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US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims

As the hysteria about Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. election grows, a key mystery is why U.S. intelligence would rely on “circumstantial evidence” when it has the capability for hard evidence, say U.S. intelligence veterans. (Originally posted December 12, 2016 on Consortiumnews.com)

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

MEMORANDUM

Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless

A New York Times report on Monday alluding to “overwhelming circumstantial evidence” leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin “deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump” is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else.

Monday’s Washington Post reports that Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined other senators in calling for a bipartisan investigation of suspected cyber-intrusion by Russia. Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.

In what follows, we draw on decades of senior-level experience – with emphasis on cyber-intelligence and security – to cut through uninformed, largely partisan fog. Far from hiding behind anonymity, we are proud to speak out with the hope of gaining an audience appropriate to what we merit – given our long labors in government and other areas of technology. And corny though it may sound these days, our ethos as intelligence professionals remains, simply, to tell it like it is – without fear or favor.

We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:

Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.

Hack: When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data.

All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient.

In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.

Awesome Technical Capabilities

Again, NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved. Thanks largely to the material released by Edward Snowden, we can provide a full picture of NSA’s extensive domestic data-collection network including Upstream programs like Fairview, Stormbrew and Blarney. These include at least 30 companies in the U.S. operating the fiber networks that carry the Public Switched Telephone Network as well as the World Wide Web. This gives NSA unparalleled access to data flowing within the U.S. and data going out to the rest of the world, as well as data transiting the U.S.

In other words, any data that is passed from the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) – or any other server in the U.S. – is collected by the NSA. These data transfers carry destination addresses in what are called packets, which enable the transfer to be traced and followed through the network.

Packets: Emails being passed across the World Wide Web are broken down into smaller segments called packets. These packets are passed into the network to be delivered to a recipient. This means the packets need to be reassembled at the receiving end.

To accomplish this, all the packets that form a message are assigned an identifying number that enables the receiving end to collect them for reassembly. Moreover, each packet carries the originator and ultimate receiver Internet protocol number (either IPV4 or IPV6) that enables the network to route data.

When email packets leave the U.S., the other “Five Eyes” countries (the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the seven or eight additional countries participating with the U.S. in bulk-collection of everything on the planet would also have a record of where those email packets went after leaving the U.S.

These collection resources are extensive [see attached NSA slides 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]; they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources.

The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.

The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like “our best guess” or “our opinion” or “our estimate” etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been “hacked” cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.

The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.

As for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.

For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)

Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator

Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)

Intelligence officials leak surprise decision in NSA whistleblower case

[Republished with permission from Whistleblowing Today]

The Project on Government Oversight reports that a three-person panel authorized by Obama’s Presidential Policy Directive 19 concluded last May that the National Security Agency’s inspector general retaliated against a whistleblower. Based on that information, Director Michael Rogers sent IG George Ellard a termination notice.  The IG, who is on administrative leave while he appeals the decision, said in 2014, “Snowden could have come to me. We have surprising success in resolving the complaints that are brought to us.”

Reportedly, this is the first whistleblower case in the intelligence community to receive a high-level review since PPD-19 was issued in 2012.  The identity of the whistleblower has not been made public.

(more…)

CIA Analyst to Iraq Tribunal: Wolfowitz Pushed Multiple Investigations of “Pure Fiction”

The allegations that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction are lies.
By Elizabeth Murray / AlterNet December 1, 2016

I retired in 2010 after a 27-year career with the CIA and for the first 20 years of my career, I was a senior political and media analyst with the CIA’s open source arm. That department monitors and translates speeches by foreign leaders, newspaper editorials and other foreign news of interest to US policymakers.

Our job was to analyze the speeches of foreign leaders and the political spin of foreign media content and help the policymakers we worked with understand the implications for US policy and interests. It was exciting, challenging and very interesting work.

In early 2003, just prior to the launching of the US attack on Iraq, I was the senior analyst in charge of Iraqi media at the Open Source Center. The political atmosphere around the Beltway had become very charged amid allegations that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD and there were active efforts afoot to link him to al-Qa’ida and the events of 9-11. The drumbeat for war was in full swing.

One morning I received a telephone call from the office of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz asking us to find media reportage of meetings between al-Qaida representatives and Iraqi officials. There was a strong implication in the way the tasking was conveyed to me that a meeting between the two sides had, in fact, taken place – possibly in Prague – and that we needed to find the evidence.

I gave the tasking my highest priority. I immediately contacted our overseas bureau in the Middle East in charge of monitoring and translating Iraqi media. We had the monitors/translators undertake an exhaustive search of all relevant Iraqi media reports in our archives that might contain such information. We also leveraged other resources available to us in Baghdad so that they could check on lesser known Iraq media sources – we pulled out all the stops.

About 2 weeks later, we received a definitive response – there was no evidence in Iraqi media of any such relationship between al-Qaida and Saddam Husayn’s regime. I promptly reported this information to Wolfowitz’s office. I assumed that was the end of the matter.

However, about a week later Wolfowitz’s office phoned us again, asking for the same thing – media evidence of an Iraqi government link with al-Qaida. So I again marshaled all the resources we had and dedicated some of our overseas staff to a full-time search. Again the finding was negative.

Again I reported this back. Unbelievably, a few weeks the request came to us a third time. It was slowly dawning on me that we were not providing his office with the answer they wanted. We were being subjected to political pressure. We had already expended many hours and many US tax dollars on this search – and I trusted our seasoned media professionals when they said there was no evidence of these allegations.

So I asked Wolfowitz’s office where they had heard that a meeting between al-Qa’ida and Iraqi officials had taken place – in the hopes that this might aid our search. However, I never received a response to my request.

Of course, we now know that these allegations were pure fiction, as were the allegations that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.

By 2006 – three years into the war on Iraq — the Bush administration officially admitted it had no evidence of any Iraqi role in the 9-11 attacks. Nevertheless, the US continues to devastate that country, to this very day.

It is time to face the truth and hold our leaders to account for the terrible war crimes committed against the Iraqi people. And it is time for the United States to withdraw from Iraq and allow the Iraqi people to rebuild their country free of foreign interference.

That is why I have shared my experience with The People’s Tribunal on the Iraq War – as my testimony to the lies that led to the mass murder of so many innocent people. It is my hope that the truth uncovered by the Tribunal will enable a national reckoning and help us hold our leaders accountable for the past and present war crimes committed against the nation of Iraq – crimes which could not have been committed in the absence of the lies that were told to the American people.

Elizabeth Murray served as Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government, where she specialized in Middle Eastern political and media analysis.

(Full article at: http://www.alternet.org/world/cia-analyst-iraq-tribunal-wolfowitz-pushed-multiple-investigations-pure-fiction)

We Can Confront Torture Advocate Michael Pompeo

By John Kiriakou, Reader Supported News
21 November 16

resident-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of Rep. Michael Pompeo (R-Kan.) sends a crystal clear message that Trump was telling the American people the truth when he said that he would bring back the torture program and do “a hell of a lot worse.” Pompeo himself said that CIA officers who engaged in torture “are not torturers. They are patriots.” The only conclusion one can draw is that Trump intends to return the CIA to the dark days of the Bush administration. And this is despite the fact that torture is illegal under the Federal Torture Act, the United Nations Conventions Against Torture, and the McCain-Feinstein Amendment.

Pompeo’s nomination was something of a surprise. Although he supported and endorsed Trump during the Republican primaries, he was not a player in the campaign, he is not one of the more prominent members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), where he served only three years, and he was not among the names being circulated among “people in the know” in Washington for CIA Director. But Trump apparently likes West Point graduates, who are more likely to say, “Yes, sir” than they are to say, “Mr. President, let me tell you why that’s a bad idea.” Pompeo is a yes man with credentials. He graduated first in his class at the U.S. Military Academy, and then went to Harvard Law School before going into business and politics.

Pompeo also has towed the Tea Party line on national security issues since being elected to Congress in 2010. He called NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden “a traitor” and in an interview on C-SPAN added, “he should be brought back from Russia and given due process, and I think the proper outcome would be that he would be given a death sentence.” Pompeo was a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, where he said that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had “failed to lead,” despite the fact that his committee’s leadership had found that the former secretary had done nothing wrong related to Benghazi. And he wants to keep the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay open, calling it “the right option for American security” and “an important asset that must remain open.” He said after a visit to Guantanamo that he had seen the detainees there and that he wants them “right where they are.”

Further afield, Pompeo has said that he supports dragnet surveillance against American citizens, including NSA interception of all U.S. metadata, voicemails, emails, and text messages. He wants this information housed along with “lifestyle information” on Americans in a database that would be accessible to all U.S. law enforcement, something more akin to Orwell’s Big Brother than any other politician has put forth. He criticized his Congressional colleagues for rolling back some of NSA’s warrantless wiretapping programs in the aftermath of the Snowden disclosures, and added that the lone wolf attacks in San Bernardino in 2015 were a result of Congress not allowing NSA to do its job. Pompeo apparently has never commented publicly on the civil liberties and legal questions at play when a U.S. intelligence agency spies on American citizens.

So what can be done about a far-right activist CIA director serving a far-right president and being overseen by far-right Congressional committees? For us average citizens, not much, unfortunately.

But there are some things we can do. We can write our members of Congress and demand that they hold the CIA and its new director to both the letter and the spirit of the law. Torture is illegal. That isn’t going to change. If the CIA engages in torture, its leadership must be brought to task. If the Justice Department won’t file charges against torturers and those who order the torture, then maybe foreign courts will, just like Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, who filed charges of human rights violations against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. We can write, speak out, and march against human rights and legal violations. We can initiate direct actions. And perhaps most importantly, if we have standing, we can sue, bog the CIA down in litigation, and force as much of the information as possible into the glare of the public spotlight.

Pompeo’s nomination is a bad thing. But it’s not the end of the world. We just have to be ready for a fight.

John Kiriakou is a former CIA counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

‘DAPL protesters rely on RT, citizen journalists, as MSM goes missing in action’–with interview of Elizabeth Murray (11/21/16)

Demonstrators protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline have resorted to social media and outside news sources to get out their message as N.Dakota police reportedly use tear gas, water cannon and concussion grenades, says political analyst Elizabeth Murray .
Police have reportedly deployed water cannon on the protesters, many of whom were trapped on a bridge at the scene, in sub-zero temperatures, and are using LRAD sound devices. There were also reports of police firing rubber bullets into the crowd.

Construction of the $3.7 billion pipeline has been inciting protests since the spring, with the Sioux tribe and environmental activists claiming the project threatens local water sources, as well sacred Indian sites, including burial grounds.

Once on-line, the 1,200-mile pipeline will carry 500,000 gallons of crude oil daily from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a distribution point in Illinois.

Kelcy Warren, CEO of Energy Transfer Partners, the company constructing the pipeline, told PBS last week the work was not being carried out on Native American property.

“We’re on private land,” and the pipeline is “new steel pipe,” he said.

Political analyst Elizabeth Murray provides her view of the demonstrations and how the US media has shied away from reporting on the disturbing drama.

RT: Tear gas and rubber bullets have reportedly been used to disperse the protests. Why do you think they’re use such strong force against protestors who say they’re acting peacefully?

Elizabeth Murray: This has been a full-blown assault on completely peaceful, non-violent protesters. I did see several reports, as yet unconfirmed, that the ground was vibrating underneath the area where the pipeline is being constructed and that it’s quite possible that this attack tonight could be a cover – actually, a distraction – while underground drilling is taking place.

As we know, Energy Transfer Partners has openly defied both the Army Corp of Engineers and the president’s urge to temporarily halt while the Army Corp of Engineers reviews whether they can go ahead with this. It’s possible that they may be trying to start drilling under the river tonight, and again, that’s unconfirmed, but I wouldn’t be surprised and I wouldn’t put it past Energy Transfer Partners, which has already said that any kind of alternative route is out of the question and that they intend to drill there…

https://youtu.be/ksO6nxnOt_E

RT:What do you think about protestors saying the police shot down their drone to prevent them from filming?

EM: I heard the same thing. I’ve been following the events rather closely on Twitter, but this is clearly an attempt to keep this out of the public eye. I understand that as this has been unfolding tonight, CNN, for example, has been busy going over the Hamilton theater incident with Vice President-elect Mike Pence and hasn’t given any attention to this issue. Fortunately, we’ve had not only RT but all kinds of citizen journalists live-streaming so they’re actually able to give citizens facts on the ground.

As you’ve mentioned and shown tonight, people were sprayed with water cannons in 25-degree cold.

Meanwhile, the Morton County Sheriff is apparently denying that they’ve used water cannons, but thanks to social media, people can get on-line and check out the live-streaming that has been going on through the night and see the terror that these non-violent water protectors are being subjected to.

It’s really appalling.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT. (Full article here.)