Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House

[Jim K Global Moderator]

19 minutes ago, Mirumir said:

 

Sooo...what is wrong with what the POTUS said?  Or is this just more Russian propaganda from RI ... the whole "Obama chickens out ... etc"

 

Question at :04 about if Obama believed Putin authorized the hack.  Obama's response was actually....

 

OBAMA: When the report comes out before I leave office, that will have drawn together all the threads, and so I don't want to step on their work ahead of time. What I can tell you is that the intelligence that I've seen gives me great confidence in their assessment that the Russians carried out this hack.

 

QUESTION: Which hack?

 

OBAMA: The hack of the DNC and the hack of John Podesta.

Now, the -- but again, I think this is exactly why I want the report out, so that everybody can review it. And this has been briefed and the evidence in closed session has been provided on a bipartisan basis, not just to me, it's been provided to the leaders of the House and the Senate and the chairmen and ranking members of the relevant committees. And I think that what you've already seen is, at least some of the folks who've seen the evidence don't dispute I think the basic assessment that the Russians carried this out.

 

QUESTION: But specifically, could (ph) you not say that...

 

OBAMA: Well, Martha, I think what I want to make sure of is that I give the intelligence community a chance to gather all the information.

But I'd make a larger point, which is, not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin. This is a pretty hierarchical operation. Last I checked, there's not a lot of debate and democratic deliberation, particularly when it comes to policies directed at the United States. We have said and I will confirm that this happened at the highest levels of the Russian government and I will let you make that determination as to whether there are high-level Russian officials who go off rogue and decide to tamper with the U.S. election process without Vladimir Putin knowing about it.

 

 

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

59 minutes ago, jjkusaf said:

Sooo...what is wrong with what the POTUS said?  

Other than the fact he was speaking with a load in his pants? Nothing. 

 

But my favourite line starts at about 0:29. "We will provide (long pause) evidence that (pause) we can safely provide..." 

 

Looking forward to them finally releasing it. I mean if Obama said so, they must have it, right?

 

And here's how CNN is spinning it:

 

Quote

Obama all but names Putin as behind hacking, told him to 'cut it out'

[Jim K Global Moderator]

19 minutes ago, Mirumir said:

Other than the fact he was speaking with a load in his pants? Nothing. 

 

But my favourite line starts at about 0:29. "We will provide (long pause) evidence that (pause) we can safely provide..." 

 

Looking forward to them finally releasing it. I mean if Obama said so, they must have it, right?

 

And here's how CNN is spinning it:

 

Of course if you actually read the transcript you would see that Obama gave reason ...

 

OBAMA: Declassification. Look, we will provide evidence that we can safely provide, that does not compromise sources and methods. But I'll be honest with you, when you are talking about cybersecurity, a lot of it is classified and we're not going to provide it, because the way we catch folks is by knowing certain things about them that they may not want us to know and if we're gonna monitor this stuff effectively going forward, we don't want them to know that we know.

 

So, this is one of those situations where, unless the American people genuinely think that the professionals in the CIA, the FBI, our entire intelligence infrastructure, many of whom -- by the way, served in previous administrations and who are Republicans -- are less trustworthy than the Russians. Then people should pay attention to what our intelligence agencies say.

 

...etc.

 

Not surprised you or or the Russian media is spinning one liners to meet your particular agendas.  

 

And how did CNN "spin it?"  Per the news conference ...

 

And so in early September when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that did not happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out, there were going to be some serious consequences if he did not.

 

And in fact, we did not see further tampering of the election process. But the leaks through Wikileaks had already occurred.

 

So...where is that CNN spin?

[ctebah]

47 minutes ago, Mirumir said:

Other than the fact he was speaking with a load in his pants? Nothing. 

 

But my favourite line starts at about 0:29. "We will provide (long pause) evidence that (pause) we can safely provide..." 

 

Looking forward to them finally releasing it. I mean if Obama said so, they must have it, right?

 

And here's how CNN is spinning it:

 

I'm sure Obama has as much proof about this as they did about Iraq WMD.  What's sad is that a big part of US population will actually believe all this BS.

[JoseyWales]

Oh please.. Again with the smoke and mirrors..

If they had any actual proof they it would be all over the news and the left would be running with it non stop. They would have used it to do what they have been trying to do all along since the end of the election, to change the results somehow. Believe me, if there were any proof, it would be the only story right now and ###### would have hit the fan big league. They have nothing so instead we get all of this obfuscation..

[ctebah]

Ron Paul said it best:

 

Quote

The American people should be worried about the influence of our CIA in other people's elections, I mean probably hundreds. It's constant

Quote

“Our government doesn't change a whole lot,” Paul explained. “The people, who behind the scenes control the government, are always the same. And I consider that to be the case in most governments.”

“The propagandists are on the side of the people who want us to be intervening around the world, and I imagine that because Trump has suggested maybe we ought to do a little bit less of that, maybe they don’t like that idea, and they want to discredit him for that approach,”

 

[wakjak]

30 minutes ago, JoseyWales said:

Oh please.. Again with the smoke and mirrors..

If they had any actual proof they it would be all over the news and the left would be running with it non stop. They would have used it to do what they have been trying to do all along since the end of the election, to change the results somehow. Believe me, if there were any proof, it would be the only story right now and ###### would have hit the fan big league. They have nothing so instead we get all of this obfuscation..

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

[JoseyWales]

23 minutes ago, wakjak said:

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

Classified my harry ass.. Not once has there been a shred of of evidence providing proof or even them saying "we have undeniable proof. It has, since day one, been "We think".. Why is Vlad involved? Well because he runs the country and nothing gets by the leader of a country. Right.. The "hacking" they so vehemently portray as being all about the election is the same that EVERY country has been doing for the past 50 years since the net came about.

So don't come on here pretending it's any different now or that the Russians magically had an influence because Hillary lost. Donald accused them(dems) of misdeeds with the voting and is raked over the coals for it but when he wins all of the sudden he was right, but it was the Russians.. Sure it was.. 

 

The sad fact is that the DNC got caught with there pants down and their rep has been forever tarnished because of it. All these lies and misdirection only serve to bolster that opinion among most Americans. No one believes a word any of them have to say at this point.. Potus included.. They have proven beyond a shadow of doubt that they can not be trusted..

[ensiform]

55 minutes ago, wakjak said:

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

Oh please, if it pertains to the public's needing to know (such as in this case because of all the smoke and mirrors already), the POTUS can declassify it on the spot thus not leaking.  That's besides the point that one shouldn't go claiming something with the evidence not holding up to a mass amount of people just to rally support.

 

If there actually is proof of "interference" (which there isn't much of a way to prove actually affected people's motives to vote), trying to bully electors into voting against Trump and for Hillary or either of the VPs does NOT fix the issue.  A new set of candidates and a new election would be the only way to have a truly fixed election because the doubts are cast over everyone involved not just the Winner and loser on November 8th.  This system is flawed and we've wasted countless time on how do we prevent an alleged "demagogue" from getting to the White House instead of pushing forward ways to fix the problems of the country.  Public Shaming isn't the way to fix election problems or the national issues surrounding bigotry and racism either.

 

I'm not even a Trump Supporter and I think this is a load of bull.

Edited December 18, 2016 by ensiform

[DocM]

2 hours ago, ensiform said:

2 hours ago, wakjak said:

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

Oh please, if it pertains to the public's needing to know (such as in this case because of all the smoke and mirrors already), the POTUS can declassify it on the spot thus not leaking.  That's besides the point that one shouldn't go claiming something with the evidence not holding up to a mass amount of people just to rally support.

 

It's not even classified - the existence of the PRISM surveillance system and its tracking software have been known for some time.  

 

There's also little doubt Russia did the hacks; Putin admitted it at a conference in Moscow on Oct. 12.  Reported Oct. 20 in Esquire. 

 

What's interesting is his stated motive: exposing the corrupt nominating process in the Democratic Party, that being the fix DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla) put in favoring Clinton over Sanders.  It was a complete show, with debate question coordination between the campaign's which Sanders only broke late in the process.

 

Along that line, another leak which caused a fuss was interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile, a CNN commentator, passing CNN moderators debate questions to the Clinton campaign before the debate.  CNN dropped her like a hot potato.

 

No doubt there were other motives which were not benign, but these leaks showed a grenade needed to be thrown into the Democratic Party nominating process, something that's been going downhill since before I left the party in the mid-1970's.  

 

The next issue that needs attention is the Superdelegate system, which is a whole other can of worms.

 

 

[DocM]

2 hours ago, ensiform said:

2 hours ago, wakjak said:

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

Oh please, if it pertains to the public's needing to know (such as in this case because of all the smoke and mirrors already), the POTUS can declassify it on the spot thus not leaking.  That's besides the point that one shouldn't go claiming something with the evidence not holding up to a mass amount of people just to rally support.

 

It's not even classified - the existence of the PRISM surveillance system and its tracking software have been known for some time.  

 

There's also little doubt Russia did the hacks; Putin admitted it at a conference in Moscow on Oct. 12.  Reported Oct. 20 in Esquire. 

 

What's interesting is his stated motive: exposing the corrupt nominating process in the Democratic Party, that being the fix DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla) put in favoring Clinton over Sanders.  It was a complete show, with debate Q&A coordination between the campaigns, which Sanders only broke late in the process.

 

Along that line, another leak which caused a fuss was interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile, a CNN commentator, passing CNN moderators debate questions to the Clinton campaign before the debate.  CNN dropped her like a hot potato.

 

No doubt there were other motives which were not benign, but these leaks showed a grenade needed to be thrown into the Democratic Party nominating process, something that's been going downhill since before I left the party in the mid-1970's.  

 

 

Edited December 18, 2016 by DocM

[PGHammer]

On 12/17/2016 at 3:23 AM, DocM said:

Below the red box is as important as what's in it....

 

That said, I've posted DNC was being hacked in 2013 and FBI tried to get DNC engaged but they didn't take it seriously until late in 2015 (source: Wired) and that this was dumb. It still is.  Was it Russia? Likely, but as the report says, there's no direct evidence.  

 

Whatever, the US and Russia have been doing this dance since forever, old news.

 

It's also true that the post election autopsy at Harvard University showed that it wasn't the Wikileaks articles which moved independent and undecided voters to Trump, so if Russia was trying to use those to influence the election it misfired - lots of noise, no results. Ditto Comey I and II, and the server emails which were released by a US Federal judge. Was he a Russian agent? 

 

What moved this election wasn't the noise produced by a Russian (?) hack or the other things above. It was moved by,

 

1) Hillary being an impersonal, aloof, unwilling to press the flesh retail politics candidate who largely ignored the Great Lakes states and PA, the exact states who swung the election, even after Bill Clinton told her and her advisors she should put in more effort there. Terrible, stupid even.

 

2) a great many people in 1) swung to Trump in the primaries because of the jobs lost to free trade and poor response to same by both parties. They wanted to throw a hand grenade at DC, and did they ever.

 

Many articles of Democrats switching their voter registrations to Republican, so many it was speculated Dems were trying to mess with the Republican primaries.  100,000 in PA alone as early as June...

 

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2016/10/12/nearly-100000-pennsylvania-voters-switch-from-democrat-to-republican/

 

They weren't kidding, and the Clinton campaign, pollsters, analysts and a bunch of Neowinians missed its importance. Now they want to blame Russia, but the real problem is closer to home.

 

3) loose lips: calling 2) "deplorables," racist etc. isn't the way to get their votes. It also royally ticked off independent and undecided voters who saw it as being divisive, more so than the salty talk by Trump. See Harvard autopsy.

 

Game over by mid September.

 

Dems need to look hard at the guy in the mirror.

Doc - you pointed that out; I pointed that out (in both cases due to non-FNC reportage - in my case, due to CNN reportage) and what did our resident liberals and lefties say?  That it was an attempt to make sure that the "easier GOP candidate" - supposedly Donald J. Trump - won the GOP primaries.  "You sure you didn't use too much dynamite, there, Sundance?"  Could it be that a lot of Democrats left for the GOP - and discovered that they liked what they found in Trump?

[DocM]

16 minutes ago, PGHammer said:

Doc - you pointed that out; I pointed that out (in both cases due to non-FNC reportage - in my case, due to CNN reportage) and what did our resident liberals and lefties say?  That it was an attempt to make sure that the "easier GOP candidate" - supposedly Donald J. Trump - won the GOP primaries.  "You sure you didn't use too much dynamite, there, Sundance?"  Could it be that a lot of Democrats left for the GOP - and discovered that they liked what they found in Trump?

 

I'd estimate 300,000-350,000 Democrats changed their registration to Republican between PA (100k alone!), Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin.

 

Even those who didn't showed their disdain another way: they stayed home.

 

In Detroit alone many tens of thousands of blacks didn't vote in November who did in 2012. A very large percentage of them had the same reason as white and Hispanic Trump voters in the region: job migration, leaving them chronically un- or under-employed, and they knew damned well Clinton would open the borders even further for imported unskilled Laborers. 

[TPreston]

59 minutes ago, DocM said:

 

It's not even classified - the existence of the PRISM surveillance system and its tracking software have been known for some time.  

 

There's also little doubt Russia did the hacks; Putin admitted it at a conference in Moscow on Oct. 12.  Reported Oct. 20 in Esquire. 

 

What's interesting is his stated motive: exposing the corrupt nominating process in the Democratic Party, that being the fix DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla) put in favoring Clinton over Sanders.  It was a complete show, with debate Q&A coordination between the campaigns, which Sanders only broke late in the process.

 

Along that line, another leak which caused a fuss was interim DNC Chair Donna Brazile, a CNN commentator, passing CNN moderators debate questions to the Clinton campaign before the debate.  CNN dropped her like a hot potato.

 

No doubt there were other motives which were not benign, but these leaks showed a grenade needed to be thrown into the Democratic Party nominating process, something that's been going downhill since before I left the party in the mid-1970's.  

Of course the problem with this is that you now have the possibility of blackmail of elected officials by Russian officials. How do we know that all the emails were leaked ?

A full investigation like john McCain suggested is needed.

[DocM]

2 hours ago, TPreston said:

Of course the problem with this is that you now have the possibility of blackmail of elected officials by Russian officials. How do we know that all the emails were leaked ?

A full investigation like john McCain suggested is needed.

PRISM would have chapter and verse on the data passing through the Russian access point. They could review it in camera, executive session of the Intelligence Committees. The rest is for show.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

Now Kissinger has chimed in.

[Dysphoria]

20 hours ago, wakjak said:

Classified information isn't something you just give the media. 

 

There's a reason Petraeus was charged and found guilty. 

YOu did not feel the same when Comey was investigating Hillary....

 

[DocM]

25 minutes ago, Mirumir said:

Now Kissinger has chimed in.

Exactly Dr. K.

 

“Everybody has a hacking capability. And probably every intelligence service is hacking in the territory of other countries,” he said. “But who exactly does what? That would be a very sensitive piece of information. But it’s very difficult to communicate about it. Because nobody wants to admit the scope of what they’re doing.”

[wakjak]

1 hour ago, Euphoria said:

YOu did not feel the same when Comey was investigating Hillary....

 

What classified info did I ask Comey to release to the public? I'll wait for you to dig through my post history.

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

1 hour ago, DocM said:

Exactly Dr. K.

Just because they're all hacking each other, doesn't and shouldn't mean the Chinese or the Russians have actually hacked the U.S. elections. That would be a logical fallacy.

 

I'd like to believe that there are some principles there, some rules of engagement, gentlemen's rules if you will that these actors adhere too.

 

Just because one group can hack a nuclear power station in another country, doesn't mean they should go ahead and try to do it in times of peace so they could master their hacking skills further.

[DocM]

∆ a utopian dream, and they usually go down in flames after encountering human nature.

[ncoday]

On 12/12/2016 at 0:29 PM, theyarecomingforyou said:

I'm all for exposing the criminality and wrongdoing of politicians in both the DNC and RNC. But you can't have foreign powers meddling in US elections, influencing the outcomes. You can't say 'let's clean up politics' and then only target one of the parties responsible - the entire system needs overhauling.

Interesting how Obama & the US Gov't spent money trying to influence the recent Israeli elections:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/12/obama-admin-sent-taxpayer-money-oust-netanyahu/

[DocM]

Not just Israel. They sent "progressive" campaign teams to S. America and other locales.

[theyarecomingforyou]

23 hours ago, ctebah said:

I'm sure Obama has as much proof about this as they did about Iraq WMD. 

If the premise of that argument is that any individual or organisation that has made a mistake and/or lied cannot ever be trusted again then I can safely dismiss anything you say, knowing full well that at some point in your life you have lied and/or been wrong. Obviously any evidence or claim to have evidence should be treated with some degree of scepticism but to dismiss outright anything the FBI or CIA ever says is intellectually bankrupt. To reject any evidence if it is contrary to your personal beliefs is outright zealotry.

 

The bizarre thing is that you followed up that post with criticism of the US for influencing the elections of other nations—something no-one would deny—yet you refuse to accept even the possibility that Russia may have done the same. You have demonstrated yourself to have no objectivity.

[ctebah]

1 minute ago, theyarecomingforyou said:

If the premise of that argument is that any individual or organisation that has made a mistake and/or lied cannot ever be trusted again then I can safely dismiss anything you say, knowing full well that at some point in your life you have lied and/or been wrong. Obviously any evidence or claim to have evidence should be treated with some degree of scepticism but to dismiss outright anything the FBI or CIA ever says is intellectually bankrupt. To reject any evidence if it is contrary to your personal beliefs is outright zealotry.

Absolutely!  The governments have been lying to their people for DECADES, there is zero reason to believe anything they said.  It doesn't matter who the President is, the lies will continue.

 

Quote

The bizarre thing is that you followed up that post with criticism of the US for influencing the elections of other nations—something no-one would deny—yet you refuse to accept even the possibility that Russia may have done the same. You have demonstrated yourself to have no objectivity.

Nope.  Debating with assumptions makes you seem foolish, I would have thought you'd stop this by now.

 

If Russia did meddle in the recent US elections, and there is proof, then provide it...