his reply...."what do you think"...meaning his view is that the human is capable of a lot of things and if I the huminter felt that it was possible write it up because 9 out of 10 times it will be correct and the one time being wrong is acceptable in the humint business....

Wow, the Post's David Ignatius on Flynn and the Russians.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-did-obama-dawdle-on-russias-hacking/2017/01/12/75f878a0-d90c-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html?utm_term=.ae8d7e453fff#

REMEMBER Flynn is not yet officially a representative of the US government nor is Trump yet ...YET both he and Trump act as if they are now running the government....

Azor....and there were no Russian Trump team contacts....apparently for awhile....

The official says the administration is also aware of contacts between Trump adviser Michael Flynn and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at other times as well.

Really weak excuse and why was it not stated right after the calls and why was it now revealed after the article....

Trump team confirms Gen Flynn spoke w/Russian Amb in Dec, to wish him a Merry Christmas & discuss Trump-Putin meeting post-inauguration

BUT WAIT Trump teame does not have an excuse for the "other times"......

[OUTLAW 09]

This article really needs to be read and then reread especially by Trump himself.....

Trump Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know About #Foreign #Policy He says right one but always does the wrong one.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/08/trump-doesnt-know-what-he-doesnt-know-about-foreign-policy/#

[OUTLAW 09]

Every time I think we've captured all the Trump-Russian links, a new one pops up–need a Wikipedia like effort on this @Parsifalssister

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...further proof that in fact elements of the Buzzfeed report were in fact true...NOTICE not being picked up by US MSM...BUT by UK journalists working Russia....

Might Sechin's very close associate , ex FSB Oleg Erovinkin, found dead "of heart failure" in his car on Dec 26, have been Steele's source?

Would certainly (but not uniquely) explain Steele's fear for his life & going to ground.

Erovinkin was x Chief Staff for Sechin, appt by Putin. FSB General. . One of few ppl w access scope (incl Putin) boasted by Steele source

Initially on Dec 26, several RU publications headlined with "Sechin's chief of staff killed"...later quietly changed headline to "died"

Last, (now-dead) Erovinkin was Managing Director of Rosneft at time of this alleged deal commitment with Carter Page

[OUTLAW 09]

NBC News: Paint Not Dry on Trump Legal Dispute Over 32K Unpaid Bill
http://ln.is/www.nbcnews.com/news/sK0g2#
See how his business methods against small businesses R almost like the mafia!

Hungarian celeb claims she's approached by #Trump during a #MissUniverse contest in #Moscow, invited her to his room
http://velvet.hu/gumicukor/2017/01/13/sarka_kata_egyetlen_szoval_mutatkozott_be_donald_t rumpnak/#

[OUTLAW 09]

While we wait for professional journalists to catch up look at how many dots readers have already connected

Would be great if Palantir would donate a copy of the network analysis tool.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor....and there were no Russian Trump team contacts....apparently for awhile....

The official says the administration is also aware of contacts between Trump adviser Michael Flynn and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at other times as well.

Really weak excuse and why was it not stated right after the calls and why was it now revealed after the article....

Trump team confirms Gen Flynn spoke w/Russian Amb in Dec, to wish him a Merry Christmas & discuss Trump-Putin meeting post-inauguration

BUT WAIT Trump teame does not have an excuse for the "other times"......

Trump/Flynn calls behind Obama's back are recorded by Putin/FSB. Their statements/promises are further blackmail. Devastatingly stupid act!!

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor.....reference the Buzzfeed article...this is exactly how HUMINT works
Here's the overview: nr, date, pages, sources, title—& a quick-and-dirty credibility assessment. Pointers to errors, suggestions appreciated

[OUTLAW 09]

Eg: 2016-100 is noteworthy. Historically we expect an active measure like this to be highly controversial. Kremlin frictions may be accurate

Note that 2016-100 mentioned a power struggle inside PA between Ivanov and Peskov days before Putin dismisses Ivanov

[Azor]

You know that I have difficulty responding to posts spread out over two pages of a thread, especially on a mobile…


ever notice that before the Buzzfeed no one heard of Orbis and or Steele accept those in the intel dark side of CI....where their opinion of him is high based on his CI work in Moscow...and Russia in general

2.Orbis became a small Mercedes Benz among the top tier of the business intel world by virtue of their work quality and Russian sources

Suddenly now we have tons of experts coming out of the wool stating this and or that about both Orbis and Steele largely to discredit him...and distract from the bulk of the 17 reports...

...if he handled as a MI6 case officer this particular cross over Russian high level agent then the MI6 placed him into a different league...only the best in this business handle such high level cross overs...

BTW...missing completely from those that try to discredit Steels and his past....UK and US types that were assigned to the Soviet Union in those days spoke fluent Russian and had extensive surveillance and counter surveillance training before arriving in Moscow...and it was spy combat from the day they hit the ground running in those days of Moscow...

You know perfectly well that from 1992 on, NATO’s military and intelligence machine was hollowed out in order to save money and reallocate resources to more pressing issues. Steele arrived in Moscow at the very end of the Cold War. He was late to the party. During the chaos of Russia in the 1990s where everything and everyone was for sale, what good was an SIS officer posing as a FCO diplomat?

He was certainly useful in the UK handling walk-ins such as Litvinenko, but he was one of a surge of intelligence officers who went into the private sector following the end of the Cold War. Perhaps if he had learned Arabic and Urdu and clung on for a few more years, he would still be with SIS and would be a true spy. According to a Bloomberg article, Steele’s colleagues have a mixed opinion of him and don’t regard Orbis as a “Merc” by any measure.

I suggest you reread my remarks on Steele from earlier in the thread, which you have not responded to: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=199145&postcount=386

:rolleyes:

The UK was home to many dissidents and defectors from Putin’s Russia who never failed to remind the world how Putin was subverting Russia’s nascent democracy and becoming a tyrant. Yet few cared to listen because Russia was no longer regarded as a major threat as it was during the Cold War.


…Trump has bee in the cross hairs of CI for going on 30 years...

Then how did he make it this far? A “vast right-wing conspiracy”? Collusion between the FBI and the Kremlin?


Putin was a central figure inside the Dresden Stasi which was extremely active during the ramp up of demonstrations in Dresden prior to the Wall coming down...he was not just some second rate figure..so he had experience already with "color revolts"...

Given the policies followed by Andropov, Chernenko and especially Gorbachev, Putin’s role would have been more to report on the StaSi using deadly force against the demonstrators than on helping suppress the opposition. East Berlin was Stalinist as far as Moscow was concerned, and Gorby was worried that the regime wouldn't go quietly into the night...


Hungarian model tells of how @realDonaldTrump tried to seduce her in 2013 - in Moscow

A Hungarian “model” claims this? From Europe’s former prostitution capital where women are part-time pornographic actresses for extra cash? Even if it was true, so?


Azor...now I am more than convinced the bulk of the materials released are valid....his sources were largely business types and that explains the look and feel that the access of the individuals reporting had and seems they were involved in actual conversations and or near ongoing conversations where they could overhear information...common for HUMINT collection...

Then you are contradicting the content of the Dossier itself. Supposedly this intelligence operation that began 5-8 years ago and which is so sensitive to be directed personally by Putin and his key aides rather than the usual organizational channels, was revealed to various Russian businessmen, perhaps over 100 as you suggest. Why would Putin confide in them and why would they confide in Steele?

Unfortunately, this Dossier reads like a salacious story fabricated by someone with knowledge of post-Soviet Russia but who needs to write in order to put steaks in the freezer. Oddly enough, Steele reminds me of Manafort, except with a bit more dignity...

[Azor]

Azor.....reference the Buzzfeed article...this is exactly how HUMINT works
Here's the overview: nr, date, pages, sources, title—& a quick-and-dirty credibility assessment. Pointers to errors, suggestions appreciated

Yet the contents of this spreadsheet would have to be incorrect, or else they would aid the Kremlin in uncovering the sources.

If the Russians can hack the DNC and C-SPAN, they can certainly hack Steele's communications.

You're really trying to sell the hooker with the heart of gold.

[davidbfpo]

Via Twitter a recommendation from The Spectator's Editor, Fraser Nelson, to read:
This, from Paul Wood, is the best analysis you'll read on the Trump/Russia imbroglio

Link to article:http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/can-donald-trump-really-compromised-agent-russian-influence/

[Azor]

Via Twitter a recommendation from The Spectator's Editor, Fraser Nelson, to read:

Link to article:http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/01/can-donald-trump-really-compromised-agent-russian-influence/

Paul Wood worked with Chris Steele, and has been ardently defending him.

Curiously, this elaborate plot to insert a Russian agent into the White House has only truly come to light after the election and now seems to be an open secret, with active and retired spies throughout the West and many Russian businessmen being aware. This is in spite of the direction of the operation from Putin's very office, bypassing the SVR and GU.

Mark Galeotti claimed that Putin desired a weakened Hillary Clinton to be elected. Now that Trump was elected in a major upset, he finds his legitimacy damaged prior to his inauguration, and again, Russia is the source. The Russians certainly have enough agents throughout the Baltics to corroborate this tale, and since when have the British not been on the losing side of the HUMINT game with the Russians?

Blinded by partisanship, Americans might not want to believe that Putin was going to sabotage whoever was president-elect.

[OUTLAW 09]

Here is now Trump's problem.......

1. he has been largely delegitimized by the whole discussion around the Russian hacking that he largely still does not really accept as it does not fit the world he has created for himself

2. he truly does not understand foreign policy and or international trade all the while claiming he is this great businessman and has over 500 companies globally

4. his cabinet picks even reflect this

5. he feels that he can personally negotiate anything with anybody

6. his extremely close Russian finance ties are now out there regardless of whether one voted for him or not

7. his sex comments from 2005 are still out there and his own AG stated they were equal to sexual assault

AND now the Buzzfeed raw intel reports which are now being slowly seen to be more than accurate....even the sex tape/tapes are open for debate...

WHEN one sees this interview you see that Trump wants to fight IS with Russia BUT really fails to admit that they have largely not done that in Syria where that would have been a great test of true Russian intentions ie fighting IS.

AND he does not talk about eastern Ukraine and Crimea which are the reasons for the US sanctions outside of the hacking side....

He talks about Chinese currency manipulations WHICH most economists know does not longer exist as an issue.......

He simply is truly uninformed on just about anything.....



NEW YORK—President-elect Donald Trump suggested he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia and wasn’t committed to a long-standing agreement with China over Taiwan, two signs that he would use what leverage was available to realigning the U.S.’s relationship with its two biggest global strategic rivals.

In an hourlong interview, Mr. Trump said he would keep intact sanctions against Russia imposed by the Obama administration “at least for a period of time.” He also said he wouldn’t commit to America’s longstanding agreement with China over Taiwan until he sees what he considers progress from Beijing in its currency and trade practices.

“If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody’s doing some really great things?”

The desire to change relations between Washington and Moscow has been a goal of several presidents since tensions began rising under President Vladimir Putin’s leadership. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sought the same goal early in the Obama administration, as did President George W. Bush, who met Mr. Putin early in his first term.

But Mr. Trump’s diplomatic efforts will have to compete with those in Congress, including many Republicans, who want to see the administration take a tough line with Russia after U.S. intelligence concluded that the government of Mr. Putin sought to influence the November presidential election with a campaign of cyberhacking.

Additionally, an unsubstantiated dossier of political opposition research suggesting ties between Mr. Trump and Russia was published this past week—drawing condemnation from Mr. Trump and his team but keeping Russian espionage in the spotlight. The allegations haven’t been validated by the U.S. intelligence agencies.

Mr. Trump in the interview suggested he might do away with the Russian sanctions—imposed by the president in late December in response to Moscow’s alleged cyberattacks—if the nation proves helpful in battling terrorists and reaching other goals important to the U.S. The president-elect said he is prepared to meet with Mr. Putin some time after he is sworn in.

“I understand that they would like to meet, and that’s absolutely fine with me,” he said.

On China, asked if he supported the “One China” policy on Taiwan that has underpinned U.S. relations with Beijing for decades, Mr. Trump said: “Everything is under negotiation including One China.”

China has considered Taiwan a breakaway province since Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists set up a government there in 1949, after years of civil war. Washington’s agreement to rescind diplomatic recognition of the government in Taiwan and uphold a One China policy was a precondition for the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between U.S. and China in 1979. Any suggestion in the past that the U.S. may change its stance has been met with alarm in Beijing.

Though he has long been critical of China, Mr. Trump also made a point of showing a holiday greeting card he received from China’s leader, Xi Jinping.

“I have a beautiful card from the chairman,” he said.

Mr. Trump seemed impatient with diplomatic protocols involving China and Taiwan. After his victory he took a congratulatory phone call from Taiwan’s leader, triggering objections from Beijing and stoking concerns among some U.S. foreign policy expert who questioned whether he understood the implications of such a conversation.

Speaking of Taiwan, he said: “We sold them $2 billion of military equipment last year. We can sell them $2 billion of the latest and greatest military equipment but we’re not allowed to accept a phone call. First of all it would have been very rude not to accept the phone call.”

Mr. Trump has said in the past he would label China a currency manipulator after he takes office. In the interview, he said he wouldn’t take that step on his first day in the White House. “I would talk to them first,” he said.
He added: “Certainly they are manipulators. But I’m not looking to do that.”
But he made plain his displeasure with China’s currency practices. “Instead of saying, ‘We’re devaluating our currency,’ they say, “Oh, our currency is dropping.’ It’s not dropping. They’re doing it on purpose.

“Our companies can’t compete with them now because our currency is strong and it’s killing us.”

The interview came at the end of the week in which Mr. Trump saw much of his national-security team get closer to their appointments but had to push back against the Russia allegations and against criticism from ethics experts of his plan to maintain ownership of his business interests.

Six of his cabinet choices had confirmation hearings, and a number look likely to sail through. Many Democrats offered eager support for his pick for defense secretary, retired Gen. James Mattis.

Mr. Trump also brought his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on as a senior White House adviser, although the appointment could be challenged under antinepotism laws. And he got closer to fulfilling a campaign promise as the Senate and then the House took procedural steps that begin rolling back or repealing the Affordable Care Act.

“He got elected as a fighter and he’s going to be president as a fighter,” said Ed Brookover, a former Trump campaign adviser. He added that Mr. Trump “is going to be a very active president and push a lot of buttons along the way.”

At a jam-packed news conference on Wednesday#morning, Mr. Trump was both combative and flattering, shouting down one journalist but praising news outlets who he said covered him fairly. During the session, he accused intelligence agencies of allowing the dossier information to be leaked, and on Twitter he said they were employing the tactics of Nazi Germany. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said he doesn’t believe intelligence officials leaked the information.

Amid a flurry of questions about the dossier, Mr. Trump avoided most direct answers and made just one admission. For the first time, he said he agrees that Russia was behind the cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee and a top aide to campaign rival Mrs. Clinton during the election.

He also tossed in the announcement of his pick to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, said he would sign executive orders beginning on#Jan. 23, and promised to begin negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies to drive costs down.

Questions about his refusal to divest himself of business holdings lingered, though. A few hours after his press conference, U.S. Office of Government Ethics Director Walter Shaub criticized Mr. Trump’s new business arrangement, saying his actions were insufficient to remove potential conflicts.

“Every president in modern times has taken the strong medicine of divestiture,” Mr. Shaub said. “Officials in an administration need their president to show that ethics matter, not only through words but through deeds. This is vitally important if we’re going to have any kind of ethics program.”

Continued...

[OUTLAW 09]

Ex-MI6 agent's frustration as FBI sat on Trump file for months

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html#

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor....as someone who has worked the dark side and HUMINT/HUMINTER sides Steele was sitting on solid reporting sources and that for a long while if he was pointing to this already...

You can literally build as HUMINT timeline and tie it directly to Trump actions....

NOW the actual question is WHY did the FBI not respond.....exactly the question the DOJ Inspector General is asking actually AND Trump cannot block the DoJ IG investigation......

[OUTLAW 09]

Yet the contents of this spreadsheet would have to be incorrect, or else they would aid the Kremlin in uncovering the sources.

If the Russians can hack the DNC and C-SPAN, they can certainly hack Steele's communications.

You're really trying to sell the hooker with the heart of gold.

They already have and I posted it...the "died of a heart" attack retired FSB general .......the Russian handling of this "death" is the key...local Moscow newspapers reported he had been killed ...THEN a long time later...corrected to read "died of a heart attack".....

This was caught the attention of a UK based Russian speaking journalist based in Moscow who pays close attention to such items....

[OUTLAW 09]

You know that I have difficulty responding to posts spread out over two pages of a thread, especially on a mobile…



You know perfectly well that from 1992 on, NATO’s military and intelligence machine was hollowed out in order to save money and reallocate resources to more pressing issues. Steele arrived in Moscow at the very end of the Cold War. He was late to the party. During the chaos of Russia in the 1990s where everything and everyone was for sale, what good was an SIS officer posing as a FCO diplomat?

He was certainly useful in the UK handling walk-ins such as Litvinenko, but he was one of a surge of intelligence officers who went into the private sector following the end of the Cold War. Perhaps if he had learned Arabic and Urdu and clung on for a few more years, he would still be with SIS and would be a true spy. According to a Bloomberg article, Steele’s colleagues have a mixed opinion of him and don’t regard Orbis as a “Merc” by any measure.

I suggest you reread my remarks on Steele from earlier in the thread, which you have not responded to: http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=199145&postcount=386

:rolleyes:

The UK was home to many dissidents and defectors from Putin’s Russia who never failed to remind the world how Putin was subverting Russia’s nascent democracy and becoming a tyrant. Yet few cared to listen because Russia was no longer regarded as a major threat as it was during the Cold War.



Then how did he make it this far? A “vast right-wing conspiracy”? Collusion between the FBI and the Kremlin?



Given the policies followed by Andropov, Chernenko and especially Gorbachev, Putin’s role would have been more to report on the StaSi using deadly force against the demonstrators than on helping suppress the opposition. East Berlin was Stalinist as far as Moscow was concerned, and Gorby was worried that the regime wouldn't go quietly into the night...



A Hungarian “model” claims this? From Europe’s former prostitution capital where women are part-time pornographic actresses for extra cash? Even if it was true, so?



Then you are contradicting the content of the Dossier itself. Supposedly this intelligence operation that began 5-8 years ago and which is so sensitive to be directed personally by Putin and his key aides rather than the usual organizational channels, was revealed to various Russian businessmen, perhaps over 100 as you suggest. Why would Putin confide in them and why would they confide in Steele?

Unfortunately, this Dossier reads like a salacious story fabricated by someone with knowledge of post-Soviet Russia but who needs to write in order to put steaks in the freezer. Oddly enough, Steele reminds me of Manafort, except with a bit more dignity...

Azor...oh where to start.......you have been reading to many spy novels....

1. the key to Steele and his abilities is who he handled as a field agent....and that is massive if you understand the individual poisoned on Putin's orders

2. while the Su collapsed what did not collapse was the KGB/GRU/SVR...they still maintained they "sword and shield of the Party" attitudes...

3. you have to separate the sex from the rest of the 17 reports and the rest is the critical point....WHY....IMHO you cannot even begin to blackmail Trump with sex...sex tapes and or 500 women all claiming sexual assault...we saw just how elegant he moved around the 2005 video footage and then the outcry....he has built this image around sex and YES even his very own voters will tell you it is not an issue for them as he is this great businessman and sometimes they bend the rules/laws....that is why he cannot be blackmailed just with sex...BUT his financial empire built on Russian money is a totally different ballgame...

4. BUT tying him to Russian black money and or that his so called slef made great empire was on the back of money laundering WELL that is a totally different subject matter for Trump and he will fight like crazy to protect that image...WHICH BTW he is doing very well on...

EVER notice just how the subject of the Buzzfeed was taken off the news cycle....first the Steep tweets....then the LL Bean tweets....then the attack on the FBI and again Clinton and then his "people will address the hacking not saying that he really distrusts the IC hacking report AND on and on and on...Suddenly the 24 hr news cycle is off the of the Buzzfeed reports is it not?????

EG......Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 20h
20 hours ago

What are Hillary Clinton's people complaining about with respect to the F.B.I. Based on the information they had she should never.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 20h
20 hours ago

Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

Want me to keep going.....?

Trump Shows How to Smother a Scandal: With a Bigger Story
https://nyti.ms/2jzIBwe#

[OUTLAW 09]

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher defends Putin, suggests lawmakers like Rubio are ‘warmongers’

http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/01/13/republican-congressman-defends-putin-suggests-lawmakers-like-rubio-are-warmongers/#

Azor..this proRussian US Congressman has received large lobbying monies just before his reelection and he gets a lot of lobbying money for so called talking circuit speeches......all form the same lobbying firm hired by Russian oligarchs to funnel money into US to support a better Ukraine image for Russia....

Check the posted comments on his statements on the Ukraine thread from 2015...it is all there.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Taibbi: If Israel gets to hear why they think Trump is compromised, how is the American public not also so entitled?
http://rol.st/2cNXkn

[OUTLAW 09]

Here is now Trump's problem.......

1. he has been largely delegitimized by the whole discussion around the Russian hacking that he largely still does not really accept as it does not fit the world he has created for himself

2. he truly does not understand foreign policy and or international trade all the while claiming he is this great businessman and has over 500 companies globally

4. his cabinet picks even reflect this

5. he feels that he can personally negotiate anything with anybody

6. his extremely close Russian finance ties are now out there regardless of whether one voted for him or not

7. his sex comments from 2005 are still out there and his own AG stated they were equal to sexual assault

AND now the Buzzfeed raw intel reports which are now being slowly seen to be more than accurate....even the sex tape/tapes are open for debate...

WHEN one sees this interview you see that Trump wants to fight IS with Russia BUT really fails to admit that they have largely not done that in Syria where that would have been a great test of true Russian intentions ie fighting IS.

AND he does not talk about eastern Ukraine and Crimea which are the reasons for the US sanctions outside of the hacking side....

He talks about Chinese currency manipulations WHICH most economists know does not longer exist as an issue.......

He simply is truly uninformed on just about anything.....

Azor...take the posted Trump interview AND THEN compare it to this article by a Harvard type who supported at first Trump....

SERIUOSLY read the article....well worth it.....

Trump Doesn’t Know What He Doesn’t Know About #Foreign #Policy He says right one but always does the wrong one.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/01/08/...reign-policy/#

[OUTLAW 09]

IF Trump still does not buy in to the US IC report on US hacking operations THEN just how does he handle this.....??????

Putin’s DNC Hackers Actively Targeting French Elections:http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2017/01/putins-dnc-hackers-actively-targeting-french-elections/134603/?oref=d-mostread

[OUTLAW 09]

Fittingly, a memorial to 1989, a piece of the Berlin Wall, was vandalized by Trump supporters.
http://m.chron.com/news/education/article/Rice-University-mural-monument-vandalized-with-10855941.php?cmpid=fb-mobile&cmpid=twitter-mobile#
… via @houstonchron

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor.....a career intelligence officer who has worked with JSOC and he is contacting on his own the Russian Embassy...knowling full well all comms to the Embassy are monitored is either fully crazy and or is disregarding basic security protocols....

REMEMBER the story of his Pakistan leaking episode costing the lives of three US soldiers one a COL is not widely distributed inside the US...BUT is inside intel circles....

AND this is the man that ranted "lock her up" at the Republican convention.....

US official says Flynn and Russian envoy have been in very frequent contact, both around sanctions and other times.
https://apnews.com/ba462d64c12d4692b8381cb7076d34ab#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...just a side comment ......

You get more thoroughly background checked for a cashier position at Target than for the Presidency of the United States

Trump BTW with his SEVEN bankruptcies....lack of US bank creditability...his countless federal count cases involving twice racketeering... and his money laundering fines would have never gotten a US TS/SCI clearance in the "normal world".....BUT a loophole in the law states that Presidents and presidential candidates do not have to have a security clearance check.....

Close the loop hole BUT WAIT the Republicans are in power thus that will never happen will it...

[OUTLAW 09]

Ted Lieu ‏@tedlieu Jan 12
I read the highly classified Intelligence Report on #Russian #hacking. @realDonaldTrump is not telling the truth.
https://lieu.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/rep-lieu-statement-his-review-classified-report-russian-hacking-us#…

BUT since the entire US general public is not aware of what is in it..Trump can argue anything he wants to and get away with it as the MSM cannot challenge him on it....

[OUTLAW 09]

Dmitry Robyolovlev in $95M Trump deal not to be confused with Dmitry Firtash, whose $ Manafort was laundering

Trump's son made *6 trips in 18 months* to Russia before 2008–then a Russian oligarch showers Trump with $95M

On Nov 3, 5 days before the election, Trump holds a rally in Concord, NC.
Rybolovlev's private jet lands in Concorde as well.

[OUTLAW 09]

Same day Rosneft CoS (ex-KGB General and close Putin friend) found dead in his car in Moscow, NATO's terrorist financing/money laundering czar also found dead in his car.

"Heart attack" in the back seat of his own car????
Less than two weeks later, Dec 26, Sechin's chief of staff was found dead in the back of his car
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/top-rosneft-exec-found-dead-in-moscow-56649#

Azor...remember the Buzzfeed comments on Page and Rosneft percentages....

REMEMBER Moscow police first reported he had been killed and then change a few days later that to "heart attack"...THIS is how Moscow police rate the ruling of "heart attack".....

When an American was murdered in a bloody bathtub, Moscow, police pointed to the autopsy, said he had a heart condition

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...as always in HUMINT and Steele is no different "follow the money".....now tell me Steele was "wrong in his HUMINT reports"....he was as the Brits say..."spot on"....

NO wonder he truly doubted the FBI when he was providing this much detail......

Source close to Rosneft President Sechin in Steele memos: Carter Page & Trump assocs stand to get ~$11bn if follow-thru lifting RU sanctions

That was in a memo dated October 18. On December 7th, Russia sold an 19.5% stake in Rosneft.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/glencore-qatar-fund-buy-russia-s-rosneft-stake-for-11-billion#…

Glencore and Qatar fund were fronts. Deal financed by the Russian Central Bank.

It’s a highly leveraged deal where Glencore is paying only €350M and Qatar allegedly €2.5B. Most of the deal is financed by Italian Intesa.

NOW jump back to the Trump casino empire WHICH was also heavily leveraged thus he lost massively...a MINUS 89% when compared to the rest of the industry BUT when they went into bankruptcy Trump walked with MILLIONS.....AND Russia money was also involved in that empire......

On Dec 7, Rosneft sells corp bonds to Russian banks, raising… $10B.
The only way Russian banks strapped for liquidity can pay so much is by borrowing from Central Bank.

A similar precedent happened in 2014, when Rus Central Bank took Rosneft bonds as collateral, and gave banks money to buy them.

On Jan 10, ownership of 19.5% shares of Rosneft is transferred to a Singaporean company QHG Shares Pte Ltd.
http://www.rbc.ru/business/10/01/2017/587507a39a7947c61978c0d2#…

There is Russian nesting doll of shell companies that own it, as depicted here:

NOW the core question is....WHO CONTROLS this particular doll...some say Putin......

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...as always in HUMINT and Steele is no different "follow the money".....now tell me Steele was "wrong in his HUMINT reports"....he was as the Brits say..."spot on"....

NO wonder he truly doubted the FBI when he was providing this much detail......

Source close to Rosneft President Sechin in Steele memos: Carter Page & Trump assocs stand to get ~$11bn if follow-thru lifting RU sanctions

That was in a memo dated October 18. On December 7th, Russia sold an 19.5% stake in Rosneft.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-07/glencore-qatar-fund-buy-russia-s-rosneft-stake-for-11-billion#…

Glencore and Qatar fund were fronts. Deal financed by the Russian Central Bank.

It’s a highly leveraged deal where Glencore is paying only €350M and Qatar allegedly €2.5B. Most of the deal is financed by Italian Intesa.

NOW jump back to the Trump casino empire WHICH was also heavily leveraged thus he lost massively...a MINUS 89% when compared to the rest of the industry BUT when they went into bankruptcy Trump walked with MILLIONS.....AND Russia money was also involved in that empire......

On Dec 7, Rosneft sells corp bonds to Russian banks, raising… $10B.
The only way Russian banks strapped for liquidity can pay so much is by borrowing from Central Bank.

A similar precedent happened in 2014, when Rus Central Bank took Rosneft bonds as collateral, and gave banks money to buy them.

On Jan 10, ownership of 19.5% shares of Rosneft is transferred to a Singaporean company QHG Shares Pte Ltd.
http://www.rbc.ru/business/10/01/2017/587507a39a7947c61978c0d2#…

There is Russian nesting doll of shell companies that own it, as depicted here:

NOW the core question is....WHO CONTROLS this particular doll...some say Putin......

Azor...NOW tell me the Trump interview yesterday and his comments concerning the lifting of sanctions DOES NOT tie into the above??????

[OUTLAW 09]

Republicans are willing to join JOIC but knowingly backpedal on what might damage the fella who secured them votes.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/burr-says-intel-panel-will-investigate-possible-russia-trump-links-233621#
…

[OUTLAW 09]

Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
No it is unusual for transition teams to have contact with foreign governments. # of calls to Kislyak during Obama transition: 0.

Flynn in excess of 14.....since DEC......

[OUTLAW 09]

Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
No it is unusual for transition teams to have contact with foreign governments. # of calls to Kislyak during Obama transition: 0.

Flynn in excess of 14.....since DEC......

APPEARS the former JSOC intel chief has forgotten the single word..."perception" and it means a lot these days......

AND he did not know this as the former JSOC intel chief......and former DIA Director??????

BREAKING: RUSSIAN GEN SERGUN WHO RECRUITED FLYNN TO TEACH GRU WAS SANCTIONED BY US TREASURY
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl23331.aspx#…

Maybe he was only in it for the money as was his Russia Today trip to Moscow and his Russia Today interviews.....

Flynn has never stated what he got for the GRU speech and his Russia today trips and interviews....

Russian GRU general who recruited FLYNN to teach GRU suddenly died in Moscow recently

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump, who denied housing to POC in the 70's is slandering @repjohnlewis, civil rights hero who marched in Selma AND Trump is a verified four time VN draft dodger claiming he had a bone spur but does not remember which foot it was in.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

[OUTLAW 09]

ABSOLUTELY NOT THE CASE....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 4h
4 hours ago

INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN

Trump keeps sidestepping his association with Russian money and Russian oligarchs especially Putin.....EVEN his own son admitted in 2008 that Russian money amounted to a heck a lot of their real estate business and then ask the UK about Russian black money flowing in to purchase real estate in UK.....

NOTICE he tweets "insiders" BUT fails to identify them...this is nothing but pure unadulterated disinformation using the Russian propaganda tactic called the SIX Ds.....

BLUF......
It would be so easy to make all the Kremlin dirty $ rumors go away by releasing his tax returns.

Why won't Trump?

Just as it would be easy form Flynn to tell us exactly how much he has received from Russia Today...the main Russian propaganda media outlet

While Trump screams about *a* dossier, intel agencies around the world are sharing *many* dossiers about his dirt:https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/spy-agencies-around-the-world-are-digging-into-trump-moscow?utm_term=.sfdvvl1xL0#.sfdvvl1xL0

John Schindler
Verified account
‏@20committee
I've chatted with more than a half-dozen intel services about Trump. All have pieces of an ugly puzzle. Devastating.
More such releases are coming soon...real soon.....

[OUTLAW 09]

On 20 JAN Trump must repeat this....as many of us have done in the past an present....

"I'll support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic"

Enemies far and near...SO who does Trump actually defend us from....Putin and or his oligarchs......or Russian black money...he definitely is not defending the US....

[OUTLAW 09]

APPEARS the former JSOC intel chief has forgotten the single word..."perception" and it means a lot these days......

AND he did not know this as the former JSOC intel chief......and former DIA Director??????

BREAKING: RUSSIAN GEN SERGUN WHO RECRUITED FLYNN TO TEACH GRU WAS SANCTIONED BY US TREASURY
https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl23331.aspx#…

Maybe he was only in it for the money as was his Russia Today trip to Moscow and his Russia Today interviews.....

Flynn has never stated what he got for the GRU speech and his Russia today trips and interviews....

Russian GRU general who recruited FLYNN to teach GRU suddenly died in Moscow recently

1. on the exact day of the US hacking sanctions against Russia Flynn calls the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times to "wish him a Merry Christmas"...which being ROC he did not celebrate exactly on that day....

2. USA has real friends. Like UK, Canada, Australia, Israel, Poland, Germany, Japan.

How many times has Mike Flynn called their ambassadors?

NOT a single time.......

So is Trump...Flynn and Spice trying to sell us a bridge in the middle of the Sahara????

Gosh, if only someone had the transcripts to those 5 calls....
APPEARS the former intel chief for JSOC in AFG and the former DIA Director totally forgot the US IC monitors and records all comms going into and out of the US Russia Embassy.....

Next leak will be those conversations and I bet they were not about Christmas......

Unlike the rest of Team Trump, Flynn was a career intel officer & Cold War vet. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing getting in bed with Putin.

With his background, Flynn knew this was out of bounds, but felt he could act without consequence.
And why is that?

1. He's not all that smart.
2. He's monumentally arrogant.
3. He hates Obama so much 4 firing him he doesn't care.

On the day the US issued sanctions against Russia for their hacking...Flynn calls the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times to "wish him a Merry Christmas"......

Michael McFaul ‏@McFaul former US Ambassador to Russia
14 hours ago

I dealt w/ Kislyak all the time when I worked at WH. Never needed to call him 5 times in one day to make my point.

[OUTLAW 09]

NSC is on 3d Trump transition "landing team" in 2 mos. Key jobs unfilled less than a week from start. One insider: Worst transition ever.

BUT WAIT...Trump during a presser stated "we have the smoothest transition ongoing right now...."

[OUTLAW 09]

This kind of summarizes the current accelerating TrumPutin drama that is unfolding.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump, who denied housing to POC in the 70's is slandering @repjohnlewis, civil rights hero who marched in Selma AND Trump is a verified four time VN draft dodger claiming he had a bone spur but does not remember which foot it was in.....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 5h
5 hours ago

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

Russian propaganda and disinformation works on their SIX Ds principle ...

DEFLECT.....DISTORT...DISMISS.....DISMAY ALL designed to create DOUBT and DISTRUST.....

Trump is a master of DEFECTING....DISTORTING.....DISMISSING in order to DIVERT the 24 hour news cycle away from the Russian hacking and deep Russian ties black money and compromising materials.....

Usual Trump MO in action: Kremlin wolves are circling. Create stupid fight -- civil rights icon on MLK WE? Perfect! Dodge with MSM frenzy.
NOW see how the Trump social media picks up on his tweets......

John Lewis is not a "legend"--he was a minor player in the civil rights movement who became a nasty, bitter old man

IT is all about controlling the US MSM news cycle to his advantage....

NOTE:
John Lewis was arrested 45 times, while Donald Trump dodged the draft FOUR TIMES with an alleged bone spur and he cannot recall now which foot.....

All talk, no action.

[OUTLAW 09]

David Frum
✔
@davidfrum
Fox hiring RT headline writers to describe NATO missions. NB Except for enclave in what was East Prussia, Poland does not border Russia

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia's state media: "We decided to take a look at the rednecks and white trash that voted for Trump—they live in houses made of plywood."

Russia's state TV: America is afraid of the outside world, except Trump will be going not after Russians, but after the Chinese & Mexicans.

[OUTLAW 09]

David Frum
✔
@davidfrum
Putin sees the EU as his most dangerous adversary. Naturally therefore so do Trump and BannonBannon via Breitbart.com has established offices and businesses in UK....France...Germany

Outgoing US Ambassador to EU has stated he and others at the EU are concerned that Trump is planning the breakup of EU...his office received numerous calls from the Trump transition team wanting him and others to tell them what EU members would follow Brexit and they alluded to their feelings the EU was breaking up.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Steele's #GoldenShowersGate leak to public is a part of highly classified intelligence handed over to @SenJohnMcCainhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-russia-dossier-file-investigation-hacking-christopher-steele-mi6-a7526901.html#

Stop obsessing over ‘secrets’ about Trump and Russia. What we already know is bad enough.http://wpo.st/rwTR2
#

[OUTLAW 09]

Russia's state media: @BorisJohnson returned from meeting Trump's team with adjusted attitude, he is now ready to "stop demonizing Russia."

Under the rubric of the Russians are hitting the vodka to hard

[OUTLAW 09]

A few tweets that former General Flynn has "liked" today.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Azor...this journalist in Russia was at first dismissive of the Steele reports.....NOW a sudden and surprising shift....

https://cgrozev.wordpress.com/2017/01/14/tower-of-cards-part-1/

Tower of Cards (part#1)
Posted on
January 14, 2017

When Buzzfeed.com leaked ex-MI6 spook’s Trump Dossier last this past Wednesday, most critical thinkers’ initial reaction was wide-eyed skepticism. The combination of alphabetized sources, the improbable breadth of alleged access to top-secret information, and over-explicit details from the (not as improbable – more on this in a future post) alleged fetishes of a President-Elect, beggared belief.# Serious analysts like Mark Galeotti who cannot be accused of sympathy for Trump or Putin, challenged the dossier’s plausibility, arguing that the cited anonymous sources had suspiciously wide a network with access to diverse state secretes – and on top of that, were willing to share them via remote communication with a UK based handler.
My initial reaction was similarly dismissive. However, after playing devil’s advocate – and testing certain assumptions about how the dossier may have been compiled – I have shifted my position. We now know conclusively (against his will) that the report was written by an industry-respected former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. Is it probable that Steele would have invented, purposely conflated, or embellished details in the report in order to please his client – or to substantiate his own Russophobic precepts? (the theory has been posited in the UK press that he may have been emotionally blinded by his own experience in handling Litvinenko’s case on behalf of MI6).
I strongly doubt the embellishment theory. Steele’s only gainful asset of late has been his reputation, both among private clients but also – crucially – among state actors who have used him to investigate transnational corruption cases such as the FIFA scandal. There is no plausible hypothesis in which Steele would knowingly embellish his report and then proceed to not only furnish it to his private clients (who, one could argue, might be gullible enough to accept Ludlumesque fiction as fact), but also to the FBI and CIA – who he would know would never trust him again if he once served them red herrings.
Therefore, I believe# Steele provided a bona-fide report of what he thought was the objective truth at the time of writing, and (importantly) in doing so, drew on actual sources, alphabetized or not, that he trusted. He did communicate with his sources, via proxies as described, and yes, such communication would have had to be remote, most likely via tradecraft-standard apps such as Signal (which at least a year ago intelligence operatives were swearing by). Whether or not what his sources fed him was truthful, is a different matter.
Now let’s move to the main substantive criticism of the dossier: the plausibility of existence of sources with such broad scope of access to Kremlin insiders – including to head of Rosneft and former PM Igor Sechin, presidential adviser Sergei Ivanov, Foreign Ministry officials, and even to Putin himself.
Indeed, such ubiquitous access to sources is extremely hard to acquire, especially for a non-state actor such as Christopher Steele. But impossible it is not.
A complex power-wielding apparatus such as the Kremlin cannot function without an extensive human support system.# While decision-making is highly centralized, information dissipation is inevitable, often as result of the eventual complacency that any successful authoritarian system promotes among its insiders. (let’s just remember the several mail hacks of senior Kremlin aparatchiks over the last 3 years – with one exception the “hacks” were not the result of foreign signit or cyberattacks, but of rather primitive humint – literally of passwords being visually pilfered as they were typed-in by self-assured Kremlin staff working at their macs in trendy cafes near the Kremlin.
But more importantly: namely because of the# concentration of the most sensitive information at the top of the power pyramid, any potential source in the vicinity of the top# would have access to not one, but to a variety of information vectors, that all lead to the very peak.
Continued.
On July 19, 2016, Christopher Steele reports for the first time of# having a source close to# Rosneft President Sechin:
“A source close to Rosneft President, Putin close associate and US-sanctioned Igor SECHIN, confided details of a recent secret meeting between him and visiting Foreign Affairs Adviser to Donald TRUMP, Carter PAGE. According to Sechin’s associate, the Rosneft CEO had raised with PAGE issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for associated move to liet Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia. PAGE had reacted positively to this demarche by SECHIN but had been generally non-committal in response”
Three months later, in October 2016 Steele followed up with his alleged source to provide more details from the July 2016 meeting with Carter – arguably from the same source close to Sechin. In this more detailed section, it becomes clear that the original source – “a close associate of Sechin” – is confiding details to “a trusted compatriot”, and not directly to Steele. Here is the relevant section from the October 19 report:
Continued....
Sudden Death Syndrome
At 14:23 Moscow time, one of Russia’s most subservient news outlet with a# first-at-the crime-scene reputation –# Life.ru, ran the sensationalist headline: #“Sechin’s Chief of Staff Killed in Downtown Moscow”.# I caught a glimpse of this headline in real-time, as I have a browser alert for breaking news from Life.ru. I remember being particularly startled by the headline, as only a week earlier, a Russian mid-level diplomat had been found shot in the head, with two bullets, in his Moscow apartment.# The working hypothesis of the investigation was reported to be “accidental homicide or suicide”. Did I mention the two bullets?

I read quickly through the new story. The gentleman in question, Gen. Oleg Erovinkin, had been found dead, by his driver, in the back seat of his corporate Lexus which had been parked in a downtown alley in Moscow’s China Town district. Erovinkin, 61, was a KGB/FSB general, who had been head of the Department for Protection of State Secrets at the Kremlin under Yeltsin, and later under the early Putin. In 2008,# Putin (then a fresh Prime Minister) appointed him Chief of Staff of his deputy PM Igor Sechin. When Sechin was promoted to President of the state-owned oil giant Rosneft in 2012, Erovinkin followed him into the ominous-sounding, if fuzzily-defined position of “Chief of Special Supervision of the President’s Apparatus.”# Insiders have described Erovinkin to me alternately# as “Sechin’s treasurer” and “the go-between between Putin and Sechin”.# One thing that everyone seems to agree – both in public and private sources – is that Erovinkin was Sechin’s closest associate.
The initial Life.ru story reported that FSB investigators were at the scene and working on determining the cause of death, and that doctors on site had only confirmed that Erovinkin was indeed dead.
By the time I had tweeted my observation that this murder would be the first time that a FSB General had been violently killed in Russia, Life.ru had already changed the headline of the story.# It was now “The Chief of Staff of Rosneft’s President found dead in Moscow“. However, certain news aggregators managed to copy the story with the original headline. (Life.ru also appear to have neglected to delete a reader’s comment referencing the change of headline; the fact that the story headline in Russian media was altered was also noticed by this Ukrainian newspaper) .# The original story was also completely deleted from the popular Kremlin-funded news-tracker, Mediametrics.ru (Mediametrics has a history of removing stories deemed inconvenient to the regime.)
Subsequent coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Life.ru and other Russian media provided contradictory narratives of what exactly took place. It was universally reported that due to Erovinkin’s high position in a strategic state corporation, and his former government function, the investigation will be handled solely by FSB, including FSB forensic pathologists.
However, while some media reported that Erovinkin had been found dead in the back seat, others reported that he has been in the driver’s seat, and had managed to park the car after his heart failed. Yet other news sites reported he “caused a minor traffic accident after his death“. # There were reports that Erovinkin may# been “en route to or from the Kremlin where he had been delivering highly confidential documents”
Continued.
Since the initial flurry of contradictory media reports on December 26th , there has been zero coverage of Erovinkin’s death in Russian media. Needless to say, FSB has not pronounced a cause of death, and is unlikely to ever do.
Was Erovinkin a Steele Source?
Steele’s source for the alleged Carter Page/Sechin convo must have fulfilled three mandatory criteria:
#s/he must have been credible enough TO STEELE for him to risk including this bombshell – knowing it would result in heavy doses of skepticism, potentially detrimental to his reputation.
#s/he must have been trusted enough by Sechin to be able receive access to this uniquely sensitive information.
assuming a “strictly-need-to-know” principle, such information must have inevitable had to be shared with him/her, due to his/her function.
It seems safe to conclude that Erovinkin fulfills, probably uniquely, all three conditions. Does the sudden death add credibility to the dossier?
Continued....
In the next part: Who in fact paid for and who acquired the 19% in Rosneft; who the direct source may have been; and why “germophobe defense” has holes]

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump and his transition team are so wrapped up in trying to not be connected to Russia even though they are deeply tied to Putin...

EXAMPLE
Former JSC chief of intel and former DIA Director Flynn gets caught calling the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times on the day of the US sanctions against Russia supposedly wishing him a "Merry Christmas"...BUT added in the Spice comment was "he was working to get a meeting between Putin and Trump scheduled" and from the tone of the comment ..that was to be ...soonest....

THEN it was said Flynn had been calling the Ambassador multiple other times as well.....HOPEFULLY Flynn has kept his SSO informed of those contacts as required with Russian counterparts?

THEN we now have this from late yesterday.....


Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Saturday evening denied a report that President-elect Donald Trump would be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in his first foreign trip as president.
Spicer called the report in The Sunday Times highlighted by media outlets "100 percent false" in a tweet.

The U.K. newspaper reported Saturday that Trump and his team told British officials that their first foreign trip would be a summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, with Putin within weeks of his Jan. 20 inauguration.

The report said Trump wanted to talk about nuclear disarmament with Putin and that the president-elect wanted to meet him outside Russia.
Trump has put a focus on pushing for warmer relations with Russia, and told The Wall Street Journal on Friday that he would be open to lifting sanctions on Russia if satisfied by relations.

"If you get along and if Russia is really helping us, why would anybody have sanctions if somebody's doing some really great things?" Trump said, adding he would keep the sanctions announced by President Obama in place for "at least for a period of time."

Trump also indicated he would be open to meeting with Putin soon after his inauguration next week, saying, "I understand that they would like to meet, and that's absolutely fine with me."

The moves come amid continued congressional probes involving Russian intelligence activities leading up to Trump's electoral win.

The Senate Intelligence Committee announced Friday it would launch an inquiry into Russian intelligence activities, including whether Trump's allies were in contact with the Kremlin.
NOW is the interesting point...Spice first indicated the calls to the Russian ambassador were of a harmless nature...Merry Christmas and oh by the way we would like to meet with Putin......

THEN the so called Trump transition leak to the UK press with actually solid planned details...UK press is under a strict libel law system thus they rarely leak without solid information.....

SO the very first FP meeting was to be with Putin AS it tied nicely back into the Trump press conference where he wanted to lift Russian sanctions if the Russians were of a "friendly nature" BUT notice Trump did not set the bar other than being "friendly and oh by the way help me fight IS"....

BUT Trump did not get the outgoing SecDef memo about Russia not contributing a single thing to the IS fight in Syria....

So Trump was expecting in Iceland a Putin vague verbal statement supporting him in the fight against IS and maybe a vague statement on nuclear weapons reductions THEN Trump would have lifted sanctions as he stated he would do in his press conference.....

WYSIWYG concept with Trump...I have said that from the beginning of this thread and we finally now see it coming together....naturally with Trump's very own help via Twitter...

[OUTLAW 09]

IMHO Trump was set to first met with Putin but it blew up in his face over the information concerning Flynn and his MULTIPLE calls just not Merry Christmas calls to the US Russian Ambassador AND the sudden turn by Republican Senators to investigate not only the Russian hacking BUT also the connections between first his own staff and Russia and then working up the chain directly to Trump and his now proven Russian financial connections potentially found in his own federal tax information...

NOW his own spokesperson is caught out treading water trying to divert from the planned visit and Flynn's calls..and the coming Senate investigation into Russian hacking ANd Russian connections which have been already proven beyond a doubt now....

[OUTLAW 09]

THIS is exactly how Trump DEFLECTS/DISTORTS the US MSM 24 hour news cycle when the flames get to close to him.....

REMEMBER DEFLECT and DISTORT are two of the SIX Ds of Russian propaganda and disinformation tactics....

We had the Steele released of allegations which social media has at least actually closely linked to actual events inside Russia...THEN we get a massive Trump twitter storm on the actress Steep....the FBI...then Clinton....THEN blasting the Steele memos....ALL designed to create a massive storm of news cycles BUT not in the direction of Trump and Russia....

THEN the Flynn disaster.....meaning a TS/SCI clearance holder is off and telephoning on a monitored line with the Russian Ambassador a number of times not explained by the Trump transition team.........WITHOUT apparently informing his SSO......

THEN Congressman Lewis stated he views Trump as not legitimate due to the Russian assistance in the election ......NOW Trump gets into DEFLECT/DISTORT mode and unleashes a twitter broadside against Lewis causing a major dustup in the MSM......AND initially successfully DIVERTING attention from Flynn and the Russian calls....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 18h
18 hours ago
Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 17h
17 hours ago
mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

BUT the MSM backlash was actually I think a wakeup call for Trump and his record of being a VN draft dodger FOUR times due to a bone spur in which foot he cannot recall today....VS a civil rights veteran of MLK who was arrested 45 times during the civil right movement days...

THEN this today....
Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 6h
6 hours ago
Congressman John Lewis should finally focus on the burning and crime infested inner-cities of the U.S. I can use all the help I can get!

BUT WAIT...another Trump lie ..he repeatedly stated over and over at his rallies ...he and he alone had a plan for the inner cities that he was going to clean up...NOW he is walking those statements back because he has no plan to fix 70 odd years of inner city decay.....in a 4 year term and he knows he will be held to his statements so he wants others in the ship so hen it goes down he came blame others....AND that 1T USD infrastructure plan does nothing for the inner cities...

The NYTs carried an interesting article on how Trump uses an even bigger distraction to sidetrack pressure on him...and create a new news cycle....
BUT in the middle of the Lewis twitter broadside he sends this tweet out....

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 17h
17 hours ago
INTELLIGENCE INSIDERS NOW CLAIM THE TRUMP DOSSIER IS "A COMPLETE FRAUD!" @OANN

NOTICE he refers to not a single person by name...just "insiders" raising the illusion he is home free and clear WHICH is the furthest from the truth...

THIS tweet was used to pass to his voters that all is well in Trumpland and all the stories around his close and deep connections to Putin and Russian balc money are fake reports....

BUT then he got caught out when the Senate suddenly shifted course and will include investigations into the Russian connections of his inner staff....WHICH are in fact proven already....plus his potential Russian black money flowing into his real estate business....

[OUTLAW 09]

Brit Christopher Steele is an American hero: worked w/o pay, tried to get US to investigate Trump-Russia. But FBI was on crusade vs Clinton

WHY is that? ESPECIALLY when the FBI is tasked to defend the US from enemies near and far INSIDE the US...it must be impartial BUT the NYC FBI office is a known anti Clinton hot bed or activity when this all came from to begin with.....tied to a Giuliani who was in that center for a number of years and who first leaked that something was going to happen in the next few days but he did not say what it was...now we know...the question is who did he hear it from????

JUST as his recorded comments indicated he knew of the coming WL dump of the Podesta emails as well....BUT WAIT...WL's is a Russian media outlet these days.....

[OUTLAW 09]

Trump and his transition team are so wrapped up in trying to not be connected to Russia even though they are deeply tied to Putin...

EXAMPLE
Former JSC chief of intel and former DIA Director Flynn gets caught calling the US Russian Ambassador FIVE times on the day of the US sanctions against Russia supposedly wishing him a "Merry Christmas"...BUT added in the Spice comment was "he was working to get a meeting between Putin and Trump scheduled" and from the tone of the comment ..that was to be ...soonest....

THEN it was said Flynn had been calling the Ambassador multiple other times as well.....HOPEFULLY Flynn has kept his SSO informed of those contacts as required with Russian counterparts?

THEN we now have this from late yesterday.....


NOW is the interesting point...Spice first indicated the calls to the Russian ambassador were of a harmless nature...Merry Christmas and oh by the way we would like to meet with Putin......

THEN the so called Trump transition leak to the UK press with actually solid planned details...UK press is under a strict liable law system thus they rarely leak without solid information.....

SO the very first FP meeting was to be with Putin AS it tied nicely back into the Trump press conference where he wanted to lift Russian sanctions if the Russians were of a "friendly nature" BUT notice Trump did not set the bar other than being "friendly and oh by the way help me fight IS"....

BUT Trump did not get the outgoing SecDef memo about Russia not contributing a single thing to the IS fight in Syria....

So Trump was expecting in Iceland a Putin vague verbal statement supporting him in the fight against IS and maybe a vague statement on nuclear weapons reductions THEN Trump would have lifted sanctions as he stated he would do in his press conference.....

WYSIWYG concept with Trump...I have said that from the beginning of this thread and we finally now see it coming together....naturally with Trump's very own help via Twitter...

Reference the 100% lies of the UK press ...as stated by the Trump spokesperson ......

Sunday Times: "Trump wants Putin summit in Reykjavik." UK apprehension abt team Trump is the sanest thing I've heard
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/trump-wants-putin-summit-in-reykjavik-rc909n9t0#

Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
Trump needs to focus first on allies not Russia. My take: Our allies are afraid. Here’s how Trump can reassure them.
http://wpo.st/m3iR2

John Schindler
✔
@20committee
We established our country, with so much blood, to be free from foreign meddling. We paid more blood 1861-65. Don't surrender to Putin now.

Never apologize for standing up for freedom from foreign meddling.

There is, quite literally, nothing more genuinely American.

I lead a pretty charmed life, why deny?

Took my lumps defending this country.

This means I can say whatever I like.

And....I do.

PS Traitors deserve a bullet.

We are in the middle of a "political war" right now that was not being fought well by Obama and it is now even worse by an incoming US President who is bound and determined to undermine that even further for WHAT reasons.... outside of money and sex.....and his image of himself....

[OUTLAW 09]

While US media snoozed, Financial Times did report on how dirty money flowed into Trump

WHY is it that Steele is a Brit...the FT is Brit and some of the best social media Trump black money flows OSINT analysis are coming from EU and UK????

WHERE is the US MSM in all of this...and they are American supposedly....

[OUTLAW 09]

The New Yorker
✔
@NewYorker
If Trump doesn’t take the prophylactic approach to his conflicts, impeachment may be the only other remedy:
http://nyer.cm/do3waOc

[OUTLAW 09]

British intelligence asks for guarantees that its spies in Russia will remain anonymous under the Trump administration. Source: Sunday Times

[OUTLAW 09]

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump Jan 13
Totally made up facts by sleazebag political operatives, both Democrats and Republicans - FAKE NEWS! Russia says nothing exists. Probably...

Crying #fakenews has become just another tactic to avoid a fact-based argument, writes @lenoretaylor
http://bit.ly/2imwYNc

BTW...the use of the single word...Probably....... at the end of his tweet is either an after thought that there is in fact truth out there OR.....

[OUTLAW 09]

AFP news agency
✔
@AFP
#BREAKING France says 'serious consequences' if US embassy moves to Jerusalem

[OUTLAW 09]

While Trump screams about *a* dossier, intel agencies around the world are sharing *many* dossiers about his dirt.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenkel/spy-agencies-around-the-world-are-digging-into-trump-moscow?utm_term=.ukrlyo21#.tuE7bPWO#

[OUTLAW 09]

Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
Since Reagan-Gorbachev analogies being invoked today, reposting my take on why Trump is not Reagan on foreign policy
http://wpo.st/E2iR2

[OUTLAW 09]

It's good, #Europe begins to understand.
Sadly 2 months after we lost the #US to the Kremlin.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/fears-russia-targeting-top-british-9625116#…

[OUTLAW 09]

"Of course not," Mike Pence tells @FoxNewsSunday about contacts between campaign & Russia. "This is all a distraction" the public sees thru.

The GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee, however, does not see thru it and will instead investigate, with subpoenas if necessary.

[OUTLAW 09]

Esquire
Verified account
‏@esquire
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration may evict the press from the White House
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a52301/trump-evict-press-white-house/#…

.@seanspicer says it's about "logistics " & numbers. Another transition official quoted calling press "the opposition party"

Our forefathers fought and died for freedom of press. To have Trump supporting American voters cheer its downfall is disturbing.

[OUTLAW 09]

At Paris meeting, major powers to warn Trump over Middle East peace

http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-israel-palestinians-france-idUKKBN14Y0SF



Major powers will signal to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday that a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians is the only solution, with France warning him that plans to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could derail peace efforts.

Some 70 countries, including key European and Arab states as well as the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, are in Paris for a meeting that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected as "futile". Neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will be represented.

But, just five days before Trump is sworn in, the conference provides a platform for countries to send a strong signal to the incoming American president.

Trump has pledged to pursue more pro-Israeli policies and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, where it has been for 68 years, to Jerusalem, all but enshrining the city as Israel's capital despite international objections.

Calling it a provocation, France's Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said the move would have serious consequences on the ground.

"One cannot have such a clear-cut, unilateral position. You have to create the conditions for peace," he told France 3 television.

Paris has said the meeting will not impose anything on Israel or the Palestinians and that only direct negotiations can resolve the conflict.
A draft communique seen by Reuters reaffirms existing international resolutions, urges both sides to restate their commitment to the two-state solution and disavow officials who reject it. The communique asks the protagonists to "refrain from unilateral steps that prejudge the outcome of final status negotiations".

LOW POINT
Diplomats said the communique could be toughened up with an allusion to Trump's plans for Jerusalem and whether to have a follow-up to the French initiative intensely debated.

"This conference is among the last twitches of the world of yesterday," Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting on Sunday. "Tomorrow will look different and that tomorrow is very close."

Relations between the United States and Israel have soured during President Barack Obama's administration, reaching a low point late last month when Washington declined to veto a U.N. resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements in occupied territory.

Obama's secretary of state, John Kerry, said the settlement programme threatened Middle East peace and the two-state solution.

Related Coverage
France's Ayrault says Trump Jerusalem proposal provocation
Palestinian President Authority Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that he had told Trump that a move to Jerusalem would kill off the peace process and strip the U.S. of its role as honest broker - and could lead to the Palestinians going back on their recognition of Israel.

Home to Europe's largest Muslim and Jewish communities, France has tried to breathe new life into the peace process over the past year. It believes that, with the uncertainty surrounding how the next U.S. administration will handle the issue, it is important to push the sides back to talks rather than allowing a fragile status quo to fester.

But with elections coming up this year in France and Germany, and Britain appearing to align itself more closely with the Trump administration on the issue, the prospects of the European Union, the largest economic partner for both Israel and the Palestinians, taking a lead on the matter appear unlikely.

Arab states also have concerns about how Trump's relationship with them will turn out, and have taken a cautious line.

[OUTLAW 09]

IC has temporarily cut intel off from allies when their govts got too cuddly w/our enemies.

Nobody ever thought they'd have to cut off DC.
When jihadist attacks against the West start rising, thank President Trump for breaking the Western intelligence alliance to placate Putin.

Outgoing CIA boss says Trump does not understand Russia's intentions and capabilities.
http://news.sky.com/story/cia-boss-says-trump-does-not-understand-russia-10730196#

UPDATE:White House Reviewing #DworkinReport On #Trump's #Russian Ties
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/5825e308e4b0852d9ec214c2?timestamp=1478882710090

[OUTLAW 09]

Estonian media cites #Czech media outlet Respekt claiming no records of COEHN's directly entering the country. http://maailm.postimees.ee/3975493/eesti-luurajad-jaelgisid-ilmselt-michael-coheni-ja-konstantin-kossatsovi-kohtumist-prahas?_ga=1.122850507.1989997098.1484472964#…

COHEN might've used 3 options:
1.False passport
2.Diplomatic passport
3.Different country of arrival & destination

but what everyone forget: Cohen has also Israeli citizenship. He could travel with that passport...

BUT WAIT.....who owns the Estonian newspaper who stated Cohen did not travel to Prague.....

Kosachev, who allegedly didn't meet Trump's lawyer COHEN, who never in life have frequently visit Prague, was head of Rossotrudnichestvo.

[OUTLAW 09]

Esquire
Verified account
‏@esquire
EXCLUSIVE: The Trump administration may evict the press from the White House
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a52301/trump-evict-press-white-house/#…

.@seanspicer says it's about "logistics " & numbers. Another transition official quoted calling press "the opposition party"

Our forefathers fought and died for freedom of press. To have Trump supporting American voters cheer its downfall is disturbing.

So is now Trump destroying the core of the US democracy????

[OUTLAW 09]

Reference the 100% lies of the UK press ...as stated by the Trump spokesperson ......

Sunday Times: "Trump wants Putin summit in Reykjavik." UK apprehension abt team Trump is the sanest thing I've heard
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/trump-wants-putin-summit-in-reykjavik-rc909n9t0#

Michael McFaul
✔
@McFaul
Trump needs to focus first on allies not Russia. My take: Our allies are afraid. Here’s how Trump can reassure them.
http://wpo.st/m3iR2

John Schindler
✔
@20committee
We established our country, with so much blood, to be free from foreign meddling. We paid more blood 1861-65. Don't surrender to Putin now.

Never apologize for standing up for freedom from foreign meddling.

There is, quite literally, nothing more genuinely American.

I lead a pretty charmed life, why deny?

Took my lumps defending this country.

This means I can say whatever I like.

And....I do.

PS Traitors deserve a bullet.

We are in the middle of a "political war" right now that was not being fought well by Obama and it is now even worse by an incoming US President who is bound and determined to undermine that even further for WHAT reasons.... outside of money and sex.....and his image of himself....

Trump spokesperson Spicer stated the UK article about Trump meeting Putin was 100% lies....

BUT WAIT.....now comes Russian state TV media and their comments....

Interesting, since #Russia's state-sponsored TV says #Trump & #Putin are getting ready for a meeting.
@FoxNews @seanspicer @realDonaldTrump

[OUTLAW 09]

So is now Trump destroying the core of the US democracy????

"They are the opposition party," a senior official says about the *press*.

No, America, this is NOT normal.


AP Politics
✔
@AP_Politics
CIA director says Trump tweeting harms security:
http://apne.ws/2jTe3K9

[OUTLAW 09]

Putin is clearly confident that #Trump will upend all U.S. sanctions against #Russia, hence no need to retaliate.http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53678#…

BUT WAIT...........
Pence DOES NOT answer Qs on CBS on whether Trump Admin wants Russia out of Eastern Ukraine/Crimea: "He’ll work through these issues, John."

[davidbfpo]

From Post 483 by Outlaw09 in part:
While US media snoozed, Financial Times did report on how dirty money flowed into Trump.

WHY is it that Steele is a Brit...the FT is Brit and some of the best social media Trump black money flows OSINT analysis are coming from EU and UK????

Yes Mr Steele is a British national, who served in MI6 / SIS, an intelligence agency that like the other British agencies has exceptionally close links to it's American "cousins" (although GCHQ is reportedly even closer to the NSA it's "cousin"). Could his loyalties and networking in the private sector serve more than one paymaster and other "interested parties"? Yes, quite clearly.

Secondly until July 2015 the FT newspaper and other electronic options were owned by the UK-based Pearson Group, but it was then sold to Nikkei, a Japanese media company. A compnay that has a mixed reputation according to this, almost funny now, Russian author:https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-07-24/why-the-financial-times-has-a-new-owner

Pearson Group also sold its 50% share in The Economist to the Agnelli family, from Italy where their interests include Fiat. The Pearson Group has largely UK-based corporate owners.

It is a moot point if in 2017 the FT reflects a distinct British flavour, let alone reports in the UK's national interest. More likely the international corporate financiers IMHO.

From Post 485 by Outlaow09 cited in part:
British intelligence asks for guarantees that its spies in Russia will remain anonymous under the Trump administration. Source: Sunday Times.

That is quite simply "spin" and may originate from within the agencies or Whitehall-Westminster. There is IMHO the widely held belief that any spy (HUMINT source), would not, except when jointly run, reveal the true identity of a spy anywhere. The information reports gained, well that is quite different and we know that sometimes the "jigsaw" can be assembled to identify a spy.