The Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike
https://amgreatness.com/2020/0
AMERICA GREATNESS.COM
Weekend Long Read
This essay is a revised and expanded version of two
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
an-hack-that-wasnt/> stories
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
ictments/> that first appeared on American Greatness in July 2018.
The Monstrous Lie Behind CrowdStrike
"There's a simple explanation for the Democratic National Committee's
unwillingness to let outsiders have a peek at evidence its servers were
infiltrated by the Russians in 2016: There isn't any. The Russian hacking
that's caused so much division and turmoil at home and abroad never really
happened. It was all a ruse."
Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 presidential election was
predicated largely on the claim Russian intelligence had hacked the
Democratic National Committee's servers ahead of the November election.
Russia's guilt is such an article of faith among our political class that a
Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions
<https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/0
index.html> on Russia and President Trump signed on, substantially
worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation.
Since those sanctions were imposed, Mueller's team confirmed the Russian
espionage those sanctions were meant to punish. Since its publication last
year, the Washington establishment has treated the Mueller report almost as
a sacred document.
Outside the Acela Corridor, however, one finds more skepticism.
A lot of ordinary folks just can't stop wondering why the DNC wouldn't let
any federal investigators examine their servers. Only CrowdStrike, an
independent contractor on the DNC's payroll, was allowed to do so.
CrowdStrike executive Robert Johnson appeared on "60 Minutes" to address
concerns that his firm hadn't been completely forthcoming with its findings.
But he only succeeded in raising more questions by claiming that the "FBI
got what it needed and what it wanted."
******************************
Michael Thau <https://amgreatness.com/autho
- February 22nd, 2020
Robert Mueller's investigation into the 2016 presidential election was
predicated largely on the claim Russian intelligence had hacked the
Democratic National Committee's servers ahead of the November election.
Russia's guilt is such an article of faith among our political class that a
Republican-controlled Congress imposed sanctions
<https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/0
index.html> on Russia and President Trump signed on, substantially
worsening relations with an important and potentially dangerous nation.
Since those sanctions were imposed, Mueller's team confirmed the Russian
espionage those sanctions were meant to punish. Since its publication last
year, the Washington establishment has treated the Mueller report almost as
a sacred document.
Outside the Acela Corridor, however, one finds more skepticism.
A lot of ordinary folks just can't stop wondering why the DNC wouldn't let
any federal investigators examine their servers. Only CrowdStrike, an
independent contractor on the DNC's payroll, was allowed to do so.
CrowdStrike executive Robert Johnson appeared on "60 Minutes" to address
concerns that his firm hadn't been completely forthcoming with its findings.
But he only succeeded in raising more questions by claiming that the "FBI
got what it needed and what it wanted."
Even if the self-proclaimed <https://www.youtube.com/user/
"hard-hitting" investigators at "60 Minutes" couldn't be bothered to spend
30 minutes researching such an important story, Johnson himself had to know
he wasn't telling the truth.
On no less than three
<https://amgreatness.com/2020/
d-democrats-got-what-they-want
him, FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress about the DNC's strange
unwillingness to let his agency examine their servers in a case they were
simultaneously hyping as akin to "an act of war." Comey
<https://www.intelligence.sena
unitys-assessment-russian-acti
the DNC rejected the FBI's "[m]ultiple requests at different levels" to
collect forensic evidence.
A week before Comey testified in January 2017, the DNC
<https://www.buzzfeed.com/alim
ed-computer-servers> had already tried palming off Johnson's lie and were
sternly contradicted the very next day. A senior FBI official told The Hill
<https://thehill.com/policy/na
ccess-to-hacked-dnc-servers> that his agency "repeatedly stressed to DNC
officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only
to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise." According to The
Hill's source, far from getting everything the bureau wanted, "the FBI [had]
no choice but to rely upon" CrowdStrike.
Johnson also must know the FBI isn't even the only federal agency who ran
into a brick wall when they took the DNC's hysterical spiel about Russian
espionage seriously. Obama Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson
<https://www.justsecurity.org/
e-Task-Force-Hearing-with-Form
pdf> told Congress he couldn't even get the DNC to discuss the case with
anyone from his agency, even though election security falls under its
official purview. The homeland security chief was so disconcerted that he
twice told Congress he "should have brought a sleeping bag and camped out in
front of" the party's headquarters.
But Congress never got the chance to ask anyone from CrowdStrike about the
peculiar circumstances surrounding its "investigation." For some strange
reason, the executives representing the only entity to inspect the DNC
servers refused
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/n
-hacked-election.html> to discuss the matter under oath.
The crack team of investigative journalists at "60 Minutes" also somehow
failed to uncover that, just six months after accusing the Russians of
hacking the DNC, CrowdStrike
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/n
-hacked-election.html> issued a report accusing the very same alleged
Russian hackers of having penetrated into some Ukrainian artillery software
that was so riddled with errors they were forced to retract
<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/n
-hacked-election.html> it. Perhaps the "60 Minutes" team was too busy
telling the rest of us how awesome they are to learn that other actors were
known to have been in possession of the malware
<https://web.archive.org/web/2
he-gru-ukraine-artillery-hack-
which CrowdStrike claimed Russian intelligence had exclusive access since
2015.
Among other problems with the technical aspects of CrowdStrike's story, the
malware which the company claims was used to broadcast Ukrainian artillery
positions to the Russians turned out not even to "use GPS nor does it ask
for GPS location information." Jeffrey Carr
<https://web.archive.org/web/2
he-gru-ukraine-artillery-hack-
the cybersecurity consultant who exposed CrowdStrike's bogus accusations
against the Russians, wryly noted, "[t]hat's a surprising design flaw for
custom-made malware whose alleged objective was to collect and transmit
location data."
"60 Minutes'" gaslighting only succeeded in confirming that the program's
self-proclaimed reputation as fierce and thorough investigators is a joke.
And it underscored ordinary folks' concerns about the DNC's refusal to
cooperate with federal officials.
Moreover, a bunch of not-so-ordinary folks who know a thing or two about
computers think there's a simple explanation for the DNC's unwillingness to
let outsiders have a peek at the evidence: There isn't any. The Russian
hacking that's caused so much division and turmoil at home and abroad never
really happened. It was all a ruse concocted by CrowdStrike.
One such skeptic is an anonymous journalist
<https://disobedientmedia.com/
goes by the pseudonym "Adam Carter." Carter has spent the last few years
cataloging evidence <http://g-2.space/> , unearthed by himself and others,
that CrowdStrike engaged in a disinformation campaign, inventing not just a
fake Russian hack but also a fake hacker called "Guccifer 2.0." Much, but by
no means all, of Carter's evidence is technical. And he's unquestionably
found an inconsistency in the Russia narrative that ought to raise doubts in
even the most computer-illiterate congressman's mind.
\
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
Julian Assange's Warning
But first, why on earth would a private contractor hired by the DNC engage
in such tactics? For motive, we need to go back to June 12, 2016, when
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange made an announcement that was sure to
strike panic in the hearts of Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers:
We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton . . . We have emails
pending publication.
A little less than three months earlier, on March 19, hostile actors had
gotten ahold of all the emails in campaign chairman John Podesta's main
Gmail account. You may have heard that Podesta's emails were "hacked," but
they weren't. There were no faraway cyber-nerds searching for some
vulnerability in the DNC network. He fell for a common "spear phishing"
scam. A fake email from Google arrived, saying he needed to change his
password and providing a link. The link was also fake. Instead of changing
his password, Podesta gave it away-along with all of his campaign emails.
Whoops!
The Clinton campaign learned of Podesta's blunder almost immediately and
must have feared that the emails Assange was threatening to release were
his. Moreover, on that date, a lot of the revelations contained therein
would have been very salient-and not in a good way.
Just six days before, with Clinton still 570 delegates short of the 2,382
needed to win the Democratic nomination, the Associated Press
<https://apnews.com/712e888ed1
Sanders and his supporters by claiming that she'd already won. The New York
Times
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/
rs-primary.html> , CNN
<https://www.cnn.com/2016/06/0
ex.html> , NBC
<https://www.nbcnews.com/polit
legates-clinch-nomination-n586
<https://www.usatoday.com/stor
linton-bernie-sanders-democrat
Washington Post
<https://www.nytimes.com/2016/
rs-primary.html> all followed suit, declaring Sanders' loss a fait
accompli.
But it wasn't.
The AP had arrived at its numbers by polling unpledged superdelegates, who
couldn't vote until the convention and were free to change their minds until
then or even to deceive the AP.
Sanders supporters had been angry about the role superdelegates played in
the nominating process for months
<https://www.politico.com/stor
ats-219286> . Sanders
<http://transcripts.cnn.com/TR
complained about it just one week before Assange's announcement and a day
before the media started writing his campaign's obituary:
My problem is that the process today has allowed Secretary Clinton to get
the support of over 400 superdelegates before any other Democratic candidate
was in the race.
The next day's headlines prematurely declaring Clinton's victory brought
Sanders' supporters long-simmering anger to a boil. His spokesman blasted
<https://www.nbcnews.com/polit
legates-clinch-nomination-n586
judgment":
Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of
pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on
superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds
between now and then.
For the rest of the week, the big election story was whether Sanders would
exit the race gracefully and encourage his followers to forgive, forget, and
rally round Hillary Clinton. But just 12 hours after Assange's announcement,
Sanders
<https://www.sevendaysvt.com/O
-supporters-in-burlington-sand
with his top advisors, refusing to concede and reiterating his determination
not to let the media gaslight his candidacy into a lost cause:
[W]e are going to take our campaign to the convention with the full
understanding that we're very good in arithmetic and that we know who has
received the most votes up until now.
The Immensity of Podesta's Blunder
John Podesta's blunder had the potential to destroy Hillary Clinton's
already precarious reputation with voters regardless of their feelings about
Bernie Sanders. In some of the emails, Podesta had revealed that Clinton's
most senior advisors-including Podesta
<https://wikileaks.org/podesta
abilities <http://tldrify.com/qvz> and her ethics <http://tldrify.com/qw0>
, commented on her poor <http://tldrify.com/qvv> health, made disparaging
remarks about Catholics <http://tldrify.com/qw2> , Muslims
<http://tldrify.com/qw5> , blacks <http://tldrify.com/qw5> , and Latinos
<http://tldrify.com/qw3> , and complained that Clinton wanted "unaware and
compliant <http://tldrify.com/qw1> " voters.
Many of Podesta's emails also contradict <https://tldrify.com/qwr> claims
made in defense of the private email server Clinton used as secretary of
state. Others reveal that the FBI investigation into the matter was anything
<http://tldrify.com/qw7> but <http://tldrify.com/qw8> unbiased
<http://tldrify.com/qw9> . At a minimum, the emails prove Clinton's campaign
knew <http://tldrify.com/qwd> from the beginning that she was breaking the
law.
It's easy to forget how serious an issue Clinton's unsecured server was when
Assange issued his warning. James Comey's surprise announcement exonerating
her was still three weeks away, on July 5, 2016. A few weeks earlier, the
State Department had sharply rebuked Clinton for violating department rules,
generating unpleasant headlines such as, "Hillary Clinton's email problems
just got much worse. <https://www.washingtonpost.co
A June 1 Morning Consult poll
<http://www.businessinsider.co
found that about half of voters thought her private email server was
"illegal, unethical and a major problem." Even a quarter of Democrats
agreed. There's little question that Assange's threat would have made the
poll disturbingly salient to Clinton and her top advisers.
But, given Sanders' supporters' cresting anger on the very day Assange
issued his warning and Clinton's need for their enthusiastic support to
prevail against Trump, her team would have been more concerned about emails
revealing her disdain for the kind of voters who flocked to Sanders and some
of their most beloved progressive policies.
How would Sanders' passionate and ideological followers react upon learning,
at the very height of their anger, that Clinton secretly opposed gay
marriage <http://tldrify.com/qwe> and supported fracking
<http://tldrify.com/qwf> ? The Democratic nomination was almost within her
grasp and those revelations alone might have made it impossible for Sanders
to graciously concede and put the weight of his campaign behind hers.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
All the more so when his followers discovered that she and other top
campaign officials routinely mocked <https://tldrify.com/qwl> both Sanders
and them. Making matters worse, if Assange released Podesta's emails they
would also find out that CNN contributor Donna Brazile
<https://tldrify.com/qwm> had given Clinton at least three questions in
advance for her debates with Sanders. And an extraordinary number of emails
confirm Sanders supporters' long-standing complaints that the DNC
<http://tldrify.com/qws> and the mainstream media
<https://tldrify.com/qwy> had been colluding with Clinton to torpedo his
candidacy from its inception.
But perhaps the most troubling of Podesta's emails would have been those
containing passages from speeches Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs and other
big-money outfits at $225,000 per appearance. In these speeches, Clinton
downplayed <https://tldrify.com/qx1> Wall Street's role in the 2008
recession. She even assured the wealthy bankers enriching her that they
themselves ought to be the ones writing any legislation necessary to make
sure such a crash didn't reoccur.
Clinton's Wall Street benefactors also heard <https://tldrify.com/qx0> her
confess to being "obviously" out of touch with the struggles of middle-class
voters. She further admitted <https://tldrify.com/qx3> to having distinct
public and private positions on political issues. Finally, though it
wouldn't bother many of Sanders's followers, moderate voters wouldn't be
happy to learn <https://tldrify.com/qx4> that Clinton assured her wealthy
patrons that she secretly favors open borders.
Like the controversy over her private email server, Clinton weathered this
storm so well that it's hard to remember how much her unreleased speeches
alarmed Sanders' supporters, to whom she was little more than a corporate
shill. Sanders himself had been mocking <https://tldrify.com/qx0> the
extraordinary sums Clinton's Wall Street patrons had paid to hear her speak
and suggesting
<http://thehilltalk.com/2016/0
et-speeches/> that they must have been getting more than just talk for their
money in his own stump
<https://www.nytimes.com/polit
ies-in-four-states-to-spur-vot
com&mtrref=undefined> speeches for months
<https://www.npr.org/2016/10/1
y-clintons-goldman-sachs-trans
If you're going to give a speech for $225,000 it's gotta be really, don't
you think an extraordinarily brilliant speech, I mean why else would they
pay that kind of money? . . . Must be a speech written in Shakespearean
prose. So I think, if it is such a fantastic speech, the secretary should
make it available to all of us.
To make matters worse, three weeks before Assange's announcement, Clinton
released a mandatory financial statement that brought her Wall Street
speeches to the forefront of campaign news, yielding disastrous headlines
like, "How corporate America bought Hillary Clinton for $21M"
<https://nypost.com/2016/05/22
for-21m/> and "The massive scale of the Clintons' speech-making industry."
<https://www.washingtonpost.co
-of-the-clintons-speech-making
1>
A few days later, reporters even annoyed President Obama
<http://www.breitbart.com/2016
orter-asks-questions-hillary-c
pestering him about whether she ought to release her speeches. On June 1,
just 11 days before Assange's warning, a Morning Consult
<https://tldrify.com/qx5> poll had 64 percent of voters saying she needed
to do so, including two-thirds of independents and even almost half of
Democrats.
Many readers have likely forgotten the many serious political storms Hillary
Clinton was navigating in the week preceding Assange's June 12 announcement
and how desperately she needed to placate Sanders' increasingly angry
supporters. If you weren't too distracted by the Russian hacking narrative,
however, you probably remember some of the above revelations from Podesta's
emails that would have made doing so impossible had Assange not given
Clinton's camp so much time to prepare.
By October 7, when Wikileaks finally began releasing Podesta's emails,
Democrat voters had been taught to tune them out by angrily reciting the
mantras "Putin" and "Russia." They were warned by CNN
<https://www.washingtonexamine
-at-wikileaks> that it was illegal for folks who didn't work for CNN or
some other CNN-approved corporation to so much as look at the Podesta's
emails. Trump couldn't push Wikileaks' disclosures because doing so
immediately rebounded back at him, raising worries he might be "Putin's
puppet," rather than reflecting poorly on Clinton.
Clinton Uses the Russian-Hacking Narrative to Great Effect
Whether Adam Carter is right that the Russian DNC hack was a ruse designed
to deflect the damage if it turned out Assange's warning meant he had
Podesta's emails, there's no question Clinton and her surrogates were
instantly prepared to use that way.
Within hours of WikiLeak's October 7 release, Podesta himself made a
transparent attempt on Twitter
<https://twitter.com/johnpodes
disastrous revelations caused by his own bone-headed blunder to a dastardly
Russian scheme perpetrated on Trump's behalf:
While I'm in pretty good company with Gen. Powell & Amb. Marshall, I'm not
happy about being hacked by the Russians in their quest to throw the
election to Donald Trump.
Clinton had avoided any situations in which she'd have to take questions as
much as possible throughout the campaign. So she forestalled publicly
addressing any of the disclosures in Podesta's emails until her third debate
<https://tldrify.com/qx7> with Trump, 12 days after they appeared.
She was asked about the secret preference for open borders she'd revealed in
a speech to a group of Brazilian bankers and the $225,000 they paid for the
privilege of hearing about it. After a few nonsensical words claiming that
she'd meant open borders for electricity, not people, Clinton quickly
shifted to her real defense:
But you are very clearly quoting from WikiLeaks. What is really important
about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage
against Americans. They have hacked American websites, American accounts of
private people, of institutions. Then they have given that information to
WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet. This has come from
the highest levels of the Russian government. Clearly from Putin himself in
an effort, as 17
<https://www.nationalreview.co
ked-russia/> of our intelligence agencies have confirmed, to influence our
election. So, I actually think the most important question of this evening,
Chris, is finally, will Donald Trump admit and condemn that the Russians are
doing this, and make it clear that he will not have the help of Putin in
this election.
A more transparently rehearsed attempt to deflect the damaging revelations
in Podesta's emails by branding them with the words "Wikileaks," "espionage
against Americans," "Putin," and "Donald Trump" would be impossible.
So, by the time Assange released them on October 7, tainting the publication
of Podesta's emails as a Russian scheme perpetrated out of love for Donald
Trump was demonstrably the Clinton campaign's go-to strategy. But a
Washington Post story about the DNC hack published just two days after
Assange's June 12 warning shows the strategy was prepared much earlier.
CrowdStrike's Perplexing Announcement
The June 14 Washington Post article marks the first time the DNC went public
about the alleged Russian hack. It includes the detail that the Russians
stole a file of Trump opposition research; which, though no ordinary readers
could have known it at the time, would turn up months later
<https://wikileaks.org/podesta
released Podesta's emails.
Indeed, this detail is also the article's big takeaway, as it's mentioned in
both the lead sentence and even its headline
<https://www.washingtonpost.co
ackers-penetrated-dnc-stole-op
-316e-11e6-8ff7-7b6c1998b7a0_s
hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump."
The story extensively quotes CrowdStrike president Shawn Henry, who
previously was in charge of FBI cyber operations. Henry just so happens to
have been promoted to that position by none other than Robert Mueller when
he ran the agency. CrowdStrike's founder and Chief Technology Officer,
Dmitri Alperovitch is also featured prominently. Though born in Russia, his
family fled the country when he was fourteen and Alperovitch is now a senior
member of the vehemently anti-Russian Atlantic Council.
All information for the Washington Post story was provided voluntarily by
CrowdStrike and the DNC. According to Alperovitch
<https://www.crowdstrike.com/b
committee/> , the DNC "decide[d] to go public...about their incident and
give us permission to share our knowledge."
So, why on June 14, 2016, had the DNC wanted everyone to know the
embarrassing fact that the Russians had penetrated their servers and the
content of one particular pilfered file?
Alperovitch <https://tldrify.com/qyr> says the DNC wanted to "help protect
even those who do not happen to be [CrowdStrike] customers." It's hard to
understand how telling the world Russia had stolen a file of Trump
opposition research from the DNC servers did anything to help those not
fortunate enough to be able to rely on CrowdStrike. But, even if sense could
be made of the philanthropic motives Alperovitch ascribed to the DNC, they
must have had more self-interested ones to, once again, publicly connect
Hillary Clinton's name to lost emails and unsecured servers while her
already existing troubles concerning such matters were still a very live
issue.
Clinton's team must have suspected that Assange had Podesta's emails and
they certainly knew the file of Trump opposition research was among them. So
announcing that the Russians had stolen it two days after Assange's warning
is, in hindsight, either an incredible coincidence or the first step in a
strategy designed to taint the damaging information in Podesta's emails with
Russian perfidy.
But CrowdStrike and the DNC weren't the only ones calling attention to that
file of Trump opposition research in the days following Julian Assange's
fateful warning.
Screenshot/Wordpress
The Russian Spy Who Was Wasn't
The day after CrowdStrike's announcement, a new actor dramatically took the
stage announcing himself as "Guccifer 2.0." His name was supposed to pay
tribute to a hacker who'd gone by the nom de guerre Guccifer
<https://www.washingtontimes.c
xposing-clinton-server-r/> , famous for having plagued Hillary Clinton.
Guccifer 2.0 expressed his intention to take up his imprisoned namesake's
mantle by boldly claiming to be the very hacker whose existence Alperovitch
and Henry had just announced on the front page of yesterday's Washington
Post!
And, to prove it, he posted
<https://guccifer2.wordpress.c
opposition research on his newly minted blog
<https://guccifer2.wordpress.c
<http://gawker.com/this-looks-
6> and The Smoking Gun
<http://www.thesmokinggun.com/
port-647293> .
If you hadn't known it was all real, you might have thought all this
sensational news coincidentally emerging on the heels of Assange's warning
was coming from a script.
We're supposed to think that G2 (as he's called for short) was a Russian spy
passing documents he hacked from the DNC servers to Wikileaks. In fact,
though hardly anyone is aware how crucial the allegation is, G2's alleged
role as WikiLeaks' source is the only evidence we've ever seen that the DNC
emails WikiLeaks published really did come from Russian intelligence.
But if G2 really is a Russian spy, Putin ought to be pitied rather than
feared.
When he debuted claiming to be the hacker featured on the front page of the
previous day's Post, G2 made no attempt to deny he was a Russian spy. Anyone
reading his first blog post also familiar with the Washington Post story was
given no reason to doubt G2 was an agent of Russia as Alperovitch and Henry
had claimed. Would a real Russian spy connect himself to a report outing him
as a Russian spy without denying it?
Why on earth would he connect himself to such a report at all?
Would a real Russian spy trying to hide his nationality end the second
sentence in his first blog post with ")))", the symbol
<https://www.rbth.com/lifestyl
Russians use in place of our "lol." G2 did <https://tldrify.com/qy3> .
Would a real Russian spy on a secret mission to sabotage Hillary Clinton
reveal his purpose by naming himself after someone famous for having already
done so? The story in the previous day's Washington Post hadn't given any
indication whatsoever that Clinton was his target. Why was G2 so anxious
that we know?
And, why would a Russian spy using WikiLeaks as a clandestine front announce
that he'd sent the documents he'd stolen to WikiLeaks? G2 gave the whole
game away in that very first blog post
<https://guccifer2.wordpress.c
I've been in the DNC's networks for almost a year . . . The main part of the
papers, thousands of files and mails, I gave to Wikileaks. They will publish
them soon.
Is it at all credible that a spy sent by Vladimir Putin on a secret mission
to control the outcome of the U.S. presidential election would start a blog
a day after his espionage had been reported in the Washington Post in order
take credit for and inform the public of some crucial facts about his
operation that hadn't been exposed; like identifying both his target and his
secret accomplice?
Shawn Henry, Dmitri Alperovitch, James Comey, James Clapper, and Robert
Mueller are all asking you to believe that it is.
The Mueller report <https://www.justice.gov/file/
absurdly expurgated quotes from alleged communications between G2 and
WikiLeaks to prove he was the source of their DNC emails. If Mueller's
insidious gaslighting hadn't caused so much damage, his neglecting to
mention that G2 announced he was WikiLeaks' source in his very first blog
post would be comical. Mueller is, of course, also silent about the other 11
occasions
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
ictments-framing-assange/> in his brief time in the public spotlight on
which G2 made public statements explicitly connecting himself to WikiLeaks.
Mueller also wants you to believe that G2 immediately denied he was
Russian-by no means
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
ictments/> Mueller's only
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
ictments-framing-assange/> blatant lie
<https://amgreatness.com/2018/
-makes-the-perfect-foil/> .
G2 first denied
<https://motherboard.vice.com/
ll-interview-transcript> being Russian only when explicitly questioned about
his nationality in an interview six days after his debut. But by then it was
too late. No one believed him because it had already emerged that there were
"Russian fingerprints" all over the documents he'd released. Odd enough by
itself, given the "superb operational tradecraft" attributed
<http://tldrify.com/qy5> to him by Alperovitch and the fact that he was
conducting one of history's most significant clandestine operations.
Russian intelligence must run hundreds of cyber operations every year that
go entirely undetected. Yet, when agents are sent directly by Vladimir Putin
himself to control the outcome of the U.S presidential election, they
announce their presence to the world and leave a half-dozen clues that
identify them as Russian spies which are found before they even have time to
deny it.
But it gets worse.
Putin Must Not be Sending His Best
The first evidence of Russian involvement was found within hours of G2's
June 15 debut. Someone at Gawker opened the metadata in the files he sent
and, what do you know? Sitting there plain as day for anyone to see was the
name of Soviet secret police founder Felix Dzerzhinsky!
Even though the name is hardly a household word in the United States, it was
still impossible to miss its significance since it just so happened to be
written in the Russian alphabet <http://tldrify.com/qyc> . All that was
missing was a link to Wikipedia
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki
of googling, "Феликс Эдмундович."
The five files G2 sent out when he debuted all later turned up in Podesta's
emails-absent any Russian names in their metadata, of course. The metadata
<https://archive.fo/2dMfC> in the versions released by G2, however, shows
that the Russian spymaster's name appeared because their content was cut and
pasted from somewhere else into a Russian template from Microsoft Word with
"Феликс Эдмундович" set as the username.
Editing the documents couldn't have served any legitimate purpose since the
files G2 released were identical <https://archive.fo/2dMfC> in content to
the versions that later turned up in Podesta's emails. Moreover, the
needless cut-and-pasting, which also caused Russian error messages to appear
in various places just in case no one bothered looking at the metadata, was
done just 30 minutes <http://g-2.space/> before G2 released the files!
Is it at all credible that a Russian spy sent by Vladimir Putin on a secret
mission to control the outcome of a U.S. presidential election would go to
the trouble of editing documents he was sending to the press as a Word file
with a famous Russian spymaster's Russian name set as username, causing it
to appear in the metadata? Would he cut and paste the documents' content
into a Russian template, causing Russian language error messages to pop up
when the journalists to whom he was sending them tried reading the files? Is
it credible that he'd do all that 30 minutes before sending the documents
out even though he didn't alter their content at all and, hence, had no
reason whatsoever to edit them?
Shawn Henry, Dmitri Alperovitch, James Clapper, James Comey, and Robert
Mueller are all asking you to believe that it is.
In fact, they're insisting that you do.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Even had G2 altered the content of the files, it's preposterous to suppose
that a Russian spy on the most serious mission imaginable would be so
careless as to leave clues revealing his identity to a Gawker reporter
within hours of his sending them to her. But, since the content of the
documents wasn't altered at all, the procedures which caused the "Russian
fingerprints" to immediately appear could only have been designed to do
exactly that.
If we weren't so desperate for sensational news, a Gawker reporter finding
evidence that G2 was a Russian intelligence agent in the files he'd sent her
mere hours after his debut by itself would have raised enormous red flags.
But, believe it or not, that's not all Henry, Alperovitch, Comey, Mueller,
and their intelligence community cohorts expect you to swallow.
G2 also chose <http://tldrify.com/qye> to use a company based in Russia to
cloak his IP address. Even then, there are plenty of email providers that
would conceal the Russian IP address. Yet G2, who Hillary Clinton suggested
"clearly" took orders directly from KGB prodigy Vladimir Putin, somehow
chose one that didn't.
If G2 had simply done nothing, there would have been nothing connecting
Wikileaks to Russian intelligence and no one would have been the wiser.
Instead of doing nothing, he went out of his way to create the only evidence
we've seen that any of the emails Assange released in the run-up to the 2016
election came from Russian intelligence.
Yet, somehow, we're supposed to believe he was sent by Putin on a mission to
sabotage the Clinton campaign. Apart from G2's self-undermining announcement
<https://tldrify.com/qy6> that Clinton was his target, neither the Trump
opposition file nor any other file he ever released contained anything
damaging <http://tldrify.com/qyg> to her.
So, on top of all the other completely preposterous nonsense, a Russian spy
intent on getting Trump elected released 230 pages of damaging information
on Trump but nothing negative about Hillary Clinton.
Viewed in quick and haphazard slices, G2's debut may look like a
collaboration between Putin and Assange. But Russian spies trying to hide
their identity don't openly confess to crimes the Washington Post attributed
to Russian spies the day before.
Nor do they use Russian emoticons.
Nor do they publicly announce their mission and name their accomplices.
Nor do they send documents to reporters containing clues that they are
Russian spies which are discovered within hours.
And they most certainly don't go out of their way to plant such clues.
And when Russian spies release 230 pages of negative information about
Trump, you can bet that it's Trump, and not his enemies, they are trying to
harm.
When we widen our view, the only question becomes who Alperovitch, Henry,
Mueller and their cohorts are grossly insulting more: Russia's intelligence
agencies or the American public's intelligence.
Where Did Guccifer 2.0 Get the Trump File?
Hindsight together with Adam Carter and crew's hard work shows that G2,
rather than trying to harm Clinton, worked to manufacture a fake connection
between Assange and Russian intelligence. This fake connection could later
be used by Clinton as a shield to immediately deflect the avalanche of
damaging information in Podesta's emails on to Trump should Assange release
them. The moment he did, the fake connection allowed her to claim he'd done
so at Putin's behest and, therefore, that Putin not only wanted Trump in the
White House but had perpetrated dirty Russian espionage designed to put him
there.
Putin had attacked not just her campaign but all of America on Trump's
behalf, Clinton scolded. That was the real story voters needed to focus on,
not all the proof of her corruption and incompetence Julian Assange had
tried to bring to their attention. In fact, it was every American's
patriotic duty to ignore they'd been given irrefutable evidence in her own
words and those of her closest advisors that she was grossly unfit for
office. Not ignoring it would make you complicit in a filthy Russian attack
on America and likely a piece of vile Russian-loving scum yourself.
It was a message perfectly designed to appeal to the tolerant souls without
a trace of bigotry in their loving hearts who make up the Democratic Party's
base.
The Washington Post headline announcing that the Russians had hacked a Trump
opposition file from the DNC set the stage for its delivery. But the article
made no mention of Assange or Wikileaks. Alperovitch and Henry could say
they'd found Putin's minions infesting the DNC servers. That was no problem
since Comey was running the FBI and he could be counted on to say whatever
words they decided to put in his mouth.
But nothing they could plausibly claim they'd discovered examining the DNC
servers would be able to connect the little Russian devils they were going
to say they found there to Assange.
So, considered alone, the Washington Post story they would use to get the
ball rolling had zero potential to discredit anything he might release.
G2 forged the crucial link to Assange the next day by taking credit for the
Russian hack Alperovitch and Henry had announced in the Washington Post and
saying he'd turned over the spoils to Wikileaks. The fact that he released
the Trump opposition research file mentioned in the Post's headline
confirmed that he really was the hacker CrowdStrike's executive duo had
credited with stealing files from the DNC and not some prankster merely
pretending to be. If Assange did release Podesta's emails, as the Clinton
campaign surely must have feared he would, the fact that the Trump
opposition file G2 released was among them could also be used to directly
connect G2 to their theft if narrative reinforcement became necessary.
Absent G2 bringing Wikileaks into the picture, the Washington Post story
would have informed voters of an embarrassing Russian DNC hack of some Trump
opposition research, without any mitigating way to connect those Russians to
Julian Assange and thereby taint anything he might publish.
So the information released to the Post serves no purpose and, indeed, could
have only harmed the DNC, unless Alperovitch and Henry knew G2 would
immediately enter the fray to shift attention away from the poor internet
security that had allowed Russian spies to breach the DNC servers and
towards speculation about their connection to Wikileaks.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
But there's another more conclusive reason to think that G2 had to be
working with CrowdStrike and Hillary Clinton.
Remember, on June 15, Guccifer 2.0 emailed the Trump opposition file along
with four other documents to Gawker
<http://gawker.com/this-looks-
6> and The Smoking Gun
<http://www.thesmokinggun.com/
port-647293> and posted them on his blog
<https://guccifer2.wordpress.c
Russian fingerprints he planted, every one of those files was found among
Podesta's emails when Assange released them four months later.
So, how did G2 get ahold of five files from John Podesta's Gmail account?
That's what Adam Carter wants everyone to start asking.
Given how hard G2 worked to discredit Wikileaks, it's impossible he got the
files from them.
Since G2 manifestly isn't the implacable foe of Hillary Clinton he pretended
to be, it's unlikely that he hacked the DNC servers as claimed. Indeed,
since none of those first five files G2 released appeared in the DNC emails
later published by WikiLeaks, we've no reason to suppose they were even on
the DNC servers to be hacked.
We know they were attached to emails in Podesta's Gmail account; which would
mean they were on Google's servers. None of them were sent to him from a DNC
email address, nor did he send any of them to one, nor were they copied to
any. So we have no reason to think they were on the DNC servers at all.
Moreover, Carter and other experts say <http://tldrify.com/qy4> the methods
G2 claims he used to hack the DNC make no technical sense and couldn't have
worked anyway.
Even putting aside that CrowdStrike's announcement that the DNC servers had
been hacked makes no sense unless they knew G2 would emerge to bring
WikiLeaks into the picture and the question of how G2 got ahold of files the
Clinton campaign knew would appear as attachments to Podesta's emails when
they were released, it's grossly implausible that G2's operation wasn't
coordinated with CrowdStrike. The effort G2 made to make it look like
Assange had gotten anything he might publish damaging to Clinton from
Russian intelligence would be bizarre if he were just some random stranger
who decided to step in and help out Clinton in her time of need.
Moreover, even if that very unlikely hypothesis somehow turned out to be
true, Alperovitch, Henry, Mueller, Clapper, Comey, and a host of others
would still be guilty of perpetuating G2's hoax as a means to falsely
substantiate that the DNC had been hacked by Russia and the spoils passed to
Assange.
And the fact that they used a hoax to substantiate the Russian DNC hack and
Assange's DNC emails having been passed to him by Russia, indicates that
both of those claims must also be hoaxes. Of course, it would be an
incredible coincidence if Alperovitch and Henry perpetrated a hoax and G2
came along and perpetrated a different hoax which just so happened to be
exactly what the CrowdStrike executives needed to make their's successful.
But the fact that G2 somehow got ahold of files from John Podesta's Gmail
account seems inexplicable, given everything else we now know, unless
someone very high up in the Clinton campaign gave them to him because that
person knew those files were stolen with John Podesta's emails and would be
released along with them. G2's having released them together with all the
clues he'd planted indicating he was with Russian intelligence would provide
a means to reinforce the idea that Podesta's emails had been stolen by
Russia should it become necessary.
Given everything we know, G2 couldn't have been in possession of files the
Clinton campaign knew would turn up in John Podesta's stolen emails unless
he was part of a CrowdStrike disinformation campaign designed to protect
Hillary Clinton from the consequences of Podesta's blunder.
But even if G2 just happened to come along and perpetrate a hoax that
perfectly met Hillary Clinton's needs, Alperovitch, Henry, Mueller and the
rest have still used that hoax to deceive the American people into believing
that Julian Assange is a Russian puppet and Trump owes his victory to
Russian espionage.
The absurdity of anyone claiming that G2 was a Russian spy and the way in
which the narrative that WikiLeaks releases were part of a Russian plot to
help Trump, means that everyone who promoted that narrative was pushing a
monstrous lie.
It also means that Robert Mueller's two-year, $32 million investigation, the
sanctions Congress placed on Russia, and all the unbelievably nasty
political strife Americans have suffered since Trump was elected were all
predicated on the very same monstrous lie.
Let's hope our political class notices and the culprits are finally
punished.
The monstrous lie has reigned for far too long.
******************************
Michael Thau <https://amgreatness.com/autho
Michael Thau is a contributor to American Greatness. He's currently working
on a book about the fake Russian hack of the DNC. He also blogs...
<https://amgreatness.com/autho
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