Former FBI director James Comey has accused US President Donald Trump of trying to get him to water down the bureau's investigation into Russia's alleged interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

• Mr Comey says he felt Mr Trump was trying to create "some sort of patronage relationship"
• The testimony details several "concerning" interactions Mr Comey had with Mr Trump
• Mr Comey will deliver his testimony at a Senate hearing on Thursday (local time)

Mr Trump asked Mr Comey to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn as part of the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe into whether Moscow meddled in the election, according to testimony from Mr Comey posted on the Senate Intelligence Committee's website.

Mr Comey said Mr Trump told him at a dinner on January 27, a week after the President took office, that: "I need loyalty. I expect loyalty."

The former director's testimony details several meetings and phone calls he had with Mr Trump following the election.

Mr Comey describes at length a February 14 meeting in the Oval Office in which he understood Mr Trump was requesting him to drop any investigation of Mr Flynn.

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-08/comey-says-trump-told-him-to-back-...

And "he did not have sex with THAT woman..."

The image conjured by a written account of James Comey's testimony is simply extraordinary: the ex-FBI chief sitting in his FBI car outside Trump Tower in New York, typing notes of his first encounter with the then-President-elect.

Mr Comey's appearance before the Senate tomorrow has been called Washington's Superbowl and an early release of his statement is a sensational pre-show curtain-raiser.

In seven pages of written testimony released ahead of his in-person appearance before the Senate tomorrow, Mr Comey has provided detailed notes of nine one-on-one, increasingly awkward — and at times crass and bizarre — conversations with Mr Trump.

Mr Comey doesn't say exactly what triggered it, but after their first meeting on January 6, he left Trump Tower and upon reaching his car decided he would make detailed notes of all interactions with Mr Trump — something he had not done with president Barack Obama.

In that first meeting he told the then-President-elect he was not personally being investigated in the FBI's counter intelligence probe into Russian meddling in last year's presidential election.

The next conversation took place at the White House a week after the inauguration.

With his investigator's eye for detail, Mr Comey recounts his version of a dinner that grew increasingly awkward and uncomfortable.

"It turned out to be just the two of us, seated at a small oval table in the centre of the Green Room. Two Navy stewards waited on us, only entering the room to serve food and drinks."

Right from the start Mr Comey's instincts were triggered. He believed the one-on-one setting, which began with Mr Trump asking him if he wanted to remain in his job, was an attempt to "create some sort of patronage relationship".

"This concerned me greatly, given the FBI's traditionally independent status in the executive branch," Mr Comey wrote.

He says in a "very awkward conversation" Mr Trump repeatedly told him he expected loyalty, to which Mr Comey instead promised "honest loyalty".

For what Mr Comey said would be the first of many times, the President asked him to publicise that he was not under investigation in the Russia probe.

Mr Comey replied that may not be wise, as he would have to correct the record if that changed.

The next meeting was February 14, and Mr Comey says Mr Trump told him his sacked National Security Advisor Mike Flynn (who lost his job for misleading Vice-President Mike Pence about conversations with Russia's ambassador) was a good guy and he hoped he could let the investigation go.

"I had understood the President to be requesting that we drop any investigation of Flynn in connection with false statements about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December," he wrote.

Mr Comey found the request such a troubling attempt to interfere with his independence that he pleaded with Attorney-General Jeff Sessions to prevent any future one-on-one chats.

"I took the opportunity to implore the Attorney-General to prevent any future direct communication between the President and me," Mr Comey wrote.

Mr Comey says he was at the FBI Headquarters on March 30 when he received a phone call from the President.

Mr Trump said the ongoing Russian investigation was "a cloud" and he wanted Mr Comey to "lift the cloud" as it was impairing his ability to do his best for the country.

"He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia," Mr Comey said.

Mr Comey says Mr Trump again repeated his request to disclose he wasn't personally being investigated.

"He hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn't being investigated," he wrote.

Mr Comey says Mr Trump again said the Russia "cloud" was impeding his job and asked him to publicly state he wasn't being investigated.

The former FBI boss says he suggested the President make the request through official channels at the Department of Justice.

Mr Trump replied he would do that and added: "Because I have been very loyal to you, very loyal; we had that thing you know."

The President didn't say what the thing was and it was the last time the two men spoke.

Within a month Mr Trump had sacked the FBI boss.

Democrats are already using the testimony to call for impeachment, but Republicans are laughing it off.

The scene is well and truly set for the most anticipated testimony before congress in years — grab your popcorn.

(It's due to kick off midnight Australian time...)

Read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-08/comey-testimony-trump-encounters-w...

So far, there is nothing that can hurt The Donald in there... Comey has burnt his good-will in advance and he is trying to swim in a sewer, counter-current. Unfortunately he has showed he is a "nut" job as Trump said. No, I am not supporting Trump, but the frenzy about this situation -- which to some extend will blow the "Russia interfered with the US presidential election" argument out of the water -- is beyond the pale. The media is already rabid and when the senate committee finds "nothing", the media will go more ballistic, like a starved demented wolf... I could be wrong, but if this is all he's got, then we're back to innuendoes about Russia this and Russia that, WITHOUT ANY CONCRETE PROOF of anything...

Unless Comey has proofs linking Putin to the release of Hillary's emails, then he has nothing, except wasted a lot of time for everybody. But the media is not about telling the "truth". The MMMM is about making cash from voyeurism and dead cats...

And the final question will be: "Did Obama suggest to you to go easy on Hillary?" There is a good chance, the answer will be hidden in cryptics, including the fifth amendment...

WASHINGTON — Two top intelligence officials refused to answer senators’ questions on Wednesday about whether President Trump had asked them to intervene in the F.B.I. investigation into Russian election interference, saying only that they had never felt “pressured” by the White House to do anything improper.

The two officials — Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency — testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the eve of a highly anticipated appearance before the panel by James B. Comey, who was fired as F.B.I. director by Mr. Trump last month. Mr. Comey, in prepared remarks released by the committee after the two officials testified, said Mr. Trump had asked him to drop an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

The reticence by Mr. Coats and Admiral Rogers drew sharp criticism from many senators, including Republicans, who said during the sometimes testy hearing that they had no justification not to answer questions.

“At no time should you be in a position where you come to Congress without an answer,” said Senator Richard M. Burr, Republican of North Carolina and the committee’s chairman. “The requirements of our oversight duties and your agencies demand it.”

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/us/politics/nsa-intelligence-senate-trump-russia.html

And why did these "high ranking officials in the US intelligence business" side-stepped the question? Simple:  they do not have any evidence of whatever. BUT ADMITTING TO HAVE NOTHING WOULD BASICALLY TERMINATE THE WHOLE CIRCUS. By side-stepping the question, though to the annoyance of "senators" and the media, the two high officials keep the gag running. Otherwise it would become a dead duck if they had said "we have no proof of anything. NOTHING..."

James Comey’s day has come and there is still no proof that President Trump committed any impeachable offenses. However, even though Trump escaped this round alive, Comey’s statements about his weak character and lack of honesty have added new strength to the bombardment of scandal, incompetence, and declining public opinion that are threatening to topple the White House. Indeed, it feels like the fort just can’t hold— that we are now entering the stage of a war where the outcome is decided—where one side’s victory feels assured and the other’s, Trump’s, feels hopelessly doomed.

Historically, this is the time that the victor’s focus should switch from winning the war to winning the peace. This was the case at the Tehran Conference in February 1945, when Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met to draw the lines of post-war Europe; and in December 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued his “10 percent” plan to begin Reconstruction in the South. Now, as the Trump presidency verges on foundering in a shipwreck of its own making, leaders need to ask the very same question: what will an America without Trump look like? And more immediately, if the Trump presidency is damaged beyond repair, what is the national exit strategy?

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/after-comeys-testimony-a...

Earlier in the day, James Comey explained during the testimony at the Senate Intelligence Committee that he recorded his private meetings with Trump because he thought the US president might lie about them later. He said that he knew there might come a day when he would need a record to defend himself and the FBI.

"I was honestly concerned that he might lie about the nature of our meeting and so I thought it really important to document," Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"No, I can definitively say the president’s not a liar," White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said.

"And it’s frankly insulting to be asked that."

Trump is committed to ensuring that US election is conducted fairly and protected from any interference, she added.

"The president takes our elections very seriously."

She added that the US president won't lift anti-Russian sanctions over Ukraine until the Minsk deal is implemented.

In the written statement to the panel released on Wednesday, Comey accused Trump of pressing him to drop the FBI probe into former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's relations with Russia.

On May 9, the White House announced President Donald Trump's decision to remove James Comey from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director post  on recommendations of the US attorney general and his deputy.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201706081054451670-white-house-trump-liar-comey/

Gus: To say that Trump is a liar, should get Comey a big slap on the wrist. Trump may be an idiot and a manipulator, but he is not a liar in the sense that he changes his mind and admits to it. Hillary is a liar. She tells fibs.

And this is the sad truth. As the director of the FBI, it appears that Comey was not cut for it. And of all people making excuses for him being a wimp in front of Trump are women. I can understand why women could be feeling threatened, but the Director of the FBI? Gimme a break:

A man is being publicly grilled about why he was alone in a room with someone he felt was threatening him. Why didn’t he simply resign if he felt uncomfortable with what his boss was asking him to do? Why did he keep taking calls from that boss, even if he thought they were inappropriate? Why didn’t he just come out and say he would not do what the boss was asking for?

Sound familiar? As dozens of people noted immediately on Twitter, if you switch genders, that is the experience of many women in sexual harassment cases. James Comey, the former director of the F.B.I., explained to senators during today’s hearing that he felt acutely uneasy and hesitant to directly confront his boss, the president of the United States. That’s right, even a savvy Washington insider, the same height as LeBron James and no stranger to the cut and thrust of power, seemed slightly ashamed that he had not been able to do so.

Read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/opinion/women-say-to-comey-welcome-to-our-world-of-sexual-harassment-in-the-office.html

If you know how this work in many "business" situation, this style of boss isn't your friend. But he is not your enemy. I have seen and been in some situations like Comey and Trump. The boss is a manipulator and a forceful analytical instinctive character -- like an animal. In this situation what the boss-in-the-raw really demands is guts and a reaction of assertiveness that will challenge his views. The boss wants to be challenged. A figurative fight. He does not want "yes-men". He wants "can-do" with fire and ideas. He wants adrenaline driven people. He does not want delicate "may-be-es". 

For women this style of boss can be challenging beyond sustainability because of "sexual" subconscious undercurrent which can be felt, whether they are there or not.

Here Comey committed a capital sin. He went sneakily "recording" (writing notes) his meeting with Trump (the boss). You don't win points for doing this caper. The truthfulness of these "recordings can be challenged. This also shows you're sneakier than a snake in the grass. The proven method to deal with "unreasonable demands" is to write a memorandum -- stating what you understood the "boss" wants you to do, your opposition to it and what you will do instead -- and deliver it to the boss, himself, with a secretary present reading the piece as well. You also send a registered version to your post box, to remain unopened unless challenged -- but you won't be.

The Boss will have to go for a rethink. He's still the boss, you still are an underling, but there is 90 per cent chances you won the respect you deserve from him.  

Note: this method of dealing with unreasonable demands from a male boss works even better if you're a woman. But you need to have the guts. You cannot expect your own powerful job delivered on a sliver platter, unless you are prepared to fight for it. What the boss demands it that you fight for it. If you don't, you're dead meat. Comey included.

I know... I know... I will get brickbats for saying all this...

Adding to my rant about the style of boss that Trump is, above, let me add a few simple things. 

First, when writing a memo, make sure it's not long winded and fits on a single page that can be read in 10 seconds flat. Such bosses don't read. They aren't philosophers. They got where they are by street fighting. 

Second, never go for a blow below the belt. You will be dead meat. Make sure the memo isn't threatening.

Third, this caper is what "The Apprentice" is all about. If you haven't understood this, you're not cut for the job and the career possibilities thereafter. "The Apprentice" is not so much as to who will make the biggest profit but who will be able to take on the boss' place when he's gone. It's animalistic. It's the old bull versus the young challenger. You can take it on (positive anger) or walk away... Going to weep by the side of your mum (the state) is only going to win you sympathy from other sneaky weak bastards in the press (MMMM) and Senators who had their own little shit fight to get where they are and now are self-righteous about fighting for "justice". 

Fourth, you don't fight dirty. At present, the caper about the (so-called) Russian interference in the US election is quite funny but it only sustains the hopes of the idiots in the media and in the DNC. It's ridiculous and they can't see that because they are enraged (negative anger of weak people) their Madam did not get the gig and an idiot got there. We had the same caper in Australia when Abbott got the job to lead this country. To say the least, HE WAS FAR WORSE THAN TRUMP though he had far less to do damage to... And this idiot Abbott is still there in politics, threatening the good progress of this now fragile country. GET OVER IT. 

This is psychology 101 for dummies...

James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, on Thursday disputed an article that appeared in February in The New York Times about contacts between President Trump’s advisers and Russian intelligence officials.

Answering a question about the Times article during an appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Comey said that “in the main, it was not true.”

The article was the first to reveal direct contacts between Trump advisers and Russian officials before the election — contacts that are now at the heart of F.B.I. and congressional investigations. Multiple news outlets have since published accounts that support the main elements of The Times’s article, including information about phone calls and in-person meetings between Mr. Trump’s advisers and Russians, some believed to be connected to Russian intelligence.

Mr. Comey did not say exactly what he believed was incorrect about the article, which was based on information from four current and former American officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was classified. The original sources could not immediately be reached after Mr. Comey’s remarks, but in the months since the article was published, they have indicated that they believed the account was solid.

One possible area of dispute is the description of the Russians involved. Some law enforcement officials took issue with the Times account in the days after it was published, saying that the intelligence was still murky, and that the Russians who were in contact with Mr. Trump’s advisers did not meet the F.B.I.’s black-and-white standard of who can be considered an “intelligence officer.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/08/us/politics/james-comey-new-york-times-article-russia.html

In intel parlance, this revelation by Comey means that someone has been fabricating some "rumours" (not even fake "evidence") of the Russian Connection... Anonymous sources? This should puncture the Senate Inquiry forthwith...  Sure, Donald lies... he is not the only one... Everyone lies... Of all the people, Donald may be the most idiotic, but he is the least lying about it. 

To Democrats and many legal experts in both parties, the Senate testimony from fired FBI director James B. Comey is devastating to President Trump — portraying him as a liar who sought to halt the federal investigation into a former top aide and putting him in dire legal peril.

But to Trump, many Republicans and a broad constellation of surrogates and conservative media outlets, the takeaway is much different: exoneration.

“Despite so many false statements and lies, total and complete vindication,” the president tweeted early on the morning after Comey’s testimony. 

That point of view has ricocheted across the conservative media world, both organically and in coordination with a hastily organized rapid-response operation at the Republican National Committee. The result is a parallel narrative — reinforced by the president himself on Twitter and at a Friday news conference — that spun Comey’s testimony as a clear victory and, publicly at least, cast aside any potential dangers that may lie ahead.

“There was no there there,” said Jay Sekulow, a prominent conservative attorney who is now part of the president’s legal team, which is being led by his longtime attorney Marc Kasowitz. “There was no basis upon which an obstruction of justice charge can be raised by what was allegedly said.”

read all:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-sees-comeys-testimony-as-c...

Read from top...

read also:

comey is deluded...

The Obama administration would not publicly say Russia was attempting to interfere with the election until Oct. 7, and the news of Putin’s attempts to aid Trump would not surface until after the election.

Trump has long disputed that the Russians interfered with the election, calling it “all a big Dem HOAX” just this week.

But on Friday evening, after the publication of The Post’s article, Trump demanded to know why Obama hadn’t done more to stop the meddling.

Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

He followed up with more tweets on Saturday, attempting to put the focus on Obama’s inaction.

Since the Obama Administration was told way before the 2016 Election that the Russians were meddling, why no action? Focus on them, not T!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 24, 2017

The Post’s article explains in detail why Obama, who reportedly was gravely concerned by an August CIA report about the hacking,  managed to approve only “largely symbolic” sanctions before he left office.

Those reasons included partisan squabbling among members of Congress, initial skepticism by other intelligence agencies about the CIA’s findings, and an assumption that Clinton would win the election and follow up.

Read more:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/06/24/trump-lashes-o...

--------------

Despite the amount of smokescreen coming out everywhere, there is not a single proof anywhere that Putin ordered the elections of Trump. That some hackers did this or that, the same can be said for the US hacking (trying to) into the Russian government operational network. At no stage can a hacking of the DNC can be detrimental, unless the DNC did a few stupid nasty things. 

And even so. The Democrats where on cruise control, with most of the media (MMMM-MSM apart from Uncle Rupe's media MMMMM) clamouring for Hillary Clinton's victorious crown of bay leaves. It was in the bag. The polls were looking better than good. Clinton had a ten point advantage on Trump who to say the least was doing everything to hand the victory to Clinton. The Russians had nothing to do with the result. But here one must look below the doonah...

A high-level adviser and operative for the 2016 Sanders campaign was Vitali Shkliarov, a Soviet-born citizen of Belarus. Shkliarov, who had previously worked on the 2012 Obama re-election campaign and for several other successful Democratic Party campaigns, has also become increasingly in demand as a political adviser and campaign manager in Russia, working for liberal candidates in opposition to President Vladimir Putin.

Possessing a unique background and vantage point, Shkliarov, now that the 2016 election is over, has many interesting observations to express on the state of American politics, the Democratic Party, U.S.-Russian relations, and the impact of rising anti-Russian sentiment in the United States.

To say that Shkliarov’s background is unusual for U.S. political advisers is an understatement. The 4o-year-old, for whom English is a fourth language, has a Ph.D. in political and social sciences from Universität Vechta in Germany. Having spent the 1990s working with various German music industry startups, he was first infected with political passion as a volunteer youth organizer for Germany’s Left Party. Shkliarov’s wife is a U.S. State Department consular officer who, after serving years in Asia and Europe, is now based in Brazil, where they live with their 5-year-old son.

Shkliarov’s first significant position with U.S. political campaigns was his overseeing the get-out-the-vote operation in Wisconsin for Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, as well as consulting work that year for Tammy Baldwin’s successful Senate run in that state. In 2015, Shkliarov was recruited to work for the Sanders campaign by colleagues he knew from his prior work on behalf of Democratic candidates.

He began by working on the Sanders campaign’s get-out-the-vote effort for Nevada. After Nevada, he became Sanders’s deputy state director for Washington, and then moved to the national team, where he worked as a deputy to the political outreach director through the end of the campaign.

His 2012 work with the Obama campaign, and his activism within the community of Russian liberals working in opposition to the Kremlin, has made him a highly sought-after campaign manager in Russia on behalf of anti-Putin candidates. In 2014, he managed the mayoral campaign of one of the leaders of the anti-Putin opposition, Ilya Ponomarev, the only member of the Russian Parliament to vote against the Russian annexation of Crimea, who now lives in exile. Shkliarov also ran the re-election campaign of one of the Kremlin’s most outspoken opponents in the Russian Parliament, Dmitry Gudkov, a campaign whose ads and messaging just won multiple top awards from the American Association of Political Consultants.

Shkliarov’s anti-Putin bona fides, and his now-entrenched status in both the Russian and American community of liberal and leftist political consultants, makes him a unique voice on a wide range of issues of current prominence, particularly the state of U.S.-Russia relations and the impact of anti-Russian discourse in the U.S. Last week in Rio de Janeiro, I spoke with him about his experiences with the Sanders campaign, his views on Trump’s victory, the dangers posed by rising tensions between Moscow and Washington, and what it’s like now to be a Russian who works in U.S. politics.

Of particular interest is Shkliarov’s analysis of — and his warnings about — the dangers posed from escalating U.S.-Russia tensions (on Tuesday night, the U.S. scrambled jets in response to Russian warplanes flying 100 miles off the coast of Alaska for the first time since Trump became president).

read more:

https://theintercept.com/2017/04/19/a-sanders-campaign-adviser-was-a-rus...

-----------------

Here we must be prepared not to trust anyone. Is Vitali Shkliarov a double agent? One never knows. But the success of the Bernie campaign did a lot of grief to that of Clinton, FOR FAR LONGER than the other idiots on the Republican side did to Trump who cruised like a demented tank in a car-park. Vitali would have had to be aware of the shenanigans in the DNC. Anyone in the Sanders camp would have known that the Hillary camp was playing dirty. This was on public record. That the DNC emails surfaced, only confirmed what we all knew. But despite all this, Hillary was cruising to a victory with more voters in the bag. 

What tipped the scales was the very unfair colleges of the US election process. This was secretly hoarded by the Trump's camp who knew the DNC had "forgotten" to consolidate its traditional voting base in some critical States. Result? Trump wins the Colleges, Hillary wins the popular vote by 3 million plus voters. Result? A Trump victory... Did the Russians spying on this and that interfere in the result: NO. Never intended to. 

Uncle Rupe meanwhile was doing his best to create doubts in the mind of voters. His horse of choice was Trump: a nag. So he loaded the spirited filly with as much weighted crap as possible without looking too partisan. Why did Uncle Rupe prefer Trump? Good question... you should ask him, but my guess be prepared for a simple answer: He does not like anything with a whiff of leftism in it. He did whatever he could to belittle Sanders, like all other MMMM that of course supported Hillary. Murdoch also manipulated the minds of the evangelicals to prefer Trump despite Trump's lunacy. Does Uncle Rupe expect favour? Trump owes him big... In Australia, Murdoch made sure Tony Abbott would get elected. No sweat. In the US, the process was a bit more complicated, but as a strategist, Murdoch is uncomplicated: load the visual cortex of voters with images. Don't bother with long winded articles that end up saying nothing much.

Hence I shall stop here and invite you to see the toon at top...

“It’s mostly bullsh*t right now. Like, we don’t have any big giant proof,” Bonifield tells a reporter in secretly-filmed footage released by conservative activist James O’Keefe via Project Veritas.

O’Keefe formed Veritas in 2010 claiming its mission is to "investigate and expose corruption, dishonesty, self-dealing, waste, fraud and other misconduct." It has since been sued for its information-gathering methods, primarily targeting liberal organizations, and presenting its findings in a misleading, highly edited format.

In this latest Veritas sting, Bonifield, Supervising Producer at CNN Health, makes the admissions to an unidentified journalist, who is heard in a brief edit of clips asking about the Russian narrative in CNN’s reporting.

“So why is CNN constantly like, ‘Russia this, Russia that?’” the journalist asks, to which Bonifield responds, “Because it’s ratings.”

“Our CIA is doing shit all the time, we’re out there trying to manipulate governments,” Bonifield says.

“I think the President is probably right to say, like, look, you are witch-hunting me,” Bonifield admits.

CNN's Russia tactic has paid off, Bonifield admits: “Our ratings are incredible right now.”

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/394233-russia-cnn-ratings-veritas/

Read from top...

The New York Times has finally retracted its assertion that 17 US national intelligence agencies had unanimously agreed that Russia organized cyberattacks against the US.

On Thursday, the New York Times issued a correction of a June 25 White House Memo report by correspondent Maggie Haberman: "The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies – the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community."

The [NY] Times’ retraction fails to reflect the fact that even those four agencies weren’t in full agreement.

The National Security Agency (NSA) is the main body that can trace and track all incoming and outgoing cyber activity on US networks, according to CIA analyst Ray McGovern. They offered a "moderate" confidence level in the allegations of Russian hacking in the report cited by the Times. 

"If this was a hack, NSA would know about it. NSA does not know about it," he said in an April interview. "Matter of fact, when the CIA and FBI said, 'we have high confidence' … NSA, which is the only real agency that has the capability to trace these things, said 'well, we only have moderate confidence.'"

"In the Army we call that the SWAG factor: a scientific wild-ass guess," McGovern said.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/us/201706291055098957-nyt-retracts-rumor-russiag...

During the later portion of a phone-call, by the world’s greatest investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, Hersh has now presented “a narrative [from his investigation] of how that whole fucking thing began,” including who actually is behind the ‘RussiaGate’ lies, and of why they are spreading these lies.

In a youtube video upload-dated August 1st, he reveals from his inside FBI and Washington DC Police Department sources — now, long before the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be presenting his official ‘findings’ to the nation — that the charges that Russia had anything to do with the leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to Wikileaks, that those charges spread by the press, were a CIA-planted lie, and that what Wikileaks had gotten was only leaks (including at least from the murdered DNC-staffer Seth Rich), and were not from any outsider (including ’the Russians’), but that Rich didn’t get killed for that, but was instead shot in the back during a brutal robbery, which occurred in the high-crime DC neighborhood where he lived.  Here is the video, and here is the transcript of it:

I’ll tell you what I know. (Mumble) comes off an FBI report, don’t ask me how, I can figure out, I’ve been around long enough:

The kid gets — I don’t think he was murdered [because of this] I don’t think he was murdered because of what he knew, the kid was a nice boy, 27, he was not an ITS person, he learned stuff, he was a data-programmer, but he learned stuff, and so he was living on one street, somewhere, he was living in a very rough neighborhood, and in the exact area where he lived, there had been about, I am sure you know, there had been about 8 or 9 or 10, violent robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun, and I am sure you know, his [the kid’s] hands were marked up, the cops concluded [HERSH SAW THE POLICE REPORT] he fought off the people, he tried to run, and they shot him twice in the back with a 22, small-caliber, and then the kid that did it ran, he got scared.

So, the cops do this, here’s what nobody knows, what I am telling you, now maybe you do know something about it: When you have a death like that, DC cops, as you’re [dealing now with a person who is] dead, you generally don’t zip and go, yep I know, what’s the motive, what’s going on, you have to get to the kid’s apartment and see what you can find. If he’s dead, you don’t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if the guy has a roommate, so they get a warrant, I’m just telling you, there is such a thing. They go in and can’t do much with his computer, [to find the] password, the cops don’t know much about it, so the cops have a cyber unit in DC, and they’re more sophisticated, they come in and look at it.

The idea is maybe he has had a series of exchanges with somebody who said ‘I am going to kill you motherfucker’ over a girl, and they can’t get in, the cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it, so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Russian[-monitoring] and field office is a hot-shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he’s like a three-star at an army-base, he’s ready [mumble], you know what I mean, he’s going to do a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent. What you get in a warrant, the public information you get in a warrant doesn’t include the affidavits underlying why you are going in, what the reason was. That’s almost never available, I can tell you that — the thesis of a warrant as a public document 99% of the time.

So they call in the feds, the feds get through, and here’s what they find [HERSH SAW THE FBI REPORT]. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is, first of all you have to know some basic facts, one of the basic facts is there is no DNC or protected email that exists beyond May 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups. So, what the report says, is:

(2:50) – At some time in late spring, which we’re talking about in June 21st, I don’t know, just late spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks, that’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian [Assange] in Europe ten twelve years [ago], I stay the fuck away from people like that. He has invited me and when I am in London, I always get a message, ‘come see me at the Ecuadorean’ [Embassy], and I am fucking not going there. I have enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.

They found, what he had done, he [Seth Rich] had submitted a series of documents, emails from DNC — and, by the way, all this shit about the DNC, you know, was it a ‘hack’ or wasn’t it a ‘hack’ — whatever happened, it was the Democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that, he offered a sample, he sends a sample, you know, I am sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money’. Later Wikileaks did get the password [SETH RICH DID SELL WIKILEAKS ACCESS INTO HIS COMPUTER.] He had a drop-box, a [password-]protected drop-box, which isn’t hard to do.

I mean you don’t have to be a whiz at IT [information technology], he was not a dumb kid. They got access to the drop-box. This is all from the FBI report. He also let people know with whom he was dealing, I don’t know how he dealt, I’ll tell you all about Wikileaks in a second, with Wikileaks the mechanism, but according to the FBI report, he shared his box with a couple of friends, so ‘If anything happens to me, it’s not going to solve your problem’, okay? I don’t know what that means.

But, anyway, Wikileaks got access. And, before he was killed, I can tell you right now, [Obama’s CIA Director John] Brennan’s an asshole. I’ve known all these people for years, Clapper is sort of a better guy but no rocket-scientist, the NSA guys are fuckin’ morons, and the trouble with all those guys is, the only way they’ll get hired by SAIC, is if they’ll deliver some [government] contracts, it’s the only reason they stayed in. With Trump, they’re gone, they’re going to live on their pension, they’re not going to make it [to great wealth]. I’ve gotta to tell you, guys in that job, they don’t want to live on their pension. They want to be on [corporate] boards like their [mumble] thousand bucks [cut].

I have somebody on the inside, you know I’ve been around a long time, somebody who will go and read a file for me, who, this person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he’s a very high-level guy, he’ll do a favor, you’re just going to have to trust me, I have what they call in my business, long-form journalism, I have a narrative, of how that whole fucking thing began.

(5:50)  – It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation, and the fucking President, at one point when they even started telling the press — they were back[ground]-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, the fucking cocksucker Rogers, telling the press that we [they] even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. All bullshit. They were telling. I worked at the New York Times those fucking years, they’re smart guys, but they’re totally beholden on [to] sources. If the President or the head of the CIA tells them something, they actually believe it. I retired at the Times at the end of the Vietnam War 1972, because they were just locked-in. So that’s what the Times is, these guys run the fuckin’ Times, and Trump’s not wrong, I wish he would calm down, get a better press secretary, you know, not be so — Trump’s not wrong to think they all fucking lied about him.

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/08/07/seymour-hersh-cracks-russiagate-as-cia-planted-lie-revenge-against-trump/

President Trump hurled fresh insults at former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, calling him a “lying machine,” as he kept tabs on his favorite news show Saturday morning.

“’Clapper lied about (fraudulent) Dossier leaks to CNN’ @foxandfriends FoxNews,” Trump tweeted at 8:58 am. “He is a lying machine who now works for Fake News CNN.”

The charge referred to a revelation in Friday’s House Intelligence Committee report on its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

Clapper, the report said, at first “flatly denied” having been the source of any reports that then-President Elect Trump had been briefed on the “Steele dossier,” a collection of unverified opposition research against the Republican.

“Clapper subsequently acknowledged discussing the ‘dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper,’” the report said.

Clapper’s leak sparked CNN’s initial reports on the dossier – and its lewd descriptions of misbehavior with prostitutes – shortly before Trump’s 2017 inauguration.

Read more:

https://nypost.com/2018/04/28/trump-slams-former-intel-chief-clapper-lyi...

Read from top. ALL THE CIA BOSSES HAVE LIED, ARE LYING AND WILL LIE. It is their profession.

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, who landed a job at CNN in August 2017 after leaving the government, leaked information to CNN’s Jake Tapper regarding the infamous Steele dossier and its salacious allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump - then denied his actions to Congress under oath.

The leak, and the cover up, shows the "collaboration between the media and the intelligence community in building up Russiagate," Max Blumenthal, a journalist and bestselling author, told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear.

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201805031064103965-tapper-clapper-trump...

Read from top and top and top....

Clapper’s Credibility Collapses

Former National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s key role in helping the Cheney/Bush administration “justify” war on Iraq with fraudulent intelligence was exposed on Tuesday at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington by his own words quoted back to him from his memoir “Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence.” Hard truths, indeed.

Clapper was appointed Director of National Intelligence by President Barack Obama in June 2010, almost certainly at the prompting of Obama’s intelligence confidant and Clapper friend John Brennan, later director of the CIA. Despite Clapper’s performance on Iraq, he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Obama even allowed Clapper to keep his job for three and a half more years after he admitted that he had lied under oath to that same Senate about the extent of eavesdropping on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). He is now a security analyst for CNN.

In his book, Clapper finally places the blame for the consequential fraud (he calls it “the failure”) to find the (non-existent) WMD “where it belongs – squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn’t really there.” (emphasis added).

So at the event on Tuesday I stood up and asked him about that. It was easy, given the background Clapper himself provides in his book, such as:

“The White House aimed to justify why an invasion of and regime change in Iraq were necessary, with a public narrative that condemned its continued development of weapons of mass destruction [and] its support to al-Qaida (for which the Intelligence Community had no evidence).”

What Clapper chokes on – and avoids saying – is that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of WMD either. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put him in charge of the agency responsible for analyzing imagery of all kinds – photographic, radar, infrared, and multispectral – precisely so that the absence of evidence from our multi-billion-dollar intelligence collection satellites could be hidden, in order not to impede the planned attack on Iraq. That’s why, as Clapper now admits, he had to find “what wasn’t really there.”

Members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) who have employed Clapper under contract, or otherwise known his work, caution that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So, to be fair, there is an outside chance that Rumsfeld persuaded him to be guided by the (in)famous Rumsfeld dictum: “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” 

But the consequences are the same: a war of aggression with millions dead and wounded; continuing bedlam in the area; and no one – high or low – held accountable. Hold your breath and add Joe Biden awarding the “Liberty Medal” to George W. Bush on Veteran’s Day.

‘Shocked’

Clapper writes: 

“… we heard that Vice President Cheney was pushing the Pentagon for intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and then the order came down to NIMA [the National Imagery and Mapping Agency] to find (emphasis in original) the WMD sites. We set to work, analyzing imagery to eventually identify, with varying degrees of confidence, more than 950 sites where we assessed there might be WMDs or a WMD connection. We drew on all of NIMA’s skill sets … and it was all wrong.”

“To support his [Secretary of State Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003] speech, NIMA (which Clapper headed) had gone through the difficult process of declassifying satellite images of trucks arriving at WMD sites just ahead of the weapons inspectors to move materials before they could be found, and my team also produced computer-generated images of trucks fitted out as ‘mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.’ Those images, possibly more than any other substantiation he presented, carried the day with the international community and Americans alike.”

“[For] the invasion of Iraq on March 20, six weeks after Powell’s speech, NIMA … prepared a prioritized list of our suspect [WMD] sites with specific locations. … Using this information, they [the fourteen-hundred-member international Iraq Survey Group] went from site to site but found almost nothing. We were shocked. … The trucks we had identified as “mobile production facilities for biological agents” were in fact used to pasteurize and transport milk.”

As for those mischievous trucks allegedly used “to move materials before they could be found,” as Scott Ritter, former chief UN weapons inspector for Iraq, has pointed out, they were clearly decontamination vehicles. UN inspectors had visited the site in question. It was an ammunition bunker, and the decontamination vehicle was a water truck used to keep the dust levels down because of the sensitive fuses located in the bunker. These were known facts but Clapper chose to ignore them.

Nor did he give up easily, before he could resist no longer and admit, as he writes, that “it was all wrong.” In late October 2003, Clapper briefed Washington media on his latest guesses as to what really happened to the (notional) WMD. The Washington Times’s Bill Getz wrote a long article replete with detailed quotes from Clapper, starting with: “Iraqi military officers destroyed or hid chemical, biological and nuclear weapons goods in the weeks before the war, the nation’s top satellite spy director said yesterday. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria.”

In his book, Clapper refers to that briefing and says he conceded “we’d made some assumptions we shouldn’t have … “ and admitted that “I was still baffled that no WMD sites had been discovered. I mentioned that in the days before the invasion started, we saw a lot of cars and trucks fleeing the country into Syria. … I probably should have clarified what a stretch it would be” to suggest the WMD had been transported to Syria.” Well, yes, that would have prevented further embarrassment.

During the Q and A I was sorely tempted to quote Hans Blix, the then head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, who on June 23, 2003 quipped to the Council on Foreign Relations, “It’s sort of puzzling that you can have 100 percent confidence about WMD existence, but zero certainty about where they are.” But that would have brought loud boos from the docile audience at Carnegie, and gotten me off on the wrong foot.

Instead, I cited to Clapper his most grievous offense against the profession of intelligence analysis – his inordinate eagerness to please whatever superiors he was working for at the time, and give them the information they lusted after to “justify” things like war.

I observed that exactly two years ago, the Obamas and Clintons were desperate to blame Trump’s victory on Russian interference. And so, I asked, was this a repeat performance? Had Clapper snapped to and again “found what really wasn’t there?” This, I emphasized, was the conclusion of VIPS, including two former Technical Directors at NSA.

Read more:

https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2018/11/14/clappers-credibility-co...

Read from top...