OPCW Report Behind Syria Bombings was Altered, Whistle-blower Tells UNSC

Worst lie since fake claim sparked Iraq war? 

A former inspector with the OPCW has accused the chemical weapons watchdog of issuing a sanitized report on the alleged 2018 attack in Douma, Syria, arguing it ignored serious reservations of its own fact-finding team.

The OPCW’s final report on the Douma incident, released last March, omitted key findings of its own inspection team which would have cast serious doubt on whether a chemical attack took place at all, a now former OPCW specialist, Ian Henderson, told members of the United Nations Security Council in a recorded video address – after his visa application to attend the meeting in person was rejected.

“The findings in the final [Fact Finding Mission] report were contradictory, were a complete turnaround with what the team had understood collectively during and after the Douma deployments,” Henderson said.

Max Blumenthal✔
@MaxBlumenthal
Ian Henderson, member of OPCW team on Douma, spoke today at the UN. 

He re-stated his belief that no chemical attack occurred & called the final OPCW report a "complete turnaround in the situation from what was understood by the majority of the team and the entire Douma team." https://twitter.com/LennyZuber/status/1219372375764021249 …

Even though several members of the fact finding team “had serious misgivings that a chemical attack had occurred” as early as July 2018, the organization’s final report – compiled by another group that never even visited the incident site – nonetheless concluded there were “reasonable grounds” to all but pin the blame for the attack on Damascus.

Sanitized of any dissenting opinion, the report ignored “findings, facts, information, data or analysis” gathered by the team in the areas of witness testimony, toxicology studies, chemical analysis, as well as ballistics, the retired inspector said.

Ian Henderson, OPCW whistle-blower

Washington and its allies blamed the Syrian government for the Douma incident, with the US, France, and the UK launching joint strikes against Syria a week later, well before any official investigation could even start, and even delaying it. Western politicians and media claimed at the time – based purely on visual materials and witness accounts provided by the notorious White Helmets and other militant-linked sources – that the Syrian government forces had ‘highly likely’ dropped two poisonous gas cylinders, killing scores of civilians.

Henderson carried out a closer analysis of that pair of cylinders mysteriously found in a residential area of Douma. His ‘Engineering Assessment’ was initially leaked last May, laying out a number of hypotheses for how the cylinders wound up at the site in Douma. Most significantly, it noted a “higher probability” that they were “manually placed” instead of being “delivered from aircraft,” suggesting a party other than the Syrian government may have planted them there.

In my case, I had followed up with a further six months of engineering and ballistics studies into the cylinders, the result of which had provided further support for the view that there had not been a chemical attack.

Subsequent WikiLeaks publications would reveal that a senior OPCW official ordered “all traces” of Henderson’s assessment to be scrubbed from its archives. But despite the internal battle undermining the OPCW’s credibility, Henderson insisted the dispute should not be a matter of “political debate,” urging for any discrepancies to be “properly resolved… through the rigors of science and engineering.”

On 27 December 2019, Wikileaks released a new batch of internal documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). [1] An email among them reveals that Inspector Ian Henderson’s report was pulled by order of the OPCW’s chief of cabinet Sébastien Braha. [2]

The French diplomat is an "officer of the Orient" (high ranking official of the French Foreign Affairs Ministry) who was seconded to the OPCW three months after the alleged chemical attack on Douma in order to oversee the organization’s investigation.

In the email, Sébastien Braha (photo) demands: “Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]... And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA”.  - Voltaire Network

The informal UNSC meeting to assess the situation and inconsistencies around the FMM’s report was convened at the request of Moscow on Monday. The US and its allies accused Russia of trying to “discredit the well-respected OPCW and its staff,” even though Moscow insists that the goal, on the contrary, was to restore trust in the organization.

“The chemical incident in Syrian Douma. Why is it so important? Because it was a justification of missile strikes by the US, France and the UK in April 2018, who immediately named the Syrian Government guilty,” said Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, who accused the US and allies of “crying wolf.”

Since not so long... ago, some of our colleagues invented a new paradigm, the world of 'highly likely'.

Besides listening to Henderson’s testimony, the UNSC was addressed by Russia’s OPCW representative, Alexander Shulgin, and the chief of a NGO (Foundation for the Study of Democracy) that had previously interviewed over 300 residents of Douma, shattering the official Western narrative.

Remarks by Mr. Maxim Grigoriev, Head of the Foundation for the Study of Democracy, at an Arria-formula meeting of UNSC member states "Implementation of UNSCR 2118: OPCW FFM Report on Douma

Individual responses by people living in the apartment building allegedly affected by the chlorine canisters can be found at the link immediately above.

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” conducted an independent evaluation of the Douma incident on 7 April, 2018. 

We have interviewed:

•       Fifteen witnesses in the Douma Hospital;

•      10 residents of a house in Douma where human bodies were found;

•       300 residents of houses, situated within one kilometer from the building where the bodies were found.

The testimony of witnesses is an undisputable proof that the chemical attack in Douma was falsified. 

Those witnesses to the falsification tell how exactly it all happened: 

•       The fighters who came with the White Helmets, brought dead bodies, intimidated locals, shot at windows, forcing some people to leave their homes and isolating the rest in their apartments. Then, they brought the bodies outside and filmed the footage.  

•       One body the fighters left outside was identified by a witness. It was his brother who had earlier been killed in an artillery shelling and taken by fighters from hospital. The remaining bodies, as the witnesses supposed, were brought from the Al Thoba prison where fighters kept the people they captured, including women and children.  

•       Taking into account that other bodies had no injuries, the witnesses are confident that the people featured in the video recordings were killed just to organize the falsification.

The testimony presented above unequivocally proves that the chemical attack on 7 April, 2018, was falsified.

When preparing the report:

OPCW abstained from inquiring the above-mentioned witnesses who were permanently residing at the place of incident and were ready to testify. By all means, this is the first thing to be done to investigate the accident. The fact that OPCW Mission did not do this proves their low level of competence or lack of willingness to reveal the truth;

OPCW used data provided by people who may not have been present at the scene of incident, and who were inquired in Idlib Governorate and in other countries;

OPCW deliberately used falsified materials provided by the “White Helmets” as the main basis for their conclusions. 

On 11 March 2019,  a briefing was held at OPCW. I presented our report ”White Helmets: fact checking by eyewitnesses  and former volunteers”. It contains numerous proofs that falsification of chemical attacks was an essential part of the work of White Helmets and they can not be considered as a credible source of information. 

Officials of OPCW concealed conclusions made by its experts, deleted a number of vital facts from the report, and falsified the report itself.

For the first time over 23 years of its existence, Officials of the OPCW take part in falsification of a report. This is an unprecedented blow to the reputation of the OPCW.

Secretary-General of the United Nations is depositary of the Chemical Weapons Convention. OPCW works based on this CWC. 

NGO “The Foundation for the Study of Democracy” prepared a letter addressed to the Secretary-General (показать) that contains testimonies of above mentioned witnesses. I kindly request to circulate it among Security Council members in order to reveal the truth about the falsification of chemical attack in Douma on 7 April, 2018.

Search this blog for Douma, for many more posts on the appalling story.

Wikileaks Reveals New OPCW Douma Leaks - Cover-up - No Chlorine Gas

Kids being treated for chlorine exposure in Douma (apparently) - notice there is no blotching of the

skin, not even any redness in her eyes. I wonder what they did to her to make her look so miserable?

By News Desk, AMN, Beirut

BEIRUT, LEBANON – Wikileaks has released their fourth set of leaks from the OPCW’s Douma investigation, revealing new details about the alleged deletion of important information regarding the fact-finding mission.

“One of the documents is an e-mail exchange dated 27 and 28 February between members of the fact finding mission (FFM) deployed to Douma and the senior officials of the OPCW. It includes an e-mail from Sebastien Braha, Chief of Cabinet at the OPCW, where he instructs that an engineering report from Ian Henderson should be removed from the secure registry of the organisation:

‘Please get this document out of DRA [Documents Registry Archive]… And please remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever in DRA.'”

According to Wikileaks, the main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma, was that two of the cylinders were most likely manually placed at the site, rather than dropped.

“The main finding of Henderson, who inspected the sites in Douma and two cylinders that were found on the site of the alleged attack, was that they were more likely manually placed there than dropped from a plane or helicopter from considerable heights. His findings were omitted from the official final OPCW report on the Douma incident,” the Wikileaks report said.

Another document released today is minutes from a meeting on 6 June 2018 where four staff members of the OPCW had discussions with “three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist” (all specialists in chemical weapons, according to the minutes).

The purpose of this meeting was two-fold. The first objective was “to solicit expert advice on the value of exhuming suspected victims of the alleged chemical attack in Douma on 7 April 2018”. According to the minutes, the OPCW team was advised by the experts that there would be little use in conducting exhumations. The second point was “To elicit expert opinions from the forensic toxicologists regarding the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims.”

ALSO READ  Newsweek reporter resigns after accusing outlet of suppressing story about OPCW leak

No correlation

More specifically, “…whether the symptoms observed in victims were consistent with exposure to chlorine or other reactive chlorine gas.”

According to the minutes leaked today: “With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure”.

The OPCW team members wrote that the key “take-away message” from the meeting was “that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified”.

For full details, please follow the link: https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/

You can also search 'Douma' on this blog for numerous other stories suggesting a false-flag operation and a cover-up, which can no longer be in any doubt. The hierarchy of the OPCW is being controlled by NATO, Deep State, or one of the governments involved. Their resignations are the very least that can be expected.

'They All Take Saudi Money': Suspected Murder of WaPo Columnist by Saudi Arabia Ignored by UK Press

Corruption is Everywhere - But in the UK, or Global Press?

© Ozan Kose / AFP

WikiLeaks has hit out at UK newspapers which have been curiously circumspect about the alleged murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey last week.

The whistleblower organization tweeted that no British newspaper had led their Monday front pages with news about Khashoggi’s suspected murder despite the fact that news agencies like the Associated Press and Reuters were all reporting on the story — and suggested that the lack of interest from the UK papers was due to the fact that they “all take Saudi money”.

Fears have been growing over the fate of the missing Saudi dissident journalist who writes opinion columns for the Washington Post. Khashoggi was last seen visiting the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last Tuesday and Turkish officials have claimed that initial investigations indicate he was murdered while inside the building.

WikiLeaks also pointed out that the incident has so far prompted no reaction from US President Donald Trump or Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Khashoggi had been intending to obtain a document to certify that he had divorced his ex-wife in order to be able to marry his Turkish fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, who reportedly waited outside the building for 11 hours when he did not return. Turkish officials believe that the journalist was killed inside the building and later removed by a 15-person Saudi team that arrived at the consulate on Tuesday and returned to Riyadh the same day.

Saudi Arabia has denied the accusation and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he still remains “positive” about the investigation.

WikiLeaks weren’t the only ones taking note of how British media have been covering the story in a surprisingly calm and low-key manner, however. Some on Twitter made comparisons to how the UK papers had covered the recent alleged murder of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko, who turned out to be alive and playing an elaborate trick on the media.

Others suggested that the British media was probably too busy trying to find a way to blame Putin for the murder or seeking out the next alleged victim of a Russian “Novichok attack” to look into the Khashoggi story.

Some pointed out that the Saudis are the “international untouchables” due to their close relationships with the US and UK governments. While the Guardian did run a column about Khashoggi on its front page, some Twitter users noted that it seemed like the newspaper was trying to downplay the story by not making it the main focus.

In 2016, Reporters Without Borders published information detailing how Saudi Arabia “manipulates foreign media outlets” in order to “project a positive image of the kingdom internationally”. RSF wrote that a series of cables between Saudi embassies and the Saudi foreign ministry (made public by WikiLeaks) revealed that “extraordinary initiatives” were considered by Riyadh in an attempt to rehabilitate its international image.

The organization wrote that Saudi Arabia “channels funds to media organizations all over the world” including the UK — and that the funding usually takes the form of outright donations or the buying up of thousands of subscriptions, as was the case when a struggling Lebanese TV network adopted a pro-Saudi editorial policy after taking a $2 million bailout from Riyadh.

In another incident, the London-based Financial Times was forced to withdraw its Saudi correspondent and close its Riyadh bureau after the government accused the paper of publishing “lies” about the country. In 2017, Saudi investor Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a 30 percent stake in the Independent newspaper, which also prompted concern that the paper would not be truly independent anymore.

Bear in mind this article comes from RT, state-run media, and Russia has an alliance with Iran which sponsors proxy wars against Saudi Arabia. So, the point of the article is to defame the Kingdom, though the points it makes are most likely accurate.

MSM's Political Bias is Highlighted by BBC's Bonehead Decision

It is just pathetic what journalism has

descended into these days

BBC accused of ‘breaching code’ by putting Assange critic in charge of special on WikiLeaks founder

© Tolga Akmen / AFP

BBC’s Newsnight will air a special on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hosted by journalist John Sweeney, despite what the #FreeAssange campaign say are tweets in “clear breach” of the BBC objectivity standards by the journalist.

“John Sweeney put in charge of tomorrow's Julian Assange special despite (because of?) malicious tweets in clear breach of BBC code,” the #FreeAssange campaign tweeted.

The campaign, which has more than 790,000 followers on Twitter published a list of tweets in which the BBC journalist repeatedly mocks and calls the Wikileaks founder a “Russian agent,” a “Kremlin asset” and Vladimir Putin’s most “useful idiot”. But, despite Sweeney’s personal feelings about Assange being on full display all over Twitter, he will still host the special on the whistleblower.

The #FreeAssange campaign has traded barbs with Sweeney on Twitter in recent days, calling the BBC employee a “UK state TV propagandist”. Sweeney responded to say that the campaign’s characterization of him was “twaddle”.

Assange has been living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London for six years and fears extradition to the United States over millions of leaked documents and classified US military footage. Recent reports have suggested that due to his deteriorating health, Assange may be leaving the embassy soon.

The Courage Foundation, which fundraises for the legal defense of whistleblowers, said the conditions in which Assange is living with “no access to sunlight” are having a serious impact on his “physical and mental health”.

Sweeney has a history of making his personal feelings about various political figures clear. A look at his Twitter profile shows that he has also retweeted numerous comments highly critical of UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, and that he appears to have somewhat of a fixation with Russia.

Sweeney made headlines in 2014 for “doorstepping” Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow to ask him whether he “regrets the killings in Ukraine”. Putin stopped to answer the question through a translator.

An article in the UK’s Independent newspaper at the time said that Sweeney had “a reputation for sailing close to the wind”.

Assange’s mother, Christine Assange, tweeted that her son is “sick, in pain & suffering” and labelled BBC journalists involved with the special “career building cowards” who want to “kick him when he's down”.

Britain and Ecuador Discuss Wikileaks Founder's Fate

Time's running out on the Whistle Blower-in-Chief

By Sommer Brokaw

British and Ecuadorean leaders are holding talks on the fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange who may soon have to leave an embassy in Britain after staying there six years. File photo by Hugo Philpott/UPI | License Photo

UPI -- Officials in Britain and Ecuador are discussing the fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in Ecuador's British embassy for six years.

Assange, 47, who has rarely seen daylight in the years he's been held in asylum, could face expulsion soon from the embassy, a source told The Times.

Government officials in both countries are pondering the eviction of Assange, who gained notoriety for publishing thousands of U.S.-classified documents on the website, WikiLeaks, from Ecuador's London embassy, where he has been in asylum since 2012 and gained citizenship late last year.

Ecuador's President Lenin Moreno told the BBC Friday that he was never "in favor" of Assange's activities, and that both countries were holding talks.

The British government has become more concerned about his welfare as Ecuador cut off his internet connection in March over concerns about his use of social media interfering with diplomatic relations and cut back extra security in May after spending $5 million on protection costs.

"It is our wish that this is brought to an end, and we would like to make the assurance that if he were to step out of the embassy, he would be treated humanely and properly," British Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan told parliament last month.

"The first priority would be to look after his health, which we think is deteriorating."

Ecuador granted political asylum to Assange in 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over rape allegations. Assange faced a count of unlawful coercion and two counts of sexual molestation, which expired in 2015 due to statutes of limitations under Swedish law, while the investigation for one remaining rape allegation, which had an expiration date of 2020, was dropped in May 2017.

Although the Swedish investigation has been dropped, Assange fears an arrest for bail breach in the sexual assault case would allow him to be extradited to the United States for publishing the classified documents on Wikileaks. 

The website grabbed worldwide attention in April 2010 when it released footage of U.S. soldiers fatally shooting at least 18 civilians from a helicopter in Iraq.

Perhaps Assange should have allowed himself to face American justice before Trump began loading the Supreme Court with right-wing cronies. He might have had a chance to be pardoned as a whistle-blower. I doubt that chance exists anymore.

I think Britain would demand assurances that he not face the death penalty for treason before handing him over to the US, but I seriously doubt that he would get a fair trial in America.

USA Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year. 

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)

After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack. Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying and doctoring were performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Independent analyst Skip Folden, a retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US, who examined the recent forensic findings, is a co-author of this Memorandum. He has drafted a more detailed technical report titled “Cyber-Forensic Investigation of ‘Russian Hack’ and Missing Intelligence Community Disclaimers,” and sent it to the offices of the Special Counsel and the Attorney General. VIPS member William Binney, a former Technical Director at the National Security Agency, and other senior NSA “alumni” in VIPS attest to the professionalism of the independent forensic findings.

The recent forensic studies fill in a critical gap. Why the FBI neglected to perform any independent forensics on the original “Guccifer 2.0” material remains a mystery – as does the lack of any sign that the “hand-picked analysts” from the FBI, CIA, and NSA, who wrote the “Intelligence Community Assessment” dated January 6, 2017, gave any attention to forensics.

NOTE: There has been so much conflation of charges about hacking that we wish to make very clear the primary focus of this Memorandum. We focus specifically on the July 5, 2016 alleged Guccifer 2.0 “hack” of the DNC server. In earlier VIPS memoranda we addressed the lack of any evidence connecting the Guccifer 2.0 alleged hacks and WikiLeaks, and we asked President Obama specifically to disclose any evidence that WikiLeaks received DNC data from the Russians [see here and here].

Addressing this point at his last press conference (January 18), he described “the conclusions of the intelligence community” as “not conclusive,” even though the Intelligence Community Assessment of January 6 expressed “high confidence” that Russian intelligence “relayed material it acquired from the DNC … to WikiLeaks.”

Obama’s admission came as no surprise to us. It has long been clear to us that the reason the U.S. government lacks conclusive evidence of a transfer of a “Russian hack” to WikiLeaks is because there was no such transfer. Based mostly on the cumulatively unique technical experience of our ex-NSA colleagues, we have been saying for almost a year that the DNC data reached WikiLeaks via a copy/leak by a DNC insider (but almost certainly not the same person who copied DNC data on July 5, 2016).

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) – the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

*  *  *

Mr. President:

This is our first VIPS Memorandum for you, but we have a history of letting U.S. Presidents know when we think our former intelligence colleagues have gotten something important wrong, and why. For example, our first such memorandum, a same-day commentary for President George W. Bush on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech on February 5, 2003, warned that the “unintended consequences were likely to be catastrophic,” should the U.S. attack Iraq and “justify” the war on intelligence that we retired intelligence officers could readily see as fraudulent and driven by a war agenda.

Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations on Feb. 5. 2003, citing satellite photos which supposedly proved that Iraq had WMD, but the evidence proved bogus

The January 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” by “hand-picked” analysts from the FBI, CIA, and NSA seems to fit into the same agenda-driven category. It is largely based on an “assessment,” not supported by any apparent evidence, that a shadowy entity with the moniker “Guccifer 2.0” hacked the DNC on behalf of Russian intelligence and gave DNC emails to WikiLeaks.

The recent forensic findings mentioned above have put a huge dent in that assessment and cast serious doubt on the underpinnings of the extraordinarily successful campaign to blame the Russian government for hacking. The pundits and politicians who have led the charge against Russian “meddling” in the U.S. election can be expected to try to cast doubt on the forensic findings, if they ever do bubble up into the mainstream media. But the principles of physics don’t lie; and the technical limitations of today’s Internet are widely understood. We are prepared to answer any substantive challenges on their merits.

You may wish to ask CIA Director Mike Pompeo what he knows about this. Our own lengthy intelligence community experience suggests that it is possible that neither former CIA Director John Brennan, nor the cyber-warriors who worked for him, have been completely candid with their new director regarding how this all went down.

Copied, Not Hacked

As indicated above, the independent forensic work just completed focused on data copied (not hacked) by a shadowy persona named “Guccifer 2.0.” The forensics reflect what seems to have been a desperate effort to “blame the Russians” for publishing highly embarrassing DNC emails three days before the Democratic convention last July. Since the content of the DNC emails reeked of pro-Clinton bias, her campaign saw an overriding need to divert attention from content to provenance – as in, who “hacked” those DNC emails? The campaign was enthusiastically supported by a compliant “mainstream” media; they are still on a roll.

“The Russians” were the ideal culprit. And, after WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, “We have emails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” her campaign had more than a month before the convention to insert its own “forensic facts” and prime the media pump to put the blame on “Russian meddling.” Mrs. Clinton’s PR chief Jennifer Palmieri has explained how she used golf carts to make the rounds at the convention. She wrote that her “mission was to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton.”

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at the third debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump. (Photo credit: hillaryclinton.com)

Independent cyber-investigators have now completed the kind of forensic work that the intelligence assessment did not do. Oddly, the “hand-picked” intelligence analysts contented themselves with “assessing” this and “assessing” that. In contrast, the investigators dug deep and came up with verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of the alleged Russian hack.

They found that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else. Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider. The data was leaked after being doctored with a cut-and-paste job to implicate Russia. We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI.

The Time Sequence

June 12, 2016: Assange announces WikiLeaks is about to publish “emails related to Hillary Clinton.”

June 15, 2016: DNC contractor Crowdstrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016: On the same day, “Guccifer 2.0” affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the “hack;” claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with “Russian fingerprints.”

We do not think that the June 12 & 15 timing was pure coincidence. Rather, it suggests the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to “show” that it came from a Russian hack.

The Key Event

July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a “Russian hack.” This was all performed in the East Coast time zone.

“Obfuscation & De-obfuscation”

Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled “Vault 7.” WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.

No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA’s Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015.

Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the “Marble Framework” program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as “news fit to print” and was kept out of the Times.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at a media conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

(Photo credit: New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)

The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima, it seems, “did not get the memo” in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: “WikiLeaks’ latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.”

The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use “obfuscation,” and that Marble source code includes a “deobfuscator” to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a “forensic attribution double game” or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi.

The CIA’s reaction was neuralgic. Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates “demons,” and insisting, “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia.”

Mr. President, we do not know if CIA’s Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA’s Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review.

Putin and the Technology

We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC’s Megyn Kelly, he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today’s technology enables hacking to be “masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin” [of the hack] … And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.”

“Hackers may be anywhere,” he said. “There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can’t you imagine such a scenario? … I can.”

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times. This is our 50th VIPS Memorandum since the afternoon of Powell’s speech at the UN. Live links to the 49 past memos can be found at https://consortiumnews.com/vips-memos/.

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center

Skip Folden, independent analyst, retired IBM Program Manager for Information Technology US (Associate VIPS)

Matthew Hoh, former Capt., USMC, Iraq & Foreign Service Officer, Afghanistan (associate VIPS)

Larry C Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

Michael S. Kearns, Air Force Intelligence Officer (Ret.), Master SERE Resistance to Interrogation Instructor

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer and former Senior Investigator, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.)

Lisa Ling, TSgt USAF (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, Jr., former NSA Technical Director for the Office of Signals Processing

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former U.S. Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and CIA analyst

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Cian Westmoreland, former USAF Radio Frequency Transmission Systems Technician and Unmanned Aircraft Systems whistleblower (Associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Sarah G. Wilton, Intelligence Officer, DIA (ret.); Commander, US Naval Reserve (ret.)

Ann Wright, U.S. Army Reserve Colonel (ret) and former U.S. Diplomat

Sweden Drops Rape Case Against Wikileak's Julian Assange

Caution: somewhat graphic sexual description below

‘I do not forgive or forget’: Assange responds

after Swedish prosecutors drop rape case

© Neil Hall

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says he will not “forgive or forget” being “slandered” and “detained” for seven years without charge.

“Detained for 7 years without charge while my children grew up and my name was slandered. I do not forgive or forget,” Assange tweeted.

Assange is due to give a public statement shortly after rape allegations against him were dropped by Swedish prosecutors on Friday.

Swedish prosecutors said as “all options of moving the investigation forward are now exhausted” and “in light of the views expressed by the [Swedish] Supreme Court on the proportionality of remanding someone in absentia” it was no longer “proportional” to maintain Assange’s arrest warrant.

Sweden’s director of public prosecution, Marianne Ny, said: “I don’t want to assign blame and responsibility to any particular person for this. I must note however that the reason for this [investigation ending] is that Julian Assange has kept himself away from us for so long.”

Of course, you wouldn't guarantee not to extradite him to America, and it's not like you didn't know where he was. You were attempting to do America's bidding. Your case was very flimsy to begin with charging him for having sex with someone who was naked and in bed with him and with whom he had already had sex several times. 

Breakdown of the rape allegations

The crux of the rape allegations against Assange stem from two sexual encounters and the WikiLeaks’ founder’s reluctance to use condoms during them.

Assange had sex with two women, dubbed ‘AA’ and ‘SW,’ when he was in Sweden in 2010. The two women wanted Assange to get an STI test because they suspected he had unprotected sex with both of them.

The two women went to a police station to ascertain whether they could force Assange to take a HIV test, sparking an investigation that has plagued Assange for seven years.   

‘SW’

Assange had what he described as “consensual” sex with ‘SW’ on August 16, 2010, after meeting her at a talk in Stockholm two days before. The two went to the cinema on the day they met, where they kissed.

“We had consensual sexual intercourse on four or five occasions,” Assange said. “Her words, her expressions and her physical reactions made it clear to me that she encouraged and enjoyed our interactions.”

According to SW’s police interview, after the two had dozed off one night, “she awoke and felt him penetrating her.” She asked if he was wearing a condom and said, “You better don't have HIV.” ‘SW’ texted a friend on August 18 saying, “I was half asleep.”

“He was already inside her and she let him continue,” the police interview reads. “She didn’t have the energy to tell him one more time. She had gone on and on about condoms all night long.”

On August 20, Assange spoke to ‘SW’ who said she was at the hospital and wanted him to meet her there to get tested for STIs, so that she wouldn’t have to worry while she was awaiting for her own results. “HIV, for instance, needs months to show up,” Assange explained.

He told her he couldn’t do that until the next day. “She said that it was normal in Sweden to go to the police to get advice about STDs and that if I didn't come down to the hospital she would go to the police to ask whether I could be forced to get tested.”

After agreeing he would meet her the next day to be tested, Assange was surprised to find out he had later been accused of rape.

According to police records of SW’s phone seen by Assange’s lawyers, ‘SW’ wrote from the police station that she “did not want to put any charges on Julian Assange,” but that the police were “keen on getting their hands on him.”

The next day she wrote she “did not want to accuse” Assange “for anything” and that it was the “police who made up the charges (sic).”

‘AA’

Assange stayed at AA’s home when he was in Stockholm, before he had sex with SW.

The two had sex, which ‘AA’ said was “so fast” and that Assange was rough and impatient. She said she wanted to reach for a condom but Assange wouldn’t let her. She told him she wanted him to wear a condom and then he let her reach for it, and wore it.

However, ‘AA’ said she didn’t see any semen in the condom and suspected Assange had broken it during sex.

Assange stayed with ‘AA’ for a few more nights and he attempted to come on to her again, including one incident where he rubbed against her in the bed they shared, AA’s police interview says, but they had no further sexual relations.

‘AA’ said she went to the police largely to support ‘SW.’

“Anna states that she had consented to have sex with Assange, but that she would not have done so if she had known that he was not wearing a condom,” the police interview reads. “Anna does not desire any contact with a crime victims service, but will get back to us if she feels the need.”

It seems likely that neither woman tested positive for HIV or any other STD, or that would be part of the story. 

It's shameful that you, Sweden, have been so doggedly determined to bring Assange to 'justice' for his 'rape' of a Swedish woman and yet you are daily sacrificing Swedish women and girls to Muslim migrants on the altar of political correctness and stupidity.

Assange’s lawyer Per Samuelsson said his client was now considering suing Sweden.

“It’s not about money but redress,” Samuelson told news agency TT.

He added that Assange would eventually try to move to Ecuador. 

Assange sought political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2012 and has been living there since, fearing the Swedish investigation would result in him being extradited to the US over leaked military documents and diplomatic cables.

Assange, 45, has always denied the rape allegations made against him.

It remains unclear how Friday’s development will affect Assange’s risk of being extradited to the US if he leaves the embassy and is arrested. The Metropolitan Police in London say they will still arrest Assange over a lesser charge of skipping bail in 2012 when he sought asylum.

Prime Minister Theresa May said any decision about Assange’s arrest or otherwise is an “operational matter” for police.

That's helpful! Great leader!

‘Total Blackout’: Lawyer Suing DNC for Fraud Speaks out on Lack of Media Coverage

Lee Camp (L), Jared Beck, the attorney leading the lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee (R) 

© Redacted Tonight

The lawyer who filed a class-action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and its ex-chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz nearly a year ago says there has been a “mainstream media blackout” of the fraud case stemming from the 2016 primary.

The class action lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee and former chair Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) filed in June 2016 alleges that the party showed bias toward Hillary Clinton over Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) during the 2016 primary. 

Jared Beck, the attorney leading the lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee, went on RT’s “Redacted Tonight” to tell host Lee Camp that while the media covered “every moment” of the trials against OJ Simpson, Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman, the coverage of the DNC lawsuit has been a “total blackout.”

“This seems like an important case, as important as you can get,” Cullin O’Brien, co-counsel on the case, told LifeZette.

Lawyers are accusing Schultz of “intentional, willful, wanton, and malicious” conduct in violating Article 5, Section 4 of the DNC Charter, which states that that the chair must “exercise impartiality and evenhandedness as between the Presidential candidates and campaigns.”

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of 150 donors to the DNC and Sanders, was in response to emails posted by WikiLeaks, which the lawyers say proves that the DNC was working against Sanders from the start. The party is accused of fraud, misrepresentation, unjust enrichment, breach of fiduciary duty and negligence.

“We are bringing fraud claims on behalf of those who paid money to the Bernie Sanders campaign, believing that they were participating in a fair and impartial political process. And that turned out not to be the case as WikiLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 documents show us beyond dispute,” Beck said on Redacted Tonight.

On April 25, the DNC filed its second motion to dismiss the case, arguing that they are under “no contractual obligation” to follow their charter, and have the right to favor one candidate over another.

“It's not a situation where a promise has been made that is an enforceable promise,” DNC lawyer Bruce Spiva argued, according to a transcript from Jam PAC. “We could have voluntarily decided that, ‘Look, we’re gonna go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.’”

On Redacted Tonight, Beck said that if the lawsuit gets past the pending motion to dismiss, the next step will be discovery, where the lawyers will be able to examine other documentary evidence and take depositions and testimony from witnesses under oath.

Beck told Camp that Democrats will not be able to come together while the DNC continues to fight against other members of its own party.

“There can be no reconciliation between the victim and the defendant – the perpetrator of frauds – until there has been justice,” Beck said. “Honestly, if the Democratic party is seeking unity in a bona fide manner, then it also needs – I believe as part of that mission – has to come to terms with the fact that the people that we represent demand and need justice for what happened.”

Hidden Off-Shore Banking Set to Result in Dramatic Changes to Icelandic Government

Iceland’s Pirate Party poised for

Saturday election win – poll

Anti-elitism in Iceland appears to be more successful than Trump's orange revolution in America

Members of the Icelandic Pirate Party © Píratar / Facebook

Iceland’s national election is likely to bring unprecedented results, with a new poll suggesting the Pirate Party will win. Led by a poet and former WikiLeaks activist, it’s running on an anti-corruption campaign against the financial and political elite.

An opinion poll conducted by the Social Science Research Institute of the University of Iceland and commissioned by Morgunblaðið newspaper found that one in five voters intends to cast their ballot for the Pirate Party on Saturday.

That figure puts the party in first place with 22.6 percent of the votes – 1.5 percent ahead of the center-right Independence Party, which is currently in power. Those numbers would give each of the two parties 15 MPs in the 63-seat parliament.

Such a win would be history-making for the Pirate Party, which is led by Birgitta Jónsdóttir – a poet, web developer, former WikiLeaks activist.

The party's forecast success is largely based on its campaign against perceived corruption among Iceland's elite.

Support for the party increased by a whopping 43 percent after the resignation of Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson in April, after it was revealed that he and his family had sheltered money in offshore accounts. The party's cause was also helped by the Panama Papers, which revealed other prominent Icelandic politicians had done the same.

Earlier this year, Jónsdóttir called her party's success “strange and very exciting,” adding that it was “driven not by fear, but by courage and hope,” the Guardian reported.

However, she has acknowledged that the party – which was created less than four years ago as a movement against global copyright laws – is inexperienced when it comes to the economy.


Birgitta Jónsdóttir © Icelandic Pirate Party / Wikipedia

“We know that we are new to this and it is important that we are extra careful and extra critical on ourselves to not take too much on. I really don't think that we are going to make a lot of ripples in the economy in the first term,” she told Reuters last month.

However, the Pirate Party – whose campaign is largely crowdfunded – is after more than just looser copyright laws and less corruption from politicians. In an effort to get young voters on board, the party has asked the developers of the popular app Pokemon Go to turn polling stations into Pokestops – locations where players can collect the items necessary to catch Pokemon.

The party has also promised to grant asylum to US whistleblower Edward Snowden and accept the bitcoin currency. It has also pledged to give voters a direct say over policy and decriminalize drugs.

One caution for Icelanders: it is one thing to vote out a government that is corrupt, but please make sure the government you vote-in is one you actually want.

The Pirate Party last week ruled out the possibility of entering a coalition with the Independence Party (Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn) or the centrist Progressive Party (Framsóknarflokkurinn). Jónsdóttir has suggested she would prefer to be the speaker of the Icelandic parliament, rather than becoming prime minister.

The party's predicted success will be a huge leap from the 2013 general election, when it gained just 5 percent of votes and three seats in parliament. That result was still extremely significant, however, as it made Iceland the only country in the world have members of the Pirate movement in government.

The Pirate Party first began in Sweden in 2006, and was created to bring about digital copyright reform. There are now 40 such parties around the world.