Reply With QuoteIt's PR not secret intelligence. I suppose it's a way to make up for years of Russia's soft power and the fact that it took a Russian invasion of Ukraine to scare Estonia into meeting its defense commitments to NATO.Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
I post this due simply to the fact that this journalist has broken correct and verified stories on the FISA warrant that was initially issued in the Russian connection investigations...
She is now building on the reporting being released in Europe from seven different European Intel services concerning Trump and Russian activities largely driven by the former head of MI6 who is highly respected in Europe for his level analysis...
The extremely interesting point is that all of this intelligence was passed to the FBI long before the actual US election and no action was undertaken by the FBI....it seems they were totally oblivious to Russian influence and hacking operations that were ongoing and still are ongong...
https://patribotics.blog/2017/04/16/...ed-with-trump/
Exclusive: Intelligence Sources: Flynn co-ordinated Russia's propaganda attack on the entire NATO alliance for Trump
Mike Flynn’s Treason Tour: Global Russian Propaganda Coordinated With#Trump
April 16, 2017 ~ patribotics
Sources linked to the intelligence community say that General Mike Flynn’s trips to Cambridge and across Europe will form a key part of Donald#Trump’s impeachment and the prosecutions of dozens of his associates.
According to several sources within the intelligence community, Michael Flynn was co-ordinating, with and for Russian agents, the drafting of messages that Vladimir Putin was using to attack democracy in not only the United States, but across Europe. Furthermore, Flynn was doing this with the full knowledge of the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump himself.
This news#directly relates to the data laundering performed by the Alfa Bank server on behalf of Donald Trump and Russia, where, as I reported, the Trump campaign colluded with the hacking of both the DNC and state voter databases.
The Alfa Bank server ‘washed’ that data together to tell Trump where to target it, sources say. But the messages and content#with which#targets were served was co-ordinated with Russia by General Flynn.
Furthermore, Flynn took the same hacking tools and artificial intelligence coded in Russia and helped far-right and Nazi parties across Europe use it in their own nations. Intelligence sources assert that multiple NATO partners have evidence of this and that it has been provided to the FBI.
If ‘data laundering’ is the first part of the Trump Russia incontrovertible evidence, ‘propaganda targeting’ is the second part. Flynn attacked not only the United States but all her Western allies on Russia’s behalf, with the full knowledge and connivance of Donald Trump.
Both halves of the social media impeachment will, sources assert, be key to Director Comey’s overall case. This is the ‘incontrovertible evidence’ to which Sir Richard Dearlove and others have referred.
Explaining Data Laundering and Fake News
The broad case of Russia’s hacking the US election can be divided into two relatively simple spheres. There is another branch of the criminal investigation that focuses on money-laundering and corrupt payments from Russia and Russian satellites to Mr. Trump and to his allies. But the actual hacking of the US election follows a relatively simple narrative line in two halves; hacking and targeting. Mr. Flynn’s activities spanned the two and link them to Russian active measures all across Europe, including the current attack on the French election.
As I previously reported in an exclusive story on this blog, the Trump server at Cendyn was communicating to Alfa Bank in Russia hacked data from state voter databases and the DNC’s own voter targeting engine, Vertica. The precise combination of these two databases allowed Cambridge Analytica and SCL both to create Russian-directed propaganda and target it at voting groups with extraordinary precision. Intelligence sources now tell me that SVB bank, the second bank named in the FISA warrant I exclusively reported on Nov 7th, was also involved in messaging Alfa Bank. There will be further explanation of that in another post.
Continued....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
It's PR not secret intelligence. I suppose it's a way to make up for years of Russia's soft power and the fact that it took a Russian invasion of Ukraine to scare Estonia into meeting its defense commitments to NATO.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
Simply put it is an embarrassment for the mighty FSB/SVR to have one of theirs outed in the media...and the long raining costs are lost forever as that agent is burned and cannot be used anywhere else in the world...
Main rule in spying to do not get caught in the first place...
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
Thus far, the outed agents seem to all be low-end provocateurs and legal agents with diplomatic status.
Russia has some of the best HUMINT capabilities in the world, and decades more experience than anyone else.
I have no doubt that they gave Manning and Snowden the necessary nudges.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
I will digress a moment....the former KGB and now FSB were and are still solid intel groups..but in some aspects the GDR MfS (Stasi) took it to new levels in their BRD influence ops several of which led to deaths of politicians still not fully explained to today...
Secondly, the US was able during the confusion immediately after the fall to "acquire" most of the MfS Foreign spy service documents and were able to identify a number of recruited US spies usual business people and military that had been I West Berlin....
What is interesting is that every German and foreigner who was in West Berlin has the right to have the Stasi records searched for any reference to yourself.....but that search does not extend to the MfS spy records returned to the US....
But what was never told to the US population was the fact that there were approximately 100 identified spies...who never were clearly identified either because you could not get a feel for where the documents came from nor get a feel of the person meaning name...or birth date or US addresses....
Why was that ..once recruited by MfS and if they returned to the US their handlers would become GRU or KGB resident US agents....even the 70/80s the GRU/KGB agents in the US gave the FBI CI a true run for their money.....
BUT a side effect was Soviets and now Russians tend to get into a spy rut and get into habits that if known usually out them....
German CI types knew for example that a true mole could only recall their full new cover story for roughly 15 years and then the story would start to alter...that is why they demand a regular series of re-reviews of the security clearance paperwork....and usually that tends to point them to subtle changes in a persons life story....
Now things are much harder due to the ease of travel and lessen visa requirements..here in Berlin Russians are literally everywhere and are buying up property at an amazing rate with black money..so are they spies..good businesspeople with black money or just out right criminals...
Will digress again concerning German records keeping..amazing..simply amazing....here in Germany there is a standard Police requirement to register with them every time you move or change residence....
Most Americans would revolt and claim police state..but those records do go back physically on mirco fiche to the 1850s...as many were not destroyed by WW2.....the US captured for example 98% of the entire NSDAP membership records....95% of all the SS membership records....and had the entire records of all transports to the German concentration camps by rail car number...number of individuals inside each and by name...
AND if you are a German retiree of the WW2 period..your name is automatically checked in this record center prior to receiving your pension and the same now goes for MfS records if you are retiring from this period of time....
That is how studious Germans are with their paperwork and the Stasi was no different for 45 years....
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:08 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
To OUTLAW 09
I assume that you mean the GRU/KGB and the GRU/SVR, respectively. FSB now handles counter-intelligence and domestic intelligence, albeit it has been involved in Ukraine. Having said that, Moscow considers various parts of Ukraine to be part of Russia, so the FSB would be involved there as opposed to say developing and managing assets in the United States.
The HVA was certainly not above direct assassination or the use of terrorist proxies. Yet in the end, the MfS failed in its primary mission to protect the SED and the DDR. The reunification process was rather lenient on a service whose activities went well beyond espionage, and which deliberately committed murders and terrorist atrocities.
I have heard it argued that the greatest success of the Warsaw Pact intelligence services was to promote anti-nationalism, anti-Christianity, political correctness and multiculturalism in Western Europe, in a bid to sap patriotic sentiment, demoralize the population and thereby undermine the ideologies most resistant to Communist rule. As an example, it was said that Olaf Palme was under such influence. I have not investigated this line of thought, so it may well be wrong.
Given the relatively recent discoveries of Herman Simm, Aleksei Dressen, Shigehiro Hagisaki and Jeffrey DeLisle, I would say that the Russians are still quite capable of turning key NATO insiders. The fact that two of these names are Estonian should put to bed your praise for Estonian intelligence, as it takes more than a few years to recover from such blows; moreover, they are indicative of deeper rot. Incidentally, the former President of Estonia under whose watch these traitors were operating became quite agitated when reminded of them by yours truly.
I have no doubt that the CIA created a dragnet across East-Central Europe in the early 1990s. I would imagine that the CIA and other Western intelligence services have replaced the FSB/GRU/SVR in Ukraine: those parts under Kiev’s control.
Interesting. I think the same checks should be applied to spouses. After fifteen years they can be very different from when they were on honeymoon.Of course, with no-fault divorces and little recognition of prenuptial agreements, CI is difficult…
Germany is by comparison a police state. The fact that the police happen to wear green and are generally friendly is irrelevant. I worry about German liberal democracy, as it is largely an Anglo-American imposition from 1945 to present, irrespective of the failed Liberal Revolutions and the brief interwar experiment.
I am highly suspicious of a society that can turn on a dime in lockstep, as Germany has been wont to do.
Last edited by davidbfpo; 04-17-2017 at 08:09 AM. Reason: Moved from Russian Disinformation thread as it fits here!
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/0...a-okuyeva.htmlUnder the guise of a journalist, the assassin, Artur Denisultanov-Kurmakayev, tried to murder Ms. Okuyeva and her husband, Adam Osmayev, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.
The plot went awry because Ms. Okuyeva was also armed, and the details of the attack and its aftermath are now shedding light on Kiev’s role as a testing ground for what Ukrainian officials say are hybrid war activities by Russia, including assassinations.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
I would be careful about ascribing this attempted assassination to Putin. Most likely its sponsor was Kadyrov. Kadyrov spent a number of years murdering members of rival Chechen clans or faction, including in Moscow, and many exiles from these groups have joined the war in Donbas on behalf of Ukraine, while the Kadyrovtsi have joined the (pro)Russian side.
Can a WW2 Soviet diplomat's success help today?
A fascinating short article 'Ivan Maisky’s diaries offer a spying masterclass that is still relevant today' on Stalin's Ambassador in London (1932-1943) and how he conducted his diplomacy - with clear parallels to his Russian successor in Washington DC today.
It is a historical article, but there is no suitable place in the Historians arena.
An earlier 2015 article on Maisky's diaries (since published):https://theconversation.com/diary-of...d-war-ii-47054
The current article:https://theconversation.com/ivan-maiskys-diaries-offer-a-spying-masterclass-that-is-still-relevant-today-78866?
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-11-2017 at 02:10 PM. Reason: 32,574v
davidbfpo
While this is not Russian hacking, propaganda and or disinformation it fits nicely into Russian Intelligence Service "active measures"...
"Revealed: Explosive Evidence Of A Russian Assassination On British Soil"
https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/...1N#.gi8774M6N#
Last edited by davidbfpo; 06-13-2017 at 08:50 AM. Reason: Copied from Russian info ops
Russian state power in the UK?
I have now read the first BuzzFeed article on murders in the UK with Russian links and found this passage was a useful summary for British action or inaction:A strange explanation and totally ignores the UK's survival after the Litvenenko murder in London, with Polonium in 2006 and the rupture of official state-to-state relations.Yes there is a potential threat to the UK from Russian capabilities, but a "general war"?The core reason British authorities have turned a blind eye, a current senior national security adviser to the British government told BuzzFeed News, is fear. Ministers, he said, were not prepared to take the “political risk of dealing firmly and effectively in whatever way with the activities of the Russian state and Russian-organised crime in the UK” because the Kremlin could inflict massive harm on Britain by unleashing cyberattacks, destabilising the economy, or mobilising elements of Britain’s large Russian population to “cause disruption”. Deep law enforcement funding cuts mean “our capabilities are very weak”, he said. It was also impossible to rule out the risk of “general war with Russia” in the current climate, he said, and “if it were to happen it would happen very, very rapidly, and we would be entirely unprepared”. As a result, he concluded, ministers “desperately don’t want to antagonise the Russians” and senior figures in government had told him bluntly that there was “no political appetite to deal with the Russian Federation.
As for the Russian population in the UK could 'cause disruption', really they are going to sell up and move? Leaving behind assets, schools and the comforts of Surrey. After all many are here to escape Russia and for reasons - that are obscure - get UK passports quickly.
Now there is HMG's inactivity on the "dirty" money from Russia; PM Cameron made a speech, in July 2015 on "cleaning up" London's property market and nothing then happened. Perhaps the influx of billions kept the post-crash property market was a policy consideration?
It does remind me of a discussion at a conference a few years ago when a retired Whitehall 'mandarin' explained that "Londonistan" was the result of low-level decisions, not those made at senior levels, let alone by politicians. An explanation that could be plausible, even when several European nations (France & Italy notably) expressed at a very senior level their concerns and the presence of many who were wanted for terrorist crimes - who were declined to extradite.
Would all these items reach policy makers, let alone elected politicians?
davidbfpo
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/18...to-region.htmlThe Russian spy ship first spotted near American waters last year is making its way back in the direction of the U.S., Fox News confirmed on Thursday.
The Victor Leonov is still in the Caribbean, according to officials, but heading north off the coast of Florida, home to a U.S. Navy base located in North Florida, east of Jacksonville.
The ship could be off the Florida coast by Friday if the ship maintains present course and speed, according to officials.
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
Relevent to your interest in this thread
Got OPSEC?
No, no you don't....
http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/us-...ion-by-jogging
A scrimmage in a Border Station
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail
http://i.imgur.com/IPT1uLH.jpg
Ex-GRU officer 'critical' after UK incident
A developing story after ex-GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, 66yrs, and his daughter Yulia, in her 30s, are critically ill in hospital after being found unconscious in Salisbury, Wiltshire. He was jailed for 13 years by Russia in 2006, convicted of passing the identities of agents working undercover in Europe to the UK's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. In July 2010, he was one of four prisoners released by Moscow in exchange for 10 Russian spies arrested by the FBI as part of a swap. He was later flown to the UK.
Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43303651
There is speculation that their collapse in public was caused by an unknown substance; three emergency responders had mild symptoms.
For a comprehensive review Shashank Joshi, of RUSI has an article and BLUF:Link:https://capx.co/russia-sees-murder-a...litical-lever/Russia is happy to use assassination to satisfy political ends; Western countries have been insufficiently robust in the face of Russian provocation; If Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal, the attack represents a significant escalation
Mark Galeotti, a SME, has a commentary and here is a taster:Link:https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/former-russian-spook-incident-suggests-the-spy-rules-are-breaking-op-ed-60722?It seems to reflect a breakdown in the old etiquette of espionage, not only foreshadowing an even more vicious "shadow war" to come, but also challenging Western states to come up with new ways to respond to and deter these kinds of outrages.
The main thread on Russian intelligence operations has a two posts (47 & 48) on previous allegations, notably by BuzzFeed that the UK officially was not prepared to "take on" Russia over a series of unexplained deaths.
Link:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=14375&page=3
Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-06-2018 at 02:42 PM.
davidbfpo
A disturbing pattern...
See here from BuzzFeed:
How can MI6 recruit agents in Russia when MI5 cannot protect defectors who become British citizens? Unfortunately, British intelligence probably has a similar reputation with disgruntled Russians as it did with disgruntled Soviets from the late 1940s to early 1960s.Now, BuzzFeed News can reveal that Puncher is among at least 14 people US intelligence officials suspect were killed in the UK by Russian mafia groups or secret services, two forces that sometimes work together, since Putin’s rise to power. Four American intelligence officials said US spies have gathered intelligence about the scientist’s death and believe that he “was assassinated”. They said they have passed MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service, information connecting Puncher’s death – and 13 others – to Russia. Yet the British police have ruled out suspicions in all those cases and shut down any further investigation.
Of course, having uncovered the most nefarious Russian intelligence operation since the penetration of the Manhattan Project, spymaster Christopher Steele is the jewel in Britain's crown, and his extensive training has enabled him, his family, and his pet(s) to escape the SVR and GRU...
A Timely Message?
After seven years.
If a message then to whom, for what?
Westminster wakes up: he's not the first to be attacked
From the BBC and finally the 2017 Buzzfeed reports gain traction:Link:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43312625During the urgent question in the Commons, Labour's Yvette Cooper raised reports by BuzzFeed that 14 deaths in the UK had been linked to Russia by US spy agencies.
Ms Cooper, chairwoman of the Home Affairs select committee, asked Mr Johnson and the home secretary to order the National Crime Agency to urgently review the cases.
Mr Johnson said there were "a number of deeply troubling cases" and he would "certainly have that discussion with the home secretary".
davidbfpo
Q&a
Citing JHR:I would contend some have been very patient and finally an opportunity came with the Colonel's daughter making a visit - she is normally resident in Moscow. IIRC the KGB and presumably the GRU had a stance on eliminating defectors; so has this stance remained in place? We are assuming this is not the action of unofficial persons.
For wiser words try this comment:https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...n-spy-agencies
Last edited by davidbfpo; 03-07-2018 at 10:44 AM.
davidbfpo
Quite possibly to send a message to anyone within the current regime or within the country itself who may be chafing under the Putin system that dissenters / turncoats / "traitors" will not be tolerated and can be reached regardless of where they are or when. After several years these current targets must have become complacent / lacked opsec so were probably easy targets, especially if thy hung around emigre circles.
This incident, now classed officially as Attempted Murder(s) is the lead item in the UK news. Amidst the media furore, with a good dose of speculation and some inspired "leaks" there are a couple of significant items. No, not the official statements by politicians.
Irony too, amidst a commentary by an ex-Army intelligence person and lightly edited:Link:http://greyharemedia.com/sergei-skripal-assassination/It was the British in1954 who first synthesized VX.
The impact of this will be magnified as this has now been reported by the local police, with my emphasis:Link:https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/mar/08/russian-spy-condition-of-police-officer-who-helped-sergei-skripal-improves?he police officer left seriously ill after he was caught up in the Salisbury nerve agent attack was named as DS Nick Bailey as Wiltshire Police said that 21 people have now been treated as a result of the incident.
davidbfpo
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