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Thread: The Trump impact on US policy

  1. #321
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    Default NPR Coverage of Trump's Press Conference

    http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137...resident-elect

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

  2. #322
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azor View Post
    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/...ch-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.
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-11-2017 at 07:44 PM.

  3. #323
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    Wall Street Journal Reportedly Identifies Source Of New Trump Dossier
    19:52 (GMT)

    http://www.interpretermag.com/live-u...?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.”

  4. #324
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    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....

  5. #325
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    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.
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-11-2017 at 08:21 PM.

  6. #326
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    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-t...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.

    [B]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. 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.....
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-11-2017 at 08:57 PM.

  7. #327
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    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...-amid-claims/#

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    Default From The Interpreter RE: Trump Memo

    http://www.interpretermag.com/live-u...?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.

  9. #329
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    We already know the Trump campaign was in contact with RIS. What do you think Wikileaks is?

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...s-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 [be] 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.”

    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.
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-11-2017 at 09:09 PM.

  10. #330
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    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/commenti...=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.
    Last edited by davidbfpo; 01-11-2017 at 11:23 PM.

  11. #331
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    Quote Originally Posted by Azor View Post
    http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137...resident-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.....
    Last edited by OUTLAW 09; 01-11-2017 at 09:28 PM.

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

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politi...cid=spartanntp

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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
    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?

    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09
    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by OUTLAW 09 View Post
    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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Azor View Post
    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.
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
    ... 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.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Azor View Post
    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.
    Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 01-12-2017 at 12:27 AM.
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    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.)
    Last edited by TheCurmudgeon; 01-12-2017 at 12:43 AM.
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
    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?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Azor View Post
    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.
    "I can change almost anything ... but I can't change human nature."

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