Novichok is a series of nerve agent weapons developed as part of a secret Soviet program and continued once the Soviet Union collapsed.
A Novichok nerve agent was used to poison the former Russian double agent Sergey Skripal in the English town of Salisbury in 2018. Also in 2018, British counterterrorism officials on Wednesday confirmed that two people found unconscious near the same site where a former Russian spy and his daughter were poisoned earlier this year were exposed to the same nerve agent, novichok, The Guardian reported.
British nationals Dawn Sturgess, 44, from Salisbury, and Charlie Rowley, 45, of Amesbury, were the victims reported by Scotland Yard.
The weapons were developed under a program known as “Foliant,” according to Mirzayanov. In the 1990s, he had been tasked with ensuring the secrecy of Russia’s chemical weapons program, but he decided to go public because he believed the program violated the country’s commitment to the Chemical Weapons Convention that it had signed along with the United States. More here.
NPR: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, hospitalized in Berlin for several weeks after being poisoned, has been taken out of his medically induced coma.
In this August photo, Alexei Navalny poses for a photo with Siberian politician Ksenia Fadeyeva. Navalny was removed from a medically-induced coma in a Berlin hospital after suffering what German authorities say was a poisoning with a chemical nerve agent while traveling in Siberia in August. Andrei Fateyev/AP
In a statement Monday, Berlin’s Charité hospital said Navalny’s condition has improved and he is being weaned off mechanical ventilation. Navalny is responding to verbal stimuli, however, “it remains too early to gauge the potential long-term effects of his severe poisoning,” the hospital said.
The hospital only released details of Navalny’s condition after first consulting with his wife, who reassured doctors that Navalny would want that information released.
The 44-year-old politician, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics, became ill from poison on Aug. 20 during a domestic flight in Russia. Suspicion immediately fell on the Russian government, which has poisoned critics of the state before.
Two days later, Navalny was flown to Germany for treatment, where doctors put him into a coma. A German military laboratory confirmed last week that Navalny had consumed a variant of Novichok, a Soviet-era nerve agent, prompting the German government to demand a Russian investigation.
“There’s no doubt whatsoever” that Navalny’s poisoning was approved by the highest levels of Russia’s government, former CIA chief of Russia operations Steven Hall told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly.
The U.K. summoned the Russian ambassador to the country Monday to express its “deep concern” over Navalny’s poisoning, First Secretary of State Dominic Raab said on Twitter. “It’s completely unacceptable that a banned chemical weapon has been used and Russia must hold a full, transparent investigation,” he said.
The Kremlin has dismissed accusations that it had anything to do with poisoning Navalny. “Attempts to somehow associate Russia with what happened are unacceptable to us, they are absurd,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to the BBC.
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Now the big question is what is the consequence to be against Russia and where will the United States, Britain or Germany be on this matter……crickets
Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience
Debate = Vindman is the Whistleblower not Ciaramella
Head fakes or rather deep fakes everywhere. Remember there was some robust chatter claiming that Ukraine was the genesis of the Trump impeachment process? Looks like he could be more right than wrong….
Hat tip to Byron York:
The most interesting thing about Byron York’s exhaustively reported and richly detailed new impeachment book, “Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump,” is that the whistleblower who filed the official complaint that got impeachment rolling isn’t ever identified.
It turns out that the heated discussion over the whistleblower, who was previously identified by Real Clear Investigations as the CIA’s Eric Ciaramella, was a diversion from allowing the American people to understand who was the actual instigator of the failed effort to oust President Donald Trump from office.
Rather than being a witness who independently supported the claims of the whistleblower, the National Security Council’s Lt. Col Alex Vindman was the driving force behind the entire operation, according to the book’s interviews with key figures in the impeachment probe and other evidence. The whistleblower’s information came directly from Vindman, investigators determined.
“Vindman was the person on the call who went to the whistleblower after the call, to give the whistleblower the information he needed to file his complaint,” said Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y.
“For all intents and purposes, Vindman is the whistleblower here, but he was able to get somebody else to do his dirty work for him,” explained one senior congressional aide.
Vindman was the only person at the National Security Council (NSC) listening in on the infamous call between President Donald Trump and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to be concerned by it. Vindman immediately began talking to his identical twin brother Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, who also worked at the NSC. The twins both complained to NSC Counsel John Eisenberg. Alex Vindman talked about it with his direct supervisor Tim Morrison, who was also on the call. He talked about it with another NSC lawyer, Michael Ellis.
Vindman testified that he talked to only two people outside the NSC. One was George Kent, a State Department official who dealt with Ukraine. He refused to say who the other person was. Both Vindman and Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., who led the impeachment proceedings, strenuously resisted any attempt by investigators to discuss who the other individual was, admitting only that it was a member of the “intelligence community,” the same nebulous descriptor used for the whistleblower.
In his complaint, the whistleblower claimed “multiple White House officials with direct knowledge of the call” described to him the contents of the conversation. It is unclear if he was sourcing his knowledge just to multiple Vindmans or any other White House officials.
The description of the call appeared to come from the White House’s rough transcript, which Vindman helped prepare. It repeated Vindman’s unique interpretation of the call as seeking foreign interference in a campaign. It mentioned that lawyers had been informed, and Vindman had done just that. The complaint also included information from public news reports.
At first Schiff publicly promised that the whistleblower would testify and that any attempt by the White House to thwart that would be fought vigorously. But then news broke that Schiff’s office had worked with the whistleblower prior to him filing his complaint. Schiff switched his stance to refusing to allow the whistleblower to testify. What’s more, he refused to allow any investigation into how the Ukraine investigation began.
The real instigator of the Ukraine investigation, Vindman, testified before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on October 29, 2019, and returned to the House in November for public testimony. York writes that Vindman’s extensive testimony was more complex than news reports suggested.
Vindman repeatedly said that he viewed Trump’s phone call with Zelensky as “wrong,” but he was unable to articulate precisely why. He expressed frustration that the elected president was pushing a foreign policy at odds from the “interagency consensus” of the bureaucracy that he felt should control foreign policy.
Vindman admitted under questioning that he had thrice been offered the prestigious position of defense minister for the Ukraine government. Despite his focus on Ukraine at the NSC, Vindman did not appear knowledgeable about well-established Ukrainian corruption problems. Vindman is a Ukrainian American. He grew hostile with members who sought to understand exactly to whom he had disclosed the phone call.
Using detailed information from interviews with White House officials, members of Congress, and their key staff, York shows how Republicans had to deal with Rep. Adam Schiff’s determination to hide from the American public not just who the whistleblower was but anything about the process that led to the whistleblower complaint.
But Schiff’s behavior inadvertently confirmed how the whistleblower found his information. Every time that members asked about the second non-NSC person Vindman disclosed the call to, Schiff and other Democrats would direct the witness to not answer in order to “protect the whistleblower.” York writes:
Could that have been any clearer? The Republican line of questioning established that: 1) Vindman told two people outside the NSC. 2) One of them was George Kent. And 3) The other was in the Intelligence Community but could not be revealed because Democrats did not want to identify the whistleblower. It did not take a rocket scientist to conclude that that unidentified other person was the whistleblower.
York shows that one of the reasons Republicans stopped pressing the issue was that while they opposed Vindman pushing his own foreign policy goals over the president’s, they respected his military service. “Republicans saw Vindman as a loyal American who had strong and inflexible views on what U.S. policy toward Ukraine should be and who was offended, and spurred to action, when the President of the United States appeared to change them,” York writes.
When Vindman retired from the Army in July 2020, media reports claimed he did so because of a hostile work environment. He had been transferred from the NSC in February 2020, following Trump’s acquittal on the charges that Vindman’s complaints instigated. Vindman received no punishment for his insubordination and disobeying of a direct order to not work with Congress on impeachment.
“Obsession: Inside the Washington Establishment’s Never-Ending War on Trump” was released today.
‘I Was A Master At Fixing Mail-In Ballots’
First question here is challenging the word ‘was’……
The next question to consider is voting or not voting is free speech at least….notice how the Democrats are now forcing speech by manipulating the voting process and votes themselves?
But first, begin with this potential scandal. A Constitutional crisis is upon the nation.
The building crisis is real for those who care to see it.
A top Democratic data firm is warning that a huge increase in mail-in ballots in 2020 may have the election night effect of making President Trump appear to have a landslide lead, even though he may lose once all the mail-in votes are counted.
Hawkfish, a Democratic data firm funded by billionaire former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, expects far more Democrats to vote by mail than Republicans. That expectation is based on a July 1-Aug. 16 survey of 17,263 registered voters nationwide, which measured how people intend to vote and who they intend to vote for.
Because it could take days or weeks to tally the mail-in ballots, that could create the effect of making Trump look like he is in the lead on election night.
“We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump,” Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn told Axios, calling the effect a “red mirage.”
In one scenario, if only 15% of mail-in ballots are counted on election night, that could make Trump look on pace to get a 408-130 Electoral College vote lead. But by four days later, if 75% of mail-in ballots are counted, then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden could show a lead.
“When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage,” Mendelsohn said. “It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead, and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted.”
The project is a warning to news outlets and voters on what to expect during election night. Part of that “mirage” scenario assumes that those who project election winners like the Associated Press will not make adjustments in how they portray results on election night due to the rise in mail-in votes — but many newsrooms are preparing for a different pace and method of election results reporting due to mail-in ballots, in order to prevent the scenario that Hawkfish describes.
Trump could further complicate matters. The president has said that he thinks that the results of the election should be announced on election night.
Election analysts have warned for months that due to the expected large increase in mail-in and absentee voting, it may take days or weeks to know the final results from the Nov. 3 election.
(Hawkfish is a US political data and technology-based agency headquartered in New York City founded by Michael Bloomberg.The firm was founded in the spring of 2019 to support, “Democratic candidates, good causes, and common sense solutions.”)
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One top Democratic operative took it upon himself to whistleblow on the fraudulent practices of voting, especially with mail-in ballots. Speaking on condition of anonymity because of his own criminal activities participating in voter fraud, the Democratic operative sought out New York Post reporter Jon Levine to explain it all.
Levine’s article published over the weekend was titled, “Confessions of voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots.” A “top Democratic operative says voter fraud, especially with mail-in ballots, is no myth. And he knows This because he’s been doing it, on a grand scale, for decades” writes Levine. The anonymous operative admitted, “this is a real thing…and there is going to be a f-king war coming November 3rd over this stuff” but admits “if they knew how the sausage was made, they could fix it.”
Operative trick #1: “the ballot has no specific security features – like a stamp or a watermark – so the insider said he would just make his own ballots. ‘I just put [the ballot] through the copy machine and it comes out the same way’ the insider said.” The man admitted, “his dirty work has taken him through the weeds of municipal and federal elections in Paterson, Atlantic City, Camden, Newark, Hoboken and Hudson County and his fingerprints can be found in local legislative, mayoral and congressional races across the Garden State.”
The Post confirmed the whistleblower’s identity, rap sheet and “long history working as a consultant to various campaigns.” The insider “says he not only changed ballots himself over the years, but led teams of fraudsters and mentored at least 20 operatives in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.” Unfortunately, “some of the biggest names and highest officeholders in New Jersey have benefited from his tricks, according to campaign records The Post reviewed.”
The whistleblower is a self-admitted Bernie Sanders “die-hard with no horse in the presidential race.” He simply said he “felt compelled to come forward in the hope that states would act now to fix the glaring security problems present in mail-in ballots.”
Additional unethical practices the insider engaged in, is “he would have his operatives fan out, going house to house, convincing voters to let them mail completed ballots on their behalf as a public service. The fraudster and his minions would then take the sealed envelopes home and hold them over boiling water. ‘You have to steam it to loosen the glue’ said the insider.” They would then replace the real ballot with a counterfeit ballot and reseal the envelope.
He and his operatives would be careful to sprinkle fake ballots in mailboxes around town. He even said sometimes postal employees are in on the scam. “You have a postman who is a rabid anti-Trump guy and he’s working in Bedminster or some Republican stronghold…He can take those [filled-out] ballots, and knowing 95% are going to a Republican, he can just throw those in the garbage.”
Chicago Gangs Form Pact to Shoot Cops on Sight
Primer: 30 Gangs could equal up to 80,000 members. For a snapshot of gang activity in Chicago since the 60’s, go here.
The FBI alert, headlined “Pact Made by People Nation Gang Factions to ‘Shoot On-Site’ Any Police Officer with a Weapon Drawn” lists street gangs that have become well-known in Chicago the past five decades, from the Latin Kings and Vice Lords to the El Rukns and Black P Stones.
Latin Kings
Vice Lords
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A federal intelligence alert from the FBI field office in Chicago, Ill., warned that about 30 gangs in the city have made a pact to shoot police officers if they draw their weapons in public, ABC 7 reported on Monday.
Intelligence alerts are frequently distributed to law enforcement officials, especially if the alerts involve threats to an officer’s safety. This particular alert was based on “a contact whose reporting is limited and whose reliability cannot be determined,” meaning a street source, witness, or information obtained through surveillance.
The alert states that Chicago gangs have agreed to “shoot on-sight any cop that has a weapon drawn on any subject in public.”
“Members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in performance of their official duties,” the alert continues. “The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent ‘shoot on-sight’ of said officer, in order to garner national media attention.”
In early August, mobs of people staged what appeared to be a coordinated spate of looting and vandalism at Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, a stretch of high-end businesses in the city’s downtown. The looting occurred after police shot and arrested a suspect in the Englewood neighborhood. The looting was reportedly prompted by a rumor, which went viral on social media, that the cops had shot and killed a child, when in fact they had injured a 20-year-old man.
Chicago has seen a rise in murders and shootings since the death of George Floyd earlier this year, a surge in violence likely compounded by economic dislocation caused by the coronavirus pandemic and a rise in anti-police sentiment, which has reportedly led police in many cities to adopt less aggressive tactics. There were 2,749 shooting victims in the city as of Monday, up 917 from the same period last year.
Chicago police superintendent David Brown, who started his position several weeks before the Floyd protests, said on Monday that “a sense of lawlessness” has been observed by officers on the street. Brown also noted that the dangers for officers have dramatically increased.
“I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago’s history,” Brown said. “So I think it’s more than a suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops.”
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According to ABC7, which obtained a copy of the report, the “situational information report” from the FBI in Chicago from last Wednesday states that “members of these gang factions have been actively searching for, and filming, police officers in performance of their official duties. The purpose of which is to catch on film an officer drawing his/her weapon on any subject and the subsequent ‘shoot on-sight’ of said officer, in order to garner national media attention.”
Though it is not uncommon to alert officers of any kind of potential threat that may risk the safety of police, CPD Superintendent David Brown said the city has seen an overall “sense of lawlessness” and that the threat of danger to police is on the rise.
“I think it’s bigger than a suggestion,” Brown said. “I think 51 officers being shot at or shot in one year, I think that quadruples any previous year in Chicago’s history. So I think it’s more than a suggestion that people are seeking to do harm to cops.”
The recent alert, headlined “Pact Made by People Nation Gang Factions to ‘Shoot On-Site’ Any Police Officer with a Weapon Drawn,” lists street gangs that have been active and well-known in the Chicago area for the past five decades.
NK Hackers are Robbing Banks Around the World
Primer:
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday called the United States a “mastermind of cybercrime” as it responded to a report detailing Pyongyang’s efforts to hack banks.
In an English-language statement posted on the ministry’s website, a spokesperson for the country’s “National Coordination Committee for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism” denied the regime’s link to any online criminal activities, claiming there was no truth to the “preposterous rumors” circulated by the United States.
The U.S. Treasury Department and three federal agencies including the FBI said in an alert issued Wednesday that hackers attempted to initiate fraudulent money transfers and ATM “cash-outs” from multiple countries that appeared to be part of the North’s “extensive, global cyber-enabled bank robbery scheme.” More here.
The BeagleBoyz have made off with nearly $2 billion since 2015, and they’re back to attacking financial institutions after a short lull in activity.
The BeagleBoyz, part of the North Korean government’s hacking apparatus, are back to targeting banks around the world after a brief pause in activity.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has released an alert with details of how the BeagleBoyz have made off with an estimated $2 billion in fiat and cryptocurrency since 2015, along with details on how financial institutions can protect themselves against their known patterns of attack.
Along with the theft of massive amounts of money that the United Nations believes is used for North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs, the robberies also pose a serious risk to financial institutions’ reputations, their operations, and public confidence in banking, CISA said.
The BeagleBoyz aren’t typical cybercriminals either: They conduct “well-planned, disciplined, and methodical cyber operations more akin to careful espionage activities,” CISA warns. “Over time, their operations have become increasingly complex and destructive. The tools and implants employed by this group are consistently complex and demonstrate a strong focus on effectiveness and operational security.”
The group has used a variety of approaches to gaining initial access: Spear phishing, watering holes, social engineering, malicious files, and even contracted third-party hacking groups have been used for initial penetration.
Once inside a network, the BeagleBoyz have again used a wide variety of approaches to meet their objectives, establish a persistent presence, evade defense, and harvest credentials of privileged users.
CISA said that the BeagleBoyz appear to seek out two particular systems in a financial institution’s network: It’s SWIFT terminal and the server hosting the payment switch application for the bank. They map networks using locally-available administrative tools, deploy a constantly evolving list of command and control software, and ultimately try to make off with any possible money they can get their hands on via fraudulent ATM cashouts.
“After gaining access to either one or both of these operationally critical systems, the BeagleBoyz monitor the systems to learn about their configurations and legitimate use patterns, and then they deploy bespoke tools to facilitate illicit monetization,” CISA said.
It isn’t known if the BeagleBoyz have successfully targeted a US-based financial institution, and CISA’s report suggests they’ve been active primarily in other parts of the world. That doesn’t mean they won’t attempt to break into a US-based bank: Everyone in the cybersecurity arm of the financial industry should be alert.
Protecting against the BeagleBoyz
CISA makes the following mitigation suggestions based on particular industry:
All financial institutions:
- Verify compliance with Federal Financial Institution Examination Council security handbooks
- Verify compliance with other industry security standards, like those from PCI and SWIFT.
Institutions with retail payment systems:
- Require chip and PIN for all transactions
- Isolate payment system infrastructure behind multiple authentication factors
- Segment networks into separate, secure enclaves
- Encrypt all data in transit
- Monitor networks for anomalous behavior
Institutions with ATMs or point-of-sale devices:
- Validate issuer responses to financial request messages
- Implement chip and PIN for debit transactions
These suggestions come along with general good security habits such as enforcing strong password policies, keeping all systems up to date, disabling all unnecessary services on workstations, scanning documents and emails for potential malicious code, and staying up to date on the latest threats.