Thursday, January 12, 2017

Schumer warned Trump of CIA retaliation and it came in a piss squall by The Wayne Madsen Report



Schumer warned Trump of CIA retaliation and it came in a piss squall by The Wayne Madsen Report
After president-elect Donald Trump threw cold water on a rather sketchy U.S. Intelligence Community assessment that Russian intelligence hacked the computers and email of the Democratic National Committee and top Hillary Clinton campaign officials, Trump dismissed the allegations by stating that many nations conduct such hacking operations. On Friday, January 7, John Brennan, James Comey, Admiral Mike Rogers, and James Clapper, the respective heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI, National Security Agency, and Directorate of National Intelligence, entered the Trump Tower to give Trump a classified briefing on the Russian hacking.

Earlier in the week, and this is very key to what the intelligence chiefs told Trump on Friday, New York Senator and Senate Minority Leader warned Trump that his airy dismissal of the allegations against Russia by the U.S. intelligence agencies would come back to haunt him. Schumer, speaking on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow program, warned Trump, "Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."

And "get back" at Trump they did, when they informed him on Friday that he was the subject of a blackmail operation by the Russian government. The alleged blackmail charge was based on a suspicious 35-page private intelligence report that arrived in the hands of the FBI via the anti-Trump John McCain on December 9. Then-Senate Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid reportedly passed the same dossier to Comey in October 2016.

One report in the partly-redacted dossier, dated June 20, 2016, alleges that during a 2013 trip to Moscow to attend the Miss Universe pageant, Trump had Russian prostitutes urinate for him in a "golden shower" performance on the same bed in the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel that President Obama and Michelle Obama slept in during an earlier state visit to Russia. The report concludes that Russia used the incident to blackmail Trump into granting Russia concessions in the event he was elected president. The report also alleges that, in addition to the Ritz-Carlton incident, Trump's "unorthodox behavior" during a series of other trips to Russia had provided the Russians with additional embarrassing blackmail, including "sex parties" in St. Petersburg, contained on videotapes and audio recordings.

The "report" was said to have originated with an anonymous former British MI-6 clandestine officer who had served in Moscow and who had since retired to form his own private intelligence company. Although the report was said to have been floating around media, intelligence, and federal law enforcement circles since last October, it was not revealed until after the "big four" intelligence chief's meeting with Trump, much too late to have affected the election.

Although the authenticity of the dossier could not be verified, Buzzfeed decided to publish it anyway as "news" in a shocking display of unprofessional journalism. The allegations in the report first surfaced in a Mother Jones article written by Clinton and CIA hack David Corn on October 31, 2016. Corn is the author of "Blond Ghost," a favorable biography of one of the CIA's all-time political dirty tricks operators, Ted Shackley. Corn's article, without any independent verification, claimed "Russian intelligence had 'compromised' Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him."

WMR has seen this sort of social networking-based "guilty verdict" before with some of the same players involved. The core group pushing the Trump blackmail story are the typical coterie of neocons, including McCain, Buzzfeed's Ben Smith, former Naval War College professor John Schindler (who was fired by the college for "sexting" a photograph of his penis to a woman not his wife), Louise Mensch (one of Rupert Murdoch's gossip column flunkies in London and an ex-Tory Member of Parliament), and CNN president Jeff Zucker.

WMR's editor was the subject of a similar social media mob campaign, centered around Schindler, Mensch, and The Daily Telegraph of the UK, over an exclusive front page interview given The Observer of the UK on NSA's third party signals intelligence partners in Europe. The neocon spin machine resulted in the interview being pulled from the second print run of The Observer and from the website of its sister newspaper, The Guardian.

The document, titled "US Presidential Election: Republican Candidate Donald Trump's Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin," contains a number of clues to indicate that it is a hoax that mixes standard U.S. and British intelligence classified document formatting with obvious fraudulent content. One tell-tale sign of U.S. intelligence and/or federal law enforcement involvement in the production of the document is the use of ALL CAPS for last names. U.S. Attorneys commonly put first and last names in ALL CAPS. This is a common format for CIA and FBI reports, as well as federal indictments. On the other hand, the security caveat "CONFIDENTIAL/SENSITIVE SOURCE" is not standard classification usage for U.S. or British classified documents.

At least part of the raw intelligence on Russian cyber-targeting and human intelligence recruiting effort inside Russia and neighboring countries like Latvia appears to have originated with the British private security firm Orbis Business Intelligence, Ltd., headquartered in London. The business was founded in 2009 by two ex-British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) officers, Christopher Steele and Christopher Burrows. Steele is a former deputy to MI-6's Moscow head of station Richard Noble in 1990. In 1991, Steele continued to serve in Moscow under Steele's replacement, John McLeod Scarlett. Scarlett was the head of MI-6 from 2004 to 2009.

More importantly, Scarlett was involved, along with Prime Minister Tony Blair's Communications and Strategy director Alistair Campbell in the preparation of the so-called British "dodgy dossier," also known as the "September Dossier," of September 24, 2002, that wrongfully concluded that Sadaam Hussein possessed chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, in a foreword to the dossier, Blair wrote, "The document discloses that his [Sadaam's] military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them. The 45-minute allegation was used by the British press to falsely claim that Britain was "45 minutes" from doom as a result of an Iraqi chemical attack.

The "dodgy dossier" also falsely claimed that Iraq had sought to obtain significant quantities of uranium from Africa. The "dodgy dossier" was proven to be based on a number of falsehoods that were later debunked. However, Blair used the dossier as justification for Britain to join the United States in the invasion and occupation of Iraq and President George W. Bush used the uranium in Africa charge in his January 2003 State of the Union address.

We now see the same circle of MI-6 officers linked to the dubious report on Trump, some of the contents of which were apparently presented to Trump's rival for the GOP presidential nomination, Jeb Bush, as opposition research on Trump. The same report, in some form, apparently also fell into the hands of the Hillary Clinton campaign after Trump received the GOP nomination in July 2016. With the involvement of Blair's political henchmen with the Orbis group that prepared the report, it is not a stretch to assume that Blair could have been involved in hyping the importance and veracity of the report to Senators Reid and McCain, who passed it on to FBI director Comey.

As for Scarlett, in 2011, he joined the board of Times Newspapers Ltd., owned by Rupert Murdoch's NI Group. It was Murdoch's other newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, that published the identities of Steele and Orbis as the source of the dossier on Trump.

A report dated June 26, 2016, contained in the dossier appears to be a standard report on Russian intelligence cyber-targeting. It deals with Russian "state-sponsored offensive cyber operations" on the "external targets [of] foreign governments and big corporations, especially banks." Nothing in this report mentions Trump. Oddly, the report states that "US citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin" were approached by Russian Federal Security Bureau (FSB) agents while on business trips to Russia. The singling out of Jews for such approaches is an indicator that American Jewish groups may have had some input on the dubious dossier.

The entire dossier appears to be a hybrid, part of it containing U.S. and/or British intelligence information and other parts strongly suggesting bogus information authored by non-intelligence parties.

Another dossier report, dated August 5, 2016, is a tell-tale sign of CIA creation. The report suggests that Russian "Premier MEDVEDEV's office" was furious over Russian intelligence hacking of the DNC." This is clearly an attempt to portray a split between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev, a longtime goal of the CIA and the Obama administration.

An August 19, 2016 report alleges the Russians had also successfully financed other American figures. The report specifically mentions Lyndon LaRouche, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders, Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page, Trump's earlier campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief Michael Flynn. WikiLeaks, long a major target for the CIA, is also implicated as part of the "grand Russian conspiracy" in the dossier, as is Araz Agalarov, an Azeri business associate of Trump.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are accused in the dossier of being agents for the Russian government. An October 20, 2016, report says that a planned meeting between Cohen and a Russian government official scheduled for Moscow in July 2016 were moved to Prague, Czechia, described in the report as a "soft" EU country. The alleged meeting is said to have taken place at the Prague office of the Russian parastatal firm Rossotrudnichestvo. The claim of such a meeting is astounding since Czech intelligence would normally have that particular office under close surveillance.



However, Czechia is also a member of NATO and the location of a number of NGOs controlled by George Soros, so it is anything but "safe." A safer non-NATO country in the EU for such a meeting would have been either Finland, Sweden, or Austria. Nevertheless, Cohen claims he was never in Prague. Cohen is implicated in the affair because his wife is "of Russian descent" and "her father is a leading property developer in Moscow." In another example of the report being a bogus and amateurish product, Trump's attorney Michael Cohen was not in Prague at the time the report indicated but was with his son at the University of Southern California. CNN backtracked on its initial report by claiming it was another Michael Cohen who was in Prague in 2016. This was another example of shoddy journalism with a story that never had any legs to begin with. The dossier is replete with many other examples of pure guilt by association.



The listing of various American citizens, with the insinuation of their being disloyal, is highly reminiscent of the "Red lists" compiled by the FBI during the witch-hunting days of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The July 30, 2016, report alleges that the Trump team provided Russia with "intelligence activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families." This refers to exiled oligarchs who have been working to overthrow Putin's government by any means and they include Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Leonid Nevzlin, Mikhail Chernoy, and other Russian Jewish billionaires who split their time between Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They have the means and the motives to create a bogus intelligence report implicating Trump, Putin, and others in an election conspiracy.

The inclusion of former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in the dossier indicates that the Ukrainian government, backed by Ukrainian-Israeli oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky, also played a role in the report's preparation. At the same time the dossier was released, there was a report that the Ukrainian government and intelligence service provided covert assistance to the Hillary Clinton campaign to prevent Trump's election. A reference to Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) workers and ethnic Russians in Latvia being targeted to be agents for Russia is an indication that the virulently anti-Russian Latvian government also provided input to the dossier.



During the Cold War, the U.S. State Department maintained an office that routinely discovered bogus documents issued by Soviet intelligence claimed to of official U.S. government origin. However, the State Department often discovered tell-tale clues, some obvious, others not so much, proving the documents were propaganda forgeries. Just as was the case with the crude Soviet forgeries, the Trump dossier contains several glaring clues that point to it being a hoax.

WMR learned from a former CIA clandestine service officer that the CIA engaged in such practices -- producing fake intelligence reports to embarrass political leaders in Third World countries -- during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. He added that the dossier about Trump bore the fingerprints of a Brennan-initiated hoax and that it involved a more general civil war within the U.S. intelligence community between pro- and anti-Trump officials.

A September 14, 2016 report on Russia's Alfa Group, formerly Alfa-Eco, the largest private investment firm in Russia, politically controlling Putin misspells the company as "Alpha Group." This points to the document's authors having military connections to the United States and/or NATO.  The Russian military's special operations (Spetsnaz) group "A" is known as the "Alpha Group," which is consistent with the alpha-numeric nomenclature employed by the U.S. military, intelligence community, and NATO. The error in using "Alpha" instead of "Alfa" indicates a U.S. intelligence and/or military connection to the dossier because the author of the particular section in question, likely a CIA operative, confused Russia's Spetsnaz team with a major Russia corporation. This is a sloppy indicator of the dossier being a fake.

Other signs of fakery include the misspellings of names, such as the three references to "Paul MANNAFORT" in the October 19 report contained in the dossier. The name is spelled "Manafort."

One copy of the dossier cites Barvikha, a town outside of Moscow, as being "reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates." This statement is false. Barvikha is open to any Russians, although many who live there tend to be wealthier citizens. The authors of the dossier appear not to have had extraordinary intelligence on Barvikha but obtained their information from the problematic Wikipedia, which refers to the town as the site of state dachas for the USSR's leading officials and intellectuals during Soviet times. Barvikha has not hosted any Russian leader since Boris Yeltsin. The use of outdated information from open sources represents yet another major sign of a hoax document.

The use of the phrase "plausible deniability" in the July 30 section of the dossier to describe Russian actions in support of Trump is from the CIA's lexicon.

The entire dossier appears to be a fictionalized spy novel complete with tales of sexual blackmail, refuge hangouts in Bulgaria (bolt-holes), Romanian hackers, shady Azerbaijani businessmen, bribed U.S. political advisers, Chinese kickbacks,and clandestine meetings in Volgograd and Prague. However, the entire script is more Austin Powers than James Bond.

What has been lost by the U.S. corporate media in the current furor over alleged Russian intelligence involvement in the U.S. election is the now-proven involvement of senior levels of British intelligence in the election and in having their fingerprints on the Trump dossier. It is always automatically assumed that British intelligence has selfless motives when it comes to the United States. U.S. media buys into that notion by hiring a number of British nationals as reporters and editors, including the New York Times's CEO Mark Thompson, Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker, Cosmopolitan editor Joanna Coles (formery with The Guardian), NBC News (which owns BuzzFeed.com) president Deborah Turness, ABC News international editor Jon Williams, CNN anchor Richard Quest, and New York Daily News editor Colin Myler. British native Tina Brown's influence is still felt at The Daily Beast, which she founded. Top British media executives and editors are well-known for their ties to British intelligence.



The chief media cheerleaders pushing the British intelligence-linked Trump dossier all have British connections: Wall Street JournalCosmopolitanThe Daily BeastNew York Daily News, CNN, and, especially, NBC's BuzzFeed, which published the dossier without verifying that it was authentic. Don't expect to see any headlines announcing: "British intelligence connections found between Jeb! and Hillary campaigns and anti-Trump dossier."