Hacking, Hacked

On Friday, the Washington Post essentially recirculated a months old story about the DNC email leak and possible involvement of the Russian government. However, in the best interests of turning mole hills into mountains, they changed two aspects of the story. First, they claimed the Central Intelligence Agency is certain of the Russian government’s involvement. Second, they claimed the Russian government’s agenda was to deny Hillary Clinton the Presidency. In the ensuing days, the Democrats and neocon wing of the GOP have leapt in with both feet in beating the war drums against Moscow.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Russia is not a historic ally of the USA and Vladimir Putin is not a friend. We also know the DNC was hacked and thousands of their internal emails embarrassingly released in the weeks leading up to the election. We also know the organization that leaked the emails was not the SVR or FSB (the Russian clandestine services) but Wikileaks.

Here’s some other things we know.

• The news outlet that released this scoop, the Washington Post, actively campaigned against Donald Trump throughout the presidential campaign. Since the campaign ended, it has actively sought to undermine the coming Trump administration before it even takes office. This includes attacks on the election itself, including attacks on the Constitution and feeding the false narrative that “fake news” led to Mrs. Clinton’s defeat. Interestingly enough, the paper has also claimed that most “fake news” is generated in Russia.
• The FBI earlier released their own report regarding the DNC hack, concluding that while it was “probable” that the Russian government had a role, it did not find that role as consequential. It also noted a failed hack attempt at the RNC.
• The CIA does not “leak” investigations through “unnamed sources.” First, the CIA cannot investigate anything on US soil. Doing so breaks US law. Second, anyone at CIA (other than political operatives with White House cover) wouldn’t dare leak anything. Doing so guarantees a life of turning big rocks into little rocks at Ft. Leavenworth.
• Ordinarily, a story of this magnitude (cyber warfare directed against the US by our greatest enemy of the 20th century) would have had dozens of follow-on pieces from rival news organizations, all working to scoop the competition. Yet, so far, everyone from CNN to MSNBC to ABC to the New York Times has only quoted the original report.
• Finally, the story appeared mere hours after President Obama (you know, that totally non-partisan paramour of righteousness) called for the US intelligence services to deliver a full report on Russian hacking activities during the election.

For the sake of argument, I’ll go  ahead and assume that the Washington Post didn’t publish a fabricated story. I’ll say they actually did have someone at CIA break their oath to leak this particular story. I’ll go ahead and pretend the likelihood that the CIA conducted the fastest investigation in history is just that. I’ll further pretend that the probability of story not originating in the Post’s press room but the White House Press Office is practically zero.

That still doesn’t leave us with much of anything. Why? Well, because the CIA report cited in the  Post’s story is all supposition. According to the anonymous source, the CIA “thinks” the Russian government worked through various international cut-outs and behind the curtain of the “dark web.” It “believes” the RNC was successfully hacked but the Russian government didn’t release any of the information they gathered (remember: the FBI said conclusively that the RNC was not hacked). Finally, the CIA “infers” that the motive behind this nefarious activity was that the Russian government wanted to ensure Donald Trump’s election. There is no proof, no smoking gun, no documentary evidence.

And yet, after all that, the brilliance of the Russian plan came down to this: the Russian intelligence services would have had to convince Putin that by showing us how the DNC systematically worked to deny Bernie Sanders the Democratic nomination, Americans would become so disgusted with those machinations we would vote for Trump.

If you’ve ever played chess with a Russian, you know how convoluted and implausible that is. What I wouldn’t doubt is the Russians planting the seeds of that kind of story, letting the American left trip over them and come up with the exact scenario now being presented. Why? Because the American left is nothing if not predictable, and undoubtedly still mad as hell about having their mail server hacked. Oh, that and Putin loves playing the American left for fools. He’s been doing it for well over 15 years now.

It’s either that, or a contrived news story originating in the Obama White House, with their obedient lackeys at the Washington Post doing the grunt work of publishing the latest bit of fake news to come out of the mainstream media. I’m not sure which. But either way, Putin wins. Kind of a last little “screw you, America” from our friends on the left before their God-Man leaves the Oval Office.