Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
This summary is up-to-date as of August 6th, but it will start with a leak from a phone-conversation on August 1st, in which Seymour Hersh<\/span><\/a> reveals \u201cwhat I know\u201d about the Russiagate matter, the matter that dominates today\u2019s U.S. international news. Hersh, of course, is the investigative journalist who broke the My Lai massacre, was among the first reporters to disclose Obama\u2019s support of Al Qaeda in Syria, and broke many other controversial news-reports exposing government-lies \u2014 none of which Hersh-articles has been disproven, despite the controversiality of his disclosures. And his record for sheer honesty is vastly better than that of any of his many detractors, and it\u2019s a record that stands out especially because such sincerity is the rarest commodity in journalism regarding international relations (which has been Hersh\u2019s specialty throughout his long career).<\/span><\/p>\n During the later portion of this phone-call, by the world\u2019s greatest investigative journalist<\/span><\/a>, Hersh presented \u201ca narrative [from his investigation] of how that whole fucking thing began,\u201d including the identities of the people he believes to be actually behind the \u2018RussiaGate\u2019 claims, and why those anti-Russia allegations are dominating the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 as they now are.<\/span><\/p>\n In a youtube video upload-dated August 1st<\/span><\/a>, in which, clearly, Hersh\u2019s distinctive voice is speaking (and speaks as he does in private, whenever he\u2019s talking about lying by the government and by the press), he revealed, from his inside FBI and Washington DC Police Department sources \u2014 now, long before the Justice Department\u2019s Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be presenting his official \u2018findings\u2019 to the nation \u2014 that the charges alleging Russia had anything to do with the leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign to Wikileaks, extend the Obama Administration\u2019s CIA-concocted lies. He says that those charges spread by the press, were, in his opinion, planted by the CIA. He says that Wikileaks had gotten only leaks, including at least one from the murdered DNC-staffer Seth Rich, not information hacked by or from any outsider (including \u2018the Russians\u2019), but that Rich didn\u2019t get killed for that, but was instead shot in the back during a brutal robbery, which occurred in the high-crime neighborhood<\/span><\/a> where Rich lived. Here is the video<\/span><\/a>, and here is the complete transcript of his statement there (along with my added clarifications [in brackets], plus my boldfacing<\/b> of key passages in it):<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n \u2026 about the kid, and I\u2019ll tell you what I know:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n (Mumble) comes off an FBI report, don\u2019t ask me how, I can figure out, I\u2019ve been around long enough:<\/span><\/p>\n The kid gets \u2014 I don\u2019t think he was murdered [because of this leak] I don\u2019t think he was murdered because of what he knew, the kid was a nice boy, 27, he was not an ITS person, he learned stuff, he was a data-programmer, but he learned stuff, and so he was living on one street, somewhere, he was living in a very rough neighborhood, and in the exact area where he lived, there had been about, I am sure you know, there had been about 8 or 9 or 10, violent robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun [here<\/span><\/a> are that neighborhood\u2019s crime-statistics], and I am sure you know, his [the kid\u2019s] hands were marked up, the cops concluded [HERSH HAD HAD ACCESS TO THE POLICE REPORT] he fought off the people, he tried to run, and they shot him twice in the back with a 22, small-caliber, and then the kid that did it ran, he got scared. So, the cops do this, here\u2019s what nobody knows, what I am telling you, now maybe you do know something about it: When you have a death like that, DC cops, as you\u2019re [dealing now with a person who is] dead, you generally don\u2019t zip and go, yep I know, what\u2019s the motive, what\u2019s going on, you have to get to the kid\u2019s apartment and see what you can find. If he\u2019s dead, you don\u2019t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don\u2019t know if the guy has a roommate, so they get a warrant, I\u2019m just telling you, there is such a thing. They go in and can\u2019t do much with his computer, [to find the] password, the cops don\u2019t know much about it, so the cops have a cyber unit in DC, and they\u2019re more sophisticated, they come in and look at it. The idea is maybe he has had a series of exchanges with somebody who said \u2018I am going to kill you motherfucker\u2019 over a girl, and they can\u2019t get in, the cyber guys are a little better, but they can\u2019t make sense of it, so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Russian[-monitoring] and field office is a hot-shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he\u2019s like a three-star at an army-base, he\u2019s ready [mumble], you know what I mean, he\u2019s going to do a top job. There\u2019s a cyber unit there that\u2019s excellent. What you get in a warrant, the public information you get in a warrant doesn\u2019t include the affidavits underlying why you are going in, what the reason was. That\u2019s almost never available, I can tell you that \u2014 the thesis of a warrant as a public document 99% of the time. So they call in the feds, the feds get through, and here\u2019s what they find [HERSH HAD HAD ACCESS TO THE FBI REPORT]. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is, first of all you have to know some basic facts, one of the basic facts is there is no DNC or protected email that exists beyond May 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups. So, what the report says, is:<\/span><\/p>\n (2:50-) At some time in late spring, which we\u2019re talking about in June 21st, I don\u2019t know, just late spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks<\/b>, that\u2019s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian [Assange] in Europe ten twelve years [ago], I stay the fuck away from people like that. He has invited me and when I am in London, I always get a message, ‘come see me at the Ecuadorean’ [Embassy], and I am fucking not going there. I have enough trouble without getting photographed. He\u2019s under total surveillance by everybody.<\/span><\/p>\n They found, what he had done, he [Seth Rich] had submitted a series of documents, emails from DNC \u2014 and, by the way, all this shit about the DNC, you know, was it a \u2018hack’ or wasn\u2019t it a \u2018hack\u2019 \u2014 whatever happened, it was the Democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that, he offered a sample<\/b>, he sends a sample, you know, I am sure dozens of emails, and said \u2018I want money\u2019<\/b>. Later Wikileaks did get the password [SETH RICH DID SELL WIKILEAKS ACCESS INTO HIS COMPUTER.] He had a drop-box, a [password-]protected drop-box, which isn\u2019t hard to do. I mean you don\u2019t have to be a whiz at IT [information technology], he was not a dumb kid. They got access to the drop-box. This is all from the FBI report<\/b>. He also let people know with whom he was dealing, I don\u2019t know how he dealt, I\u2019ll tell you all about Wikileaks in a second, with Wikileaks the mechanism, but according to the FBI report, he shared his box with a couple of friends, so \u2018If anything happens to me, it\u2019s not going to solve your problem\u2019, okay? I don\u2019t know what that means. But, anyway, Wikileaks got access. And, before he was killed, I can tell you right now, [Obama\u2019s CIA Director John] Brennan\u2019s an asshole. I\u2019ve known all these people for years, Clapper is sort of a better guy but no rocket-scientist, the NSA guys are fuckin\u2019 morons, and the trouble with all those guys is, the only way they\u2019ll get hired by SAIC, is if they\u2019ll deliver some [government] contracts, it\u2019s the only reason they stayed in. With Trump, they\u2019re gone, they\u2019re going to live on their pension, they\u2019re not going to make it [to great wealth]. I\u2019ve gotta to tell you, guys in that job, they don\u2019t want to live on their pension. They want to be on [corporate] boards like their [mumble] thousand bucks [cut]. <\/b><\/span><\/p>\n I have somebody on the inside, you know I\u2019ve been around a long time, somebody who will go and read a file for me, who, this person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he\u2019s a very high-level guy, he\u2019ll do a favor, you\u2019re just going to have to trust me, I have what they call in my business, long-form journalism, I have a narrative, of how that whole fucking thing began.<\/span><\/p>\n (5:50-) It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation, and the fucking President, at one point when they even started telling the press \u2014 they were back[ground]-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, the fucking cocksucker Rogers, telling the press that we [they] even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. All bullshit. They were telling. I worked at the New York Times those fucking years, they\u2019re smart guys, but they\u2019re totally beholden on [to] sources. If the President or the head of the CIA tells them something, they actually believe it. I retired at the Times at the end of the Vietnam War 1972, because they were just locked-in. So that\u2019s what the Times is, these guys run the fuckin\u2019 Times, and Trump\u2019s not wrong, I wish he would calm down, get a better press secretary, you know, not be so \u2014 Trump\u2019s not wrong to think they all fucking lied about him.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n \u2014<\/span><\/p>\n The slight media-coverage that this statement by Hersh receives is focusing on widespread allegations that Seth Rich was murdered in order to silence him<\/i>. All such media-coverage ignores much of what Hersh actually said on the phone (where Hersh makes clear that, according to the police record, Rich was, indeed, murdered in a regular robbery), and therefore should be viewed as an example of what the Washington Post<\/i> and others in the mainstream press call \u2018fake news\u2019, but which actually applies to the mainstream media, on both the left and right, above all (since they\u2019re all actually protecting and serving the same aristocracy). Hersh said both that Seth Rich did leak to Wikileaks (which many Republicans allege), and that the allegations that he was murdered for that are false (which many Democrats allege). Hersh was contradicting both the Democratic Party\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 media and the Republican Party\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 media. This is not something that a journalist would do in order to advance his own career, but it\u2019s typical of Hersh, a fiercely independent journalist, who really does care about truth above all else.<\/span><\/p>\n The purpose of those distorting \u2018news\u2019 stories might be a desire, on the part of both the Democratic Party aristocrats and the Republican Party aristocrats, to distract the public\u2019s attention away from the far deeper understanding that drives the \u201cnarrative\u201d that Hersh, in that clip, is describing: rot by the U.S. aristocracy, which controls both of America\u2019s political Parties, to deceive the American public<\/span><\/a>. The objective of the press is to protect the nation\u2019s aristocracy. That fact is not publishable; it is American samizdat. Corruption rules America. The public do not.<\/span><\/a> This situation is what Hersh describes in his \u201cnarrative.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But there is more in the \u2018hacking\u2019 story than what Hersh talked about: There wasn\u2019t only the leak from the DNC computer<\/span><\/a> (which Hersh was discussing); there was also the leak from John Podesta\u2019s computer<\/span><\/a>, and this information was published by Wikileaks later on. We\u2019ll first summarize the former (the part that Hersh did discuss): <\/span><\/p>\n According to Josh Marshall\u2019s very helpful 11 July 2017 \u201cLook at the Timeline\u201d (which unfortunately accepts, uncritically and without challenge, the U.S. government\u2019s and U.S. \u2018news\u2019media\u2019s allegations that \u2018Russian hacks\u2019 instead of Clinton-campaign leaks were behind this):<\/span><\/p>\n June 12th, 2016: Julian Assange <\/i>first announces<\/i><\/span><\/a> that Wikileaks has Clinton emails which are soon to be released. \u201cWikileaks has a very big year ahead \u2026 We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication.\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n June 14, 2016: Washington Post <\/i>publishes first account<\/i><\/span><\/a> of hacking of the DNC computer networks, allegedly by hackers working on behalf of the Russian government.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n June 15th, 2016: \u201cGuccifer 2.0\u201d, later identified by US government officials and other private sector analysts as a fictive persona created by Russian intelligence operatives, <\/i>contacts The Smoking Gun to take credit<\/i><\/span><\/a> for hacking the DNC.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n June 27th, 2016: First <\/i>hacked DNC emails posted to \u201cDCLeaks\u201d<\/i><\/span><\/a> website. \u2026<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n July 22, 2016: Wikileaks <\/i>releases<\/i><\/span><\/a> first tranche of DNC emails dating from January 2015 to May 2016.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Hersh says \u201clate spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks, that\u2019s in his computer, and he makes contact.\u201d Presumably, this release of information constituted the DNC emails that Seth Rich had sold to Wikileaks.<\/span><\/p>\n On 5 July 2017, the Washington Times<\/i> reported<\/span><\/a> that:<\/span><\/p>\n It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia\u2019s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack \u2014 but which has come under fire itself for its work.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n Presumably, Robert Mueller\u2019s investigation will subpoena that evidence \u2014 the DNC\u2019s computer from which the 22 July 2016 information-release by Wikileaks was introduced \u2014 if it hasn\u2019t yet subpoenaed that. Clearly, the DNC has someting to hide there, and the FBI didn\u2019t press the matter. The only question on the matter is whether Mueller as Special Counsel is honest and truly impartial, or not (as the FBI under Obama was not).<\/span><\/p>\n On 6 August 2017, an anonymous technical specialist posted online \u201c(2) Guccifer2.0 Timeline \u2014 What Happened & When Did It Happen?\u201d<\/span><\/a> and presented a timeline of the first of the two leaks (the one Hersh was discussing), and documented, in a detailed technical analysis, the extreme unlikelihood that any hack at all was entailed in the first information-release. Perhaps Seth Rich\u2019s leak was the only one that was involved in the first release \u2014 the release that Assange announced on 12 June 2016. <\/span><\/p>\n Later than the DNC leak(s), the release from John Podesta\u2019s computer occurred:<\/span><\/p>\n October 7, 2016: Wikileaks <\/i>releases<\/i><\/span><\/a> first batch of Podesta emails.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n That release is either from a second, independent, inside-leaker, or else like the U.S. \u2018news\u2019media allege, again by an outside hacker (together now called \u201cRussiagate\u201d). If it was the former (a leak), it was from someone who had access to Podesta\u2019s computer. A well-informed narrative does exist along that line, but it has been suppressed in the \u2018news\u2019-reports. It alleges that someone had handed a thumb-drive or other physical copy of information from Podesta\u2019s computer, to Craig Murray, a friend of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, when Mr. Murray visited Washington DC on 24 September 2016 and returned with it to London and handed that data to Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n As regards the information-release from Podesta\u2019s computer, however, far less challenge to the official U.S. line that Russia was behind this release has been issued. But Sam Biddle of The Intercept did headline on 14 December 2016, \u201cHere\u2019s the Public Evidence Russia Hacked the DNC \u2014 It\u2019s Not Enough\u201d<\/span><\/a>. He there challenges the \u201cRussiagate\u201d narrative, as regards the information-release from Podesta\u2019s computer. As to whether Mueller\u2019s investigation can be trusted to provide truthful answers to that matter (and to disprove Craig Murray\u2019s narrative, or else to discredit the Russiagate narrative, regarding the second information-release), any such conclusion, at the present time, would be pure speculation.<\/span><\/p>\n In the court of public opinion, however, the U.S. government should be on trial here, regardless of whether or not the Russian government is. The idea that \u2018the enemy\u2019 of the American people is Russia, instead of America\u2019s aristocracy, is the successor to the idea that \u2018the enemy\u2019 of the American people was Salvadore Allende, and was Saddam Hussein, and was Muammar Gaddafi, and was Viktor Yanukovych<\/span><\/a>, and was\/is Bashar al-Assad. It\u2019s a lie<\/span><\/a>. We\u2019ve been ruled by lies. Only if the government of the United States is placed on trial by the American public, can democracy<\/span><\/a> become established or re-established here. A government that actually represents only the very rich, with mere tokenism for everybody else<\/span><\/a>, is no democracy. The \u201cus\u201d versus \u201cthem\u201d is internal, and the \u201cthem\u201d control (and benefit from) both Parties; it is not external. That truth is not publishable in the United States; it is American samizdat. The present article is being submitted to all major and most minor U.S. \u2018news\u2019media in case any of them are bold enough to break from America\u2019s recent past and allow the American people (or their audience) to consider the reality. All of America\u2019s major \u2018news\u2019media have a stake in the status-quo, but maybe someday one of them will have conscience and break ranks. All that\u2019s required is one of the majors, to have conscience. That would do it. If none of them do, would Robert Mueller? What would the tooth-fairy<\/span><\/a> say?<\/span><\/p>\n \u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of\u00a0 They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of<\/span> \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse This summary is up-to-date as of August 6th, but it will start with a leak from a phone-conversation on August 1st, in which Seymour Hersh reveals \u201cwhat I know\u201d about the Russiagate matter, the matter that dominates today\u2019s U.S. international news. Hersh, of course, is the investigative journalist who broke the My Lai […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":320446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[115,30,32,96,29,3604,535,524,6257,523,1835],"class_list":{"0":"post-320857","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"tag-barack-obama","9":"tag-big-brother","10":"tag-cia","11":"tag-cover-up","12":"tag-democrats","13":"tag-donald-trump","14":"tag-global-news","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-trump","17":"tag-ukraine","18":"tag-wikileaks"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}