Truth of the Iran Lobby

All Republicans in the Senate are ‘NO’ votes on the Iran deal and there is an estimated 12 Democrats so far that are staying with a NO vote, the rest of the Democrats have declared they will vote with the White House, when not one Senator has had any access to the side deals.

The White House has declared they don’t need any part of Congress to approve the deal, it is done. Further, the Iran deal is non-binding which is to say Iran does not need to comply with any part of the JPOA.

Meanwhile, you may be interested to know who the Iran Lobby is in Washington DC and the influence they have with legislators and the White House. Simply, money votes.

The text below is the perfect model for how all politics work in Washington DC. Chilling but true.

Meet the Iran Lobby

In the fight over sanctions and the nuclear deal, how did the supposedly all-powerful pro-Israel lobby lose to the slick operatives of the National Iranian American Council?

Russian Connection with Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and OPM?

Pvt. Bradley Manning describes as noted by Gawker in part:

The story begins with Manning’s own disillusionment with U.S. foreign policy and its wars, sparked by his wide-ranging research as an analyst. “I began to become depressed with the situation that we found ourselves increasingly mired in year after year,” he said. He wanted to give the public access to some of the same information he had seen, so they might come to a similar conclusion. Manning said he leaked a massive database of incident reports from Iraq and Afghanistan because he believed they might “spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as it relates to Iraq and Afghanistan.” He hoped people who saw the dramatic video of a 2007 Apache helicopter strike in Iraq he leaked would be outraged by the “delightful bloodlust” of the pilots. The U.S. State Department cables he gave to Wikileaks detailed shady deals and backroom intimidation and were “a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy.” 

But Manning’s ideas and actions did not develop in a vacuum. In walking us through the genesis of and rationale behind each leak, Manning’s statement emphasizes they were not hit-and-run jobs. Wikileaks plays a pivotal role in this story, and not just as a passive leaking “platform.” As Manning tells it, his relationship with Wikileaks was not unlike the relationship between a traditional journalist and their source. Manning said he was originally drawn to Wikileaks after their release in 2009 of half a million pager messages from 9/11. In January, 2010, Manning joined a chatroom linked on Wikileaks’ official site out of curiosity. He wanted to know how Wikileaks got the pager messages. “I am the type of person who likes to know how things work,” he said in his statement. “And, as an analyst, this means I always want to figure out the truth.”

Over the years I’ve periodically visited that same, now-defunct chatroom to try to figure out how Wikileaks works. Whenever I dropped by it seemed pretty dead, a few Wikileaks fanboys idling during the work day. But in early 2010 Manning found a lively collection of geeks discussing stimulating topics.

Later the official investigation and charges were brought against Bradley Manning. The charge sheet is here describing his full actions.

As noted in this blog yesterday, the Chinese and the Russians are in fact cultivating and applying the stolen data (hacked) and are working against the West.

Enter Julian Assange and the Russians.

Hat tip to John:

Wikileaks is a Front for Russian Intelligence

The part played by Wikileaks in the Edward Snowden saga is an important one. The pivotal role of Julian Assange and other leading members of Wikileaks in getting Snowden from Hawaii to Moscow, from NSA employment to FSB protection, in the late spring of 2013 is a matter of record.

For years there have been questions about just what Wikileaks actually is. I know because I’ve been among those asking. Over two years ago, little more than two weeks after Snowden landed in Moscow, I explained my concerns about Wikileaks based on my background in counterintelligence. Specifically, the role of the Russian anti-Semite weirdo Israel Shamir, a close friend of Assange, in the Wikileaks circle merited attention, and to anyone trained in the right clues, the Assange group gave the impression of having a relationship with Russian intelligence. As I summed up my position in July 2013, based on what we knew so far:

It’s especially important given the fact that Wikileaks is playing a leading role in the Snowden case, to the dismay of some of Ed’s admirers and even members of his family. Not to mention that Snowden, as of this writing, is still in Moscow. One need not be a counterintelligence guru to have serious questions about Shamir and Wikileaks here. It may be a much bigger part of the story than it appears to the naked eye.

Evidence that Wikileaks is not what it seems to be has mounted over the years. Assange’s RT show didn’t help matters, neither did the fact that, despite having claimed to possess secret Russian intelligence files, Wikileaks has never exposed anything sensitive, as they have done with the purloined files of many other countries. To say nothing of Assange & Co. taking unmistakably pro-Russian positions on a host of controversial issues. Questions logically followed.

Now answers are appearing. It’s long been known that Wikileaks, by their own admission, counseled Ed Snowden in June 2013 to leave Hong Kong and head to Moscow. Contrary to the countless lies propagated by Snowden Operation activists, Snowden’s arrival in Russia was his choice; it had nothing to do with  canceled passports in Washington, DC.

An important gap has been filled this week by Julian Assange, who admitted that Snowden going to Moscow was his idea. Ed wanted to head to Latin America, Julian asserted, especially Ecuador, whose London embassy Assange has been hiding out in for years on the lam from rape changes in Sweden. As Assange explained, “He preferred Latin America, but my advice was that he should take asylum in Russia despite the negative PR consequences, because my assessment is that he had a significant risk he could be kidnapped from Latin America on CIA orders. Kidnapped or possibly killed.”

Only in Russia would Ed be safe, Julian counseled, because there he would be protected by Vladimir Putin and his secret services, notably the FSB. One might think that seeking the shelter of the FSB — one of the world’s nastiest secret police forces that spies on millions without warrant and murders opponents freely — might be an odd choice for a “privacy organization.” But Wikileaks is no ordinary NGO.

Why Assange knew Russia would take in Snowden — it could be a big political hassle for Moscow — is a key question that any counterintelligence officer would want answered. Was Julian speaking on behalf of the FSB or did he just “know” Ed could obtain the sanctuary plus protection he sought?

Just as telling is the recent report on Assange’s activities in Ecuador’s London embassy, where it turns out Ecuadorian intelligence has been keeping tabs on him. Which is no surprise given the PR mess Assange has created for Ecuador with his on-going antics.

Especially interesting is the revelation that, while holed up in London, Assange “requested that he be able to chose his own Security Service inside the embassy, suggesting the use of Russian operatives.” It is, to say the least, surpassingly strange that a Western “privacy advocate” wants Russian secret police protection while hiding out in a Western country. The original Spanish is clear: Assange “habría sido la elección de su propio Servicio de Seguridad en el interior de la embajada, llegando a proponer la participación de operadores de nacionalidad rusa.”

Why Assange wants FSB bodyguards is a question every journalist who encounters Julian henceforth should ask. Until he explains that, Wikileaks should be treated as the front and cut-out for Russian intelligence that it has become, while those who get in bed with Wikileaks — many Western “privacy advocates” are in that group — should be asked their feelings about their own at least indirect ties with Putin’s spy services.

P.S. For those familiar with espionage history, there is a clear precedent for such an arrangement. In 1978 the magazine Covert Action Information Bulletin appeared to expose the secrets of US and Western intelligence. Its editor was Phil Agee, a former CIA officer who had gotten into bed with Cuban and Soviet intelligence; think of Agee as the Snowden of the pre-Internet era. CAIB was in fact founded on the direction of the KGB and for years served as a conduit for Kremlin lies and disinformation that seriously harmed Western intelligence. While CAIB presented itself as a radical truth-telling group, in actuality it was a KGB front, though few CAIB staffers beyond Agee knew who was really calling the shots. One suspects much the same is happening with WikiLeaks.

Per Hillary’s Emails, She Needs Visiting Angels

Late Monday evening, the State Department released a large volume of Hillary emails and it will take a long time to review all of them.

In case you need a sampling of her communications with various people, I am pleased to share a handful. If Hillary is this needy and inept, how can she be president?

Hillary has a cook, needs skim milk and cant figure out the TV guide, she needs Visiting Angels:

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Evergreen, Secret Service codename:

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Worried about server security:

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Benghazi, note the date, so no video to blame:

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Then, just how anti-Semitic is Hillary and her inner circle:

Hilary and her team are fans of Max Blumenthal, Peter Beinart, J-Street

The Hilary Clinton emails that were just released show that she and her team are far more to the left, and far more interested in promoting the leftist J-Street view of Israel, than she lets on publicly.

Hilary was thrilled with Max Blumenthal’s book “Republican Gomorrah,” writing on September 11, 2009, “I just finished the book and it is great!.”

Blumenthal’s father, Sidney, often shared Max’s articles with Hilary, including “The Great Islamophobic Crusade” where Blumenthal began his career of conflating all evils of the world to Jews and Zionists, blaming them for anti-Islamic initiatives and then moving on to pretend that all Jews in Israel support murdering Arabs for no reason. Hilary asked her staff to “Pls print for me.”

Sid also recommended to her Peter Beinart’s article, “The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment,” saying

H: I’m sure you are preoccupied with the adventures of Lula, et al. Nonetheless, the article below, just posted by the NY
Review, soon to be published, is a breakthrough piece that will have a large impact. It’s worth reading, not least for Frank
Luntz’s poll numbers. The hysterical tone of much of the Israeli leadership and US Jewish community is partly rooted in
this long-term and profound development. Sid

Sid also pushed hard the idea that American Jews are against the Israeli government, as another Sid Blumenthal memo says:

March 23, 2010
For: Hillary
From: Sid
Re: US Jewish and Israeli public opinion
Three new polls released: from AVO07 (all US), J Street (US Jews), and Ha’aretz (Israelis). I’ve
sent Lauren the whole J Street poll to print out for you; its internals are the most detailed,
relevant and suggestive. My reading of that poll is that the administration is in a pretty good spot
with US Jewish opinion and that the drag (about 10 points, I think) has less to do with the Middle
East and Israel than with the economy. Jewish opinion is far more solidly supportive of the
administration generally than the general population (except minorities). Those adamantly
opposed to the administration stance on Israel are preconceived to be against; they are
predictable, a minority of the US Jewish community and have reached their natural limits. The
institutional US Jewish position backing Bibi and against the administration does not have
majority support among Jews.

Sid also recommended that Hilary tell AIPAC that they are too right wing:

For: Hillary
From: Sid
Re: AIPAC speech
This memo does not address specific policy initiatives.
What I’ve written are options. Use what you like, or none at all. Here are some ideas:

1. Hold Bibi’s feet to the fire, remind everyone he was at Wye, his key participant event in
the peace process, and that it was successful.

2. Reassure all players of our commitment to the process and the solution (whatever the
language is).

3. Perhaps most controversial, I would argue something you should do is that, while
praising AIPAC, remind it in as subtle but also direct a way as you can that it does not
have a monopoly over American Jewish opinion.
Bibi is stage managing US Jewish
organizations (and neocons, and the religious right, and whomever else he can muster)
against the administration. AIPAC itself has become an organ of the Israeli right,
specifically Likud. By acknowledging J Street you give them legitimacy, credibility and
create room within the American Jewish community for debate supportive of the
administration’s pursuit of the peace process. Just by mentioning J Street in passing,
AIPAC becomes a point on the spectrum, not the controller of the spectrum. I suggest a
way how to do this below.

1. On US national security interest, Israel’s security and the peace process:
The reason the US has always supported Israel since the moment President Harry S. Truman
decided to recognize the State of Israel is that it is in the US national security interest and
consistent with our values. It is in our interest to support a thriving democracy in the Middle East
Only through the marketplace of ideas will sound policies to help resolve complicated and
seemingly intransigent problems be developed. This administration values everybody’s views.
They are important. You are important. We welcome views across the spectrum, from AIPAC to
J Street. All these views are legitimate and must be heard and considered.

There’s also a Martin Indyk email forwarded to Hilary that blames Bibi for not extending his 2010 settlement freeze, without a negative word about Mahmoud Abbas for refusing to negotiate:

From: Martin Indyk [mailto
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2010 8:59 AM
To: George Mitchell; Feltman, Jeffrey D
Subject: Dealing with Netanyahu
The principle conclusion from a quick visit to Israel and Ramallah over the weekend is that Netanyahu is in a strong
position politically, with an unusually stable ruling coalition. Nobody I spoke with believed that the government would
have fallen if he had decided to extend the settlement freeze before its expiry, as a gesture to U.S. peacemaking efforts.
In their view, he could have easily garnered the support of a large majority of the people, for whom the settlers are a
marginal concern. And this would have given him leverage over his ministers to ensure their support or abstention in
the cabinet. ..

3. As his friend, paint a realistic picture of the strategic consequences of his negotiating tactics, particularly in terms of
what is likely to happen to the PA leadership if he worries only about his politics and not at all about Abu Mazen’s
politics.
4. If all else fails, avoid recriminations in favor of a “clarifying moment.” The world will of course blame Bibi. But you
should avoid any kind of finger-pointing in favor of a repeated commitment to a negotiated solution and a willingness to
engage with both sides in trying to make that happen, when they’re ready. The Israeli public and the American Jewish
Community should know how far the President was prepared to go and they should be allowed to draw their own
conclusions

Based on the relatively narrow timeframe of last night’s email dump the overall tone is that Israel is obstinate and not interested in peace, the Zionist American Jewish community must be marginalized, the Palestinians are victims and not responsible for any of their actions, and that Hilary must still publicly cultivate the AIPAC crowd while working behind the scenes to undermine it. Haaretz is liberally quoted but no conservative analysis about Israel ever reached Hilary’s eyes through her handpicked, trusted advisers.

(h/t Babylonian Hebrew)

CNN has an early summary with embedded links as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a Day that Ends in ‘Y’ and Another Hillary Email Revelation

While a big 9000 email dump is expected tonight at 9PM, August 31 by the State Department of more court ordered emails to be released, seems yet another 150 contained classified information.

EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Shared An Email Network With The Clinton Foundation

Hillary Clinton’s private email server was housed at the same physical location and on the same network as an email server used and operated by the Clinton Foundation, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

Breitbart: Records reveal that Hillary Clinton’s private clintonemail.com server shared an IP address with her husband Bill Clinton’s email server, presidentclinton.com, and both servers were housed in New York City, not in the basement of the Clintons’ Chappaqua, New York home.

Web archives show that the Presidentclinton.com Web address was being operated by the Clinton Foundation as of 2009, when Hillary Clinton registered her own clintonemail.com server.

Numerous Clinton Foundation employees used the presidentclinton.com server for their own email addresses, which means that they were using email accounts that, if hacked, would have given any hacker complete access to Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails, as well.

The bombshell revelation raises new concerns about the possible illegality of Hillary Clinton’s private email use. The former Secretary of State is under federal investigation for potentially violating the Espionage Act by allowing people without a security clearance to access classified information. The fact that Hillary was sharing an email network with a private foundation means that people without a security clearance almost certainly had physical access to her server while she was working at the State Department.

Here’s what we know:

The Servers Have The SAME IP Address

Hillary’s clintonemail.com server and the Foundation-run presidentclinton.com email server have exactly the same IP address, and the same SSL certificate (which an organization purchases for an email server to verify its trustworthiness).

mail.clintonemail.com and mail.presidentclinton.com both have an IP address of 64.94.172.146, according to an SSL Certificate Checker.

The two servers both have that same IP address, 64.94.172.146, according to DNS records. (Here are records for Hillary’s server, and here are records for Bill’s server).

Both servers have the same IP address, according to another independent Internet records database, robtex.net.

The fact that both of these email servers have the same IP address means that they were operating on the same network, and sharing physical space. A computer expert tells Breitbart News that the servers were probably operating on the same machine. It is also possible that they were operating on different machines on the same network, which still means that the machines would have to be close enough to exist in the same physical location.

President Clinton’s server was created in 2002, while Hillary’s was created in 2009, which means that Hillary’s server was simply added to Bill’s Foundation-run server network.

They Had The SAME IP Address When She Was Secretary of State

Hillary’s server and Bill’s Foundation-run server also shared a different IP address during her tenure as Secretary of State.

From September 8, 2009 until June 24, 2011, Bill Clinton’s Foundation-run mail.presidentclinton.com server had an IP address of 24.187.234.187, according to DNS records.

Hillary’s mail.clintonemail.com server had the same exact IP address, 24.187.234.187, from the dates May 21, 2010 until October 21, 2010, according to DNS records.

Their Shared IP Address Can Be Traced to Midtown Manhattan

A geographical search for the IP address that both servers shared at registration traces to Midtown Manhattan, according to three different databases: infosniper.net, which locates a Midtown latitude/longitude point, ip-tracker.org, which also gives a Midtown latitude/longitude point, and whatsmyip.org.

Clinton Foundation headquarters are currently located at 1271 6th Avenue in Midtown. Bill Clinton’s office is at 55 West 125th Street

The Denver-based firm Platte River Networks told Breitbart News that it physically moved Hillary Clinton’s private email server out of the basement of her Chappaqua home in 2013. But the Clintons could have moved the server from Manhattan to Chappaqua before Platte River got there.

Clinton Founation Employees Had presidentclinton.com email addresses

The employees who have used presidentclinton.com email addresses included former Bill Clinton right-hand man Doug Band, as well as Justin Cooper, a Hillary aide who has worked with the Foundation, Terry Krinvic, Laura Graham, and John Zimmerebner.

Was Chelsea Clinton On The Server?

The email server for mail.chelseaoffice.com, which is no longer active, resolves to clintonemail.comaccording to DNS records. Wikileaks confirms that the chelseaoffice.com server was used by Chelsea Clinton employees.

Hillary Even Admitted That She Used Her Husband’s “System”

“Well the system we used was set up for President Clintons office and it had numerous safeguards it was on property guarded by the Secret Service and there were no security breaches, so I think that the use of that server which started with my husband proved to be effective and secure,” Hillary Clinton said in a March 2015 press conference.

Clinton has not returned to that talking point since.

The Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s campaign did not return requests for comment by press time.

The Words you Use can Be a Cause for Investigation

On the knife’s edge, Americans are threatened by some entity every day. It is the work of government to keep the homeland safe and the methods or tactics used can infringe on our protected rights.

Wonder what words are used in Hillary’s emails….

When it comes to words, the Department of Homeland Security has a list and they have systems to cultivate interactions on the internet where social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and YouTube are the top three locations where you are being watched. Have you ever posted something to Facebook and it was removed?

This is not a new circumstance, but often we need to be reminded.

Dept. of Homeland Security Forced to Release List of Keywords Used to Monitor Social Networking Sites

Forbes: If you are thinking about tweeting about clouds, pork, exercise or even Mexico, think again. Doing so may result in a closer look by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In a story appearing earlier today on the U.K’s Daily Mail website, it was reported that the DHS has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor various social networking sites. The list provides a glimpse into what DHS describes as “signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.”

The list was posted by the Electronic Privacy Information Center who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act, before suing to obtain the release of the documents. The documents were part of the department’s 2011 ’Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

The information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats. The Daily Mail’s article noted the Electronic Privacy Information Center wrote a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, describing it’s choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’.

What wasn’t disclosed is how the agency actually gains access to the various search engines and social networks to monitor the specified keywords. My guess is the DHS has a “special arrangement” with companies like Google GOOG -1.94%, Facebook FB -1.12%, Microsoft MSFT +0.00%, Yahoo and Twitter to gain secure direct API access. This type of access would allow it to use distributed cloud technologies to monitor the daily flow of social media and search activity in something close to real time.

I would love to learn more about the technologies used to accomplish this type of social / web monitoring. The applications for monitoring trends and social statics are fascinating when applied to other industry sectors. Given the extent of the monitoring, I’m sure this post itself is now coming up on the DHS radar, so please feel free to leave a comment with any insights.

2014:

(Update 1: Reading through the Desktop Binder, I discovered the DHS Twitter account is @dhsnocmmc1 and DHS appears to be using tweetdeck to monitor the various keywords. See Page 38 – Also interesting to note they seem to be using a Mac Mini as a server, and no password vaults. All Passwords appear to be shared in a plain text word document.)

(Update 2: On page 37, DHS instructs analysts to accept invalid SSL certificates forever without verification. Although invalid SSL warnings often appear in benign situations, they can also signal a man-in-the-middle attack. Not a good practice for the security conscious. Thanks to @obraon twitter for the tip.)

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For the full DHS document, click here.