In Part 4 of this series, I stated that something had to have happened between the meeting attended by executives of Crowdstrike and the DNC and the Washington Post's national security reporter, Ellen Nakashima on June 13, 2016 and when Crowdstrike's Dmitri Alperovitch completed the final report about the alleged Russian hack, Bears in the Midst: The Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee. There were too many contradictions between Ms. Nakashima's June 14, 2016 above-the-fold front page article and Alperovitch's final report to not be noticed. Something happening between the meeting and the completion of the final report had to cause material changes to the final report. After additional research, I am satisfied that the event that took place was the intrusion into the "Russian Hack Narrative" of the alleged Russian (or Romanian) hacker, Guccifer 2.0.
Guccifer 2.0 took his hacker name from the original hacker from Romania, Guccifer. It was just before the incident at the DNC that Guccifer was being readied for sentencing after his trial for hacking in Romania. For some reason, the FBI requested the Romanian government extradite Guccier, who will be referred to hereinafter as the Original Guccifer, to the United States so that the FBI could question him. The Original Guccifer had publicly claimed that he had hacked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's private email server that had cast a cloud over Mrs. Clinton's candidacy for the Presidency. Not only did Original Guccifer claim he obtained access to Clinton's email server, but Original Guccifer claimed that he knew of other foreign hackers who had gained access to that server. Mrs. Clinton's private server contained some of the United States Government's highest secrets, Special Access Program/Sensitive Compartmented Information (SAP/SCI) intelligence. After spending some time with the FBI, Original Guccifer recanted his claim about accessing Mrs. Clinton's private server along with knowing that other foreign hackers breached the private server. Original Guccifer was then returned to Romania to begin his incarceration in that country. Nothing else resulted from Original Guccifer's visit to the United States.
Guccifer 2.0 appeared on June 15, 2016, just as Mr. Alperovitch was completing the final Crowdstrike report about the alleged Russian hack of the DNC. It is a reasonable conclusion that the actions of Guccifer 2.0 created problems for Mr. Alperovitch as he completed the report. Guccifer 2.0 was publishing on the Internet a lot of DNC documents that were not identified as exfiltrated by the alleged Russian hackers in the report written by Ellen Nakashima and published in the Washington Post on June 14, 2016. Guccifer 2.0 gave Alperovitch a problem to solve as completing a final report that exactly reflected Ellen Nakashima's would raise questions because of the contradictions that were created by Guccifer 2.0. What follows is a table displaying the contradictions that would result from Crowdstrike producing a final report that did not contradict the information Crowdstrike and the DNC provided to Ellen Nakashima while Guccifer 2.0 published his documents stolen from the DNC.
|
|
Emails were "read" and "monitored" by the alleged Russian hackers, not stolen. |
Emails were exfiltrated by Guccifer 2.0, and, more importantly, given to Wikileaks, which adds insult to injury. |
Donor information was not even accessed by the alleged Russian hackers. |
Donor information was published by Guccifer 2.0 in Gawker and The Smoking Gun. |
Opposition Research files about Donald Trump stolen by alleged Russian hackers. |
Opposition Research files stolen by Guccifer 2.0. |
The claim by Guccifer 2.0 that he gave the DNCemails to Wikileaks is the most important fact to remember. After all, the mainstream media (MSM) were taken completely by surprise when the DNC emails were published by Wikileaks. We linked to the articles published by mainstream journalists attempting to explain why the publication of the DNC emails by Wikileaks was not anticipated by the MSM. Guccifer 2.0 appeared on June 15, 2016, just as Alperovitch was working to complete the final report. It is a reasonable conclusion that the actions of Guccifer 2.0 are what caused the complete revisions of the report which clearly contradict the facts Crowdstrike and the DNC provided to Ellen Nakashima just two days before. The DNC hack became a major event, one of the most devastating hacks that Dmitri Alperovitch had ever witnessed, the event that continues to drive the Trump-Russia-Wikileaks narrative to this day, and caused two nuclear powers to assume the alert position known as DEFCON 3 during the run-up to the 2016 election. For no other reason than the close brush with nuclear war, we need to know exactly what happened. The Crowdstrike report does not provide that explanation.
WHY DID THE DOGS NOT BARK?
One has to wonder why the MSM have not asked any questions about the contradictions between the June 14, 2016 report by Ellen Nakashima and the Crowdstrike report. Only researchers like Adam Carter, and Steven McIntyre have questioned the discrepancies in the Crowdstrike report along with why Crowdstrike did nothing to contain a hack for over 30 days. Steven McIntrye emphasized the lack of any effort to contain the hack during the month of May, and Adam Carter has pulled apart the discrepancies in the attempts to identify Guccifer 2.0 as a Russian hacker along with a dissection of the June 14, 2016 article by Ellen Nakashima. Some of those discrepancies were covered in the appraisal of Crowdstrike's Incident Response engagement, and more discrepancies about the claim that Guccifer 2.0 is a Russian spy of some kind will be covered in the next part.
It would be one thing if the MSM constituted the only institutional guard dog that did not bark. The FBI has to be counted as another barkless dog. As pointed out in early parts to this series, then FBI Director, James Comey, had FBI agents telephoning the DNC headquarters to inform them that, not only were Russian hackers in their network, but the hackers were transmitting data back to Russia. This is extremely important, and will be covered in detail in another part to this series which never was intended to run this long. The most important aspect of the FBI's lack of response? It began in JULY 2015. That is the correct year--2015, which was eleven months before Crowdstrike finally expelled the alleged Russians from the DNC network. Let that roll around in your brain for awhile. Russian hackers and espionage agents were allowed nearly an entire year of access to the network of the Democratic National Committee, a network with which a President, Vice President, Members of Congress, and Senators would also be accessing. It is hard to believe, but true, and is not getting any play at all in either the media or in Congressional hearings. The MSM ignores thestrange behavior of the FBI between July 2015 and June 2016, typically reporting about it in dry, factual descriptions, but raising no questions about why Russians would be given unchallenged access to the DNC network for nearly one year. The effect on viewers and readers of the data is to digest it as if it is the usual response to such events.
CONCLUSION
The emergence of Guccifer 2.0 created a problem in the ealiest narrative of the hack of the DNC by alleged Russian intelligence hackers. Documents that Crowdstrike and DNC executives told Washington Post National Security Reporter, Ellen Nakashima were not exfiltrated by the alleged Russian hackers were published by Guccifer 2.0 in DC Leaks, Gawker, and The Smoking Gun. In addition, Guccifer 2.0 claimed he sent the emails to Wikileaks. These revelations forced a change in Crowdstrike's report from the June 14, 2016 report in the Washington Post, which barely caused a ripple in the national media, to the horrific looting of the DNC network that was a major part of a scheme by the Putin regime to install Donald Trump in the White House. Only a few researchers outside of the MSM have attempted to verify the hack of the DNC as a major act of aggression by Russia against the United States, or the "Attack on Our Democracy," as it is usually described. The major questions still remain unanswered and there is continuing danger of nuclear confrontation, or even World War III, all because of this alleged hack.