Humint Events Online: What Is It with Trump and Russia

Monday, April 03, 2017

What Is It with Trump and Russia

Hmmm:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation cannot tell us what we need to know about Donald Trump’s contacts with Russia. Why? Because doing so would jeopardize a long-running, ultra-sensitive operation targeting mobsters tied to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and to Trump.
But the Feds’ stonewalling risks something far more dangerous: Failing to resolve a crisis of trust in America’s president. WhoWhatWhy provides the details of a two-month investigation in this 6,500-word exposé.
The FBI apparently knew, directly or indirectly, based upon available facts, that prior to Election Day, Trump and his campaign had personal and business dealings with certain individuals and entities linked to criminal elements — including reputed Russian gangsters — connected to Putin.
The same facts suggest that the FBI knew or should have known enough prior to the election to justify informing the public about its ongoing investigation of potentially compromising relationships between Trump, Putin, and Russian mobsters — even if it meant losing or exposing a valued informant.

The Steele dossier got additional confirmation, and this bit is key:
In the report, Steele spoke of an "established operational liaison between the TRUMP team and the Kremlin… an intelligence exchange had been running between them for at least 8 years."
Members of the Obama administration believe, based on analysis they saw from the intelligence community, that the information exchange claimed by Steele continued into the election.
"This is a three-headed operation," said one former official, setting out the case, based on the intelligence: Firstly, hackers steal damaging emails from senior Democrats. Secondly, the stories based on this hacked information appear on Twitter and Facebook, posted by thousands of automated "bots", then on Russia's English-language outlets, RT and Sputnik, then right-wing US "news" sites such as Infowars and Breitbart, then Fox and the mainstream media. Thirdly, Russia downloads the online voter rolls. The voter rolls are said to fit into this because of "microtargeting". Using email, Facebook and Twitter, political advertising can be tailored very precisely: individual messaging for individual voters. "You are stealing the stuff and pushing it back into the US body politic," said the former official, "you know where to target that stuff when you're pushing it back."
This would take co-operation with the Trump campaign, it is claimed. 
"If you need to ensure that white women in Pennsylvania don't vote or independents get pissed in Michigan so they stay home: that's voter suppression. You can figure what your target demographics and locations are from the voter rolls. Then you can use that to target your bot."
This is the "big picture" some accuse the FBI of failing to see. It is, so far, all allegation - and not just the parts concerning Donald Trump and his people. For instance, the US intelligence agencies said last October that the voter rolls had been "scanned and probed" from a server in Russia.
But the Russian government was never shown to have been responsible. There are either a series of coincidences or there is a conspiracy of such reach and sophistication that it may take years to unravel.
"I hear a lot of people comparing this to Watergate," said Congressman Eric Swalwell, a Democrat who sits on the House Intelligence Committee. "Let me just tell you, the complexity of this case is unlike anything we've ever seen. "Watergate doesn't even come close. That was a burglary in the Metro section of the Washington Post. "It doesn't have the international waypoints [of this]. Russia's M.O. is to avoid attribution. This investigation is going to take time."
In his testimony, the FBI director gave away nothing of the details of the inquiry. As I wrote in January, it is being done by a "counter-intelligence taskforce" that includes the CIA, with the FBI leading. I wrote then that the secret US intelligence court had granted an order, a so-called Fisa warrant, to intercept the electronic records of two Russian banks.
The White House cited this report several times as evidence for President Trump's tweets that "Obama had my 'wires tapped' in Trump Tower… This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" It isn't. Since Watergate, no president can simply order the CIA or FBI to tap someone's phone.
I wrote that: "Neither Trump nor his associates are named in the Fisa order." If they were, the court would have to see "probable cause" that they were agents of a foreign power. It is possible that the communications of Trump associates were picked up in monitoring of foreign entities, such as the Russian banks, so-called "incidental collection". This is presumably what the White House spokesman, Sean Spicer, is talking about when he asks Congress to investigate an "abuse of power" by the Obama administration.
Comey was careful in his testimony to say the investigation was into "co-ordination" rather than collusion. "Collusion is not a term, a legal term of art," he said, "and it's one I haven't used here today, as we're investigating to see whether there was any co-ordination…"
Comey's testimony confirmed there was an open investigation over the links between the Trump campaign and Russia - but not much more "Explicit or implicit coordination?" a Congressman asked. "Knowing or unknowing," Comey replied. The investigation, then, is into a range of possibilities: at one end, unwitting co-operation with Russia by members of the Trump campaign; at the other conscious "co-ordination".
Hillary Clinton's former campaign manager, Robby Mook, said that if Trump's aides knew of Russia's plans, there should be charges of treason. Trump's enemies ask us to believe that some of his people were either traitors or dupes.
The president himself has another version of events: there was no "co-ordination"; the whole thing is a monstrous lie created by the Obama administration, fed by the intelligence community and amplified by the "dishonest" media, billowing black clouds of smoke but no fire.
When the dossier was released, he tweeted: "Are we living in Nazi Germany?" These two stories cannot be reconciled. With each new drip of information, option three - the chance that this is all a giant mistake, an improbable series of coincidences - seems further out of reach.

I think it's quite striking that Michael Flynn was actually anti-Russia until he joined the Trump campaign.  So, it's not that people brought into the campaign made Trump more pro-Russia, it was the other way around. That fits with the idea that Trump was pro-Russia way back... not just recruited recently.

4 Comments:

Blogger the mighty wak said...


TRUMPS CONTACTS WITH RUSSIA!

oh the horrors, how dare he communicate with russia.
what, does everyone think that trump should order a nuclear strike on our mortal enemy russia? i say better to have dialog with them.
and never mind the fact that the clinton's have extensive ties with russia:

""As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, along with the Obama Administration, approved a deal that gave Russia one-fifth of America’s uranium reserves. Hillary’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, received over half-a-million dollars by a paid speech by a bank connected to the uranium deal. And Vladimir Putin personally called the former President and thanked him for giving the speech.""

a deal to turn over U.S. uranium to russia?
wow that actually sounds like treason.

and to accuse russia of hacking the U.S. election in favor of trump is laughable at best. where was the almighty NSA, CIA, FBI and the rest of uncle schmuel's alphabet agencies whose jobs it is to protect the U.S. from such crimes as computer hacking?
russia hacking the U.S. election - double HA! since the great majority of U.S. elections still use paper ballots.
nobody hacked the DNC, they are just crybabies because their man hillary lost.

besides, obama stated BEFORE the election, in anticipation of a GOP loss and further anticipation of imagined GOP accusations of election tampering (hacking?);
"tampering with the election is impossible!"
straight from obama's mouth.

3:44 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Spooked,

The Who What Why article looks *extremely* interesting - and Russ Baker is difficult to dismiss as a compromised source, considering his excellent work in "Family of Secrets."

Mighty Wak,

Would you have the same attitude toward this situation if it was secret meetings (which officials later *lied about*) with Israel?

Furthermore, are you inclined to interpret such asinine statements by Pres. Obama ("tampering is impossible") at face value when both 2000 and 2004 were clearly tampered with and when I'm sure you're aware of the tampering at the DNC?

This is deep politics and it's multi-layered. Everyone needs to start thinking *very critically* and stop aligning themselves with one "camp." If indeed Vladimir Putin is the crusader for justice that elements of the 'alternative' right and left would have us believe, why has he not released information about 9/11? You don't seriously think Russian Intelligence has nothing actionable? Heck - why hasn't Wikileaks? When asked, Julian Assange said in 2010: "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud."

At the highest levels of power, the great George Michael Evica saw "a treasonous cabal of hard-line American and Soviet intelligence agents whose masters were above Cold War differences." The east versus west construct is largely an illusion - false reality designed by the supranational "haves" for the manipulation and control of the "have nots." The recently-surfaced ties to the Russian State are one glimpse of this deep reality - and you are correct in noting that the Democrats share them.

The "cold war" is and always has been designed to facilitate mutually assured profits. This is why the elite financed both the revolution and the progress and advancement (as necessary) of the Soviet Union. It's also why Trump has openly called for a new "arms race."

I agree that we should be wary of what anonymous "intelligence sources" tell us - regardless of which "side" they purport to represent. They're all ultimately agents - through "unwitting cooperation or coordination" - of the Beast we "have nots" face.

6:43 PM  
Blogger the mighty wak said...


anonymous @6:43

i am not on putin's side, nor am i on uncle sam's side. while i do happen to enjoy the benefits of living in uncle sam's territory, i do not endorse him's policies or actions. i am living the dream in california and i count my blessings every day.
putin? probably a full on bad guy. trump? moron, has no business being a president of anything much less the U.S. - bush jr.? a convenient patsy. al gore? another patsy.
i remember the nixon bullshit. that's what it was, bullshit. fast forward to now, every politico asshole is just another asshole.

i dragged myself out of bed on 9/11/01 just in time to see (on TV) a cartoon plane hit a WTC which subsequently rendered itself completely into powder at the astonishing rate of 11 floors per second. 110 floors divided by 11 seconds = approximately 10 seconds total - what?! ya.

anyway, when i saw that, the first thought in my mind was "george bush sr. did it."
of course he did, before he was vice-prez and then prez, he was the the chief of the CIA. if anybody could destroy two 110-story giant towers and frame a complete moron like osama bin laden and subsequently invade afghanistan and iraq then it would be the boss of the CIA. (vice prez and full prez).

my name might be WAK but that doesn't mean that i am WAK.

6:21 PM  
Blogger the mighty wak said...


oh israel? should be wiped off the map

10:40 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

Powered by Blogger