© Dado Ruvic / Reuters
Comment: There is no evidence provided by the West that Russia is at all involved in the email leaks surrounding the Clinton presidential campaign Despite that, the US government acts as though perception is reality. The reality is that Russia is very unlikely to be behind the Podesta email leaks and also there is unlikely to be anything done to truly embarrass Putin and Russia. The US media is merely being used to spread misinformation in this case. The likely culprit of the hacking scandal is the US government themselves, specifically factions of the CIA.
"Current and former officials," who the report claims have direct knowledge of the situation, say the CIA has been tasked with providing options to the White House.
Sources tell the channel that US intelligence has started preparations for the operation and has even obtained "reams of documents" to target Russian President Vladimir Putin and his "unsavory tactics."
Comment: His "unsavory tactics" include soundly whipping the US Empire's butt in Syria, saving Syrian civilians from mass slaughter at the hands of US proxy terrorists and forcing the US to back down from its psychopathic "full spectrum dominance" behavior around the world.
Earlier this week, the White House said President Barack Obama was weighing a "proportional response" to Moscow. Spokesman John Earnest told reporters that the president was still deciding on "response options" that would probably not be announced in advance and may never be disclosed.
As sources have told NBC News, there is "a division" at the Obama administration on whether or not Capitol Hill should retaliate.
Comment: Retaliate against what? There is no evidence of Russian involvement in the Podesta emails. At this point it's patently ridiculous the steps the US will go to attack Russia. Anything that harms the US government's reputation is blamed on Putin and then used as an excuse for attacking them. Putin is surely smart enough to realize that acting this way will only result in attacks on Russia, so hacking the US government clearly doesn't benefit Russia. But it sure allows the US government and media to continue with their narrative of demonizing Putin and Russia and keeping people focused on the bad guy "out there" instead of the bad guy right at home. Perhaps Americans ought to look at their government's responsibility for the email leaks, since it benefits them more than anyone.
"If someone has decided, 'we've had enough of the Russians,' there is a lot we can do. Step one is to remind them that two can play at this game and we have a lot of stuff. Step two, if you are looking to mess with their networks, we can do that, but then the issue becomes, they can do worse things to us in other places," a former CIA officer, who worked on Russia, said.
The same source has also revealed that it was not an unusual practice for the White House to ask the CIA to pitch options for anti-Russia measures, including cyberattacks. However, it never went further than just requests.
"We've always hesitated to use a lot of stuff we've had, but that's a political decision," the former CIA officer said.
Another former officer confirmed the words of his colleague to NBC News. As the one who helped run intelligence operations against Russia, he said that over the years he was asked several times to work on action plans, but "none of the options were particularly good, nor did we think that any of them would be particularly effective."
He believes that embarrassing Putin was a particularly tough case, because there is not anything the US can do to which Russia would not be able to respond. Of a hypothetical example being made of Russian bank accounts, he said: "Do you want to have Barack Obama bouncing checks?"
The CIA's cyber operation is being prepared by a team within, the documents indicate.
According to officials, the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence has a team of "hundreds and a budget in the hundreds of millions."
On Friday, Vice President Joe Biden told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the US is "sending a message" to Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact."
When asked if Americans would know a message was sent, Biden replied, "hope not," essentially echoing the White House.
WikiLeaks, however, expressed doubt over the seriousness of the report about the "clandestine" cyberwar on Russia.
Accusations against Russia have been louder in recent days with WikiLeaks releasing thousands of dubbed "Podesta emails" exposing Hillary Clinton's connections to Wall Street, views on Syria and details of her presidential campaign. In much of the US media reporting, the perception is that the Kremlin works along with WikiLeaks, providing it with materials to post. The allegations have been denied both in Moscow and by WikiLeaks.
Responding to Washington's official accusations on October 7, Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said it was "yet another fit of nonsense," stating that "tens of thousands of hackers" try to break into the sites of Russian officials. However, he stressed, Moscow never pointed a finger at the US.
This week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the claims of Russia trying interfere in the US presidential election as "ridiculous."
"It's flattering, of course, to get this kind of attention - for a regional power, as President Obama called us some time ago," Lavrov said in an interview with CNN. "Now everybody in the United States is saying that it is Russia which is running the [US] presidential debate," he said, adding, "we have not seen a single fact, a single proof."
Kaspersky is currently advertising in F1 cars. These ads cost millions. Where did they get the money ? Simple. By robbing banks using the well known "back door" trick. They installed their "security" first
in Italy and then Turkey in order to perform a rehearsal. It went without a hitch since it was planned down to
the last detail, namely picking up the persons taking the cash from the ATMs. The total amount lost wasn't big and of course once again the story was buried by the MSM. But they didn't stop there. They reinstalled their security elsewhere and this time it was time for the big one. They waited for 2 (!) years observing how banks moved their money, their digital refresh timing and so on and so forth, again everything down to the last detail plus this time the amount stolen was much much bigger about 3,000 € per person involved, maybe more, and there were a lot involved in Russia, China and Europe. Once again the MSM buried the story. Conclusion : Unless you have your own cybersecurity installed BY PEOPLE YOU TRUST you are totally screwed.