Killary sez: '17 intelligence agencies confirm Russia behind email hacks' - NOT a fact

Mark Jeftovic
Rebooting Capitalism
Fri, 21 Oct 2016 16:35 UTC

© Wikileaks/Twitter

Briefly, because I'm trying to get some work done instead of expending energy on this horrific, disgusting election cycle...

In last night's debate, Clinton stated that "17 intelligence agencies have confirmed that Russia is behind the email hacks" which were then turned over to Wikileaks.

Never mind that the mainstream media and the elites are very selective about when to condemn hacked document dumps. As I wrote yesterday before the debate:

It is interesting to note the difference in the treatment of email dumps based on whether it criticizes or supports the Establishment.

In the Panama Papers, hacked emails revealed mass tax avoidance schemes executed primarily by non-insulated political outsiders. Obama deemed it "important stuff" and called for international tax reform in the wake of the revelations contained therein.

But when the Podesta emails reveal ongoing, systemic, baked-in wrong-doing on the part of anointed political favourites, the bogeyman of "Russian state-sponsored hackers" is trotted out, hell-bent on throwing the election and Obama (as per the aforementioned quote) starts talking about "folks needing some kinda Ministry of Truthiness".

As I also covered yesterday, Glenn Greenwald exhaustively back-traced where the 'Russia-hacked-the-election' meme came from and that it was pure spin. The original author who set the entire farce in motion later admitted it was all a mistake, and in his own 'Mea Culpa' revealed that according to the subtext of extensive emails from a Newsweek reporter pressuring him to allow the lie to live, it was US intelligence agencies pushing to spread this narrative. (NSA whistleblower William Binney said the hack itself was the act of a disgruntled employee within a US intelligence agency).

Comment: Well, he suggested that. More likely, it's a disgruntled Clinton insider. Yes, even her 'closest' can't stand her, as revealed in some of the Podesta emails.

The "17 agencies that actually confirmed" it was the Russians? Well it turns out that was one guy, namely DCI James Clapper: the head of US intelligence. The same man who committed perjury before congress after his NSA surveillance program was leaked. He issued a statement that included the phrase:

We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

The very next sentence is also of interest:

Some states have also recently seen scanning and probing of their election-related systems, which in most cases originated from servers operated by a Russian company. However, we are not now in a position to attribute this activity to the Russian Government.

The word "confirmed" does not appear anywhere in this statement

So when HRC stated the "17 intelligence agencies have confirmed" I was anticipating what that would turn up in the "fact checking" apparatus, which allegedly exists to objectively test the assertions of both candidates in real time.

The "fact checking" around this statement would be comical if not infuriatingly Orwellian: ABC called it "a true fact"

© ABC News

The New York Times fact check on this debate, at first glance would lead one to believe all the lies and misdirection to be coming from one side of the the podiums, Trump's. But they did not even touch Clinton's "17 intelligence agencies have confirmed" statement, instead they took an accusation by Clinton, levelled at Trump, dressed it up as a "fact" (by it's inclusion in the NYT's edition of the "Debate Fact Checks"), presumably "fact checked" it and then ceremoniously blessed it as "True":

© New York Times

Again, the media narrative around all this is now completely oblivious to the actual content of those leaks. Including that the Democrats staged anti-Trump rallies which has since been corroborated by the fact that Dems employed paid agents provocateurs at Trump rallies to incite violence.

The media gave a previous administration a free pass when they started a war in Iraq based on a lie (one that was also presumably "confirmed" by intelligence agencies). Now they are full-on complicit in this one as the US gears up for a cyberwar with Russia over another lie.

Comment: Relations between US intel and the intel agencies of its most obsequious vassal states are such that the US govt could plausibly find 17 agencies 'committed' enough to 'fall on their swords' and 'take one for the team'. Just think of how Denmark, the UK and Australia said the airstrikes against Syrian forces in Deir ez-Zor last month were their doing (when everyone and his dog knows perfectly well it was the US 'secret govt' network).