Category Archives: Presidential campaign

Forced to Compromise? Media vs. Truth vs. Facts vs. Money

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We are angry at the media for either not reporting at all or only part of the story. Bill O’Reilly is famous for saying the ‘spin stops here’ but sadly….the spin never stops. The spin even happens in regular intimate conversations and debate where some real facts are spoken while other facts are negated.

So, get over the anger when it comes to the news. The reliability factor has shifted from that ‘drive-by-media’ to alternative media like PJ Media or Breitbart. Okay, cool right? Those outlets among so many others do in fact produce stories that are quite important and useful, deserving huge praise. But wait…not all is that glitter is gold reporting….what you say?

The truth is often painful but facts, truths and money still creates spin and the word ‘but’ comes up often overlooking that which should be held as sacrosanct.

Here is a set up question: Where did the term Lyin’N Ted come from? Okay…set that question aside for a moment as you read on….yikes right?

(This is a long read, so sit back and focus. Facts and truths and money matters, just like words matter.)

TheHill: In late January, Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon was tipped off about a story that he hoped would damage Ted Cruz.

Bannon, who this week became CEO of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was told that a radio advertisement would be landing in Iowa aimed at hurting Cruz with evangelical voters — the very constituency the senator was depending on to win the state’s caucuses on Feb.1.

The line of attack, which was being pushed by Cruz’s presidential rival Mike Huckabee, was that Cruz had donated only a small fraction of his income to his church, not enough to fulfill his tithing duties of 10 percent.
Bannon was excited by the story, stating that it could spell the end of Cruz’s candidacy. He told his reporters to chase the story hard, though their efforts turned up nothing new.

Bannon didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment from The Hill, but a spokeswoman for the conservative news sight downplayed any work Breitbart’s reporters did on the tithing story.

“With regards to your question on Ted Cruz: Breitbart did virtually zero reporting on this,” Breitbart spokeswoman Alexandra Preate said.

Preate would not comment further, however, and did not deny that Bannon was pushing reporters to pursue the storyline.

In the early stretch of the presidential campaign, Breitbart was seen as a staunch supporter of Cruz, with Bannon leading the charge. Coverage of the Texas senator was favorable, with Breitbart at one point getting an exclusive look at Cruz getting his children ready for bed.

But Breitbart’s allegiances shifted as Trump’s campaign caught fire.

The story of how that happened, which has never before been told in such detail, provides a vivid illustration of how Trump’s rise has changed the balance of power in the conservative media, and by extension, the entire Republican Party.

In Cruz’s corner

To report this account, The Hill spoke at length to 12 sources with intimate knowledge of Breitbart’s internal operations, including several former staffers who were upset with the company’s direction. Most refused to be identified by name and several talked entirely off the record, only to confirm details.

All of the sources agreed that Bannon was once enthusiastic about Cruz’s presidential candidacy.

In early 2014, a source who attended a gathering at Bannon’s Capitol Hill townhouse, known as the Breitbart “Embassy” among staff, said that Bannon was telling anybody who would listen that Cruz was the most hardcore conservative likely to run for president and a guy he thought could win.

“He didn’t outright say he was endorsing Cruz, but he made it clear that Cruz was his guy,” said the same source who was with Bannon that night.

A year later, Bannon’s opinion had changed.

The first strike against Cruz came in July 2014, when Cruz joined Bannon’s sworn enemy, the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, on a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border. Cruz’s staff described the trip as a “humanitarian” mission to help a church provide supplies to needy families.

Bannon thought the trip painted Cruz as soft on illegal immigration, and Breitbart ran a story titled, “Ted Cruz Joins Glenn Beck for ‘Soccer Balls and Teddy Bears’ Event.”

“Steve was still ranting about that trip six months later,” said a source who worked with Bannon at the time.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier declined to comment for this story.

The second strike against Cruz came in April 2015, when the senator signaled his support for the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and the fast-track legislation needed to push it through Congress.

Making matters worse, Cruz promoted his support for fast-track authority in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed with Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Bannon made clear to Breitbart staffers that he wanted to destroy Ryan’s political career and what he called his “globalist” agenda. Shortly after Ryan became Speaker last October, Bannon began instructing reporters to look for ways to take him down. That effort culminated earlier this month in an unsuccessful bid to unseat Ryan in his Wisconsin primary, with the challenger heavily promoted in Breitbart coverage.

Cruz ultimately walked back his support for trade promotion authority, voting against fast-track legislation and explaining his decision in an exclusive for Breitbart News. But that conciliatory gesture wasn’t enough to win back Bannon, or at least not enough to overcome his growing affection for Trump.

“Steve has always been basically an anti-trade guy,” said a second source who worked closely with Bannon at the time. “That’s one of the fissures with the Trump and Cruz support.

“When push comes to shove, Cruz is basically a free-trade guy, and part of the reason why he saw Cruz as the weaker second option, and why he was willing to go after Cruz, was because he didn’t trust that Cruz would hold the line on trade.”

Embracing Trump

Soon after the trade flap, Bannon concluded that Trump was his guy, sources who worked with him at the time assessed.

He saw the billionaire as the most effective tribune of Breitbart’s populist nationalist movement. Bannon and other senior editors at Breitbart also believed that Trump had all but stitched up the nomination.

Breitbart’s slow turn against Cruz was complicated by the fact that a major funder behind Cruz’s presidential campaign, New York hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, is also a major funder of Breitbart.

Several prominent Cruz allies registered their distress about Breitbart’s coverage to Mercer’s daughter Rebekah, asking her why she was supporting an outlet that was hurting her candidate, Cruz.

The Mercers, who never opposed Cruz and resolutely backed Bannon as being fair to the senator, eventually came around to Trump. They are now funding an anti-Hillary Clinton super-PAC and are increasingly influential figures in Trump’s orbit, as The Hill has previously reported. They were seen as influential players in Trump’s decision to hire Bannon as his campaign CEO.

When Breitbart’s coverage shifted toward Trump, some say the tone of Breitbart coverage about Cruz never became overly hostile.

“To be completely honest, I felt like Breitbart were more than fair to [the Cruz camp],” said the source defensive of Bannon.

“Breitbart had a standing offer to the Cruz folks that Breitbart would print anything they pitched,” the same source said. “Only problem is they didn’t pitch anything.”

But while Breitbart continued to publish stories favorable to Cruz, the website’s sympathies soon became clear, with pro-Trump coverage overtaking the site.

A directive went out to Breitbart staff over their internal Slack channel in mid-2015 that any stories involving Trump or Cruz, or conflicts between the two of them, needed to be approved by Bannon and editor-in-chief Alex Marlow.

The move was explained to staff as necessary to ensure that politically consequential stories were appropriately vetted, but several staff members said they felt that it was a means of tipping coverage in Trump’s favor.

On the attack

In January, When Trump began raising questions about Cruz’s Canadian birthplace and his eligibility to be president, Breitbart jumped on the storyline.

Bannon ultimately scored a concession out of the Cruz camp. When the Cruz campaign decided to release the birth certificate of the senator’s mother, it did so by giving it exclusively to Breitbart.

Another anti-Cruz storyline Breitbart pursued aggressively was what Trump called the “weak” and “pathetic” informal alliance between Cruz and John Kasich late in the primary season.

On April 25, Breitbart published seven stories about the alliance, which quickly fell apart.

The same source defending Bannon pointed out that Breitbart never supported the “birther” movement questioning President Obama’s birthplace. The source defended the coverage of Cruz’s citizenship and said that the Breitbart chairman simply wanted Cruz to explain the issue to voters.

The source also said Breitbart would’ve gotten fully behind Cruz or any other Republican had they won the nomination, in keeping with the philosophy of the site’s founder, the late Andrew Breitbart.

Caught in the middle

Three sources familiar with Breitbart’s internal operations said that Bannon didn’t want to have to choose between Cruz and Trump and found it an uncomfortable position to be in.

“Their hope was that they would get both sides together to fight the establishment,” one of these sources, who no longer works at Breitbart, said. “So they were hedging their bets, but it was clear when push came to shove they would side with Trump.”

By late 2015, sources working at Breitbart — both those sympathetic and hostile to his leadership — believed that Bannon was privately all-in for Trump but trying at the same time to keep on good terms with the other candidates in case Trump didn’t win.

“As general chairman of Breitbart, he might as well have been general chairman of Trump for president,” said Kurt Bardella, Breitbart’s former spokesman who resigned because he was upset with the company’s direction.

Bardella, who has publicly criticized Breitbart and Bannon, was in constant contact with Bannon for two years. He said it was “almost like [Bannon was] placing bets” during the primaries.

“You have some chips on some numbers,” Bardella said. “They kind of flirted with Rand Paul; they flirted with Ted Cruz.

“I think Steve kind of astutely saw that there was something more than a novelty of Donald Trump being temporary and began moving his chips into the Trump side of the betting table.”

Bannon’s underlings felt that he’d hitched his wagon to Trump by the time of the first Fox News debate in August — the one where Trump had a famous confrontation with co-moderator Megyn Kelly.

And by January 2016, when Cruz stopped praising Trump and started attacking him as a liberal, Bannon became increasingly enraged and instructed his reporters to hammer Cruz.

Throughout this period, Breitbart staff made no secrets of their close ties to the Trump campaign.

Bannon kept colleagues abreast of his near constant contact with Trump and Corey Lewandowski, who was then Trump’s campaign manager.

Breitbart’s Washington political editor, Matthew Boyle, had long since established himself as one of Trump’s favorite reporters. That dynamic was on display last summer when, according to The Washington Post, “Boyle, 28, asked Trump about his rising poll numbers … [and] Trump broke into a broad smile and high-fived the young journalist in front of startled onlookers in the post-debate spin room.”

A source who observed several of Boyle’s interactions with Trump staff said that on the campaign trail, Boyle was “actively giving consulting advice to the Trump campaign staffers and strategizing with them while he was reporting on the primary.”

Boyle declined to comment.

Another chance for Cruz?

Since refusing to endorse Trump in the most aggressive way possible — in a speech at the Republican National Convention that got him booed from the stage — Cruz has been back at work in the Senate.

**** Yes of course there is more….

As this site has posted more than once regarding Ukraine, Paul Manafort and John Podesta, how and why did this all become important? Something like the old KGB model, money and influence. Rather like that ‘drive-by-media’ thing right? Yes.

Exclusive: How Ukraine Wooed Conservative Websites

Passion or payola? A source describes being offered $500 for an article, and a consultant doesn’t deny payments.

Hat tip to Rosie at BuzzFeed: WASHINGTON — Several conservative bloggers repeated talking points given to them by a proxy group for the Ukrainian government — and at least one writer was paid by a representative of the Ukrainian group, according to documents and emails obtained by BuzzFeed.

The Ukrainian campaign began in the run-up to high-stakes Ukrainian parliamentary elections last year, and sought to convince skeptical American conservatives that the pro-Russian Party of Regions, led by President Viktor Yanukovych, deserved American support. During that period, articles echoing Ukrainian government talking points appeared on leading conservative online outlets, including RedState, Breitbart, and Pajamas Media.

The emails and documents, which include prepackaged quotes from election officials and talking points that some writers copied nearly word-for-word, offer a glimpse into how foreign governments dodge tight Justice Department regulations on foreign propaganda to covertly lobby in the United States: The payments were routed through a front group in Belgium to an American consultant, who has urged writers not to cooperate with a reporter investigating the campaign.

The model resembles a recent stealth campaign in which bloggers were paid by the Malaysian government to write favorable stories, though the Ukraine campaign appears to have involved smaller sums of money.

One of the writers who participated in the campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and because of lingering qualms about the arrangement, they said, described being offered $500 for a blog post praising Ukraine’s ruling Party of Regions. The payment was arranged by George Scoville, a libertarian media strategist, and Scoville’s name was on the check, the source said.

An email from October 26, 2012 shows Scoville inviting writers to join a conference with Mikhail Okhendovskyy of Ukraine’s Central Election Commission. The call was organized by the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, a Brussels-based group headed by Leonid Khazara, a former senior member of parliament from the pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. According to its website, it is a “a unique ‘Modern Ukraine’ organisation based in Brussels and operating internationally as an advocate for enhancing EU-Ukraine relations.”

In practical terms, the ECFMU exists to promote Yanukovych and the party — but its nominal independence means that its representatives in Washington do not need to register as foreign agents and make the extensive disclosures required under that program. Instead, the only evidence of its activity comes in the far more relaxed domestic lobbying disclosure law, which shows that the Brussels-based group employs two well-connected Washington lobbying firms, The Podesta Group and Mercury/Clark and Weinstock.

One email from October 29, the day after the election, shows Scoville sending out documents full of exit poll results and prepackaged statements from election observers.

“I just wanted to share the attached documents with you in case you were interested,” Scoville writes. “You’re under no obligation to write anything, but I wanted you to have this info in case you were feeling nostalgic and/or entrepreneurial :)”.

“But in all seriousness, if you could spend a few minutes today tweeting about the results using #ukrainevotes and promoting some of the pieces you wrote, that would be very helpful to us,” Scoville writes.

His next email, sent five minutes later, consists of a list of “talking points that are mostly tweetable — some may need to be shortened.” These include “Ukraine has demonstrated its commitment to democracy and passed the test put forth by the international community of holding transparent elections” and “The victory for the Party of Regions is a victory for the people, for Ukraine and for democracy.”

Yanukovych’s party has been criticized for reverting to Soviet-style tactics such as jailing opposition figures including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Europe’s human rights court ruled earlier this year that Tymoshenko’s pre-trial imprisonment on charges of illegally making a gas deal with Russia was “arbitrary,” and the U.S. and European Union have called for her release.

The source who provided BuzzFeed with the emails and documents said that other writers involved in the Scoville campaign had included Breeanne Howe of RedState and Warner Todd Huston, a freelance conservative writer. The source estimated that around five or six writers were on the October 26 conference call.

Writers involved in the campaign had been individually warned by Scoville not to talk to BuzzFeed during the reporting of a story on this subject that appeared in March, and to deny any payment if asked, according to the source.

Howe denied having accepted payment for her pro-Party of Regions blog posts published in October when asked about it in March. “I can’t speak for anyone else that wrote on the subject, I can assure you that my employment at RedState is an unpaid labor of love and I was absolutely not employed by or on the payroll for the Ukranian gov’t (or any other gov’t for that matter),” she said at the time.

But her posts hew closely to talking points issued by Scoville, sometimes nearly verbatim.

A document titled “BACKGROUND INFO FOR MESSAGING (NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION)” includes the following: “The current Ukrainian government is also reforming its energy sector to ensure efficient use of its resources and preserve its important role as an energy corridor between the Caspian Basin and Europe — a corridor that is not subject to Russian interference.”

On October 8, Howe wrote: “Ukraine actually has a large reserve of natural gas and serves as an energy corridor between the Caspian Basin and Europe. A corridor which, incidentally, is not subject to Russian interference.”

Howe also used some of the quotes from election observers that were provided in an email attachment from Scoville in a post after the election on October 29 about “Ukraine Election Success.” She did not respond to requests for comment from BuzzFeed this week.

Warner Todd Huston was one of the more prolific of the writers tasked with writing pro-Yanukovych stories. He posted Ukraine content on Family Security Matters, a website that used to be run by the Center for Security Policy, anti-Muslim pundit Frank Gaffney’s think tank. Other posts appeared on small sites like Right Wing News, ChicagoNow’s Publius Forum, and Canada Free Press.

In a post titled “Russia’s Constant Interference in Ukraine,” Huston wrote that the imprisonment of Tymoshenko was justified.

“Too many in the west imagine that she was arrested by a Ukraine backsliding into a Soviet-styled police state where all opposition leaders are squelched,” Huston wrote. “This, however, just isn’t the case.” Huston called Tymoshenko “one of Putin’s best assets in the former Soviet-satellite nation.”

At the end of the talking point sheet provided for writers, there is a note addressing the Tymoshenko jailing:

NOTE: There is also a controversy surrounding the former Prime Minister of Ukraine (Tymoshenko) who has been convicted and jailed on corruption charges. It is a complex issue — she definitely was a Putin crony and there is an independent investigation going on now — but this is more about Ukraine’s elections, its geopolitical importance and encouraging the current (and likely next) Ukrainian
administration. If you have questions about the former PM, let me know.

Huston told BuzzFeed that he hadn’t been on the conference call but that he knew Scoville and had often received pitches from him.

“Of course, I see George whenever I’ve gone to a conference in D.C.,” Huston said.

“I got some press release-like emails from George back then like I do many other issues (like all the union stuff I have written) but I don’t get money for all those type of pitches,” Huston said. “I am always looking for stuff to write and ask organizations for their stuff so I can see if it catches my interest.”

Huston didn’t directly deny being paid by Scoville.

“I would not be open to say who pays me and who doesn’t,” he said.

Other writers who were producing incongruous pro-Party of Regions stories at the time include Ben Shapiro of Breitbart and Seton Motley, a conservative blogger.

One of Shapiro’s Ukraine posts, “Hillary Sides With Anti-Semitic Ukrainian Opposition,” is nearly identical to a post that appeared four days later in a different publication under Huston’s byline: “Clinton Dept. of State Backing the Anti-Semitism Party in Ukraine?”

Shapiro said he hadn’t been paid by anyone other than his employers to do the posts.

Scoville “was not the one pitching me as far as I recall,” Shapiro said.

Motley wrote a post for Human Events about Ukraine’s gas dealings with Russia on October 15, and one for Pajamas Media on October 5 titled “Ukraine is Leading West — Not Bowing East” that cites most of the statistics about Ukraine’s economy contained in the talking points provided by Scoville.

“I wasn’t on whatever emails you have, I wasn’t on them,” Motley said when reached by BuzzFeed. “I wasn’t paid anything by George Scoville.”

After multiple requests for comment, Scoville did not deny that he had paid writers to place stories having to do with Ukraine. He wouldn’t elaborate further, nor would he detail his relationship with the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine.

“Thanks for reaching out. I also received your voicemail,” Scoville said in an email. “I don’t discuss either my clients or the specifics of my project work with media.”

Description of European Centre for a Modern Ukraine call

Okhendovskyy Telebriefing by Rosie Gray on Scribd

Text of talking points sent from Scoville to bloggers

BACKGROUND INFO FOR MESSAGING (NOT FOR PUBLIC DISTRIBUTION)

Pivoting Towards the E.U. – Ukraine’s Economic Future

Ukraine is fully committed to integration into the E.U. – this is one of the priorities of the current administration. Furthermore, Ukraine is ready to undertake the tough measures needed to implement the Association Agreement, which is the next step in the E.U. ascension process.

As part of this effort, Ukrainian authorities are undertaking an effort to transform Ukraine into a more transparent market economy in line with European standards. And results are already apparent: despite the global economic slowdown, Ukraine’s economy grew by 4.2% in 2010 and 5.2% in 2011 with exports growing 37% in 2011.

These gains will be further locked in by the Deep and Comprehensive FTA (DCFTA) with the E.U. initialled in March 2012. The DCFTA, which is still pending is final signing and ratification, is a major step in reinforcing Ukraine’s ties with the E.U. and building on an already strong trading relationship. In 2010, the E.U. exported to Ukraine €17.3 billion worth of goods, with Ukraine’s exports to the E.U. worth €11.4 billion.

The current Ukrainian government is also reforming its energy sector to ensure efficient use of its resources and preserve its important role as an energy corridor between the Caspian Basin and Europe – a corridor that is not subject to Russian interference. As a sign of Ukraine’s commitment to Western values, Ukraine is
opening the country to international election observers this October as it elects a new parliament.

Russia and Geopolitics

Tymoshenko, both before and during her tenure as Prime Minister, fostered close relationships with Russian officials, most notably President Putin. These relationships led directly to Tymoshenko unilaterally signing a long-term gas contract on behalf of Ukraine’s state owned gas company that leaves Ukraine bound to buy Russian natural gas at above market rates. The deal was explicitly opposed by
Viktor Yushchenko, the former Ukrainian President that ushered in the Orange Revolution alongside Tymoshenko.

President Putin remains a vocal ally of Tymoshenko and recently told reporters, “We never sign contracts contradicting the laws of the contract partner country, in this case Ukraine.” He has previously questioned her imprisonment.

President Putin is also actively trying to bring Ukraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence by pushing the country to join its Customs Union, designed to rival the EU. The EU Association Agreement, which the Ukraine is actively pursing, is seen as
incompatible with Customs Union membership and Ukraine has demonstrated a clear preference to joining Europe. The EU cannot turn its back on Ukraine at this pivotal moment; this is an opportunity to firmly bring Ukraine into the Western order, an outcome that is favoured by both Ukraine and the West.

Ukraine has a longstanding and productive relationship with NATO and supports the mission in Afghanistan in addition to conducting key training exercises with NATO forces. [NOTE: Prior to Yanukovych’s Presidency, Ukraine was considering joining NATO. Negotiations began with the 1997 Charter on a Distinctive Partnership, which established the NATO-Ukraine Commission. Ukraine’s ambitions ended in 2010 when President Yanukovych submitted a law for ratification that bans the
country from joining military alliances.]

Reform of the Judicial System

Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s Parliament, recently adopted significant reforms to its judicial system that will replace its Soviet-era Criminal Procedure Code (CPC). Proposed by Ukraine’s President, the new CPC equalizes the powers of defence and prosecution lawyers in addition to numerous other reforms that bring Ukraine’s justice system in line with European standards.

Ukraine’s current government is the first to take on the country’s long-standing problem with corruption, which was bad under Soviet rule before worsening in the period following independence. A recent report by the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption notes the country’s recent moves to combat the problem by establishing liability for corrupt actions and the introduction of liability for bribery, trading in influence and other corrupt actions. These reforms are part of a long-term effort to undergo judicial reform within the framework of European integration while also strengthening Ukraine’s democratic society.

NOTE: There is also a controversy surrounding the former Prime Minister of Ukraine (Tymoshenko) who has been convicted and jailed on corruption charges. It is a complex issue — she definitely was a Putin crony and there is an independent investigation going on now — but this is more about Ukraine’s elections, its geopolitical importance and encouraging the current (and likely next) Ukrainian
administration. If you have questions about the former PM, let me know.

Exit polls provided to bloggers

UkraineElections.102812.ExitPolls by Rosie Gray on Scribd

Trump’s Campaign Chair, Manafort with Podesta and Fraud

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More continues to bubble to the surface with regard to Paul Manafort and Ukraine. For context, the Podesta Group is a functioning liberal organization run by two brothers. One, John Podesta has both worked for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. John is presently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman. The collusion advances and has history.

Image result for paul manafort ukraine russia

It is also important to add in two related items:

  1. RNC platform included full military and diplomatic support for Ukraine and it was the Trump campaign that removed this party plank.
  2. Two weeks ago, Ukraine went on a full war footing against the aggression and insurgency of Russia.
  3. Gen. Flynn, Trump’s military advisor dismisses Russian/Ukraine connections

Related reading: Ukraine prosecutor confirms Paul Manafort’s name appears in secret cash ledger

Trump advisers waged covert influence campaign

WASHINGTON (AP) — A firm run by Donald Trump’s campaign chairman directly orchestrated a covert Washington lobbying operation on behalf of Ukraine’s ruling political party, attempting to sway American public opinion in favor of the country’s pro-Russian government, emails obtained by The Associated Press show. Paul Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, never disclosed their work as foreign agents as required under federal law.

The lobbying included attempts to gain positive press coverage of Ukrainian officials in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press. Another goal: undercutting American public sympathy for the imprisoned rival of Ukraine’s then-president. At the time, European and American leaders were pressuring Ukraine to free her.

Gates personally directed the work of two prominent Washington lobbying firms in the matter, the emails show. He worked for Manafort’s political consulting firm at the time.

Manafort and Gates’ activities carry outsized importance, since they have steered Trump’s campaign since April. The pair also played a formative role building out Trump’s campaign operation after pushing out an early rival. Trump shook up his campaign’s organization again this week, but Manafort and Gates retain their titles and much of their influence. The new disclosures about their work come as Trump faces criticism for his friendly overtures to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump said Thursday night that, if elected, he will ask senior officials in his administration not to accept speaking fees, for five years after leaving office, from corporations that lobby “or from any entity tied to a foreign government.” He said it was among his efforts to “restore honor to government.”

Manafort and Gates have previously said they were not doing work that required them to register as foreign agents. Neither commented when reached by the AP on Thursday.

The emails show Gates personally directed two Washington lobbying firms, Mercury LLC and the Podesta Group Inc., between 2012 and 2014 to set up meetings between a top Ukrainian official and senators and congressmen on influential committees involving Ukrainian interests. Gates noted in the emails that the official, Ukraine’s foreign minister, did not want to use his own embassy in the United States to help coordinate the visits.

Gates also directed the firms to gather information in the U.S. on a rival lobbying operation, including a review of its public lobbying disclosures, to determine who was behind that effort, the emails show.

And Gates directed efforts to undercut sympathy for Yulia Tymoshenko, an imprisoned rival of then-President Viktor Yanukovych. The Ukrainian leader eventually fled the country in February 2014 during a popular revolt prompted in part by his government’s crackdown on protesters and close ties to Russia.

The emails do not describe details about the role of Manafort, who was Gates’ boss at the firm, DMP International LLC. Current and former employees at Mercury and the Podesta Group, some of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they are subject to non-disclosure agreements, told the AP that Manafort oversaw the lobbying efforts and spoke by phone about them. Gates was directing actions and seeking information during the project using an email address at DMP International, which he still uses.

Manafort did not return phone and email messages Thursday from the AP to discuss the project. After the AP reported earlier this week that Manafort helped the Ukrainian political party secretly route at least $2.2 million to the two Washington lobbying firms, Manafort told Yahoo News that the AP’s account was wrong. “I was not involved in any payment plans,” Manafort said.

Gates said Thursday he was busy with Trump campaign focus groups and promised to review the AP’s questions in writing, then did not respond.

Manafort also said in a statement earlier this week that he never performed work for the governments of Ukraine or Russia. Gates previously told the AP, “At no time did our firm or members provide any direct lobbying support.”

Under the U.S. Foreign Agents Registration Act, people who lobby on behalf of foreign political leaders or political parties must provide detailed reports about their actions to the Justice Department. A violation is a felony and can result in up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.

The emails illustrate how Gates worked with Mercury and the Podesta Group on behalf of Ukrainian political leaders. None of the firms, nor Manafort or Gates, disclosed their work to the Justice Department counterespionage division responsible for tracking the lobbying of foreign governments.

“There is no question that Gates and Manafort should have registered along with the lobbying firms,” said Joseph Sandler of Sandler Reiff Lamb Rosenstein & Birkenstock, a Democratic-leaning Washington law firm that advises Republican and Democratic lobbyists.

Manafort and Gates have said that they did not disclose their activities to the Justice Department because they did not oversee lobbying efforts and merely introduced the Washington firms to a Brussels-based nonprofit, the European Center for a Modern Ukraine, which they said ran the project. The center paid Mercury and the Podesta Group a combined $2.2 million over roughly two years.

The emails appear to contradict the assertion that the nonprofit’s lobbying campaign operated independently from Manafort’s firm.

In papers filed in the U.S. Senate, Mercury and the Podesta Group listed the European nonprofit as an independent, nonpolitical client. The firms said the center stated in writing that it was not aligned with any foreign political entity.

The 1938 U.S. foreign agents law is intended to track efforts of foreign government’s unofficial operatives in the United States.

Political consultants are generally leery of registering under it, because their reputations can suffer once they are on record as accepting money to advocate the interests of foreign governments — especially if those interests conflict with America’s. Moreover, registering under the law would have required Gates, Manafort or the lobbying firms to disclose the specifics of their lobbying work and their efforts to sway public opinion through media outreach.

Ina Kirsch, who runs the European nonprofit, has said the group’s work was independent and its goal was to bring Ukraine into the fold of Europe. The center has declined for years to reveal specific sources of its funding.

Gates confirmed to the AP previously that he was working for Ukraine’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, at the time.

The chairman of the Podesta Group, Tony Podesta — the brother of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — said his firm believed Gates was working for the nonprofit. Podesta said he was unaware of the firm’s work for the Ukraine’s Party of Regions, led by Yanukovych. On Thursday, his firm said it had nothing new to add.

Mercury’s founder, Vin Weber, an influential Republican and former congressman, told the AP that his firm was aware of Manafort’s and Gates’ affiliation with Ukraine’s political party and said Gates never participated in Mercury’s lobbying work. Weber did not respond to questions after the AP said it had obtained emails contradicting this.

 

The Russians Hacked the NSA? Ah…What?

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This is bad bad bad….and panic has struck Washington DC ….payment is to be in Bitcoins…

Graphics of files below courtesy of Arstechnica.

    

More here in further detail.

*****

Most outside experts who examined the posts, by a group calling itself the “Shadow Brokers,” said they contained what appeared to be genuine samples of the code — though somewhat outdated — used in the production of the NSA’s custom-built malware. Most of the code was designed to break through network firewalls and get inside the computer systems of competitors like Russia, China and Iran. That, in turn, allows the NSA to place “implants” in the system, which can lurk unseen for years and be used to monitor network traffic or enable a debilitating computer attack.  More here.

NSA and the No Good, Very Bad Monday

LawFare: Monday was a tough day for those in the business of computer espionage. Russia, still using the alias Guccifer2.0, dumped even more DNC documents. And on Twitter, Mikko Hypponen noted an announcement on Github that had gone overlooked for two days, a group is hosting an auction for code from the “Equation Group,” which is more commonly known as the NSA. The auctioneer’s pitch is simple, brutal, and to the point:

How much you pay for enemies cyber weapons? Not malware you find in networks. Both sides, RAT + LP, full state sponsor tool set? We find cyber weapons made by creators of stuxnet, duqu, flame. Kaspersky calls Equation Group. We follow Equation Group traffic. We find Equation Group source range. We hack Equation Group. We find many many Equation Group cyber weapons. You see pictures. We give you some Equation Group files free, you see. This is good proof no? You enjoy!!! You break many things. You find many intrusions. You write many words. But not all, we are auction the best files.

This release included two encrypted files, and the password to one was provided as proof while the other remains encrypted. The attackers claim that they will provide the password to the second file to the winner of a Bitcoin auction.

The public auction part is nonsense. Despite prevailing misconceptions on cryptocurrency, Bitcoin’s innate traceability means that no one could really expect to launder even $1M out of a high profile Bitcoin wallet like this one without risking detection, let alone the $500M being requested for a full public release. The auction is the equivalent of a criminal asking to be paid in new, marked, sequential bills. Because the actors here are certainly not amateurs, the auction is presumably a bit of “Doctor Evil” theater—the only bids will be $20 investments from Twitter jokesters.

But the proof itself appears to be very real. The proof file is 134 MB of data compressed, expanding out to a 301 MB archive. This archive appears to contain a large fraction of the NSA’s implant framework for firewalls, including what appears to be several versions of different implants, server side utility scripts, and eight apparent exploits for a variety of targets.

The exploits themselves appear to target Fortinet, Cisco, Shaanxi Networkcloud Information Technology (sxnc.com.cn) Firewalls, and similar network security systems. I will leave it to others to analyze the reliability, versions supported, and other details. But nothing I’ve found in either the exploits or elsewhere is newer than 2013.

Because of the sheer volume and quality, it is overwhelmingly likely that this data is authentic. And it does not appear to be information taken from compromised targets. Instead, the exploits, binaries with help strings, server configuration scripts, 5 separate versions of one implant framework, and all sort of other features indicate that this is analyst-side code—the kind that probably never leaves the NSA.

It is also unlikely that this data is from the Snowden cache. Those documents focused on PowerPoint slides and shared data, not detailed exploits. Besides NSA, the only plausible candidate for ownership is GCHQ—and the implications of stealing Top Secret data from GCHQ and modifying it to frame the NSA would themselves be startling.

All this is to say that there is relatively high confidence that these files contain genuine NSA material.

From an operational standpoint, this is not a catastrophic leak. Nothing here reveals some special “NSA magic.” Instead, this is evidence of good craftsmanship in a widely modular framework designed for ease of use. The immediate consequence is probably a lot of hours of work down the drain.

But the big picture is a far scarier one. Somebody managed to steal 301 MB of data from a TS//SCI system at some point between 2013 and today. Possibly, even probably, it occurred in 2013. But the theft also could have occurred yesterday with a simple utility run to scrub all newer documents. Relying on the file timestamps—which are easy to modify—the most likely date of acquisition was June 11, 2013 (see Update, however). That is two weeks after Snowden fled to Hong Kong and six days after the first Guardian publication. That would make sense, since in the immediate response to the leaks, as the NSA furiously ran down possible sources, it may have accidentally or deliberately eliminated this adversary’s access.

As with other recent cyber conflicts, the  espionage aspect is troubling but not entirely new. It’s very, very bad that someone was able to go rummaging through a TS//SCI system—or even an unclassified Internet staging system where the NSA operator unwisely uploaded all this data—and to steal 300 MB of data. But whoever stole this data now wants the world to know—and that has much graver implications. The list of suspects is short: Russia or China. And in the context of the recent conflict between the US and Russia over election interference, safe money is on the former.

Right now, I’d imagine that the folks at NSA are having rather unpleasant conversations about what the other encrypted file might contain, and what other secrets this attacker may have gained access to. Even if they were aware of the attack that resulted in this leak, there’s no way of knowing what is in the other archive. Is there evidence of another non-Snowden insider who went silent three years ago? Was a TS//SCI system remotely compromised? Was there some kind of massive screw-up at an agency which prides itself on world class OPSEC? Some combination of the three?

And—most chillingly—what else might be released before this war of leaks is over?

 

Update:  Thanks to @botherder for pointing out that a couple files have a newer date:  One file has a date of June 17th, 2013; another has a date of July 5th, 2013; three setup strips are dated September 4th, 2013; and two have dates of October 18th 2013.  One of those files (which I’m currently investigating) is the database of allocated Ethernet MAC addresses, which may be able to identify a later minimum date of compromise.  If the latter date of October 18th, 2013 is correct, this is even more worrysome, as this suggests that the compromise happened four months after the initial Snowden revelations—a period of time when the NSA’s systems should have been the most secure.

Update 2: Looking at the dates again, it now does seem somewhat likely that this was data copied on June 11th, 2013 with a few updates with a compromise after October 18th.  This does make it more likely that this was taken from a set of files deliberately moved onto a system on the Internet used for attacking others.  To my mind, this is actually an even scarier possibility than the NSA internal system compromise: This scenario would have the NSA, after the Snowden revelations, practicing some incredibly awful operational security.  Why should the NSA include five different versions of the same implant on a system used to attack other systems on the Internet?  Let alone implants which still have all the debugging strings, internal function names, and absolutely no obfuscation?

Update 3: Kaspersky confirms that the particular use of RC6 matches the unique design present in other Equation Group malcode.  XORcat apparently confirmed that the Cisco exploit works and, due to the versions it can attack, was a zero day at the time.  This exploit would generally work to take over a firewall from the inside of a target network since it did require limited access that is almost always blocked from the outside.

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In part from the WashingtonPost:

A cache of hacking tools with code names such as Epicbanana, Buzzdirection and Egregiousblunder appeared mysteriously online over the weekend, setting the security world abuzz with speculation over whether the material was legitimate.

The file appeared to be real, according to former NSA personnel who worked in the agency’s hacking division, known as Tailored Access Operations (TAO).

“Without a doubt, they’re the keys to the kingdom,” said one former TAO employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations. “The stuff you’re talking about would undermine the security of a lot of major government and corporate networks both here and abroad.”

Said a second former TAO hacker who saw the file: “From what I saw, there was no doubt in my mind that it was legitimate.”

“Faking this information would be monumentally difficult, there is just such a sheer volume of meaningful stuff,” Nicholas Weaver, a computer security researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an interview. “Much of this code should never leave the NSA.”

The tools were posted by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers using file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent and DropBox.

At the same time, other spy services, like Russia’s, are doing the same thing to the United States.

It is not unprecedented for a TAO operator to accidentally upload a large file of tools to a redirector, one of the former employees said. “What’s unprecedented is to not realize you made a mistake,” he said. “You would recognize, ‘Oops, I uploaded that set’ and delete it.”

Critics of the NSA have suspected that the agency, when it discovers a software vulnerability, frequently does not disclose it, thereby putting at risk the cybersecurity of anyone using that product. The file disclosure shows why it’s important to tell software-makers when flaws are detected, rather than keeping them secret, one of the former agency employees said, because now the information is public, available for anyone to employ to hack widely used Internet infrastructure. Read the full article here.

Private Contractors Left without Escape Plan in Afghanistan

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The next Benghazi? State Department leaves contractors in Afghanistan without escape plan

Circa: The concerns are heightened by the fact that many of those civilians doing the security and nation-building work of the U.S. government hold sensitive security clearances, making them an attractive target for the enemy.

And the situation could become even more precarious after the U.S. military in Afghanistan draws down to just 8,400 troops by year’s end.

“It’s not just a political nightmare for somebody, it’s people’s lives at stake,” said Kevin Ofchus, head of Georgia-based firm Host Nations Perspectives Southwest Asia (HNPSWA) that has security contracts in Afghanistan.

The current situation

“The State Department says there’s a lack of infrastructure to support an emergency response after we’ve spent 15 years and billions of dollars on infrastructure,” he added.

Ofchus’s company is a member of the State Department’s Overseas Security Advisory Committee, and it chairs the Crisis Management Advisory Subcommittee in Kabul, which advises companies about security working in hot-zones.

And his sentiments are widely shared by a dozen other federal contractors in theater interviewed by Circa, some of whom would only talk on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisal from Washington.

“I was told ‘don’t bother going to Kabul, grab your weapon and fight your way through until you can reach an aircraft’ or whatever,” said one contractor working in Afghanistan, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I don’t think any of us count on State Department to have their shit together. I’ve never seen, heard or prepared for any evacuation plan.”

— -Anonymous contractor

So is there a plan?

State Department officials told Circa that there is an evacuation plan, but they could not release any details about it because it was classified.

Mike Warren, a security director for the USAID-backed Mining Investment and Development for Afghanistan Sustainability Project, known as MIDAS, says he believes State has a very remedial plan but it fails on almost every security protocol.

“The Department of State, in close coordination with the Department of Defense, has a crisis response plan for Afghanistan that encompasses civilians and contractors. U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, in close coordination with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, maintains a classified Non-Combatant Evacuation Operations plan to support the chief of mission,” the department wrote in an email.

“I know the U.S. Embassy was working on a plan, but it’s a shell of what they need,” Warren said in a phone interview from Kabul. “There appears to be a lack of coordinated effort between the U.S. Embassy and the American companies and personnel here in Afghanistan.”

“I know the U.S. Embassy was working on a plan, but it’s a shell of what they need.”

— Mike Warren, security director for MIDAS

Circa obtained a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the State Department and Department of Defense governing the protection and evacuation of U.S. citizens and nationals from threatened areas overseas. The document specifically outlines the duties and requirements of the various agencies.

The Secretary of State “will prepare the plans for the protection and evacuation of all U.S. citizens and nationals and designated other persons abroad, including the Department of Defense (non-combatants).” More terrifying details here from Circa.

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In part: Now, as President Obama prepares to hand off combat operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere, to his successor, he’s also bequeathing a way of war that relies on large numbers of guns-for-hire while, at least formally, restricting the number of American “troops” sent overseas. Since 2009, the ratio of contractors to troops in war zones has increased from 1 to 1 to about 3 to 1.

Private military contractors perform tasks once thought to be inherently governmental, such as raising foreign armies, conducting intelligence analysis and trigger-pulling. During the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, they constituted about 15 percent of all contractors. But don’t let the numbers fool you. Their failures have an outsized impact on U.S. strategy. When a squad of Blackwater contractors killed 17 civilians at a Bagdad traffic circle in 2007, it provoked a firestorm in Iraq and at home, marking one of the nadirs of that war.

Contractors also encourage mission creep, because contractors don’t count as “boots on the ground.” Congress does not consider them to be troops, and therefore contractors do not count again troop-level caps in places like Iraq. The U.S. government does not track contractor numbers in war zones. As a result, the government can put more people on the ground than it reports to the American people, encouraging mission creep and rendering contractors virtually invisible.

For decades now, the centrality of contracting in American warfare—both on the battlefield and in support of those on the battlefield—has been growing. During World War II, about 10 percent of America’s armed forces were contracted. During the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, that proportion leapt to 50 percent. This big number signals a disturbing trend: the United States has developed a dependency on the private sector to wage war, a strategic vulnerability. Today, America can no longer go to war without the private sector. More here from DefenseOne.

That $1.3 Billion to Iran was Paid, How? Classified…

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How was it delivered? Classified. How do you put $1.3 billion on pallets and shrink wrap it and get it to Iran? Classified. We thought the $400 million was for ransom but now it appears it was ALL of it, $1.7 billion and Iran along with Russia coupled with the Iranian militia and Hezbollah will enjoy it all.

Related reading: United States is Buying Nuclear Material from Iran

US paid Iran $1.3 billion in cash to settle old dispute

NYP: WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s $400 million payoff to Iran was followed by a second transfer of $1.3 billion, it was reported Tuesday.

President Obama took considerable flak for the first payment, which coincided with the release in January of four Americans being held by Tehran.

Critics charged that the move smacked of ransom, which the US has pledged never to pay.

The $400 million was the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement with Iran to resolve a dispute over a failed arms deal signed before the 1979 fall of the shah.

But there was no word about what happened to the rest of the debt — $1.3 billion.

On Tuesday, The Weekly Standard reported that the second payment was also quietly delivered.

Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs Julia Frifield sent a letter to Congress on March 17, 2016, stating, “Iran received the balance of $400 million in the Trust Fund as well as roughly $1.3 billion representing a compromise on the interest,” according to the magazine.

This payment was likely made in cash, since the US has no banking relationship with Tehran.

Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran in an unmarked cargo plane to cover the first $400 million.

“The reason that we had to give them cash is precisely because we are so strict in maintaining sanctions — and we don’t have a banking relationship with Iran — that we couldn’t send them a check,” Obama said in an Aug. 4 press conference.

Although he insisted there was no connection to the hostages, one of them described waiting for “another plane” to land before being freed from Iran.

“I just remember the night at the airport sitting for hours and hours there, and I asked police, ‘Why are you not letting us go?’” former hostage Pastor Saeed Abedini told Fox Business.

“He said, ‘We are waiting for another plane, so if that plane doesn’t come, we never let [you] go.’”

In part from Reuters:

The White House announced on Jan. 17, a day after the prisoner exchange, it was releasing $400 million in funds frozen since 1981, plus $1.3 billion in interest owed to Iran. The remaining interest has since been fully paid from the U.S. Treasury-administered Judgment Fund, according to a U.S. official.

The funds were part of a trust fund Iran used before its 1979 Islamic Revolution to buy U.S. military equipment that was tied up for decades in litigation at the tribunal.

The Treasury Judgment Fund?

The Judgment Fund was established to pay court judgments and Justice Department compromise settlements of actual or imminent lawsuits against the government.

It is administered by the Judgment Fund Branch, which is a part of the United States Department of the Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service. The Judgment Fund Internet Claims System (JFICS) is the application used to process all Judgment Fund claims.

The Judgment Fund is a permanent, indefinite appropriation available to pay judicially and administratively ordered monetary awards against the United States. The Judgment Fund is also available to pay amounts owed under compromise agreements negotiated by the U.S. Department of Justice in settlement of claims arising under actual or imminent litigation, if a judgment on the merits would be payable from the Judgment Fund. The statutory authority for the Judgment Fund is 31 U.S.C. 1304.

If funds for paying an award are otherwise provided for in the appropriations of the defendant agency, the Judgment Fund may not pay an award. A federal agency may request that payment of an award be made on its behalf from the Judgment Fund only in those instances where funds are not legally available to pay the award from the agency’s own appropriations.

Amounts paid vary significantly from year-to-year. Federal agencies are not required to reimburse the Judgment Fund except when cases are filed under the Contract Disputes Act (CDA) or the No FEAR Act (Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act).