Do YOU Trust Benghazi/Bergdahl Liar?


John R. Houk

© April 5, 2017

 

Susan Rice is a typical lying Dem that unmasked Trump campaign staff names that did NOTHING illegal while using an investigation of Russian collusion/voting interference as a MERE excuse to politically impugn Donald Trump during the 2016 election and during the Obama lame duck period leading President Trump’s inauguration!!!!

 

AND even more reprehensible is the Left Stream Media either didn’t report on Ly’n Rice or defended her for doing nothing wrong while simultaneously still stick to the UNPROVEN – ergo lie – accusation the President Trump colluded with the Russians to defeat Crooked Hillary in the 2016 election cycle.

 

Susan Rice Lying to Americans on 5 MSM Networks

 

 

For any American to believe Rice’s words that she “leaked nothing to nobody,” were also duped by her lies about Benghazi and her lies the traitor Bergdahl was an upstanding loyal American: “He served the United States with honor and distinction …”

 

VIDEO: Susan Rice: Bergdahl Served With ‘Honor and Distinction’

 

Posted by PoliticalTurkey1

Published on Jun 2, 2014

 

Hmm … IF SUSAN RICE SAYS SHE DIDN’T UNMASK TRUMP SURVEILLANCE FOR POLITICAL PURPOSES, I CAN CONFIDENTLY SAY “I DON’T BELIEVE HER!”

 

I have found loads of articles that question the veracity of Susan Rice and Barack Obama. The Left Stream Media will not take up the question of reliability because they are essentially a propaganda of Obama, The Dems and the Left in general.

 

I am cross posting two articles. One from The Federalist posted today and another from Fox News’ Adam Housley post on April third. At the end, I will provide some links (perhaps some excerpts) from other sources that pretty much have the same opinion about Susan Rice but may add some details lacking between each article.

 

JRH 4/5/17

Please Support NCCR

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Why Susan Rice’s Role In The Obama Spying Story Is A Big Deal

 

By Mollie Hemingway

April 5, 2017

The Federalist

 

Susan Rice was one Obama official who requested the unmasking of Trump associates’ information that was widely disseminated. Here’s why that’s significant.

 

Since Donald Trump won the election for president in November, U.S. media outlets have received and eagerly published selective, damaging leaks about him from anonymous intelligence officials. The general effort, which appeared highly coordinated, was an effort to delegitimize Trump’s election and paint him as a stooge of Russia or otherwise unfit for office.

 

The media outlets claimed their information came from very highly placed officials in the Obama administration. Even if they hadn’t claimed their anonymous sources were Obama officials, the information they were leaking, such as the name of a U.S. citizen caught up in surveillance by the Obama administration, would have been known only by highly placed intelligence officials.

 

As the publishers of the information that was illegally disclosed, many media outlets weren’t keen to make a story, much less a big story, about the leak campaign by Obama officials. This despite the fact that the same Obama officials who had run the infamous Iran Echo Chamber operation, in which reporters were duped into reporting the Obama administration’s spin on the Iran deal, had bragged that they’d continue a highly developed communications operation in the Trump era.

 

In early March, Donald Trump tweeted out a series of unsubstantiated claims:

 

Trump Tweets on BHO Wiretapping

 

 

Two weeks ago, the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Devin Nunes, revealed that he’d seen dozens of reports featuring unmasked information on Trump and his associates and family members. He said these reports arose out of incidental collection during FISA surveillance, had nothing to do with Russia, were disseminated widely throughout the intelligence agencies, and contained little to no foreign intelligence value.

 

It should go without saying that the country’s powerful surveillance capabilities are not to be used against American citizens so that such unmasking should be exceedingly rare, be done for only the strongest reasons, and make pains to avoid the appearance of politicization. Nunes said the incidental collection might be legal but the unmasked dissemination of information about political opponents was disconcerting.

 

Despite the bombshell allegations, many in the media responded by downplaying or denigrating his news, distracting with process complaints, or quickly thrown-together stories from anonymous sources with no evidence claiming more breathless wrongdoing with Russia.

 

On Monday, Eli Lake of Bloomberg Views reported that sources said “Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.” Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, was conducting a review of unmasking procedures when he “discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities.”

 

Susan Rice was Obama’s National Security Advisor for his second term.

 

Again, many in the media are attempting to downplay, denigrate and distract, some are doing so shamelessly. Here are five reasons why this is a story worth covering:

 

1) Susan Rice’s Story Changed Dramatically From Two Weeks Ago

 

Two weeks ago, PBS’ Judy Woodruff asked Rice a very general question about Nunes’ claims:

 

JUDY WOODRUFF: I began by asking about the allegations leveled today by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes that Trump transition officials, including the president, may have been swept up in surveillance of foreigners at the end of the Obama administration.

 

SUSAN RICE, Former U.S. National Security Adviser: I know nothing about this. I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that count today.

 

I know nothing about this, she said.

 

Yesterday, in a damage control interview with prominent Democratic journalist Andrea Mitchell, Rice admitted her unmasking efforts and said they were routine. Mitchell’s 16-minute interview involved no tough questions. Mitchell asked, “Did you seek to unmask the names of people involved in the Trump transition?” Rice responded in the Clintonian fashion, “Absolutely not for any political purposes.” A natural follow-up would have been if she requested the unmasking for any other purpose. It didn’t occur to Mitchell. Instead she followed-up with the related question, “Did you leak?” to which Rice responded, somewhat confusingly, “I leaked nothing to nobody.”

 

Somehow Rice tried to claim later that her initial statement of having no clue about Nunes’ earlier claim was not at odds with her 16-minute answer about her unmasking efforts.

 

Rice has a reputation for dishonesty, most notably for her claim that a September 11, 2012, attack in Libya that killed four Americans was a spontaneous result of anger at a video critical of Islam. At the time she said this, the State Department knew well that it was a coordinated terrorist attack.

 

Rice also falsely claimed that Bowe Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction,” when critics began raising questions about why President Obama traded high-value Taliban detainees and a ransom for the Army deserter. Bergdahl is expected to face a court-martial in August for desertion and misbehavior before the enemy. His desertion was already known at the time Rice made her comments.

 

2) The Unmasking Was Related To Political Information

 

When Nunes first alerted the public about his concerns over the unmasking and dissemination, he noted that the information had nothing to do with Russia and had little to no intelligence value. Lake reported that Rice’s multiple unmasking requests were related to reports on Trump transition activities. She is said to have requested the identities of Americans in reports of monitored conversations between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition and in surveilled contact between the Trump team and monitored foreign officials.

 

“One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration,” according to Lake.

 

When Rice gave her interview to the friendly journalist Mitchell, she gave a hypothetical example of when it would be appropriate to request an unmasking of a U.S. citizen’s name that was caught up in foreign surveillance. She said that if two foreigners were talking about a terrorist attack to be committed with a U.S. citizen, she would seek out that name. That’s a great hypothetical. And no one is making the claim that Susan Rice sought to unmask a Trump family member or transition member’s name because she believed they were about to set off a bomb. They are making the claim that the information in the reports was politically valuable and related to the Trump transition.

 

3) Susan Rice Worked In The White House

 

Rice was known as Obama’s “right-hand woman,” “like a sister,” and was his National Security Advisor throughout his second term.

 

Weeks ago, diplomat Richard Grennell said that if Rice were involved, that would implicate President Obama:

 

‘But within that realm there could have easily been a political calculation to listen in, and then to take those transcripts and the summaries of those transcripts, make sure that those in the NSC and the political people – like Ben Rhodes and Susan Rice – make sure that they have them so they can leak them to reporters.’

 

‘I think that it would be easy to figure out if Susan Rice and Ben Rhodes knew about this,’ he added, ‘because if they did, clearly President Obama knew about it.’

 

Even if Rice wasn’t working with Obama on this effort or informing him of her activities, her role as National Security Advisor means her unmasking request in this instance doesn’t make sense, according to Andrew McCarthy. If the identities of U.S. citizens had intelligence value, it would have been unmasked by agencies that conduct investigations, he wrote:

 

Consequently, if unmasking was relevant to the Russia investigation, it would have been done by those three agencies. And if it had been critical to know the identities of Americans caught up in other foreign intelligence efforts, the agencies that collect the information and conduct investigations would have unmasked it. Because they are the agencies that collect and refine intelligence ‘products’ for the rest of the ‘intelligence community,’ they are responsible for any unmasking; and they do it under ‘minimization’ standards that FBI Director James Comey, in recent congressional testimony, described as ‘obsessive’ in their determination to protect the identities and privacy of Americans.

 

Understand: There would have been no intelligence need for Susan Rice to ask for identities to be unmasked. If there had been a real need to reveal the identities — an intelligence need based on American interests — the unmasking would have been done by the investigating agencies. The national-security adviser is not an investigator. She is a White House staffer. The president’s staff is a consumer of intelligence, not a generator or collector of it. If Susan Rice was unmasking Americans, it was not to fulfill an intelligence need based on American interests; it was to fulfill a political desire based on Democratic-party interests.

 

It is unclear what President Obama knew about Rice’s successful request to unmask information on Trump transition members.

 

4) This Substantiates Nunes’ Claim

 

When Nunes told the public that information about the Trump team had been collected, unmasked, and widely disseminated, many media figures questioned the legitimacy of his claim. With the news that no less than Susan Rice requested unmasking of political operatives, it appears that Nunes was onto something.

 

Also of note, Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democratic member on the committee, had been very upset with Nunes for telling the public and the White House about the reports he’d seen before briefing the committee. However, after Schiff saw the information, he more or less went quiet. He didn’t say the reports were a distraction or unimportant, unlike other Democratic operatives.

 

5) Civil Liberties Questions Remain

 

The most frequent defense of the Obama administration’s unmasking efforts is that incidental information collection on U.S. citizens is routine, and that requests to unmask that information about U.S. citizens is also routine. When we learn more about the widespread dissemination of such information, we can anticipate that the media and other Democrats will say that such dissemination is more than routine.

 

When Nunes revealed the collection, unmasking, and dissemination news, he specifically referenced the incidental information collection on members of Congress during the Iran deal. The U.S. spies on foreign leaders, including Benjamin Netanyahu and his advisors. As a result, the Obama administration picked up information on politically valuable information:

 

White House officials believed the intercepted information could be valuable to counter Mr. Netanyahu’s campaign. They also recognized that asking for it was politically risky. So, wary of a paper trail stemming from a request, the White House let the NSA decide what to share and what to withhold, officials said. ‘We didn’t say, ‘Do it,’ ‘a senior U.S. official said. ‘We didn’t say, ‘Don’t do it.’ ‘

 

Stepped-up NSA eavesdropping revealed to the White House how Mr. Netanyahu and his advisers had leaked details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations—learned through Israeli spying operations—to undermine the talks; coordinated talking points with Jewish-American groups against the deal; and asked undecided lawmakers what it would take to win their votes, according to current and former officials familiar with the intercepts.

 

The Bush administration also collected and used information on members of Congress this way.

 

In some ways, this “routine” defense of collecting and disseminating information on political adversaries is the most disconcerting. The federal government’s surveillance powers are intense, from metadata collection to surveillance of communications. Such information is easily weaponized and exceedingly difficult to oversee for accountability purposes.

 

As one journalist who used to be worried about such things wrote a few years ago:

 

Instead, the NSA’s approach of grabbing up every bit of information that it can guarantees that the metadata and sometimes even the content of legislator communications are swept up, and will continue to be available to a secretive class of executive branch employees for years to come. There is obvious potential that this will be exploited with abusive intent–it isn’t like we’ve never had a president try to spy on his political opponents before! But even absent any nefarious motives, incidentally collected data could damage the integrity of our political system.

 

Members of the media should try to cover, rather than cover up, this aspect of the story. The civil liberties of U.S. citizens are of vital importance and the unmasking of information on them should not be routine, not regular, and not a light matter.

 

The media have thousands of questions to force answers on regarding this important story. As Ari Fleischer wrote on Twitter:

 

About Susan Rice: The President’s National Security Advisor has authority to request unmasking of American names from intel agencies.

 

But in this instance, I am stunned by the lack of curiosity most media have shown about the facts and circumstances present here.

 

This is a good example of media giving soft coverage to President Obama while they’re hard on the GOP in general & Trump in particular.

 

Bear in mind, Rice is the official who praised Bowe Bergdahl for his ‘honorable service’ & claimed he was captured ‘on the battlefield.’

 

She also said two weeks ago in a TV interview that she didn’t know anything about the unmasking.

 

I would have thought the media would ask tough questions. There is no reason this should be a FOX News and conservative press issue only.

 

If I were a reporter, I would want to know why Rice sought the unmasking. The FBI is investigating possible Trump collusion, not the WH.

 

How often did she ask? What reasons did she give? (Each request is tracked and catalogued in writing by the NSA. A procedure exists.)

 

The info would have been provided ONLY to her as the requester. It is highly classified. Did she share it? With whom? Why?

 

If she shared it with anyone, why did she do so? What did they do with it? Did they give it to the media or tell media about it?

 

One of the reasons we live in a polarized era is because too many reporters look the other way at issues like this. Bias is real.

 

It’s not too late. The press knows how to dig and get answers. I hope they do so.

 

It’s not just Rice. She wasn’t the only person to request the unmasking of Trump officials regarding politically sensitive operations, and she wasn’t the person who requested that Flynn’s name be unmasked, meaning she requested at least one other Trump associate’s unmasking. We still don’t know who committed the crime of leaking Flynn’s name to the Washington Post. It’s time to start working on covering this story, rather than running interference for anonymous sources.

 

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is a senior editor at The Federalist. Follow her on Twitter at @mzhemingway

 

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Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say

 

By Adam Housley

April 03, 2017

Fox News

 

Multiple sources tell Fox News that Susan Rice, former national security adviser under then-President Barack Obama, requested to unmask the names of Trump transition officials caught up in surveillance.

 

The unmasked names, of people associated with Donald Trump, were then sent to all those at the National Security Council, some at the Defense Department, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and then-CIA Director John Brennan – essentially, the officials at the top, including former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes.

 

The names were part of incidental electronic surveillance of candidate and President-elect Trump and people close to him, including family members, for up to a year before he took office.

 

It was not clear how Rice knew to ask for the names to be unmasked, but the question was being posed by the sources late Monday.

 

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump

 

Such amazing reporting on unmasking and the crooked scheme against us by @foxandfriends. “Spied on before nomination.” The real story.

 

5:15 AM – 3 Apr 2017

 

“What I know is this …  If the intelligence community professionals decide that there’s some value, national security, foreign policy or otherwise in unmasking someone, they will grant those requests,” former Obama State Department spokeswoman and Fox News contributor Marie Harf told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum on “The First 100 Days. “And we have seen no evidence … that there was partisan political notice behind this and we can’t say that unless there’s actual evidence to back that up.”

 

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, asked about the revelations at Monday’s briefing, declined to comment specifically on what role Rice may have played or officials’ motives.

 

“I’m not going to comment on this any further until [congressional] committees have come to a conclusion,” he said, while contrasting the media’s alleged “lack” of interest in these revelations with the intense coverage of suspected Trump-Russia links.

 

When names of Americans are incidentally collected, they are supposed to be masked, meaning the name or names are redacted from reports – whether it is international or domestic collection, unless it is an issue of national security, crime or if their security is threatened in any way. There are loopholes and ways to unmask through backchannels, but Americans are supposed to be protected from incidental collection. Sources told Fox News that in this case, they were not.

 

This comes in the wake of Evelyn Farkas’ television interview last month in which the former Obama deputy secretary of defense said in part: “I was urging my former colleagues and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill – it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration.”

 

Meanwhile, Fox News also is told that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes knew about unmasking and leaking back in January, well before President Trump’s tweet in March alleging wiretapping.

 

Nunes has faced criticism from Democrats for viewing pertinent documents on White House grounds and announcing their contents to the press. But sources said “the intelligence agencies slow-rolled Nunes. He could have seen the logs at other places besides the White House SCIF [secure facility], but it had already been a few weeks. So he went to the White House because he could protect his sources and he could get to the logs.”

 

As the Obama administration left office, it also approved new rules that gave the NSA much broader powers by relaxing the rules about sharing intercepted personal communications and the ability to share those with 16 other intelligence agencies.

 

Rice is no stranger to controversy. As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN, she appeared on several Sunday news shows to defend the adminstration’s [sic] later debunked claim that the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya was triggered by an Internet video.

 

Rice also told ABC News in 2014 that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl “served the United States with honor and distinction” and that he “wasn’t simply a hostage; he was an American prisoner of war captured on the battlefield.”

 

Bergdahl is currently facing court-martial on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy for allegedly walking off his post in Afghanistan.

 

Adam Housley joined Fox News Channel (FNC) in 2001 and currently serves as a Los Angeles-based senior correspondent.

 

+++

SOURCES: SUSAN RICE BEHIND UNMASKING OF TRUMP OFFICIALS

White House counsel reportedly ID’d former national security adviser

 

By GARTH KANT

Updated: 04/03/2017 at 11:05 PM

WND

 

WASHINGTON – Multiple reports indicate former National Security Adviser Susan Rice was the Obama administration official who requested the unmasking of incoming Trump administration officials.

 

Mike Cernovich broke the story in an article in Medium on Sunday that said, “The White House Counsel’s office identified Rice as the person responsible for the unmasking after examining Rice’s document log requests.”

 

Unmasking is the revealing of names within the intelligence community of U.S. citizens whose communications were monitored during foreign surveillance.

 

According to Fox News, the unmasked names of people associated with Donald Trump were sent widely to top officials in the Obama administration.

 

That is a potential felony.

 

The unmasked names were reportedly sent to every member of the National Security Council, former Rice deputy Ben Rhodes, then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, then-CIA Director John Brennan and some officials at the Defense Department.

 

The NSA is required to remove the names of Americans incidentally collected during foreign surveillance before sharing intelligence with other agencies unless there is an issue of national security, but Rice reportedly requested the unmasking of the identities of Trump associates.

 

Sources said …….

 

+++

BOMBSHELL REPORT: Obama National Security Advisor SUSAN RICE Behind Unmasking Of Trump Transition Team

 

By BEN SHAPIRO

APRIL 3, 2017

Daily Wire

 

In a massive scoop, on Monday morning Eli Lake of Bloomberg reported that Barack Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, repeatedly requested information from the intelligence community on members of the Trump transition team and campaign, unmasking them to an audience beyond the intelligence community in the process. Normally, raw intelligence masks the identity of American citizens caught up in legal surveillance of other targets.

 

Here’s Lake:

 

In February [National Security Council senior director for intelligence] Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy. The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations – primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration. 

 

Rice denied that she knew anything about members of the Trump transition caught up in incidental intelligence gathering last month. As Lake also points out, the revelation that Rice requested the documents would explain House Intelligence Chair Devin Nunes’ trip to the White House two weeks ago – he needed to go there to view Rice’s missives. It would also explain why Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the most ardent Trump critic on wiretapping and leaks, suddenly went silent over the weekend after seeing documents the White House presented to him.

 

This is indeed a huge story for the Trump White House. It doesn’t change the inaccuracy of Trump’s accusations that he was wiretapped by the Obama administration – there is still zero evidence to support that claim. But it demonstrates that the Trump team was not only targeted by members of the Obama intelligence community for unmasking and likely leaking, but that such unmasking went to the very top of the Obama administration.

 

And here’s another inconvenient fact …

 

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Benghazi Liar Susan Rice’s Treachery Continues

 

By Daniel John Sobieski

April 4, 2017

American Thinker

 

Call it the tale of two National Security Advisers, Michael Flynn and Susan Rice. As much as Flynn has taken fire as being an architect of unspecified “collusion” with the Russians, Susan Rice has been like the iceberg that sank the Titanic — barely visible above water but dangerous enough to threaten the Trump administration’s ship of state.

 

As reported by Circa News, Rice, while serving as Obama’s National Security Adviser, requested the unmasking of the names of Team Trump officials mentioned in the so-called “incidental” surveillance  of the Trump transition team:

 

Computer logs that former President Obama’s team left behind in the White House indicate his national security adviser Susan Rice accessed numerous intelligence reports during Obama’s last seven months in office that contained National Security Agency intercepts involving Donald Trump and his associates, Circa has learned.

 

Intelligence sources said the logs discovered by National Security Council staff suggested Rice’s interest in the NSA materials, some of which included unmasked Americans’ identities, appeared to begin last July around the time Trump secured the GOP nomination and accelerated after Trump’s election in November launched a transition that continued through January.

 

The intelligence reports included some intercepts of Americans talking to foreigners and many more involving foreign leaders talking about the future president, his campaign associates or his transition, the sources said. Most if not all had nothing to do with the Russian election interference scandal, the sources said, speaking only on condition of anonymity given the sensitive nature of the materials.

 

Ordinarily, such references to Americans would be redacted or minimized by the NSA before being shared with outside intelligence sources, but in these cases names were sometimes unmasked at the request of Rice or the intelligence reports were specific enough that the American’s identity was easily ascertained, the sources said.

 

Well, isn’t that special? While Trump’s pick for this sensitive post was under scrutiny, Obama’s adviser was doing opposition research which involved data mining classified intelligence reports. Rice requested the unmasking of names, something only three people, according to Circa, were authorized to do:

 

Dozens of times in 2016, those intelligence reports identified Americans who were directly intercepted talking to foreign sources or were the subject of conversations between two or more monitored foreign figures. Sometimes the Americans’ names were officially unmasked; other times they were so specifically described in the reports that their identities were readily discernible. Among those cleared to request and consume unmasked NSA-based intelligence reports about U.S. citizens were Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice, his CIA Director John Brennan and then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch.

 

If Susan Rice had worked for Richard Nixon, she could have been one of his Watergate “plumbers”, perhaps retiring as plumber emeritus. We are all familiar with Susan Rice’s tour of the Sunday talk shows after the Benghazi terrorist attack. That was no accident, but a calculated part of the Obama administration’s disinformation campaign to protect President Obama’s reelection chances and …

 

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‘Absolutely false’: Top Obama adviser denies she ‘unmasked’ Trump associates for political purposes

 

By Natasha Bertrand

April 4, 2017

Business Insider

 

Former national security adviser Susan Rice told MSNBC on Tuesday that allegations she “unmasked” associates of Donald Trump for political reasons while she served in the Obama administration were “absolutely false.”

 

Bloomberg and Fox on Monday reported that Rice had tried to unmask, or learn the identities of, officials on Trump’s transition team whose conversations with foreign agents — or conversations those agents were having about the transition officials — were incidentally collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations. The Daily Caller then reported that Rice had created a “spreadsheet” with the names she had unmasked.

 

“The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes,” Rice told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “That’s absolutely false. [Yeah right, & she never lied about Benghazi either]

 

“I was the National Security Adviser.  My job is to protect the American people and the security of our country.  That’s …

 

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Rand Paul calls for Susan Rice to testify on unmasking Trump officials

 

By Juliegrace Brufke, DCNF

April 4, 2017 

BizPAC Review

 

GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said he believes former National Security Advisor Susan Rice should testify before Congress on her request to unmask the names of Trump transition officials collected during routine intelligence-gathering operations.

 

Paul argued the situation should not be downplayed, saying reforms need to be made to prevent individuals from being blackmailed on personal aspects of their lives through unmasking. He noted there was nothing stopping the former administration from looking through Trump officials and national security advisors’ conversations during the transition window.

 

“If it is allowed, we shouldn’t be allowing it, but I don’t think should just discount how big a deal it is that Susan Rice was looking at these,” he told reporters Monday. “And she needs to be asked, ‘Did President Obama ask her to do this? Was this a directive from President Obama?  I think she should testify under oath on this.”

 

Paul said he has long thought there are too many people with the ability to unmask individuals.

 

“The law says you can’t reverse target people, but how would you know that once you get inside the brain and the people that are unmasking people,” Paul continued. “So, what if I decided to unmask and I’m there and I only unmask the conversations of my Democrat opponents — shouldn’t there be more restrictions for unmasking people in the political process?”

 

He said he believes there should be …

++++++++++

VIDEO: Susan Rice Requested Intel to Unmask Names of Trump Transition Officials

 

Posted by Lionel Nation

Published on Apr 3, 2017

 

BloombergView’s Eli Lake reports that White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice’s requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government’s policy on “unmasking” the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like “U.S. Person One.” Not this time. It was Suzie, kids.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-04-03/top-obama-adviser-sought-names-of-trump-associates-in-intel

The Official Lionel READ THE REST

 

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FORMER US ATTORNEY JOSEPH DIGENOVA: SUSAN RICE ORDERED SPY AGENCIES TO PRODUCE ‘DETAILED SPREADSHEETS’ INVOLVING TRUMP

 

By ALICIA

APRIL 4, 2017

Patriot Tribune

 

I CAN’T SAY I’M REALLY SURPRISED CONSIDERING THIS IS THE SAME LYING FRAUD WHO GOT HER JOB AS NSA ADVISER AS A POLITICAL FAVOR FROM OBAMA/CLINTON FOR BEING THE FRONT-PERSON IN THE BENGHAZI VIDEO LYING SCHEME.

 

And she did this all on her own, huh? Do you believe that?

 

Daily Caller:

 

Former President Barack Obama’s national security adviser Susan Rice ordered U.S. spy agencies to produce “detailed spreadsheets” of legal phone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides when he was running for president, according to former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova.

 

“What was produced by the intelligence community at the request of Ms. Rice were detailed spreadsheets of intercepted phone calls with unmasked Trump associates in perfectly legal conversations with individuals,” diGenova told The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group Monday.

 

“The overheard conversations involved no illegal activity by anybody of the Trump associates, or anyone they were speaking with,” diGenova said. “In short, the only apparent illegal activity was the unmasking of the people in the calls.”

 

Other official sources with direct knowledge and who requested anonymity confirmed to TheDCNF diGenova’s description of surveillance reports Rice ordered one year before the 2016 presidential election. More

 

VIDEO: Hannity: Susan Rice has a lot of explaining to do

 

Posted by Fox News

Published on Apr 3, 2017

 

Multiple reports reveal the former Obama adviser requested the names of Trump transition team members be unmasked.

 

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Former US Attorney: Susan Rice Ordered Spy Agencies To Produce ‘Detailed Spreadsheets’ Involving Trump

 

By Richard Pollock

04/03/2017 10:08 PM 

Daily Caller

 

Update: In response to a question Tuesday from NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell, former Obama White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice denied that she “prepared” spreadsheets of surveilled telephone calls involving Donald Trump and his aides. The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group, however, reported that Rice “ordered” the spreadsheets to be produced.

 

In addition, former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova, one of TheDCNF’s sources, said Tuesday in response to Rice that her denial “would come as quite a surprise to the government officials who have reviewed dozens of those spreadsheets.” 

 

 

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No Proof of Trump-Russia Collusion but Lots of Evidence of Obama Spying

 

By Onan Coca

April 4, 2017

Constitution.com

 

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson ripped the national media to shreds while condemning the Obama era White House for wrongfully spying on American citizens for political purposes.

 

Carlson argued that while media continues to focus in on some phantom collusion between President Trump and the Russian government, something for which they have NO PROOF, they are actively ignoring the real scandal unfolding before their eyes. Susan Rice, one of President Obama’s closest advisors, has been caught wrongfully unmasking members of the Trump campaign and transition teams for what seem to be nakedly political purposes. How do we know she did it for political purposes? Many of the reports now being produced show that the data that Rice was collecting had nothing to do with Russia or other national security issues, meaning that she unmasked the names of members of the Trump team without cause.

 

This fact is what Carlson finds most disturbing because it means that civil libertarians were right all along – there really is NOTHING we can do to stop the government from spying on us.

 

 

VIDEO: Tucker: Susan Rice revelation more disturbing than Russia

 

Posted by Fox News

Published on Apr 3, 2017

 

Carlson then transitioned into a conversation with former Obama advisor David Tafuri, a conversation that grew quite heated when Tafuri argued that the Russia story was the real issue here. Carlson pressed, as he has done time and again with liberals and journalists, for Tafuri to present ANY EVIDENCE that there was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Or, for that matter, for Tafuri to present any evidence that Russia had any impact on the recent election. Of course, Tafuri could provide none, nor has any liberal politician or liberal member of the media been able to show a tangible connection between Russia and recent events.

 

 

VIDEO: Rice unmasked as Team Trump unmasker: What it really means

 

Posted by Fox News

Published on Apr 3, 2017

 

+++

FAKE-NEWS GIANTS CLAIM SUSAN RICE SPY SCANDAL IS ‘FAKE’

Chorus of legacy media: Nothing to see here

 

By ALICIA POWE

April 4, 2017

WND

 

WASHINGTON – Is it a real story, or is it fake news?

 

That’s the raging debate about the exploding scandal over Susan Rice’s “unmasking” of incoming Trump administration officials when she served as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

 

Despite some likening the White House use of classified leaks for political purposes to a scandal bigger than Watergate, media outlets Tuesday were shooting down – or flat-out ignoring – the blockbuster report that verified the Obama administration surveilled the Trump team.

 

 

+++

Susan Rice Responds To Trump Unmasking Allegations: “I Leaked Nothing To Nobody”

 

By Tyler Durden

Apr 4, 2017 9:47 PM

ZeroHedge

 

If anyone expected former National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the same Susan Rice who “stretched the truth” about Benghazi, to admit in her first public appearance after news that she unmasked members of the Trump team to admit she did something wrong, will be disappointed. Instead, moments ago she told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that she categorically denied that the Obama administration inappropriately spied on members of the Trump transition team.

 

[Several MSNBC Tweets of Mitchell/Rice interview]

 

We doubt that anyone’s opinion will change after hearing the above especially considering that, in addition to Benghazi, Rice is the official who praised Bowe Bergdahl for his “honorable service” and claimed he was captured “on the battlefield”, and then just two weeks ago, she told PBS that she didn’t know anything about the unmasking.

 

Unfortunately, Mitchell’s list of questions did not go so far as to ask about her false claim in the PBS interview, in which she said “I know nothing about unmasking Trump officials.”

 

It is thus hardly surprising that now that her memory has been “refreshed” about her role in the unmasking, that Rice clearly remembers doing nothing at all wrong.

 

On Monday night, Rand Paul and other Republicans called for Rice to testify under oath, a request she sidestepped on Tuesday. “Let’s see what comes,” she told Mitchell, when asked if she would testify on …

______________

Do YOU Trust Benghazi/Bergdahl Liar?

John R. Houk

© April 5, 2017

___________

Why Susan Rice’s Role In The Obama Spying Story Is A Big Deal

 

Copyright © 2017 The Federalist, a wholly independent division of FDRLST Media, All Rights Reserved

____________

Susan Rice requested to unmask names of Trump transition officials, sources say

 

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2017 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved.

 

[Blog Editor: FYI, I did not get Fox News permission to cross post. If requested, this cross post will be removed.]

Newbill Thoughts in Conspiracies Inbox


Tony Newbill’s theme in this post is the Dem fake news of Trump/Russia collusion to win the 2016 election as POTUS. Even though some of this info is old news, too many people listen to the Leftist Mainstream Media (MSM) as gospel truth.

 

There is some treason going on here. I pray criminal activities are revealed so the American people can learn that the Dems main goal is to eradicate the U.S. Constitution as we know and to continue Obama’s dream utopia of fundamentally transforming America.

 

The last post is off topic to the rest of Newbill’s emails. That post is a video of Alex Jones bring clarity to his Pizzagate disavowal which includes a warning that there are pedophilia rings, the Clintons have a connection and the American Left is doing its best to silence reporting either by outright censorship or by falsely impugning reputations of those exposing pedophilia. Take some time to watch the entire Alex Jones video.

 

JRH 4/3/17

Please Support NCCR

***************

Newbill Thoughts in Conspiracies Inbox

 

Emails sent by Tony Newbill

Posted 4/3/17

 

Screw You James Comey – What’s Good For The Goose

Sent 3/5/2017 9:51 PM

 

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/03/05/screw-you-james-comey-whats-good-for-the-goose/

 

Hypocrisy, thy name is

 

According to the New York Times, FBI Director James Comey is reported to be requesting the President Trump Department of Justice to refute the possibility of the FBI having intercepted communications from Trump Tower in the latest “Wire Tapping” denial.

 

So lets [sic] give this request by Director Comey some context.

 

It was only a few weeks ago when the same FBI went to President Trump’s Chief of Staff and told Reince Priebus there was no truth to media reports, based on FBI leaks, of FBI evidence showing Trump campaign officials involved with Russian officials regarding the 2016 election.  It was all a complete nothingburger.

 

Details – On February 15th while discussing another issue FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe asked Reince for 5 minutes alone after the meeting.  At the one-on-one meeting McCabe told Priebus the New York Times Russia and Trump campaign story was a “bunch of BS”.

 

Priebus asked McCabe if McCabe would be able to say that publicly and get the media off his back about a ridiculously false narrative.  Asst. Director McCabe said he would check with his boss, FBI Director James Comey.  Later, McCabe called back and said he couldn’t issue a statement about it.

 

Reince Preibus/McCabe dialogue 2-24-17

 

Reince Priebus was simply asking for the FBI to give truthful information about the false reports to the public.  The White House was asking Comey to deliver transparency.

 

Quote from the FBI to Priebus: “We’d love to help, but we can’t get into the position of making statements on every story”.

 

Oh, but now, when there are “false wire-tapping reports” about Director Comey, now, N.O.W he wants the Trump administration, via the DOJ, to help him out and deny the FBI had any involvement in surveillance of Trump Tower, candidate Donald Trump or President-Elect Donald Trump.

 

Now, when it fits Comey’s preferred sensibility.  Now he wants a clear and transparent record.  The hypocrisy is thick with this guy.

 

 

Screw you James Comey!

 

My advice to President Trump and team would be for them to tell Director Comey to go READ ENTIRETY (Screw You James Comey – What’s Good For The Goose; By sundance; The Last Refuge; 3/5/17)

 

+++

The Trump Administration needs to watch its back!!!!!!!

Sent 3/7/2017 10:28 PM

 

Wikileaks: CIA hackers can pose as Russians—ring a bell?

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/wikileaks-cia-hackers-can-pose-as-russians-ring-a-bell/

 

(Part-2, here)

 

Let’s see. The CIA claims that Russian government hackers interfered in the US election, on the side of Trump.

 

But suppose CIA hackers fabricated an operation to make it look like a Russian hack? Too far-fetched?

 

Not anymore.

 

In conjunction with their new data-dump of CIA material, WikiLeaks issues this statement:

 

“The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation. With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.”

 

Spy games.

 

A group within the CIA wanted to shift blame for Hillary Clinton’s defeat? How about pointing at the Russians? “Easy. We can use Russian hacking tools and fabricate a scenario. We can say we discovered ‘fingerprints’ that point to the Russian government.”

 

Here is what the CNN Wire Service reported on January 2, 2017:

 

“…even as President-elect Donald Trump and his aides cast doubt on the links between Russia and recent hacks against Democrats, US intelligence officials say that newly identified ‘digital fingerprints’ indicate Moscow was behind the intrusions.”

“One official told CNN the administration has traced the hack to the specific keyboards — which featured Cyrillic characters — that were used to construct the malware code, adding that the equipment leaves ‘digital fingerprints’ and, in the case of the recent hacks, those prints point to the Russian government.”

 

Really? We live in a world where spies and their cronies are constantly fixing reality to suit themselves.

 

So now all this bravado about discovering how the Russians hacked and stole the election blows up like a cream puff with a firecracker inside.

 

Who originally hacked/accessed the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email files and handed them to WikiLeaks for publication? That appeared to be an insider at the DNC. But the cover story—“the Russians did it”—floated by the CIA other US intelligence agencies now takes on a new hue.

 

The CIA has worked, over the years, to refine its ability to fake a hack-trace to all sorts of people, including the READ THE REST (Wikileaks: CIA hackers can pose as Russians—ring a bell? By Jon Rappoport; Jon Rappoport’s Blog; 3/7/17)

 

Trust CIA hackers who hack France’s election campaign?

https://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2017/03/07/trust-cia-hackers-who-hack-frances-election-campaign/

 

 

In my previous article, I mentioned how, according to the latest WikiLeaks CIA data dump, the CIA can fabricate, yes, fabricate the “fingerprints” of Russian government hackers and create the false impression that Russians hacked the US presidential campaign of 2016.

 

But there’s more.

 

Commenting on its CIA data dump, WikiLeaks also describes a wide-ranging CIA espionage plan to infiltrate the candidates running in the 2012 French presidential election. These are, of course, the same CIA thieves who assure us that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election campaign. CIA credibility? Zero. Who has time to try to sort out when the liars might not be lying?

 

WikiLeaks, Press Release, 16 February, 2017:

 

“All major French political parties were targeted for infiltration by the CIA’s human (‘HUMINT’) and electronic (‘SIGINT’) spies in the seven months leading up to France’s 2012 presidential election. The revelations are contained within three CIA tasking orders published today by WikiLeaks as context for its forth coming CIA Vault 7 series. Named specifically as targets are the French Socialist Party (PS), the National Front (FN) and Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) together with current President Francois Hollande, then President Nicolas Sarkozy, current round one presidential front runner Marine Le Pen, and former presidential candidates Martine Aubry and Dominique Strauss-Khan.”

“The CIA assessed that President Sarkozy’s party was not assured re-election. Specific tasking concerning his party included obtaining the ‘Strategic Election Plans’ of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP); schisms or alliances developing in the UMP elite; private UMP reactions to Sarkozy’s campaign stratagies [sic]; discussions within the UMP on any ‘perceived vulnerabilities to maintaining power’ after the election; efforts to change the party’s ideological mission; and discussions about Sarkozy’s support for the UMP and ‘the value he places on the continuation of the party’s dominance’. Specific instructions tasked CIA officers to discover Sarkozy’s private deliberations ‘on the other candidates’ as well as READ THE REST (Trust CIA hackers who hack France’s election campaign? By Jon Rappoport; Jon Rappoport’s Blog; 3/7/17)

 

+++

Have You Seen This?

Sent 3/19/2017 1:04 PM

 

http://www.newsmax.com/LarryKlayman/chariman-nunes-fbi-james-comey-montgomery-whitsleblower/2017/03/19/id/779551//

 

… In the case of President Donald Trump, …  the president’s claims that he was wiretapped, that is, illegally spied upon, by his predecessor’s administration, former President Barack Obama.

 

As I have written in this Newsmax blog and elsewhere particularly of late, my client, former NSA and CIA contractor Dennis Montgomery, holds the keys to disproving the false claims of those representatives and senators on the House and Senate intelligence committees, reportedly as well as FBI Director James Comey, that there is no evidence that the president and his men were wiretapped.

 

Montgomery left the NSA and CIA with 47 hard drives and over 600 million pages of information, much of which is classified, and sought to come forward legally as a whistleblower to appropriate government entities, including congressional intelligence committees, to expose that the spy agencies were engaged for years in systematic illegal surveillance on prominent Americans, including the chief justice of the Supreme Court, other justices, 156 judges, prominent businessmen such as Donald Trump, and even yours truly. Working side by side with Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence (DIA), James Clapper, and Obama’s former Director of the CIA, John Brennan, Montgomery witnessed “up close and personal” this “Orwellian Big Brother” intrusion on privacy, likely for potential coercion, blackmail or other nefarious purposes.

 

 

[Blog Editor: The next paragraph is the part of the Newsmax report Newbill focused on in the email.]

 

… Under grants of immunity, which I obtained through Assistant U.S. Attorney Deborah Curtis, Montgomery produced the hard drives and later was interviewed under oath in a secure room at the FBI Field Office in the District of Columbia. There he laid out how persons like then-businessman Donald Trump were illegally spied upon by Clapper, Brennan, and the spy agencies of the Obama administration. He even claimed that these spy agencies had manipulated voting in Florida during the 2008 presidential election, which illegal tampering resulted in helping Obama to win the White House.

 

This interview, conducted and videoed by Special FBI Agents Walter Giardina and William Barnett, occurred almost two years ago, and nothing that I know of has happened since. It would appear that the FBI’s investigation was buried by Comey, perhaps because the FBI itself collaborates with the spy agencies to conduct illegal surveillance. In READ ENTIRETY (Nunes Must Ask FBI’s Comey About Montgomery Mass Surveillance Case; By Larry Klayman; Newsmax; 3/19/17 01:04 PM)

 

+++

What does Hillary Clinton, CrowdStrike, Ukraine Russian Conflict and Russian Hacking have to do with one another????

Sent 3/29/2017 1:14 PM

 

http://www.voanews.com/a/crowdstrike-comey-russia-hack-dnc-clinton-trump/3776067.html

 

WASHINGTON —  An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election.

 

The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists.

 

But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking never happened.

 

 

While questions about CrowdStrike’s findings don’t disprove allegations of Russian involvement, they do add to skepticism voiced by some cybersecurity experts and commentators about the quality of their technical evidence.

 

 

Alperovitch, a Russian expatriate and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council policy research center in Washington, co-founded CrowdStrike in 2011. The firm has employed two former FBI heavyweights: Shawn Henry, who oversaw global cyber investigations at the agency, and Steven Chabinsky, who was the agency’s top cyber lawyer and served on an Obama White House cybersecurity commission in 2016. Chabinsky left CrowdStrike last year.

 

 

In a January post on LinkedIn, Carr called CrowdStrike’s evidence in the Ukraine “flimsy.” He told VOA in an interview that CrowdStrike mistakenly assumed that the X-Agent malware employed in the hacks was a reliable fingerprint for Russian actors.

 

“We now know that’s false,” he said, “and that the source code has been obtained by others outside of Russia.” READ ENTIRETY (Think Tank: Cyber Firm at Center of Russian Hacking Charges Misread Data; By Oleksiy Kuzmenko and Pete Cobus; VOA; Last Updated 3/23/17 11:17 AM)

 

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/crowdstrike-needs-address-harm-causedukraine-jeffrey-carr

 

Crowdstrike’s Danger Close intelligence report is an analytic failure of epic proportions, but more importantly, it has harmed the morale of the people of Ukraine as well as cast doubt in the minds of the Ukrainian soldiers who relied upon the artillery app maligned by Crowdstrike.

 

In addition, Adam Meyers and Dmitri Alperovich chose to quote a pro-Russian military blogger’s exaggerated figures of an 80% loss rate of Ukraine’s D-30 artillery caused in part by a variant of the same malware used in the DNC hack.

 

The Ministry of Ukraine denies the allegations and states that the number of lost artillery is less than 80% and they lost no artillery due to READ THE REST (Crowdstrike Needs To Address The Harm It Caused Ukraine; By Jeffrey Carr; LinkedIn; 1/16/17)

 

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/03/20/fix-is-in-comey-praised-dnc-hired-cybersecurity-firm-even-after-botched-report/

 

Crowdstrike, the cybersecurity company working for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), released a report tying “Russian hacking” to an incident that never happened, yet even after the report had been debunked, FBI Director James Comey still referred to Crowdstrike as a “highly respected private company” at a Senate hearing.

 

By issuing a still-unrestricted report about an incident that never happened and then tying it to the alleged Russian hacks that Democrats claim tipped the elections for Pres. Trump, the DNC-employed Crowdstrike’s credibility deserves to be called into question, however, despite excellent reporting by cybersecurity expert Jeffrey Carr, Bloomberg’s Leonid Bershidsky, and Voice of America reporter Oleksiy Kuzmenko, the media has ignored the story and continued to cite Crowdstrike’s work… even after the Ukrainian Defense Ministry issued a statement on January 6th, 2017 refuting Crowdstrike’s claims.

 

Even more troubling than the media malfeasance about the discredited Crowdstrike report, in testimony in front of the Senate intelligence committee on January 10 – four days after the Ukrainian DOD denied Crowdstrike’s report — Director Comey admitted that the FBI had been denied access to the DNC servers and praised Crowdstrike, without mentioning that they worked for the DNC or that their recent report had been debunked.

 

 

If Henry’s statement to the Washington Post seems more political than technical, that’s because Crowdstrike was being utilized by their clients at the Democratic National Committee to put out a narrative about Russian hacking to use against the Trump campaign. As later confirmed by a laudatory piece in Esquire magazine, starting in June 2016 the DNC used Crowdstrike executives Alperovitch and Henry as part of an anti-Trump publicity plan related to allegations of Russian hacking:

 

 

The Democrats’ attempts to smear Donald Trump with allegations of Russian involvement failed to win them the election and by December the Obama administration was taking a number of steps to make the incoming president’s job as difficult as possible. On December 13th, the New York Times published a major piece pushing the narrative – without any new definitive technical evidence – that the Russians were READ ENTIRETY (Fix Is In: Comey Praised DNC-Hired Cybersecurity Firm Even After Botched Report; By LEE STRANAHAN; Breitbart; 3/20/17)

 

http://www.zdnet.com/article/crowdstrike-denied-bid-to-block-security-report-in-legal-challenge-against-subversive-nss-labs/

 

CrowdStrike has failed in a bid to prevent the NSS Labs endpoint security report from going public at RSA after a court in Delaware refused to side with the firm’s arguments.

 

The CrowdStrike Falcon Host, which aims to combine “next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response and proactive features” to keep enterprise systems secure, is the product NSS Labs included in both public and private testing.

 

However, it is allegations of underhanded tactics and alleged poor testing methods which are at the heart of the matter — rather than the results themselves.

 

 

On February 13, the Federal Court denied CrowdStrike’s bid, allowing NSS Labs to go ahead and release the results of the endpoint tests.

 

 

The endpoint security report, available to subscribers, analyzed the security of 13 vendors which offer endpoint protection solutions.

 

The vendors included in the report were Carbon Black, CrowdStrike, ESET, Fortinet, Invincea, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes, McAfee, SentinelOne, Sophos, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

 

Out of the 13, nine received a “Recommend” rating, one received “Security Recommended,” one was “Neutral” and two were in “Caution.”

 

 

While 11 products were granted an “above average” value, two were rated as having a “below average” value — one of which being CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform.

 

According to the subscription-only report, obtained by ZDNet, the Falcon Host received an overall security effectiveness rating of 73.2 percent and a score of 99 percent for evasion techniques tested. After what NSS Labs calls “initial tuning,” the company’s solution did not alert on false positives during testing.

 

As a result, the CrowdStrike Falcon Host received a “caution” rating, alongside Malwarebytes, which only gained an overall security effectiveness rating of READ ENTIRETY (CrowdStrike denied bid to block security report in legal challenge against ”subversive” NSS Labs; By Charlie Osborne for Zero Day; ZDNet; 2/15/17 12:24 GMT (04:24 PST))

 

+++

Why didn’t Hillary Clinton’s DNC let the FBI Look at the Servers …?

Sent 3/29/2017 12:06 PM

 

We need to start asking this question …. Why didn’t Hillary Clinton’s DNC let the FBI Look at the Servers that the DNC said were Hacked by Russians???????

 

As of today, many months after the election, no one has put forth any evidence that Russia hacked anything related to the election whatsoever. None. The closest thing anyone has even resembling evidence is the word of CrowdStrike, the company hired by the DNC to investigate their servers, after someone released emails showing that Democratic party officials had been working behind the scenes to discredit and disable the Bernie Sanders campaign.

 

There are several problems with the CrowdStrike angle however. The first problem, is that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the servers themselves. The FBI instead just took their word for it. The second problem is that CrowdStrike has a SIGNIFICANT conflict of interest in this situation. Google is a major stakeholder in CrowdStrike, and Eric Schmidt the Executive Chairman of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) was working directly on the Clinton campaign effort. He was providing tech assistance, he drew up her campaign plan, and he was even photographed wearing a “staff” badge in an exclusive area during election night.

 

https://twitter.com/less_tx/status/798954058128166912

 

Eric Schmidt wore “Staff” Badge at Clinton Election Night Party

 

This doesn’t pass the smell test, at all.

 

Furthermore, the anti-Russian angle peddled by CrowdStrike was premised on the “fact” that the malware used in the attack was of Russian origin. As any security expert will tell you, once malware is used in the wild, anyone can pick it up and use it (including other state actors).

 

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/839117937042735104

 

CIA steals other groups virus and malware facilitating false flag attacks #Vault7 https://wikileaks.org/ciav7p1/ [Click Twitter link to view Umbrage Photo]  

 

To bolster their claim, CrowdStrike attempted to draw parallels to a supposed hack on Ukrainian artillery communications that used the same technique. That however, blew up in their face when both the Ukrainian military and the International Institute for Strategic Studies came forward to debunk their assessment.

 

Then there is the fact that Wikileaks has been very clear about the fact that their source was NOT Russian.

 

    “We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,”

 

The rabbit hole on this topic goes deeper, and clearly there is room for a lively debate, but it takes a willful act of intellectual dishonesty to treat it as a slam dunk case where the villain is clearly defined.

 

Anyone who has studied crowd psychology knows that one of the most important principles of ideological contagion is repetition. It doesn’t matter if something is true or false. If you repeat something enough times people will start believing it. Once an idea becomes an accepted belief, it takes on characteristics of religious orthodoxy. To question becomes heresy.

 

Read more here:

http://stormcloudsgathering.com/demonizing-russia-the-psychology-and-consequences-of-neo-mccarthyism/

 

This article is not intended to alter your position in regard to Donald Trump in any way. Whether you love him or hate him isn’t an issue of global importance, nor is his political survival relevant to this analysis. Some of the tactics being used in the push to take Trump down however, are.

 

THE STAKES

 

Before we dive into the quagmire that the topic of of Russia, Trump and the 2016 elections has become, it behoves [sic] us to anchor to the stakes: Russia is a nuclear power. The demonization of foreign nations is a precursor to war, and even a limited conflict between the United States and Russia would kill millions (if not billions) of people; rendering much of the planet uninhabitable for decades. Using U.S. Russian relations as a political football in this context is foolish and irresponsible.

 

THE TRUMP VARIABLE

 

Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign made tying Trump to Russia a central pillar of their messaging strategy. This line of attack was predicated on comments made by Trump over the years expressing respect for Putin. …

 

 

Clinton used these and other statements to weave the narrative that Trump is “Putin’s puppet”. The mainstream media, and left-leaning blogosphere took that narrative and ran with it. Those who didn’t were labeled “fake news”, and attacked as collaborators. The goal was to capitalize on existing anti-Russian sentiment by attaching it to Trump and his supporters (and to pressure those on the fence distance themselves).

 

 

THE RUSSIAN HACKING ALLEGATIONS

 

 

Now playing loose and fast with the facts for political purposes is a mainstay of American partisanship, but when foreign policy gets thrown into the mix, and “leaders” start accusing a nuclear power of “an act of war” the facts matter.

 

As of today, many months after the election, no one has put forth any evidence that Russia hacked anything related to the election whatsoever. None. The closest thing anyone has even resembling evidence is the word of CrowdStrike, the company hired by the DNC to investigate their servers, after someone released emails showing that Democratic party officials had been working behind the scenes to discredit and disable the Bernie Sanders campaign.

 

There are several problems with the CrowdStrike angle however. The first problem, is that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the servers themselves. The FBI instead just took their word for it. The second problem is that CrowdStrike has a SIGNIFICANT conflict of interest in this situation. Google is a major stakeholder in CrowdStrike, and Eric Schmidt the Executive Chairman of Alphabet (the parent company of Google) was working directly on the Clinton campaign effort. He was providing tech assistance, he drew up her campaign plan, and he was even photographed wearing a “staff” badge in an exclusive area during election night.

 

 

THE LONG TERM CONSEQUENCES

 

The short term political utility of tying Trump to Russia has blinded many on the left to the long term effect such a strategy is bound to have. Consider for a moment the implications of an entire generation being raised in the United States right now marinating in news and commentary which frames Russia as enemy number (or depending on where Trump supposedly fits). The facts and specifics won’t matter to these formative minds. It all boils down to sentiment. This sentiment can (and likely will) be used in ways that those fomenting it never imagined.

 

A recent poll by Reuters found that a stunning 82% of Americans now view Russia as a threat. This is a ticking time bomb.

 

It is a strategic error to assume anti-Russian propaganda will always work in the favor of the political left. Remember the original Mccarthyism. Neocon Republicans like John Mccain [Blog Editor: I don’t agree with the author that McCain is a Neocon. Regardless of the propaganda Neocons are patriots that used to be Leftists. McCain is a downright GOP Establishment RINO] and Mike Pence [Blog Editor: VP Pence is hardly a Neocon. He has been a Conservative values Christian most of – if not all – his political career.] would like nothing more than a chance to clip Putin’s wings, and in the right context that’s exactly what they would attempt to do. By linking Russia to Trump (arguably one of the most hated political figures in American history) the left is unwittingly laying the psychological groundwork for war.

 

If and when the moment comes where a Republican president decides to escalate tensions with Moscow (by direct or proxy intervention), “progressives” will find themselves in an extremely uncomfortable dilemma: either they get carried along with their enemies in the wave of anti-Russian sentiment they helped create, or they try to reverse tack and play opposition.

 

Reversing tack wouldn’t be easy under any circumstances, but in the midst of a crisis it would be all but impossible, and such protests would be easily shot down with snippets of their own words. Hypocrisy is after all, a vulnerability in and of itself. READ ENTIRETY (DEMONIZING RUSSIA: THE PSYCHOLOGY AND CONSEQUENCES OF NEO-MCCARTHYISM; StormCloudsGathering.com; 3/28/17)

 

+++

Evelyn Farkas says ….

Sent 3/30/2017 1:07 AM

 

Evelyn Farkas says President Trump needs to tell the American People if he received a Bunch of Money from the Russians to bail him out of debt and if that’s possibly bribing leverage by the Russians and that is this at the heart of the Russian issue  … listen to her @ 2:40,  https://youtu.be/cVGp2FZmVA4?t=2m40s

 

VIDEO: Obama Aide Evelyn Farkas Squeals Live On MSNBC: ‘I Helped Spy On Trump For Obama'(VIDEO)!!!

 

Posted by GLOBAL News

Published on Mar 28, 2017

 

Obama aide rats on Obama: ‘I helped spy on Trump for Obama’. Evelyn Farkas, an Obama administration insider, has become the latest Democrat to roll over and squeal on her former comrades, telling MSNBC that she helped spy on Trump for Obama before he left office, and that Trump, not Russians, was the target of the illegal surveillance

 

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Blog Editor: A link was sent as a comment by Tony Newbill under another pseudonym he uses more often these days: Tommy Tunes. The thing is I don’t remember the comment other than it was a bit out of place for the post it was on. Perhaps Tony/Tommy removed the comment. Nevertheless, the comment pointed to an Alex Jones video of an episode of InfoWars devoted entirely to elitist pedophilia. In the 1:34:27 episode Jones clarifies his disavowal of Pizzagate but only as it pertains to the pizzerias themselves. The clarification is that Leftist pedophiles of the Dem Party/Crooked Hillary inclusion used those pizzerias as fundraising locations and that pedophilia conversations undoubtedly took place in the largely ignorant pizzerias. I placed this at the end because this entry has little to do with the theme of the rest of the post yet is so right-on that every should watch, listen and learn.

 

VIDEO: SPECIAL REPORT with Alex Jones – Saturday 4/1/17: This Needs To Go VIRAL

 

Posted by Ron Gibson

Published on Apr 1, 2017

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Edited by John R. Houk

Text enclosed by brackets are by the Editor.

 

© Tony Newbill (pseudonym)