http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/08/10/left-wing-magazine-the-nation-report-puts-russian-hack-dnc-narrative-in-freefall/
Left-Wing Magazine The Nation Report Puts â?~Russian Hack' DNC Narrative in
Freefall
A bombshell report published Wednesday by avowedly liberal news magazine The
Nation may have put the last nail in the coffin of the â?oRussian hackâ?ť
narrative that has dominated the mainstream mediaâ?Ts coverage for the last
year.
Author Patrick Lawrence assembles the findings of months of investigation by
forensic computer experts and former NSA officials to conclude, quite
categorically, what Breitbart News and other independent media outlets have
suggested for nearly a year: there was no hack of the Democratic National
Committee (DNC) by the Russian government or anyone else last summer. An
internal leaker is a much more likely source of the confidential internal
DNC emails that upended the presidential campaign season when they became
public last June.
Some supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders saw in the emails a DNC plot to
support eventual nominee Hillary Clinton, dealing a blow to Democratic unity
in the runup to the partyâ?Ts convention.
The Nation, a leading publication of the American left for over a century,
may seem an unlikely place for such a thorough refutation of one of the
Democratic Partyâ?Ts most salient talking points. Lawrence, however, is
strikingly forthright. Calling the supposed hack and the continual
allegations of collusion by President Donald Trump and his associates a
â?ogreat edifice,â?ť Lawrence points to the central role the â?oDNC Hackâ?ť
plays in the â?oRussiagateâ?ť narrative. He writes:
All this was set in motion when the DNCâ?Ts mail server was first violated
in the spring of 2016 and by subsequent assertions that Russians were behind
that â?ohackâ?ť and another such operation, also described as a Russian
hack, on July 5. These are the foundation stones of the edifice just
outlined. The evolution of public discourse in the year since is worthy of
scholarly study: Possibilities became allegations, and these became
probabilities. Then the probabilities turned into certainties, and these
evolved into what are now taken to be established truths.
Now, according to the research by the experts Lawrence cites â?"Â the group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) â?"Â a Russian
government cyberattack on the DNCâ?Ts computers is likely not a
â?opossibility.â?ť The group has examined several aspects of the emailsâ?T
journey to the public eye and concluded it cannot be made to comport with a
hacker in the former Soviet Union. The files apparently were transferred to
a data storage device at a speed not possible over the internet. Metadata
also indicate that the emails were taken by someone in the Eastern Daylight
Timezone and then deliberately copy-and-pasted into a Microsoft Word file
that had its language settings changed to Russian in a ruse to throw off
investigators.
The conclusions of four of VIPSâ?Ts investigators was unanimous. Lawrance
writes:
All those interviewed came in between 90 percent and 100 percent certain
that the forensics prove out. I have already quoted Skip Foldenâ?Ts answer:
impossible based on the data. â?oThe laws of physics donâ?Tt lie,â?ť Ray
McGovern volunteered at one point. â?oItâ?Ts QED, theorem demonstrated,â?ť
William Binney said in response to my question. â?oThereâ?Ts no evidence out
there to get me to change my mind.â?ť When I asked Edward Loomis, a 90
percent man, about the 10 percent he held out, he replied, â?oIâ?Tve looked
at the work and it shows there was no Russian hack. But I didnâ?Tt do the
work. Thatâ?Ts the 10 percent. Iâ?Tm a scientist.â?ť
Nothing in the report, however, dissuaded the DNC from its conviction the
Russians are responsible for the publication of their internal
communications. â?oU.S. intelligence agencies have concluded the Russian
government hacked the DNC in an attempt to interfere in the election. Any
suggestion otherwise is false and is just another conspiracy theory like
those pushed by Trump and his administration,� Adrienne Watson, the
DNCâ?Ts deputy communications director told Breitbart News Thursday.
The Nationâ?Ts story is by no means the first indication something might be
awry with the â?oofficial versionâ?ť of what happened at the DNC last
summer. Shortly after the emails became public, Julian Assange, whose
Wikileaks played a major role in the emailsâ?T dissemination, claimed Russia
played no role, but this did nothing to stem the flood of assurances about a
Russian hack.
The central text of the Russiagate gospel became the â?oIntelligence
Community Assessment (ICA)â?ť issued in January of this year, days before
President Barack Obama left office. Presumably this ICA, quoted for months
in the mainstream media as being the work of â?oall 17â?ť American
intelligence agencies, is the basis of the DNCâ?Ts continued claims of a
Russian hack.
The reality, as the New York Times finally admitted in June, was that only
three intelligence agencies participated in the creation of the ICA. The
â?o17 intelligence agenciesâ?ť line, a fixture of pro-Russiagate media since
Hillary Clinton used the figure in her second presidential debate
performance, was and is fake news.
Lawrenceâ?Ts piece further takes the ICA to task. â?oJames Clapper, the
former director of national intelligence, admitted in May that
â?~hand-pickedâ?T analysts from three agencies (not the 17 previously
reported) drafted the ICA,â?ť he writes, pointing out that not even the
whole of the three agencies cited (the FBI, NSA, and CIA) were involved but
only a few staffers â?ohand-pickedâ?ť by Clapper.
The intelligence agencies, according to Lawrence, did not even examine the
DNCâ?Ts computers, an omission he calls â?obeyond preposterous,â?ť and
instead relied on a third-party report from Crowdstrike, a non-profit
co-founded by Dmitri Alperovitch, described as â?ovigorously
anti-Russian.â?ť The â?ohigh confidenceâ?ť in Russian culpability we heard
of again and again in mainstream media reporting is an â?oevasive termâ?ť
and â?ohow officials avoid putting their names on the assertions we are so
strongly urged to accept.â?ť
Some conservatives are already lauding Lawranceâ?Ts report and the work of
VIPS as a final vindication of their skepticism. Americans for Limited
Government President Rick Manning, for example, issued the following
statement Thursday:
If the whole premise of the [Special Counsel Robert] Mueller
investigation, that Russia hacked the DNC emails interfering with the
elections, is in fact false and it was a DNC insider as the Nation reports
former NSA officials contending, there is simply no rationale for the
special counsel to continue investigating the Russia angle. It is incumbent
upon the Justice Department to determine and settle once and for all the
true source of the DNC emails. The only prosecutions that can flow from that
investigation must be of Obama administration officials who covered up the
real facts surrounding the DNC emails, setting the nation off on this new
red scare. If Mueller is unwilling to go where the evidence leads, in this
case to the DNC itself and the Obama administration cover-up, then he is not
fit to serve. In Muellerâ?Ts case, this is either obstruction or willful
blindness.
As Breitbart Newsâ?Ts Joel Pollak wrote last month, the â?oDNC Hack,â?ť now
better known as the â?oDNC Leak,â?ť the term originally used in these pages,
is not the only pillar of the Russia collusion narrative to face collapse as
the media hysteria passes its first anniversary. It became clear through the
testimony of Investor William Browder that Fusion GPS, the research firm
that assembled for a still unknown client the infamous, perverse 2016
dossier describing now-President Trump asking Russian prostitutes to urinate
for his pleasure, had, in fact, worked for the Russian government in the
past.
With actual evidence of Russian collusion with the Trump campaign now
looking increasingly unlikely to come to light, there are increasing
indications Muellerâ?Ts investigation has shifted to looking for financial
crimes allegedly committed by President Trump and his family long before and
far outside the presidential campaign. The impact of the revelations
unearthed by the VIPS team and The Nation on that investigation have yet to
be seen.