Thursday, December 15, 2016

CIA's allegations against Russian election interference "political" By Wayne Madsen Report




 CIA's allegations against Russian election interference "political"
By Wayne Madsen Report
Current and former members of the U.S. intelligence community are lambasting Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan for waging a political campaign against President-elect Donald Trump based on flimsy "intelligence" that the CIA director claims ties Russia to interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Brennan's secret report on alleged election interference by Moscow has been questioned as "fuzzy" and "inconclusive" by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials, including Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and FBI director James Comey.

However, the pro-Saudi Brennan, who, according to former FBI agent John Guandalo is a secret convert to Wahhabi radical Islam, continues to proffer the notion that Russia "selected" Trump as president. Brennan's gambit is designed to convince enough electors to vote against Trump on December 19 when the Electoral College meets in the 50 state capitals. If Trump is denied the 270 Electoral College votes required to become president, the election will be thrown into the House of Representatives and Senate. The House would vote for the President, with each state entitled to one vote, while the Senate would vote for the Vice President, with each senator having one vote. It is through this constitutional but rarely-invoked process that Brennan and his allies within the CIA seek to select the next president.

In recent years, the CIA has eschewed the military coup and adopted the "constitutional coup" to oust presidents and governments around the world. Such "constitutional" tactics have been used to oust democratically-elected presidents in Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Ukraine, and Brazil, expel democratically-elected prime ministers and governments in Thailand, Nepal, Turks and Caicos Islands, and Norfolk Island, and defeat independence referenda in Scotland and Nevis. In the cases of the Turks and Caicos and Norfolk Island, the CIA acted through British and Australian proxies, respectively.

The CIA is now using the skills it honed in effecting constitutional coups in countries around the world to bring about a similar coup in the United States.

Twenty years ago, the CIA blatantly involved itself in the Russian presidential election, using its influence to help President Boris Yeltsin win re-election even though the Russian leader was highly unpopular, mired in corruption and a bloody civil war in Chechnya, and known to be an alcoholic. After taking a drubbing from the Russian Communist Party and its leader Gennady Zyuganov in the 1995 parliamentary election, Yeltsin appeared to be on his way out. That was until the CIA and its partners, George Soros and his Open Society Institute/Foundation and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its NGOs showed up on the scene to help Yeltsin pull off an upset second-round 54-to-40 percent victory over Zyuganov.



The CIA, Soros, and the NED printed and distributed fake campaign flyers claiming to be from Zyuganov's campaign. The flyers advocated returning Russia to Stalinism and re-launching the Cold War against the West by sending in Russian troops to occupy the Baltic states, Poland, and other eastern European nations. The CIA and Soros dirty tricks operatives also called phony Zyuganov news conferences and canceled reservations made by the Zyuganov team for campaign event venues. The CIA and their allies also manipulated election returns to shave votes from Zyuganov's total and transfer them to Yeltsin. In 2012, then-President Dmitry Medvedev said, "There is hardly any doubt who won [the '96 election]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin." The CIA and Soros had followed the script laid out by Joseph Stalin, who infamously said, "The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do."

The CIA also directed the National Security Agency to assist Yeltsin with top-grade signals intelligence to deliver the Russian president an important pre-election coup against the Chechen separatist president Dzokhar Dudayev. The involvement by the CIA and NSA in Russia's 1996 election relegates unfounded charges of Russian cyber-hacking in the U.S. 2016 election to the level of a harmless prank. This story was reported by this editor in Covert Action Quarterly in October 1997:

The former Soviet Air Force general knew the rules. When talking on the portable satellite telephone bought for him by his Islamist Refah Party allies in Turkey, he had to keep conversations to an absolute minimum. Nothing less than his life depended on it. Chechen leader Dzokhar Dudayev was especially aware of the capabilities of the Ilyushin-76 aircraft and its A-50 Mainstay radar to pinpoint his phone's signal- The plane and its suite of equipment was the Soviet version of the more sophisticated US AWACS electronic warfare aircraft.
Four times during the first three months of 1996, the Russians had tried unsuccessfully to lock onto Dudayev's phone signal- But the general never gave the Russian army's vast array or signals intelligence (SIGINT) aircraft and mobile vans enough time to conduct radio direction finding ("DFing") to determine his exact location.
Dudayev had good reason to be nervous. Both Moscow and the West wanted a quick end to the Chechens' two-year long war for greater autonomy. The conflict had become a mini-Afghanistan. It was draining the lives of hundreds of Russia's young soldiers, the country's precious cash reserves, and Yeltsin's chances for winning the June 16 1996 presidential election against Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.
The West too was eager to keep the Chechen conflict from contributing to a Communist victory at the polls. For president Clinton, who also faced reelection a Communist win was especially unwelcome. The rallying cry of "Who lost Russia to the Communists" would be heard over and over again at the Republic convention and campaign tallies and would certainly be used against him in the televised debates.
To make matters worse the Chechens were dealing the Russians some devastating battlefield blows. In mid April Dudayev had severely bloodied the noses of the Russians when his forces (including some mujahedin volunteers from Pakistan) attacked the Russian Army' s 245th regiment convoy with anti-armor grenades from both side perches near the town of Yarysh-Mardy. After the attack, some 90 Russian troops were dead and another 50 wounded. A few civilian women and children who were traveling with the convoy were also killed.
The Yarysh-Mardy attack would become Russia's worst defeat of the Chechen conflict, topping even the bold Chechen attack of June 1995 on Budennovsk, within Russia itself, and assaults within the neighboring republic of Dagestan. It was also making Yeltsin and the army look impotent.
Yeltsin, Clinton, and Yeltsin's other close ally, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, all needed a quick fix to the Chechen problem. Yeltsin blamed the Russian military for the defeat at Yarysh-Mardv and began to extend peace feelers to Dudayev. While the president was huddled with Clinton and other Group of Seven leaders in Moscow. he told the press that be was ready to cut a deal. King Hassan II of Morocco agreed to act as an intermediary. Face-to-face meetings with the Russians were too dangerous for Dudayev; negotiations would be conducted over the rebel leader's heretofore stealthy satellite telephone.
Yeltsin's peace gestures sounded good to Dudayev. Perhaps too good. Soon he was on his satellite telephone to discuss Yeltsin's peace offerings with Hassan and Konstantin Borovoi, a liberal Duma deputy who served as Dudayev's Moscow intermediary.
During the evening of April 21, Dudayev went outside his headquarters, a small house near the village of Gekhi Chu, some 20 miles southwest of Grozny, the Russian occupied Chechen capital. At 8:00 p.m., he phoned Borovoi in Moscow to discuss Yeltsin's latest olive branch. "Soon, it could be very hot in Moscow," he told Borovoi. "Do you live in the center?" In the center and even next to the Interior Ministry, Borovoi responded. "You should probably move out for the time being," Dudayev warned. Dudayev may have been telling Borovoi that a Chechen attack on the Interior Ministry was imminent. "That's out of the question, Dzhokar Mussayevich, Borovoi responded, using the familiar Russian term of address. Then Dudayev said, "Russia must regret what it is doing." Borovoi's line suddenly went dead. This time, Dudayev had stayed on the phone too long.
Dead shot
Just seconds before what were to be the Chechen's last words, a Russian Sukhoi Su-25 jet, armed with air-to-surface missiles, had received his coordinates. It locked on to Dudayev's phone signal and fired two laser-guided missiles. As one exploded just a few feet away, shrapnel pierced Dudayev's head. He died almost immediately in the arms of one of his bodyguards.
There was immediate speculation that the signal from Dudayev's satellite phone had been beamed directly into the sensitive ears of a satellite which relayed his coordinates to the jet. According to Agence France Presse, a source inside Chechnya's rebel government charged that, the attack was carried out by the Russian secret services with the participation of the spy satellite services of certain Western countries.
Martin Streetly, editor of Jane's Radar and Electronic Warfare Systems, thought that the state of the Russian armed forces would preclude it from accurately pinpointing Dudayev's location.
The Russians had previously tried some less advanced methods to kill Dudayev and failed. On one occasion, Dudayev had been given a knife with an electronic homing device embedded in the handle but it was discovered before Russian aircraft could lock in on the signal.
Suspicion centered on the US and the National Security Agency's Vortex, Orion, and Trumpet, the world's most sophisticated (SIGINT) spy satellites.
They were partially designed to intercept the mobile telephone systems used by the big brass in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact high commands. The NSA SIGINT birds were, therefore, extremely useful against the kind of telephone Dudayev had been given by his Turkish friends. Furthermore, the US and Britain were the only Western countries with sophisticated SIGINT satellite capabilities. (In fact, Britain's Government Communications headquarters merely "rents time on the NSA's Vortex satellite so it is arguable whether London has its own independent SIGINT satellite capability.)
According to intelligence analyst Mark Urban, the NSA and Orion SIGINT coverage of Chechnya was more comprehensive than that of Bosnia. The NSA has concentrated its Vortex and Orion SIGINT Iraq and Kuwait since the Gulf War.
It would not have taken much to steer some of the orbiting SIGINT satellites Eavesdropping on Iraq to a position slightly north over the Russian Caucasus mountains.
A French counter terrorism specialist concurred that the US was the only country with satellite technology that could pinpoint Dudayev's location within a few meters of his satellite telephone transmission. After Dudayev was reported killed by the Russians, a US State Department spokesperson scoffed at rumors that the Chechen president might still be alive. He stated unequivocally that he was "certain" that Dudayev was dead.
Clinton's presence in Moscow on the day Dudayev was killed did little to curb suspicion."
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The CIA painted Zyuganov as an unreconstructed Communist who would restore the Soviet Union. In fact, Zyuganov was no real Communist but a Russian nationalist who wanted to clean up corruption; take back under government control former state industries that had been bought up by unscrupulous oligarchs, many of whom were dual Russian-Israeli nationals; and restore pride in a Russia that had been emasculated by economic advisers sent by Wall Street to transform Russia into a capitalist debtor nation. Many of Zyuganov's policies were adopted by Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's hand-picked successor, who first became prime minister and then succeeded Yeltsin as president in 1999.

The U.S. media crowed about how the Clinton administration "saved Russia" from a re-introduction of Communism. The claim was spurious and a blatant attempt to inject Cold War rhetoric into U.S. diplomacy. We see the same dynamic playing out today, with the CIA and its media allies using the language of Senator Joseph McCarthy to brand Trump, his Cabinet nominees, and supporters as Russian agents.


The CIA was happy to provide its traditional media front, Time magazine, the "secret story" of how it helped Yeltsin win in 1996
The CIA and Soros have continued to interfere in Russian presidential elections. Langley's "favorite son," opposition leader and convicted embezzler Alexey Navalny, a close friend of former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, has announced he is running against Putin in 2018. Although Navalny counts Russia's neo-Nazi "skinheads" among his strongest supporters, he, like Ukraine's neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok, have become the darlings of American neocons, particularly Jewish ones like Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan. These political "marriages of convenience" highlight the ongoing historical link between Nazism and Zionism.

In 2012, McFaul, while the chief U.S. diplomat in Moscow, directed $50 million in American funds, mostly CIA money laundered through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to political parties and groups aligned to Navalny. McFaul has been leading the charge against the legitimacy of Trump's election, citing Russian interference. The CIA-linked Daily Beast has referred to McFaul, who is a senior fellow at the right-wing Hoover Institution, as "an earnest Stanford academic." In fact, McFaul is nothing more than a middle-ranking CIA errand boy.