{"id":342110,"date":"2018-01-02T23:21:48","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T22:21:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-still-missing-evidence-of-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2018-01-02T23:21:48","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T22:21:48","slug":"the-still-missing-evidence-of-russia-gate-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-still-missing-evidence-of-russia-gate-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"The Still-Missing Evidence of Russia-gate \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein.<\/p>\n<p>By Dennis J. Bernstein<\/p>\n<p>A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who are usually more skeptical of U.S. intelligence agencies, especially their evidence-free claims, now question the patriotism of Americans who insist that the intelligence community supply proof to support the dangerous claims about Russian \u2018hacking\u201d of Democratic emails especially when some \u00a0veteran U.S. government experts say the data would be easily available if the Russians indeed were guilty.<\/p>\n<p>One of those experts is William Binney, a former high-level National Security Agency intelligence official who, after his 2001 retirement, blew the whistle on the extraordinary breadth of NSA surveillance programs. His outspoken criticism of the NSA during the George W. Bush administration made him the subject of FBI investigations that included a raid on his home in 2007.<\/p>\n<p>Even before Edward Snowden\u2019s NSA whistleblowing, Binney publicly revealed that NSA had access to telecommunications companies\u2019 domestic and international billing records, and that since 9\/11 the agency has intercepted some 15 trillion to 20 trillion communications. Snowden has said: \u201cI have tremendous respect for Binney, who did everything he could according to the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_17739\" style=\"max-width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/NSA_seal-2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/NSA_seal-2-300x300.png\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17739\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17739\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/NSA_seal-2-300x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Seal of the National Security Agency<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>I spoke to Binney on Dec. 28 about Russia-gate and a host of topics having to do with <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eff.org\/702-spying\">spying<\/a><\/span> and America\u2019s expanding national security state.<\/p>\n<p>Dennis Bernstein: I would like you to begin by telling us a little about your background at the NSA and how you got there.<\/p>\n<p>William Binney: I was in the United States Army from 1965 to 1969. \u00a0They put me in the Army Security Agency, an affiliate of the NSA. \u00a0They liked the work I was doing and they put me on a priority hire in 1970. \u00a0I was in the NSA for 32 years, mostly working against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. \u00a0I was solving what were called \u201cwizard puzzles,\u201d and the&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/01\/01\/the-still-missing-evidence-of-russia-gate\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The central groupthink around Russia-gate is the still unproven claim that Russia hacked Democratic emails in 2016 and publicized them via WikiLeaks, a crucial issue that NSA experts say should be easy to prove if true, reports Dennis J. Bernstein. By Dennis J. Bernstein A changing-places moment brought about by Russia-gate is that liberals who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-342110","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342110","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\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=342110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}