qnV7fhif

1
2
3Some corrections:
4
5
6
7
8About Comey briefing Trump that the dossier was about to be leaked, I asked:
9
10https://pastebin.com/bqyWNzgi
11
12	how did you know for sure? why is a "defensive briefing" even necessary? and did you really have to talk about the blackmail material in detail?
13
14These questions aren't that good. A better question is: why brief people on the dossier at all?
15
16It looks like there is a Russian propaganda campaign to convince people the dossier is true (or trick people into thinking the whole thing is true):
17
18
19http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-report-intelligence-community
20	by Abigail Tracy 
21
22	At the same time, the fact that the nation’s top intelligence officials chose to present a summary version of the dossier to both President Obama and President-elect Trump, as CNN reports they did last week, indicates that they may have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at least some of the claims therein were credible, or at least worth investigating further. “My general take is that the intelligence community and law enforcement seem to be taking these claims seriously. That itself is highly significant. But it is not the same as these allegations being verified,” Susan Hennessey a former lawyer for the National Security Administration, told Wired. “Even if this was an intelligence community document—which it isn’t—this kind of raw intelligence is still treated with skepticism.” Former N.S.A. analyst John Schindler made a similar argument on Twitter, writing that the intelligence community “would never touch an outside, private Intel report, much less briefed it to ‘the top,’ unless key parts could be corroborated.”
23
24https://www.reddit.com/r/russianpropaganda/comments/5tqnbz/john_schindlers_conduct_is_consistent_with_being/
25	John Schindler's conduct is consistent with being a Kremlin propagandist
26
27http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/06/donald-trump-nato-article-5
28	by Abigail Tracy 
29
30	Of course we believe in Article 5,” United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley said on Sunday during an interview with CNN’s State of the Union. Secretary of Defense James Mattis argued that Trump’s mere appearance before NATO leaders indicated that he was dedicated to the alliance. “He was there to show our statement that we are standing with the NATO allies 100 percent,” Mattis said at a security conference in Singapore on Saturday. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster took his defense of Trump’s speech one step further. “I think it’s extraordinary that there would be an expectation that the president would have to say explicitly that he supports Article 5. Of course he does,” McMaster told reporters at the end of a Group of Seven summit in Sicily. “He did not make a decision not to say it. It was implicit in the speech. There was no decision to not put it in there.”
31
32(Article 5 is the whole point of NATO. Trump claims to understand and support NATO, at least for fighting terrorism: http://thehill.com/policy/international/330245-trump-didnt-know-much-about-nato-when-he-called-it-obsolete-report)
33
34http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/12/joe-biden-presidential-election-2020
35	Why Biden 2020 Isn’t As Crazy As It Sounds
36
37	by Abigail Tracy
38
39	...Biden harkens superficially back to an older, whiter time
40
41	...Sure, he’d be pushing 80 by the time he returned to lead the country.
42
43
44https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-intelligence-report-explainer.html
45	What We Know and Don’t Know About the Trump-Russia Dossier
46
47	By SCOTT SHANE
48
49	Last June, after evidence of Russian hacking of Democratic targets surfaced, Fusion GPS **hired a retired British intelligence officer**, Christopher Steele, to investigate Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.
50
51	...Mr. Steele, who had long experience in Russia and a network of connections there, compiled **dozens of reports** detailing what he heard from his contacts. The memos he wrote, mostly one to three pages long, are dated from June to December.
52
53	...The memos contain **unsubstantiated claims that Russian officials tried to obtain influence over Mr. Trump** by preparing to blackmail him with sex tapes and bribe him with business deals.
54
55	...Fusion GPS and Mr. Steele shared the memos first with their clients, and later with the F.B.I. and multiple journalists at The New York Times and elsewhere.
56
57	The memos, totaling about 35 pages, also **reached a number of members of Congress.**
58
59 	Last week, when **the F.B.I., C.I.A. and National Security Agency gave a classified report** on the Russian hacking, leaking and efforts to influence the presidential election to Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders, they attached a two-page summary of the unverified allegations in the memos.
60
61	...Whether any of the claims in the memos are true. American intelligence agencies have not confirmed them, and **Mr. Trump has said they are a complete fabrication.**
62
63	...Who concocted the information in the memos, if it is entirely false or partly so, and with what purpose. If all the information in the dossier is false, it **is a very sophisticated fabrication.**
64
65	What exactly prompted American intelligence officials to pass on a summary of the unvetted claims to Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and Congress. Officials have said they felt the president-elect should be aware of the memos, which had circulated widely in Washington. But putting the summary in a report that went to multiple people in Congress and the executive branch made it **very likely that it would be leaked.**
66
67	...So what changed on Tuesday? Why is this now being reported?
68
69	CNN broke the news that a summary of the memos had been attached to the classified report by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and National Security Agency on the Russian hacking and leaking, and that it had been given to Mr. Obama, Mr. Trump and congressional leaders last week. That level of official attention prompted news organizations to decide to inform the public about the memos.
70
71http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/29/world/europe/29spy.html
72	In Ordinary Lives, U.S. Sees the Work of Russian Agents
73
74	By SCOTT SHANE and CHARLIE SAVAGE JUNE 28, 2010 
75
76	The alleged agents were directed to gather information on nuclear weapons, American policy toward Iran, C.I.A. leadership, Congressional politics and many other topics, prosecutors say. The Russian spies made contact with a former high-ranking American national security official and a nuclear weapons researcher, among others. But the charges did not include espionage, and it was unclear what secrets the suspected spy ring — which included five couples — actually managed to collect.
77
78	...“The magnitude, and the fact that so many illegals were involved, was a shock to me,” said Oleg D. Kalugin, a former K.G.B. general who was a Soviet spy in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s under “legal” cover as a diplomat and Radio Moscow correspondent. “It’s a return to the old days, but even in the worst years of the cold war, I think there were no more than 10 illegals in the U.S., probably fewer.”
79
80
81http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-intelligence-report-buzzfeed-cnn-coup-214623
82	The Coup Before the Inauguration
83
84	To hear Donald Trump tell it, BuzzFeed and CNN teamed up with a rogue intelligence community to slime him and destroy his presidency. But what other choice did they have?
85
86	By Jack Shafer January 11, 2017
87
88	...If you’re asking if I would have published the raw report if I had been sitting in the editor Ben Smith’s BuzzFeed cockpit, the answer is yes. No competent journalist publishes oppo research without confirming and placing it in context, so I stand with the major news organizations that did not publish during the campaign. But when such a report is flung about by people in power, as this one was, and its allegations are beginning to inform governance, more damage is done to trust in government and confidence in journalism by withholding it from public scrutiny.
89
90	...Perhaps the leading indicator that the dossier isn’t pure invention comes from Russia itself, which has officially announced that the report is “pulp fiction” and an “absolute fabrication.” A Kremlin spokesman said, “The Kremlin has no compromising information on Trump.” Oh, come on! The Kremlin must have some compromising information on everybody in the U.S. within reach of the tendrils of power, especially folks like Trump who have traveled there. The Russians are protesting a tad too much. Hell, the Kremlin probably has compromising information on your mother.
91
92http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/05/17/hr-mcmaster-trump-leak-russian-classified-intel-215149
93	H.R. McMaster Takes a Dive
94	The national security adviser’s fanboys are having a sad over his shilling for Baby Donald.
95	By Jack Shafer  May 17
96
97
98http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/03/dossier-looking-more-credible-all-time/
99	The Trump “Dossier” Is Looking More Credible All the Time
100	Kevin Drum
101	Mar. 30, 2017
102
103		...The most explosive allegation that the dossier says originally came from Millian is the claim that Trump had hired prostitutes at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton and that the Kremlin has kept evidence of the encounter.
104
105	Nobody knows for sure if Millian is genuinely plugged in at high levels, or if he’s just a fast-talking huckster. But put all this together and it’s easy to see why the Trump-Russia story won’t go away. The FBI believes Steele to be credible. In the cases where it’s been possible to check out the allegations in the dossier, they’ve turned out to be true. Other intelligence corroborates much of the alleged Russian activity. And Millian’s claims are genuinely explosive.
106
107http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/05/mcmaster-trumps-blabbing-was-totally-appropriate
108	McMaster: Trump's Blabbing Was "Wholly Appropriate"
109	Kevin Drum  May 16
110
111
112http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-page-donald-trump-russia-investigation/index.html
113	FBI used dossier allegations to bolster Trump-Russia investigation
114
115	By Evan Perez, Shimon Prokupecz and Manu Raju, CNN
116
117http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/10/politics/russia-dossier-update/index.html
118	US investigators corroborate some aspects of the Russia dossier
119
120	By Jim Sciutto and Evan Perez, CNN
121
122https://web.archive.org/web/20100704035145/http://blogs.wsj.com:80/washwire/2010/06/29/alleged-russian-spies-a-novel-idea/
123	Alleged Russian Spies: A Novel Idea?
124
125	By Evan Perez
126
127	The criminal complaints filed by U.S. prosecutors don’t portray any significant U.S. secrets that may have been compromised by the agents; in fact FBI wiretaps captured two of them discussing that they likely couldn’t pass vetting if they tried to get a U.S. government job. 
128
129
130http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/what-happened-donald-trumps-russia-scandal
131	What happened to Donald Trump’s Russia scandal?
132	02/10/17 04:15 PM
133	By Steve Benen
134
135	In the meantime, Russia is taking steps that make it seem as if some in Putin’s government believe the details in the now-infamous dossier may be true.
136
137http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trumps-national-security-advisor-comes-the-wrong-defense
138	 Trump’s National Security Advisor comes up with the wrong defense
139	 By Steve Benen  May 16
140
141
142https://patribotics.blog/2017/02/26/planespotting-michael-cohens-amazing-journey-louise-mensch/
143	Planespotting: Michael Cohen’s Amazing Journey
144
145	When the Steele dossier was published by Buzzfeed, with an entirely appropriate amount of caveats, other journalistic outlets rushed to pour cold water on it, and wrongly so.
146
147	Chief among these was CNN. Acting as if Buzzfeed had not offered caveats alongside the publication, CNN blasted the news site as though they had irresponsibly published ‘fake news’.
148
149
150http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/17/media/fbi-raid-orrin-hatch-russian-election-meddling/index.html
151	How an FBI raid fed a rumor that Orrin Hatch was about to become president
152
153	For a moment last week, a part of the Internet thought Utah Senator Orrin Hatch was on the verge of becoming president of the United States.
154
155	On Thursday, in a pair of unproven reports on her website Patribotics, Mensch wrote that Hatch was "likely to become president" should President Trump be removed from office -- because, she said, Trump and the next two people in the Constitutional line of succession were likely swept up in the Russian plot to sway the US election and, thus, ineligible for the presidency. 
156
157
158http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-russia-dossier-fbi-investigation-2017-3
159	The FBI is reportedly using the explosive Trump-Russia dossier as a 'roadmap' for its investigation
160	Natasha Bertrand
161
162	The relationship was so "chummy" that the FBI offered to pay Steele to continue his work in October, The Washington Post reported last month.
163
164https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/fbi-once-planned-to-pay-former-british-spy-who-authored-controversial-trump-dossier/2017/02/28/896ab470-facc-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html
165	...Ultimately, the FBI did not pay Steele.
166
167	...Those people say Steele’s frustration with the FBI peaked after an Oct. 31 New York Times story that cited law enforcement sources drawing conclusions that he considered premature. The article said that the FBI had not yet found any “conclusive or direct link” between Trump and the Russian government and that the Russian hacking was not intended to help Trump.
168
169	...“The [intelligence community] has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions,” then-Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said in a statement in January.
170
171http://www.businessinsider.com/carter-page-fbi-dossier-fisa-warrant-case-2017-4
172	We just got a huge sign that the US intelligence community believes the Trump dossier is legitimate
173    	Natasha Bertrand
174
175https://finance.yahoo.com/news/national-security-experts-trumps-sharing-135600288.html
176	National security experts: Trump's sharing classified info with Russia 'may breach his oath of office'
177	Natasha Bertrand
178
179	..."This story is nauseating," Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, posted on Twitter along with a link to The Washington Post's bombshell story. "You might have to work with natsec," or national security, "people to understand how bad it is, but it's horrible. Really really bad."
180
181http://www.businessinsider.my/mcmaster-trump-russia-classified-information-2017-5/
182	Trump’s national security adviser: He ‘wasn’t even aware’ of where information he shared with Russians came from
183
184	Natasha Bertrand 
185
186	...McMaster did not confirm whether the information Trump disclosed was classified, or if it came from a US ally. But he suggested Trump did not intend to reveal classified information because he “did not even know where that information came from.” 
187
188https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2017/05/16/mcmaster_national_security_put_at_risk_by_leaks_like_washington_post_story.html
189	QUESTION: General, when you came out after the story broke, you said that the president did not disclose any sources or methods. He did not reveal anything about military operations. Why were you denying things that were not even reported? What the report said is that the president revealed classified information that had been shared by one of our allies in the Middle East. So the question is simply a yes or no question here. Did the president share classified information with the Russians in that meeting?
190
191	MCMASTER: As I mentioned already, we don't say what's classified, what's not classified. What I will tell you again is that what the president shared was wholly appropriate. The story -- the story combined what was leaked with other information and then -- and the insinuated about sources and methods. So I wanted to make clear to everybody that the president in no way compromised any sources or methods in the course of this conversation.
192
193
194But some major claims in the dossier don't hold up. A lot of the dossier is about a momentous secret meeting between Russian officials and Trump lawyer Micheal Cohen and that allegedly took place in August 2016 in Prague:
195
196
197https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
198	Speaking to a compatriot and friend on 19 October 2016, a Kremlin insider provided further details of reported clandestine meeting/ s between Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP'S lawyer Michael COHEN and Kremlin representatives in August 2016. Although the communication between them had to be cryptic for security reasons, the Kremlin insider clearly indicated to his/her friend that the reported contact /s took place in Prague, Czech Republic.
199
200	...Rossotrudnichestvo was being used as cover for this relationship and its office in Prague may well have been used to host the COHEN / Russian Presidential Administration (PA) meeting /s. It was considered a "plausibly deniable" vehicle for this, whilst remaining entirely under Kremlin control. 
201
202	...KOSACHEV, also "plausibly deniable" being part of the Russian legislature rather than executive, had facilitated the contact in Prague and by implication, may have attended the meeting/ s with COHEN there in August.
203
204	...US/RUSSIA: FURTHER DETAILS OF SECRET DIALOGUE BETWEEN TRUMP CAMPAIGN TEAM, KREMLIN AND ASSOCIATED HACKERS IN PRAGUE 
205
206	- TRUMP’s representative COHEN accompanied to Prague in August/September 2016 by 3 colleagues for secret discussions with Kremlin representatives and associated operators/hackers 
207
208	1. We reported previously (2016/135 and /136) on secret meeting/s held in Prague, Czech Republic in August 2016 between then Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP's representative, Michael COHEN and his interlocutors from the Kremlin working under cover of Russian 'NGO' Rossotrudnichestvo. 
209
210	...COHEN had been accompanied to Prague by 3 colleagues and the timing of the visit was either in the last week of August or the first week of September. One of their main Russian interlocutors was Oleg SOLODUKHIN operating under Rossotrudnichestvo cover. According the agenda comprised questions on how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers who had worked in Europe under Kremlin direction against the CLINTON campaign and various contingencies for covering up these operations and Moscow's secret liaison with the TRUMP team more generally. 
211
212	In Prague, COHEN agreed contingency plans for various scenarios to protect the operation
213
214	...We reported earlier that the involvement of political operatives Paul MANAFORT and Carter PAGE in the secret TRUMP- Kremlin liaison had been exposed in the media in the run-up to Prague and that damage limitation of these also was discussed by COHEN with the Kremlin representatives
215
216
217But Czech intelligence said they found no evidence Cohen travelled to Prague:
218
219
220https://www.rferl.org/a/czech-intelligence-trump-lawyer-prague-meeting/28226228.html
221	January 11, 2017 15:27 GMT 
222
223	PRAGUE -- A Czech investigative journal quotes local intelligence officers as saying they have no evidence that a lawyer for President-elect Donald Trump traveled to the Czech capital last year, potentially dealing a blow to a claim at the center of an unverified text suggesting Russia had compromising materials on the billionaire developer.
224
225	The lawyer, Michael Cohen, has already dismissed reports that he met in Prague with Russian agents over possible influence on the 2016 presidential election, and said he has never been to the city.
226
227	A Czech intelligence source told the Respekt magazine that there is no record of Cohen arriving in Prague by plane, although the news weekly pointed out he could have traveled by car or train from a nearby EU country, avoiding passport control under Schengen zone travel rules.
228
229	"If there was such a meeting, he [Cohen] didn’t arrive in the Czech Republic by plane," the source said.
230
231
232nor did the FBI:
233
234
235https://www.wsj.com/articles/spy-agencies-investigating-claims-trump-advisers-worked-with-russian-agents-1484101731
236	Spy Agencies Investigating Claims Trump Advisers Worked With Russian Agents
237
238	By Shane Harris, Devlin Barrett and Alan Cullison
239
240	U.S. intelligence agencies and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have spent months trying to substantiate explosive claims, compiled by a former Western intelligence official, that Russian government operatives engaged in an extensive conspiracy with advisers to Donald Trump's presidential campaign and employees of his company, people familiar with the matter said.
241
242	...The FBI has found no evidence that he traveled to the Czech Republic, where the meeting allegedly took place in August of last year, officials said.
243
244
245and CNN reports that it was a different Micheal Cohen who went to Prague:
246
247
248https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/819187673961287681?lang=en
249	6:22 AM - 11 Jan 2017
250
251	In this uncorroborated report it talks about Micheal Cohen Trump's official corporate lawyer making a trip to the Czech Republic. My reporting suggests that people did try to run that down and they concluded that it was a different Micheal Cohen. It was a Micheal Cohen with a passport from another country; the same birth year, different birth date. So for Micheal Cohen to dispute that he was in the Czech Republic completely confirms and comports with our reporting, and its one of the reasons why the intelligence chiefs did not get specific with these allegations, and that's why I hope at the press conference today people are more general and don't get into the specifics because a lot of that stuff just has not been proven.
252
253
254A lot of the dossier's claims don't make sense:
255
256
257https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
258	The reason for using WikiLeaks was "plausible deniability” and the operation had been conducted with the full knowledge and support of TRUMP and senior members of his campaign team. In return the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue and to raise US/NATO defence commitments in the Baltics and Eastern Europe to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject. 
259
260
261If this was Putin's plan, it wasn't a very good one. All Trump did was draw attention to Ukraine:
262
263
264https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/trump-campaign-guts-gops-anti-russia-stance-on-ukraine/2016/07/18/98adb3b0-4cf3-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
265	Trump campaign guts GOP’s anti-Russia stance on Ukraine
266
267
268https://qz.com/650201/donald-trump-hired-an-advisor-to-ukraines-notorious-former-president-putin-buddy-viktor-yanukovych/
269	Donald Trump has hired an experienced political operative to help wrangle GOP delegates: Paul Manafort, a strategist with three decades of Republican conventions under his belt, who has also worked for some unsavory international clients.
270
271	That roster includes the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, who was deposed in a popular revolution in 2013.
272
273
274https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/06/ukraine-trump-presidency-russia-putin
275	'It's a pretty disturbing time for Ukraine': Trump's Russia ties unnerve Kiev 
276
277
278https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/760095370185674752
279	When I said in an interview that Putin is "not going into Ukraine, you can mark it down," I am saying if I am President. Already in Crimea!
280
281
282https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/831846101179314177
283	Crimea was TAKEN by Russia during the Obama Administration. Was Obama too soft on Russia?
284
285
286https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/820789938887294977
287	much worse - just look at Syria (red line), Crimea, Ukraine and the build-up of Russian nukes. Not good! Was this the leaker of Fake News?
288
289
290Trump doesn't sounds like someone who "agreed to sideline Ukraine" in some kind of deal. He comes off as an obsequious Putin fan who doesn't know what he's doing:
291
292
293https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/862788002594127873/photo/1
294	Yesterday, on the same day- I had meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the FM of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin. #LetsMakePeace!
295
296
297https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/814919370711461890
298	Great move on delay (by V. Putin) - I always knew he was very smart!
299
300
301https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/347191326112112640
302	Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?
303
304	8:17 PM - 18 Jun 2013
305
306
307And Trump has been convinced "other countries are ripping us off" for decades:
308
309
310http://www.apnewsarchive.com/1987/Trump-U-S-Should-Stop-Paying-To-Defend-Countries-that-Can-Protect-Selves/id-05133dbe63ace98766527ec7d16ede08
311	Sep. 1, 1987 
312
313	NEW YORK (AP) _ Real estate developer Donald J. Trump bought full-page ads in three major U.S. newspapers to say the United States should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to protect themselves.
314
315	The advertisements appeared in Wednesday's New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe at a total cost of $94,801, said Trump spokesman Daniel Klores.
316
317	The ads bore the headline, ''There's nothing wrong with America's Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can't cure.''
318
319	''For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States'' and that it has been costing this nation in terms of the economy, deficit and taxes, the ad said. ''The saga continues unabated as we defend the Persian Gulf.''
320
321	Trump described the Gulf as ''an area of only marginal significance to the United States for its oil supplies, but one upon which Japan and others are almost totally dependent.''
322
323	''Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests? ... The world is laughing at America's politicians as we protect ships we don't own, carrying oil we don't need, destined for allies who won't help.''
324
325	Trump's name has been mentioned for various public offices, including mayor of New York City, governor and the presidency.
326
327	Asked if Trump's letter had anything to do with political aspirations, Klores said, ''Right now Donald Trump has no ambition to seek political office of any kind.'' 
328
329
330https://votesmart.org/public-statement/367/discusses-his-bid-for-the-reform-party-presidential-nomination-interview
331	Oct. 24, 1999
332
333	MR. TRUMP: Well, I mean, I think there is a certain controversy to me. And I am single. And I do go out with women. And I do respect and adore women. And some women love me and probably some women don’t. But I am certainly controversial. But I also am a great businessman. I’d make the greatest treaties that this country has seen in a long time. Other countries wouldn’t be ripping us off like they’re doing, when you look at what Japan has been doing to us for so many years and decades. I mean, they wouldn’t be ripping us like they are, and things would happen.
334
335
336http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/10/08/trump.transcript/
337	October 8, 1999
338
339	I am for whatever it takes. We have the money. The fact is, that the world is ripping off this country: Germany is ripping us off big league; Saudi Arabia is ripping us off big league; France, I mean, they’re the worst team player I’ve ever seen in my life. You look at what’s happened, Japan, for years, I mean, we’re like a whipping post for Japan.
340
341
342http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2011/04/15/exclusive-donald-trump-rips-into-president-obama-past/
343	Published April 15, 2011
344
345	HANNITY: And what have you come up with your investigators?
346
347	TRUMP: Well, I don’t want to say that now. But it is going to be very interesting. But I don’t want to say it now, Sean. But I will say this, I don’t love this issue. I’d much rather be talking about how China is ripping us off, how OPEC is — that’s what I’m really good at. I understand it. I can do such a great job.
348
349
350http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/27/americas-allies-are-ripping-us-off-says-donald-trump/
351	27 March 2016 • 8:52pm
352
353	America’s allies are “ripping us off” says Donald Trump
354
355
356And he has long held warm feelings toward the Russian government:
357
358
359http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/03/nyregion/trump-wins-approval-for-3d-casino-in-jersey.html
360	July 3, 1987
361
362	Mr. Trump also said he would leave Friday for Moscow to pursue an invitation to build a hotel across from the Kremlin. 
363
364	...Of the Moscow project, Mr. Trump said he did not know how large the hotel would be. He plans to be in Moscow for six days as a guest of the Government to examine the site and look into details. He said it would be his first trip to the Soviet Union. Kremlin Wants a Trump Tower
365
366	The New York developer said the Soviet Government wanted a hotel ''with the feel of Trump Tower.'' 
367
368
369http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_spectator/2016/03/trump_s_nuclear_experience_advice_for_reagan_in_1987.html
370	So what is the deal Trump thinks can be done? What is the Trump Plan?
371
372	It’s a deal with the Soviets. We approach them on this basis: We both recognize the nonproliferation treaty’s not working, that half a dozen countries are on the brink of getting a bomb. Which can only cause trouble for the two of us. The deterrence of mutual assured destruction that prevents the United States and the USSR from nuking each other won’t work on the level of an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange. Or a madman dictator with a briefcase-bomb team. The only answer is for the Big Two to make a deal now to step in and prevent the next generation of nations about to go nuclear from doing so. By whatever means necessary.
373
374	“Most of those [pre-nuclear] countries are in one form or another dominated by the U.S. and the Soviet Union,” Trump says. “Between those two nations you have the power to dominate any of those countries. So we should use our power of economic retaliation and they use their powers of retaliation and between the two of us we will prevent the problem from happening.
375
376
377http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russia-trump-political-conflict-zone/story?id=42263092
378	There is ample evidence in Russian media from that period in the 2000s that brokers mounted a significant effort to attract buyers to Trump properties in Florida, Toronto and New York. And Trump and his children participated in those campaigns.
379     
380	During the marketing of the Trump SoHo project, in which Trump licensed his name to a group that included Russian investors, the Trump family met with a group of Russian journalists at their New York offices to help boost interest in the project, according to Russian media reports. During the meeting, Trump was quoted telling the gathering of Russian journalists: “I really like Vladimir Putin. I respect him. He does his work well. Much better than our Bush.”
381
382
383Reading between the lines, it sounds like Trump's position on NATO being "obsolete" might have something to do with his feelings about Russia:
384
385
386http://ktla.com/2017/04/12/trump-reverses-position-says-nato-no-longer-obsolete/
387	Trump said Wednesday he’d changed views after NATO’s leaders assured him the group would turn its attention to combating groups like ISIS going forward.
388
389	“The secretary general and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism,” Trump said. “I complained about that a long time ago, and they made a change and now they do fight terrorism.”
390
391
392(e.g. "the Warsaw pact dissolved, so NATO is obsolete!")
393
394
395In sum, Putin wouldn't need to make a deal with Trump to "raise US/NATO defence commitments." He'd do it on his own (or with some prodding by agents of influence close to him).
396
397(And you have to wonder where Trump got the idea that NATO is "obsolete" or "needs to pay up?"  I don't actually know, but this might be a start: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/why-cant-our-allies-defend-themselves-19880616).
398
399
400The dossier tries to make Trump sound like a witting spy for Russia:
401
402
403https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
404	...In terms of the intelligence flow from the TRUMP team to Russia, Source E reported that much of this concerned the activities of business oligarchs and their families’ activities and assets in the US, with which PUTIN and the Kremlin seemed preoccupied. 
405
406	...the emigre confirmed that an intelligence exchange had been running between them for at least 8 years. Within this context PUTIN'S priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families. TRUMP and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.
407
408
409But that's not consistent with how Russia's influence operations have worked historically (e.g with Gore, Mao: https://pastebin.com/r5PHGSnz), and Trump has all the hallmarks of a "useful idiot" who actually believes what he's saying. Russia puts out their propaganda because it works--there are people who actually believe it. It looks like Donald Trump actually believes it: 
410
411
412http://www.politicususa.com/2017/06/03/nbc-news-refuses-report-trump-london-bridge-tweet-false-info.html
413	Donald Trump retweeted:
414
415		Fears of new terror attack after van 'mows down 20 people' on London Bridge…
416
417		— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) June 3, 2017
418
419	Trump then tweeted a plea for his travel ban as a tool to fight terrorism:
420
421	We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!
422
423		— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 3, 2017
424
425
426https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/527388136306143232
427	Just out - the POLAR ICE CAPS are at an all time high, the POLAR BEAR population has never been stronger. Where the hell is global warming?
428
429	2:15 AM - 29 Oct 2014
430
431
432https://www.infowars.com/penguins-polar-bears-glaciers-arctic-ice-all-thriving/
433	Global warming alarmists debunked yet again by reality
434
435	Even as climate alarmists amplify their call for a worldwide tax on carbon dioxide emissions in the name of preventing global warming – penguins, polar bears, Himalayan glaciers and Arctic sea ice are all thriving.
436
437
438https://www.infowars.com/polar-bear-numbers-still-on-the-rise-despite-global-warming/
439	Polar Bear Numbers Still On The Rise, Despite Global Warming
440
441
442http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/28/trump-weighs-in-on-vaccine-autism-controversy/
443	March 28th, 2014 
444
445	Trump weighs in on vaccine-autism controversy
446
447 	Donald Trump appears to be once again suggesting a link between vaccines and the rise in autism, a theory that's been debunked numerous times in recent years.
448
449	"If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one time massive shots that a small child cannot take – AUTISM," the business mogul and reality TV star wrote on Twitter Thursday evening.
450
451
452https://www.infowars.com/nearly-two-dozen-medical-studies-prove-that-vaccines-can-cause-autism/
453	Nearly two dozen medical studies prove that vaccines can cause autism
454
455
456https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/how-alex-jones-conspiracy-theorist-extraordinaire-got-donald-trumps-ear/2016/11/17/583dc190-ab3e-11e6-8b45-f8e493f06fcd_story.html
457	Last December, amid the jumbled Republican presidential nomination scrum, Donald Trump carved out a half an hour for a live video interview with a volcanic Austin radio and web-streaming host who broadcasts from a semi-secret location dubbed “The Central Texas Command Center and the Heart of the Resistance.”
458
459	Alex Jones, America’s foremost purveyor of outlandish conspiracy theories, was in a buoyant mood that day. He’d had Matt Drudge, the influential conservative news aggregator, on recently. But this was much bigger.
460
461	Trump wasted no time signaling that his mind-set aligned with the host’s. Trump said he wouldn’t apologize for asserting that large numbers of Muslims in New Jersey celebrated the collapse of the twin towers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a claim that fact-checkers have repeatedly refuted.
462
463	“People like you and I can’t do that so easily,” the New York developer, speaking from his office in Trump Tower, said. He would later call Jones “a nice guy.”
464
465	The December interview would reverberate into the general election as Hillary Clinton tried to use it to paint Trump as an irresponsible crackpot associating with an irresponsible crackpot. It also pushed Jones, who operates the websites Infowars.com and Prisonplanet.com, from the realm of niche showman into the mainstream national dialogue. The man who said that the Newtown, Conn., school shooting was a “hoax” involving child actors and claimed that elements of the U.S. government were responsible for bombing the Oklahoma City federal building and for the 9/11 attacks had been granted an enormous new audience.
466
467	“I think Alex Jones may be the single most important voice in the alternative conservative media,” says Roger Stone, the Nixon-era political trickster who orchestrated Trump’s appearance on the show.
468
469	...Now, another Anderson company, Genesis Communications Network, syndicates the Alex Jones program to 129 radio stations, many of them in small markets. It’s difficult to confirm Jones’s audience size, but the host has said he has 5 million daily radio listeners and recently topped 80 million video views in a single month. He claims to have a bigger audience than Rush Limbaugh.
470
471	Jones is able to multiply his audience by simulcasting his radio programming via his website and further spreading its reach on his YouTube channel. The costs are minuscule in comparison to running, say, a cable television network, and it’s conceivable he could be generating millions in profits. 
472
473
474The Russians wouldn't need to blackmail or pay Trump for him to revere Putin or support disastrous policies that favor them--that's already in their propaganda, and he believes it. Basically, they've already got his mind.
475
476
477There's a lot that's off with the dossier:
478
479
480https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
481	So far TRUMP has declined various sweetener real estate business deals offered him in Russia in order to further the Kremlin’s cultivation of him.
482
483	...The Kremlin’s cultivation operation on TRUMP also comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing Cup soccer tournament However, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these
484
485	However, there were other aspects to TRUMP’s engagement with the Russian authorities. One which had borne fruit for them was to exploit TRUMP'S personal obsessions and sexual perversion
486
487	...Finally, regarding TRUMP’s claimed minimal investment profile in Russia, a separate source with direct knowledge said this had not been for want of trying. TRUMP's previous efforts had included exploring the real estate sector in St Petersburg as well as Moscow but in the end TRUMP had had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success. 
488
489
490The dossier downplays Trump's business connections with Russia, saying Trump "opted for extensive sexual services" instead (how does that even work? "Sorry, we won't let you build a hotel here, but here's a complementary prostitute?"). But this is misleading--if Trump doesn't make "business deals" in Russia, he does make deals with Russians:
491
492
493http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/russian-mogul-pays-donald-trump-100-million-florida-mansion-article-1.294453
494    June 21, 2008
495     
496     A Russian billionaire paid Donald Trump a staggering $100 million for a beachfront Florida mansion — although the new digs don’t mean the new owner’s bidding dosvidaniya to his Moscow home.
497     
498     Dmitry Rybolovlev, 41, who made his fortune in fertilizer, said his big-bucks buy of the 6.5-acre Maison de l’Amitie property in Palm Beach was simply an investment.
499
500
501http://www.eturbonews.com/5008/executive-talk-donald-trump-jr-bullish-russia-and-few-emerging-ma
502	Sep 15, 2008
503
504	Executive Talk: Donald Trump Jr. bullish on Russia and few emerging markets
505
506	“And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.
507
508
509"A pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets" doesn't sound like a "minimal investment profile."
510
511
512Reportedly, some of these deals show up on Trump's tax returns:
513
514
515http://money.cnn.com/2017/05/12/news/trump-tax-returns-russia/index.html
516	The letter also asserts that the returns show no debt owed to or interest paid to Russian lenders by Trump or his business entities.
517
518	In addition, the returns show no Russian investments in Trump's businesses or any investment by Trump or the entities he controls in Russian businesses, the lawyers said.
519
520	But the letter acknowledges that there are three exceptions. The first was income Trump received from the 2013 Miss Universe pageant held in Moscow. The second was income from the sale of a Florida estate in 2008 by Trump Properties LLC to a Russian billionaire. And the third is the "ordinary course sales of goods and services to Russians or Russian entities, such as sales/rentals/fees for condominiums, hotel rooms, rounds of golf, books or Trump-licensed products."
521
522	But in this third exception, the letter asserted, "the amounts are immaterial." 
523
524
525The dossier downplays the idea that Trump could be blackmailed for business deals with Russians, and plays-up that he could be blackmailed for perverted sexual acts. But it looks like it's the other way around (Trump asked the FBI to investigate the "Russian hookers" claim, even though he doesn't trust the intelligence community: http://www.businessinsider.com/comey-trump-russian-hookers-dossier-2017-6).
526
527
528The dossier makes some confusing claims about Putin's intent:
529
530
531https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
532	- Ex-Ukrainian President YANUKOVYCH confides directly to PUTIN that he authorised kick-back payments to MANAFORT, as alleged in western media. Assures Russian President however there is no documentary evidence/trail 
533
534	PUTIN and Russian leadership remain worried however and sceptical that YANUKOVYCH has fully covered the traces of these payments to TRUMP’s former campaign manager 
535
536	...Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, and ethnic Russian close associate of US presidential candidate Donald Trump, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between then and Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared.
537
538	...We reported previously, in our Company Intelligence Report 2016/135 of 19 October 2016 from the same source, that COHEN met officials from the PA Legal Department clandestinely in an EU country in August 2016. This was in order to clean up the mess left behind by western media  revelations of TRUMP ex-campaign manager MANAFORT's corrupt relationship with the former pro-Russian YANUKOVYCH regime in Ukraine and TRUMP foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE'S secret meetings in Moscow with senior regime figures in July 2016. According to the Kremlin advisor, these meeting/ s were originally scheduled for COHEN in Moscow but shifted to what was considered an operationally "soft" EU country when it was judged too compromising for him to travel to the Russian capital. 
539
540	...
541
542	1. Speaking in late August 2016, in the immediate aftermath of Paul MANAFORT’s resignation as campaign manager for US Republican presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, a well-placed Russian figure reported on a recent meeting between President PUTIN and ex-President YANUKOVYCH of Ukraine. This had been held in secret on 15 August near Volgograd, Russia and the western media revelations about MANAFORT and Ukraine had featured prominently on the agenda. YANUKOVYCH had confided in PUTIN that he did authorise and order substantial kick-back payments to MANAFORT as alleged but sought to reassure him that there was no documentary trail left behind which could provide clear evidence of this. 
543
544	2. Given YANUKOVYCH'S (unimpressive) record in covering up his own corrupt tracks in the past, PUTIN and others in the Russian leadership were sceptical about the ex-Ukrainian president’s reassurances on this as relating to MANAFORT. They therefore still feared the scandal had legs, especially as MANAFORT had been commercially active in Ukraine right up to the time (in March 2016) when he joined TRUMP's campaign team. For them it therefore remained a point of potential political vulnerability and embarrassment. 
545
546
547The dossier says Putin choose Manafort and Page to help him secretly collude with Trump, and that Putin was worried when news reports revealed Yankovych was paying Manafort under-the-table (e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/20/us/politics/paul-manafort-resigns-donald-trump.html). But it was revealed years ago that Manafort was working for Yanukovych:
548
549
550http://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/paul-manafort-ukraine-104263
551	Mystery man: Ukraine's U.S. fixer
552
553	By Alexander Burns and Maggie Haberman
554
555	03/05/2014 05:01 AM EST 
556
557	...Today, Paul Manafort is more like The Invisible Man — a worldly political pro whose latest adventure, whispering in the ear of Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych, has handed him a supporting role in a bona fide international crisis. 
558
559	...Manafort’s firm had a set of international clients and produced an analysis of the Orange Revolution that Yanukovych found instructive, according to one operative involved in Yanukovych’s political rehabilitation. Manafort became, in effect, a general consultant to Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, shaping big-picture messaging, coaching Yanukovych to speak in punchy, American-style sound bites and managing teams of consultants and attorneys in both Ukraine and the United States ahead of an anticipated Yanukovych comeback. While it’s difficult to track payments in foreign elections, a former associate familiar with Manafort’s earnings say they ran into the seven figures over several years.
560
561	...A 2008 disclosure form filed by Edelman under the Foreign Agents Registration Act described the Yanukovych team’s determination to “share [Yanukovych’s] vision for Ukraine, his reform slated for 2008, his accomplishments in economic development as well as Ukraine’s business development.” The PR firm earned $35,000 a month for its services. 
562
563	...And one operative closely involved in Ukraine emphasized that what may have started as a straightforward business transaction between Davis Manafort and Yanukovych grew into a “real and close relationship” between Manafort and his candidate over the course of the election. 
564
565
566And Putin has openly admitted to colluding with him:
567
568
569http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-29761799
570	Putin: Russia helped Yanukovych to flee Ukraine
571
572	..."I will say it openly - he asked to be driven away to Russia, which we did," the Russian president said.
573
574
575And if Putin wanted to avoid being tied to the Trump campaign, he would have known Page would be a bad choice of "intermediary":
576
577
578https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/04/us/politics/carter-page-trump-russia.html?mcubz=1
579	The businessman, Carter Page, met with one of three Russians who were eventually charged with being undeclared officers with Russia’s foreign intelligence service, known as the S.V.R. The F.B.I. interviewed Mr. Page in 2013 as part of an investigation into the spy ring, but decided that he had not known the man was a spy, and the bureau never accused Mr. Page of wrongdoing.
580
581	...According to the court documents filed in 2015, the F.B.I. secretly recorded Mr. Podobnyy and another Russian operative named Igor Sporyshev discussing efforts to recruit Mr. Page, who was then working in New York as a consultant.
582
583
584But according to the dossier, Putin thinks the recent scandals surrounding Manafort's ties to Yanukovych are a point of "political vulnerability" and "embarrassment" for him, and that Putin is "worried." Worried about what? The only difference between the 2014 and 2016 reports on Manafort's ties to Yanukovych is that the 2016 reports allege under-the-table payments. Is that what Putin is worried about? That Manafort looks more corrupt now?
585
586The dossier mostly paints a picture of Putin trying to avoid being exposed in the media for his meddling in the election and his ties to Trump:
587
588
589https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
590	...The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared.
591
592	...The emigre said there was a high level of anxiety within the TRUMP team as a result of various accusations levelled against them and indications from the Kremlin that President PUTIN and others in the leadership thought things had gone too far now and risked spiralling out of control. 
593
594	Continuing on this theme, the emigre associate of TRUMP opined that the Kremlin wanted the situation to calm but for 'plausible deniability' to be maintained concerning its (extensive) pro-TRUMP and anti-CLINTON operations. S/he therefore judged that it was unlikely these would be ratcheted up, at least for the time being. 
595
596	...the ethnic Russian associate of Trump assessed that the problem was that the TRUMP campaign had underestimated the strength of the negative reaction from liberals and especially the conservative elite to Russian interference. This was forcing a rethink and a likely change of tactics. The main objective in the short term was to check Democratic candidate Hillary CLINTON's successful exploitation of the PUTIN as a bogeyman/Russian interference story to tarnish TRUMP and bolster her own (patriotic) credentials.
597
598	...1. Speaking in confidence to a trusted compatriot in mid-September 2016, a senior member of the Russian Presidential Administration (PA) commented on the political fallout from recent western media revelations about Moscow's intervention, in favour of Donald TRUMP and against Hillary CLINTON, in the US presidential election. The PA official reported that the issue had become incredibly sensitive and that President PUTIN had issued direct orders that Kremlin and government insiders should not discuss it in public or even in private. 
599
600	2. Despite this, the PA official confirmed, from direct knowledge, that the gist of the allegations was true. PUTIN had been receiving conflicting advice on interfering from three separate and expert groups. On one side had been the Russian ambassador to the US, Sergei K1SLYAK, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, together with an independent and informal network run by presidential foreign policy advisor, Yuri USHAKOV 
601
602	(KISLYAK’s predecessor in Washington) who had urged caution and the potential negative impact on Russia from the operation/s. On the other side was former PA Head, Sergei IVANOV, backed by Russian Foreign Intelligence (SVR), who had advised PUTIN that the pro-TRUMP, anti-CLINTON operation/s would be both effective and plausibly deniable with little blowback. The first group/s had been proven right and this had been the catalyst in PUTIN'S decision to sack IVANOV (unexpectedly) as PA Head in August. His successor, Anton VAINO, had been selected for the job partly because he had not been involved in the US presidential election operation/s. 
603
604	..According to the Kremlin insider, COHEN now was heavily engaged in a cover up and damage limitation operation in the attempt to prevent the full details of TRUMP’s relationship with Russia being exposed. In pursuit of this aim, COHEN had met secretly with several Russian Presidential Administration (PA) Legal Department officials in an EU country in August 2016. The immediate issues had been to contain further scandals involving MANNAFORT's commercial and political role in Russia/Ukraine and to limit the damage arising from exposure of former TRUMP foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE’S secret meetings with Russian leadership figures in Moscow the previous month. The overall objective had been to “to sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connections could be fully established or proven" 
605
606
607But it looks like a lot of the exposés on Putin's meddling come from his own spies (including the "Putin hates and fears Hillary" narrative), particularly those targeting the left:
608
609(context for Russian spies: https://pastebin.com/ar4GWrRT, https://pastebin.com/z49g6KKe, https://pastebin.com/r5PHGSnz, https://pastebin.com/bqyWNzgi)
610
611
612http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/russia-putin-hack-dnc-clinton-election-2016-cold-war-214532
613	Putin’s Revenge
614
615	By Michael Crowley 
616
617	...Today, as the U.S. grapples with a Russia with resurgent global ambitions, with a Kremlin that hacks our emails, manipulates our news—and, according to the CIA, actively worked to elect Donald Trump—it’s important to realize that for Putin, it’s not just a constant move for advantage. Yes, Putin is pressing Russia’s current interests. But in scheming to defeat Hillary Clinton, and by subjecting American democracy itself to Russian influence, he is also closing a loop opened in part by the Clintons 20 years ago. Putin can’t undo Russia’s Cold War defeat by America. But he can avenge it. And in Donald Trump—the man who defeated Hillary Clinton and seems ready to deal with Putin on terms that few other American politicians would countenance—he hopes he has found a willing partner.
618
619	...But it wasn’t until December 2011 that Putin came to see Hillary Clinton as a direct threat to his power. 
620
621	...In a March 2014 address shortly after claiming Crimea, Putin made clear that he was re-establishing Russia’s place in the global order. He said the world had to “accept the obvious fact: Russia is an independent, active participant in international affairs. Like other countries, it has its own national interests that need to be taken into account and respected.” Translation: Russia would no longer be seated at the kids’ table while Washington dictated world events.
622
623	Increasingly, it has become clear that another foreign nation where Russia has exercised its new influence is the United States itself, where Hillary Clinton’s campaign was beset for months by a steady flow of stolen emails—hacked, according to U.S. intelligence officials, by agents of the Kremlin, likely at Putin’s personal direction.
624
625	It’s impossible to measure the precise effect of the leaked emails on Clinton’s candidacy. But her defeat was unquestionably a win for Putin, who will soon greet an American president leading what could be the most Russia-friendly administration in U.S. history. Putin sent Donald Trump his congratulations within an hour of Clinton’s concession. And when word of Trump’s election reached the Russian Duma, spontaneous applause broke out in the room. 
626
627http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/16/mcmaster-truth-defense-secrets-238470
628	 McMaster tests truth-telling reputation in Trump defense
629	H.R. McMaster's strong defense of Trump on Russia leak brings credibility — and sharp criticism.
630	By Michael Crowley  May 16
631
632
633https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/11/dont-gamble-on-trump/506207/
634	The Conservative Case for Voting for Clinton
635
636	Why support a candidate who rejects your preferences and offends your opinions? Don’t do it for her—do it for the republic, and the Constitution.
637
638	David Frum
639
640https://twitter.com/davidfrum/status/864440403117969408?lang=en
641	How does McMaster not resign today? That thing he said "did not happen" the president has just defended doing
642
643
644http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/neera-tanden-2016-election-227494
645	 Meet Hillary Clinton's anger translator
646
647	In an interview for POLITICO's 'Off Message' podcast, longtime Clinton confidante Neera Tanden sounds off on Bernie Sanders' attacks, the 2016 election coverage and Vladimir Putin.
648
649	By Glenn Thrush 
650
651	...“I think Putin is definitely not a fan of Hillary Clinton's, I mean, look at his own rhetoric,” she told me. “Hillary was very clear in her condemnation of his actions toward democracy protesters. She was very strong and he took that as a very strong affront.”
652
653	Tanden, like many other Clinton advisers, won’t go so far as to allege collusion between Putin and top officials Trump’s campaign — especially former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was a high-paid consultant for Putin allies in Ukraine. But she thinks the U.S. body politic is experiencing a foreign invasion unprecedented in history by a Russian interloper she describes as a “proto-fascist” strongman.
654
655http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/joe-biden-2016-thrush-off-message-215031
656	 5 takeaways from Biden's not-quite-campaign
657
658	In the words of a longtime ally, it became increasingly clear that the planning was more “fantasy football than football.”
659
660	By Glenn Thrush 
661
662	There was so, so much going for a Joe Biden presidential campaign — wasn’t there? His shaggy-dog “authenticity,” the tantalizing possibility of a Hillary Clinton face plant, the endless egging-on by a D.C. press corps that coveted a Joe-vs.-Hillary fight over a dreary, substance-y battle between Clinton and a Larry David doppelgänger.
663
664	The solitary item in the “no” column: reality.
665
666	Joe Biden was a bad presidential candidate in 1988 and 2008, and he didn’t seem to be brandishing many new skills (especially discipline or a measured tongue) in his more than four decades of public life.
667
668	At 72, with his 46-year-old son, Beau (whom he viewed as the most likely president in the Biden family), buried less than six months ago, the vice president’s restless mind alighted on an unexpected path to a political future — until his gaze returned to reality and legacy. In the end, he opted to stop where he stood — as an uncommonly powerful and collaborative vice president.
669
670	...It was never going to happen.
671
672	...Biden, my sources in his orbit have repeatedly told me, believed his greatest legacy would have been Beau’s election to the presidency — not his own — and he cherished the idea that the shattered boy rescued from the car wreck that killed his wife and baby daughter would someday occupy the Oval Office. With that dream gone, he picked up the flag himself and began to believe the overly optimistic reports that his dedicated inner circle — especially the exhortations of his surviving son, Hunte,r and longtime adviser Mike Donilon — were feeding him.
673
674
675http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/clinton-putin-226153
676	 Why Putin hates Hillary
677
678	Behind the allegations of a Russian hack of the DNC is the Kremlin leader's fury at Clinton for challenging the fairness of Russian elections.
679
680	By Michael Crowley and Julia Ioffe 
681
682http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/seven-reasons-the-new-russian-hack-announcement-is-a-big-deal-214330
683	 Seven Reasons the New Russian Hack Announcement Is a Big Deal
684	It might turn out to be bigger than the Trump tape. A Moscow-watcher explains what's really going on.
685	By Julia Ioffe 
686
687	...This marks a new sophistication in Russia’s understanding of American politics. The Russians didn’t always know what the DNC was—or at least why it was worth hacking. The fact that it now does represents a massive leap forward for Russian intelligence.
688
689	Just a few years ago, the Russians wouldn’t have known about the intricacies of American domestic politics.
690
691
692Why they would do this is anyone's guess. One possibility is that they want to spread misinformation about Russia's activities so that they can discredit the idea of Russian meddling later. Another is that they want to politicize the issue, which would make it harder for many Americans to reason or learn about Russia's activities and motives. Politicizing important issues looks like a tactic for the Russians:
693
694
695https://archive.org/stream/BezmenovLoveLetterToAmerica/YuriBezmenov-LoveLetterToAmerica_djvu.txt
696	After several months I was formally recruited by the KGB as an informer, while still maintaining my position as a Novosti journalist. My work with the KGB entailed combining my journalistic duties with the collection of intelligence data, and the spreading of "disinformation" to foreign countries for the purposes of Soviet propaganda and subversion.
697
698	...All the subverter has to do to remove the spiritual backbone of America is to help you to POLITICIZE, COMMERCIALIZE and 'ENTERTAINMENT-ALIZE' the dominant religions.
699
700	...Politicizing religion is the most efficient method of demoralizing a target nation. Once a nation starts giving to Caesar what belongs to God, and getting God involved in such things as 'social justice' and partisan political squabbles, it predictably loses what religion calls mercy and the grace of God. To put it in 'atheistic' terms, a target country allows the subverter to use the area of moral values for dissemination and enforcement of amoral ideas and policies. The most powerful instrument of this process is an organization called World Council of Churches, infiltrated by the KGB to such extent, that it is hard to distinguish, these days, a priest from a spy. Being a public relations officer for Novosti, I accompanied many foreign members of the WCC during their visits to the USSR. Some of them struck me as individuals pathologically unable to say or hear truth. They were simply allergic to any facts or opinions which would 'undermine' their 'spiritual' affiliation with the Soviet manipulators.
701
702
703http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/former-soviet-spy-we-created-liberation-theology-83634/
704	Former Soviet spy: We created Liberation Theology
705
706	...In general, could you say that the spreading of Liberation Theology had any kind of Soviet connection?
707
708	Yes. I learned the fine points of the KGB involvement with Liberation Theology from Soviet General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, communist Romania's chief razvedka (foreign intelligence) adviser – and my de facto boss, until 1956, when he became head of the Soviet espionage service, the PGU1,  a position he held for an unprecedented record of 15 years.
709
710	...Was the Theology of Liberation a movement somehow "created" by Sakharovsky's part of the KGB, or it was an existing movement that was exacerbated by the USSR?
711
712	The movement was born in the KGB, and it had a KGB-invented name: Liberation Theology. During those years, the KGB had a penchant for “liberation” movements. The National Liberation Army of Columbia (FARC), created by the KGB with help from Fidel Castro; the “National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created by the KGB with help from “Che” Guevara; and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), created by the KGB with help from Yasser Arafat are just a few additional “liberation” movements born at the Lubyanka -- the headquarters of the KGB.
713
714	The birth of Liberation Theology was the intent of a 1960 super-secret “Party-State Dezinformatsiya Program” approved by Aleksandr Shelepin, the chairman of the KGB, and by Politburo member Aleksey Kirichenko, who coordinated the Communist Party's international policies. This program demanded that the KGB take secret control of the World Council of Churches (WCC), based in Geneva, Switzerland, and use it as cover for converting Liberation Theology into a South American revolutionary tool. The WCC was the largest international ecumenical organization after the Vatican, representing some 550 million Christians of various denominations throughout 120 countries.
715
716	The birth of a new religious movement is a historic event. How was this new religious movement launched?
717
718	The KGB began by building an intermediate international religious organization called the Christian Peace Conference (CPC), which was headquartered in Prague. Its main task was to bring the KGB-created Liberation Theology into the real world.
719
720	The new Christian Peace Conference was managed by the KGB and was subordinated to the venerable World Peace Council, another KGB creation, founded in 1949 and by then also headquartered in Prague.
721
722	During my years at the top of the Soviet bloc intelligence community I managed the Romanian operations of the World Peace Council (WPC). It was as purely KGB as it gets. Most of the WPC’s employees were undercover Soviet bloc intelligence officers.
723
724
725https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Harry_Hopkins
726	Talk:Harry Hopkins
727
728	Someone has vandalized this page.
729
730	"Such critiques of Roosevelt and Hopkins as the notorious book, Verona Secrets, paint Hopkins as a Russian spy. No such allegation has been substantiated or proven." http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1610.html. It's pretty sad really.
731
732 	...What is sad is your reliance on stale history and offer of only opinion. Information is actually coming from the Soviet archives that Hopkins was in fact considered an "agent of influence" for the Soviets inside the U.S. Do you speak Russian?
733
734	...Vasily Mitrokhin was a KGB archivist who defected from the Soviet Union with copies of KGB files. He claimed Harry Hopkins was a secret Russian agent.
735
736	...Does the above writer know Russian? Obviously he is not concerned with the basic facts of history and has no evidence whatsover to back up his claims. No, the above is scurrilous demogoguery emanating historically from Hopkins' and FDR's political opponents among the America First crowd and others who were unenthusiastic about World War 2 and loathed the New Deal as "socialism". The Soviet Union was our ally in the biggest, most cataclysmic war in human history. In his capacity as FDR's chief foreign affairs advisor and emissary he worked to solidify and manage these alliances playing a role in facilitating military aid to these countries, not only Russia but...
737
738
739https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Hopkins#Relations_with_the_Soviet_Union
740	...Hopkins continued to be a target of Republican attacks even after his death. George Racey Jordan testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee in December 1949 that Hopkins passed nuclear secrets to the USSR. While Democrats dismissed Jordan’s testimony, Republicans championed it. ...Roll further notes that in 1963 the FBI concluded that Jordan's allegations could not be substantiated, adding that Jordan "either lied for publicity and profit or was delusional."
741
742
743http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2001/jan/4/20010104-020500-7670r/
744	Harry Hopkins, Soviet agent
745
746	...But the liberals, dreading the charge that they had ignored the peril, counterattacked, turning Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy into an all-purpose villain who allegedly smeared innocent victims with groundless charges of communism or pro-communism, and gradually the tide turned. 
747
748
749https://pastebin.com/r5PHGSnz
750
751
752http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2000/07/31/gore-without-a-script
753	Gore asked a group of his friends to set up a series of seminars for him, like the arms-control seminars with Leon Fuerth, only much more ambitious, with big-time thinkers, such as the economists Kenneth Arrow and Brian Arthur, flying to Washington to brief him. Up one level! By the end of it, Gore had a new, sweeping view of the world and its prospects. His main interest had noticeably shifted, from arms control to global warming, but the setup was familiar: mankind was in a morally dire situation of its own making, which could be solved through a combination of analytic mastery, spiritual guidance, and the use of technology in healthy ways instead of unhealthy ones.
754
755
756https://www.livescience.com/22069-polarization-climate-science.html
757	How Climate Science Became Politicized
758
759	...Part of the problem is that climate change has moved out of the realm of research and into the political arena, Leiserowitz said. The climate-change views of the two political parties were not significantly different until the Kyoto Protocol negotiations of 1997, when policymakers began to look for solutions to global warming.
760
761	This was in the midst of the polarizing Clinton administration, and for some, the association made global warming belief seem unsavory. Even today, many climate-change naysayers think of former vice president Al Gore when they hear the words "climate change."
762
763	"They loathe Al Gore," Leiserowitz said. "Sometimes I joke that Al Gore could hold a press conference tomorrow to say that science has determined that the Earth is round and people out there would say, 'Well, no it isn't.'" 
764
765
766https://www.infowars.com/leftist-pr-firm-pressuring-media-to-blame-climate-change-for-hurricane-joaquin/
767	Leftist PR Firm Pressuring Media to Blame “Climate Change” for Hurricane Joaquin
768	Liberals are exploiting a potential tragedy to promote their alarmist agenda
769
770
771https://www.infowars.com/liberal-fascist-calls-for-global-warming-skeptics-to-be-arrested/
772	Liberal Fascist Calls For Global Warming Skeptics to be Arrested
773
774
775https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Ainfowars.com+global+warming&ie=utf-8
776
777
778https://pastebin.com/e4qCs1AT
779
780
781https://www.cnas.org/publications/blog/5-questions-with-someone-interesting-charles-emmerson
782	5 Questions with Someone Interesting: Charles Emmerson
783
784	 CE: Well first of all, there’s certainly an increasing convergence in terms of the idea that climate change is the reality, and that a large part of it is anthropogenic, although there are still a number of Russian scientists – including at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg – who argue that the anthropogenic contribution is generally overstated in the West. The argument put to me there was that what we’re now seeing in the Arctic – and there’s no denying that Arctic warming is real – is a blip, and it may actually be overshadowed by a natural cooling effect over time. This argument was put to me in Russia, but it’s not current elsewhere around the Arctic. So there’s still some divergence in scientists’ views, but not very much and it’s becoming smaller.
785
786	But in terms of *effects*, it really depends on who you talk to.
787
788
789https://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/12/since-over-1000-confidential-e.html
790	Climategate: Russian secret service blamed for hack
791
792
793http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/pub/Bolsen%20Druckman%20Cook%20PBehavior%202013.pdf
794	The Influence of Partisan Motivated Reasoning on Public Opinion
795
796	Abstract  Political parties play a vital role in democracies by linking citizens to their representatives. Nonetheless, a longstanding concern is that partisan identification slants decision-making. Citizens may support (oppose) policies  that they would otherwise oppose (support) in the absence of an endorsement from a political party—this is due in large part to what is called partisan motivated reasoning where individuals interpret information through the lens of their party commitment. We explore partisan motivated reasoning in a survey experiment focusing on support for an energy law. We identify two politically relevant factors that condition partisan motivated reasoning: (1) an explicit inducement to form an ‘‘accurate’’ opinion, and (2) cross-partisan, but not consensus, bipartisan support for the law. We further provide evidence of how partisan motivated reasoning works psychologically and affects opinion strength. We conclude by discussing the implications of our results for understanding opinion formation and the overall quality of citizens’ opinions.
797
798
799(compare to:
800
801http://www.nbcnews.com/card/nbc-news-exit-poll-honesty-vs-temperament-n680296?cid=sm_tw
802	Indeed, nearly six in 10 voters interviewed in NBC Exit Polls so far today say that Clinton is not honest and trustworthy. Slightly more than one-third say she is. 
803
804
805https://archive.org/details/MSNBCW_20160808_100000_Morning_Joe/start/660/end/720
806	It's weird Hillary Clinton wasnts that everything was hunky dory with the e-mails and they were cleared of wrongdoing and that's their spin and nobody believes it. Nobody in America believes it.
807
808http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/06/russian-conspiracy-hillary-clinton-absurd-trump/
809	Hillary Clinton’s Absurd, McCarthyist Russian Conspiracy Theory
810
811http://www.breitbart.com/big-journalism/2016/09/12/clintons-russia-conspiracy-theory-salvage-election/
812	Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been placing increasing emphasis on a bizarre conspiracy theory that claims Russia is hacking the U.S. election to ensure that Donald Trump wins.
813
814http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sean-hannity-russian-hacking-liberal-media-fake-news_us_584fdd10e4b0e05aded5b6c1
815	Sean Hannity Says Russian Hacking Probe Is ‘Liberal Media Fake News Story’
816
817http://www.politico.com/story/2016/12/gop-russia-putin-support-232714
818	More Republicans viewing Putin favorably
819
820	GOP sympathies for Putin and his homeland are rising)
821
822
823A lot of Russian propaganda goes towards increasing animosity between the left and right and politicizing issues of interest to them. By politicizing the issue of their meddling, Russia can make it harder for politically-inclined Americans to reason about their activities. Tying the warnings of Russian meddling to the words of Clinton, a polarizing figure, would help with this (to get a sense of one of the ways Clinton inadvertently helped Putin, read this http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-putin-no-relationship-226282 and imagine Trump was asking Russia to attack Biden instead. Clinton helped Russia manipulate Republicans with the idea that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend.")
824
825If they intended this, it looks like it worked: you can see more than a few politicians and pundits on the right arguing that Russian interference is ineffective and overstated (or doesn't exist), and plenty on the left jumping on every meeting with a Russian official, kind word towards Trump, or dubious Russia-related report as evidence of treachery:
826
827
828https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/
829	STEWART: That's exactly right and are both of your agencies capable of handling accusations agree with me on that. I'd like to shift quickly if I could to the integrity of the report which the previous DNI when he determined along with your acquiescence, I might add, both of you, that Russia developed a clear preference for Mr. Trump and this is a huge deal. I mean, think about this story the American people have been told and some believe that our president was elected maybe because of the influence of a foreign government.
830
831	And I love you guys, you know that, and I defend you and we respect what you do but I do need to make this point and that is the intelligence community is not perfect, is it?
832
833	COMEY: Not perfect?
834
835	STEWART: Yes.
836
837	COMEY: Certainly not.
838
839	STEWART: Certainly not. We...
840
841	...STEWART: And as has been indicated here, and look again, that's not a criticism, it's just the human endeavor. We sometimes make mistakes as do agencies sometimes make mistakes and all of us can think of examples of that including meaningful mistakes, by the way. Mistakes that had clear implications for our policy. And as has been indicated here as well, there's a difference in the level of confidence.
842
843
844http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise/2016/dec/08/risch-adamant-russia-didnt-affect-outcome-us-election-despite-hacking/
845	Risch adamant that Russia didn’t affect outcome of U.S. election, despite hacking
846
847	Idaho Sen. Jim Risch, a member of the Senate foreign relations and intelligence committees, was adamant on CNN yesterday that he doesn’t believe Russia successfully interfered in the U.S. election in November. “It is a fact that no one can deny that the Russians attempt to influence elections all over the world,” Risch told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “No one in the intelligence community has offered anything, that the Russians, whatever they did, whether it was hacking or whether it was releasing things, had any effect.”
848
849	He added: “I don’t think they interfered. I think they attempted to interfere.”
850
851
852http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/rand-paul-democrats-donald-trump-campaign/2017/05/10/id/789318/
853	Rand Paul: Trump Collusion With Russia 'Huge Myth' by Democrats
854
855
856http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/if-only-john-mccains-actions-matched-john-mccains-rhetoric
857 	By Steve Benen
858
859	If only John McCain’s actions matched John McCain’s rhetoric
860
861	Sure, the GOP senator has been willing to criticize Trump – at times, in surprisingly forceful terms – which is more than can be said for many of his congressional Republican colleagues, nearly all of whom remain silent, despite genuine concerns. But McCain doesn’t just give speeches and sit down for interviews; he’s also a sitting senator who casts votes.
862
863	And in the Senate, so far this year, McCain is voting with Trump’s position 94% of the time. As a factual matter, the senator is a Maverick in Name Only.
864
865	...And yet, much of the political world seems inclined to credit McCain for resisting Trump’s more outlandish excesses, even though McCain isn’t following through when it counts. Worse, there are Democrats trying to get attention for the fact that they’re actually resisting Trump both rhetorically and legislatively.
866
867
868https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/06/09/the-latest-republican-defense-of-trump-is-built-on-a-massive-lie/
869	The latest Republican defense of Trump is built on a massive lie
870	By Greg Sargent
871
872	Now that James B. Comey’s testimony to Congress has painted a picture of President Trump’s contempt for the rule of law that’s far more forceful and persuasive in its dramatic details than Republicans ever bargained for, the new and emerging GOP defense is that Trump is a political and procedural naif. He merely needs to learn the rules. This line of obfuscation requires pretending that many of the events of the past six months never happened.
873
874	But this spin from Republicans has a significance that runs deeper than merely revealing the absurd lengths to which they’ll go to protect Trump from political and legal harm. More urgently, their new line unwittingly reveals the degree to which Trump’s abuses of power and assault on our democracy have depended all along upon their tacit and willful complicity — and, perhaps worse, it leaves little doubt that this enabling will continue, with unforeseen consequences.
875
876
877https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/
878	CASTRO: ...My focus today is to explore how many claims within Steele's dossier are looking more and more likely, as though they are accurate.
879
880	...Are you investigating the claims made in the dossier?
881
882	...The allegations it raises about President Trump's campaign aids connections to Russians, when overlaid with known established facts and timelines from the 2016 campaign are very revealing.
883
884	...OK. Well, the dossier definitely seems right on these points.
885
886	...A July 19, 2016 entry for example asserts that Russians were receiving intel from Trump's team on Russian oligarch
887
888	...A July 30 entry likewise states that a source close to the Trump campaign confirms a regular exchange with the Kremlin
889
890	...So, the dossier states in an entry dated August 10, 2016, that a quote "Kremlin official involved in U.S. relations" suggested that Moscow might offer assistance
891
892	...Among the U.S. actors, this Kremlin official mentions a Carter Page and Michael Flynn, whom my colleagues have already discussed at length and which the dossier describes as
893
894	...CASTRO: In an October 18, 2016, entry, the dossier states that, during Page's visit to Moscow, he met with Igor Senchin, offering, quote,"Page and Trump's associate, the brokerage of up to 19 percent stake in Rosneft," which Page conferring (ph) that, quote, "If Trump were elected U.S. President, sanctions on Russia would be lifted."
895
896	And although fortunately the White House hasn't been so naive as to (inaudible) unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia, it was widely reported that on January 27th of this year, Rosneft sold a 19.5 percent stake in Rosneft in what Reuters calls, quote,"one of its biggest privatizations since the 1990s." Furthermore, Reuters reported that, quote, "Public records show the ownership structure of the -- of the stake ultimately includes a Cayman Islands company whose beneficial owners cannot be traced." What a coincidence.
897
898	Is this the subject of your investigation? One of the subjects of your investigation?
899
900	COMEY: Same answer.
901
902	CASTRO: OK.
903
904	COMEY: Meaning -- meaning I'm not going to comment.
905
906	CASTRO: I understand.
907
908	...CASTRO: OK. An entry from July 19, 2016, in the dossier states that a Trump associate knew that the Kremlin was
909
910
911The dossier itself seems like a handy tool for getting the left and right to fight about Russia's activities and intentions. It reads like a Democrat partisan's dream: According to the dossier, Trump is not just a fan of Putin but a criminal collaborator, Trump is an utter pervert and the evidence is out there just waiting to be discovered, Putin dreads the Democrat's stalwart resistance, and his true motivation is fear and loathing of their champion, Hillary Clinton (at least for the partisans that support Clinton; it looks like she and Sanders have helped divide the Democratic party).
912
913The problem is just about everything in the dossier is unverified or unverifiable, and so the people who believe it end up being the people who want to believe it.
914
915The reality, is as far as I can tell: Trump could easily have been kept in the dark enough by his advisors to have avoided breaking the law (but maybe not enough to avoid impeachment), there is no evidence that the KGB taped Trump with prostitutes, a lot of the left (and right) helped politicize Russian interference, and Clinton was mostly just useful for installing Trump, politicizing Russian interference, and dividing the American electorate.
916
917The dossier is also misleading in subtle but important ways. The dossier would have you believe that Russia's intelligence network aiding Trump (or "being used against CLINTON") was entirely made up of Trump himself and recruits from Russian emigres:
918
919
920https://archive.org/stream/TrumpIntelligenceAllegations_201701/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations_djvu.txt
921	...In terms of the FSB’s recruitment of capable cyber operatives to carry out its, ideally deniable, offensive cyber operations, a Russian IT specialist with direct knowledge reported in June 2016 that this was often done using coercion and blackmail. In terms of ‘foreign’ agents, the FSB was approaching US citizens of Russian (Jewish) origin on business trips to Russia.
922
923	...Agreed exchange of information established in both directions. TRUMP's team using moles within DNC and hackers in the US as well as outside in Russia. PUTIN motivated by fear and hatred of Hillary CLINTON. Russians receiving intel from TRUMP’s team on Russian oligarchs and their families in US 
924
925	Mechanism for transmitting this intelligence involves “pension" disbursements to Russian emigres living in US as cover, using consular officials in New York, DC and Miami 
926
927	...In the wider context of TRUMP campaign/Kremlin co-operation, Source E claimed that the intelligence network being used against CLINTON comprised three elements. Firstly there were agents/facilitators within the Democratic Party structure itself; secondly Russian emigre and associated offensive cyber operators based in the US; and thirdly; state-sponsored cyber operatives working in Russia.
928
929	...Source E claimed that Russian diplomatic staff in key cities such as New York, Washington DC and Miami were using the emigre ‘pension’ distribution system as cover. The operation therefore depended on key people in the US Russian emigre community for its success.
930
931
932But deep cover spies like the SVR's illegals (https://pastebin.com/r5PHGSnz) aren't exactly what you'd call "Russian emigres," especially the ones born in the U.S. And the dossier makes it sound like the whole thing was a hacking operation (how many thousands of propagandists would Russia have to employ to write all of this: http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html ?). Anyone who based their investigation on the dossier would look for Russian agents among ethnic Russians (and Jews, apparently) who have travelled to Russia, missing agents like Vicky Pelaez (http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/06/29/russian.spies.pelaez.profile/ and  https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fmundo.sputniknews.com%2Ffirmas%2F201603171057745687-trump-candidato-republicanos), who emigrated from Peru. The dossier draws attention away from the fairly obvious observation that the same kind of deep cover spies arrested in 2010, who were "getting close to U.S. policymaking circles," could be used by Russia to aide Trump's campaign or to further other goals.
933
934As for what Russia's methods and goals actually are, that's not always easy to know. The dossier says Russia aims to stop Clinton, sew division within the West, distract from Russian intervention in Ukraine, hide their meddling and collusion with Trump's team, and lift sanctions, and that the Kremlin's methods comprise hackers targeting Clinton (the word "spy" or "illegal" doesn't appear in the text) and blackmail over Trump, with the whole thing coordinated by secret meetings between Trump associates and officials based in Russia. But Russia's goals and methods are hard to figure out by design:
935
936
937http://georgianreview.ge/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/bob-pdf.pdf
938	Other tools, such as the uses of agents of influence, or disinformation, or maskirovka, deception to mask intent, are either Soviet or even Tsarist in their roots. The Swedish Defence Research Agency concluded that the only novelty about the Crimean annexation was that the Russians had executed it 
939successfully. But this form of warfare, however one wants to call it, is ‘new’ in a few critical ways. First, most Western experts and governments did not see it coming (despite being signposted for several years) and did not know how to react when it happened. 
940
941
942http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-31020283
943	 Russia's annexation of Crimea last year caught almost everyone off guard. The Russian military disguised its actions, and denied them - but those "little green men" who popped up in the Black Sea peninsula were a textbook case of the Russian practice of military deception - or maskirovka.
944
945	At a cadet school in the southern suburbs of Moscow, Maj Gen Alexander Vladimirov heaves two enormous red volumes off his bookcase and slams them down on the table. "My Theory and Science of Warfare," he says, beaming. "It's three times longer than Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace!"
946
947	Vladimirov, vice-president of Russia's Collegium of Military Experts, is an authority on maskirovka - the hallmark of Russian warfare and a word which translates as "something masked".
948a 
949	"As soon as man was born, he began to fight," he says. "When he began hunting, he had to paint himself different colours to avoid being eaten by a tiger. From that point on maskirovka was a part of his life. All human history can be portrayed as the history of deception." 
950
951	Vladimirov quotes liberally from the Roman general Frontinus and the ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu who described war as an eternal path of cunning.
952
953	But it's Russia, he tells me, with unmistakable pride, that has over the centuries really honed these techniques to perfection.
954
955	...Five weeks later, once the annexation had been rubber-stamped by the Parliament in Moscow, Putin admitted Russian troops had been deployed in Crimea after all. But the lie had served its purpose. Maskirovka is used to wrong-foot your enemies, to keep them guessing.
956
957	..."I think that there is an alignment between what probably started out as military doctrine, but now is much more a part of state policy and there's an alignment between the strategic down to the tactical level in terms of the mindset of maskirovka." 
958
959
960https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_military_deception
961	The 1978 Soviet Military Encyclopedia defines deception similarly, placing additional stress on strategic levels, and explicitly including political, economic and diplomatic measures besides the military ones. It largely repeats the 1944 Encyclopedia's concept, but adds that
962
963	Strategic maskirovka is carried out at national and theater levels to mislead the enemy as to political and military capabilities, intentions and timing of actions. In these spheres, as war is but an extension of politics, it includes political, economic and diplomatic measures as well as military.
964
965
966The dossier has all the hallmarks of "maskirovka." It gives the impression of a sloppy, thrown-together hacking operation carried out by whoever the FSB was able to recruit on Russian soil. But Russia's recruitment and influence network is the largest and the best in the world:
967
968
969https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91-00901R000600210056-1.pdf
970	Soviets embark on new path of anti-American
971
972	14 April 1981
973
974	Last year Central Intelligence Agency Deputy Director for Operations John McMahon testified before Congress in closed committee session that the Soviets were spending from $3 billion to $4 billion a year on anti-U.S. covert action and propaganda.
975
976	"The Soviets have established a worldwide network of agents, organizations, and technical facilities" to implement these programs, McMahon told the House Intelligence Committee.
977
978	That network is second to none in comparison to the major world powers in its size and effectiveness."
979
980	According to McMahon and other sources, such covert "active measures," as distinguished from the normal intelligence collection and counterintelligence functions of the KGB, have included:
981
982	--Written and oral "disinformation." In may 1978, Soviet Ambassador to Zambia Solodovnikov warned Zambian President Kuanda falsely that Soviet intelligence had learned British and American intelligence services were plotting to overthrow him. Kuanda was advised against making a trip to Britain and the U.S., since his departure was to precipitate the coup.
983
984	Solodovnikov said falsely that the U.S. and Britain had used a similar plan to overthrow Nkrumah of Ghana.
985
986	--Forgeries and false rumors. A bogus U.S. Army field manual was cited by the Soviets as proof that the CIA was secretly manipulating the terrorist Red Brigades who murdered Italian leader Aldo Moro.
987
988	This happened after it was reported that the REd Brigades had received training in Czechoslovakia and had ties with the Soviet Union.
989
990	"Whenever the KGB is caught red-handed in an outrageous action that threatens the Soviet Union with serious embarrassment," wrote Reader's Digest Senior Editor John Barron in his book KGB: the Secret work of Soviet Secret Agents, "it hurriedly commences disinformation operations to divert world attention from the event. Frequently the KGB simply accuses others of doing precisely what it has been shown to have done."
991
992	The forged field manual used in the Moro case also was used by the Soviets to try to prove that U.S. military and intelligence liaisons abroad are used as cover to penetrate and manipulate friendly foreign governments.
993
994	--"Gray" or unattributed propaganda. When the Soviets want to create an aura of authenticity around an otherwise implausible position, they use a system of press placements through non-Soviet journalists recruited to make sure Soviet articles surface in the local foreign press.
995
996
997And it doesn't look like that's changed. All those spies aren't going to just pack up and leave after the fall of the Berlin wall:
998
999
1000http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/cia-art-spying-espionage-spies-military-terrorism-214875
1001	But here’s the unfortunate irony of that transformation: Our Cold War adversaries hadn’t actually gone away. While American attention was turned elsewhere, Russia had quietly continued applying its formidable knowledge of traditional spy tradecraft.
1002Spy_spots_final-01-redder.jpg
1003
1004	Using old propaganda techniques, and its usual modus operandi of dangling potentially compromising material on subjects of interest, Russia has spent the past several years slowly rebuilding its great empire and quietly undermining the foundations of Western democracy.
1005
1006	...It is clear now that, while we were fighting the war on terror, Russia was not twiddling its thumbs. Its security services are good—frighteningly good—and extremely patient. 
1007
1008
1009https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/higher-education-national-security.pdf
1010	This white paper was prepared by the FBI's Counterintelligence Strategic Partnership Unit to provide awareness to administrators, senior researchers, export control offices, and technology transfer offices at higher education institutions about how foreign intelligence services and non-state actors use US colleges and universities to further their intelligence and operational needs.
1011
1012	...In 2009, Russia sent the following instructions to one of its spies, Lidiya Gurveva (using the name Cynthia Murphy), while she was pursuing an MBA degree at Columbia Business School, Columbia University:
1013
1014	[S]trengthen...ties w. classmates on daily basis incl. professors who can help in job search and who will have (or already have) access to secret info... [r]eport to C[enter] on their detailed personal data and character traits w. preliminary conclusions about their potential (vulnerability) to be recruited by Service.
1015
1016	They also directed her to “ ‘dig up’ personal data of those students who apply (or are hired already) for a job at CIA.” Guryeva was arrested in June 2010 for acting as an agent of a foreign power and was deported back to Russia.
1017
1018	This example demonstrates a foreign intelligence service searching for students who may soon have access to targeted information. Intelligence services also collect information on the programs, officers, professors, and demographics of US universities. After studying the information and, if they find a person to target, they will study his/her motivations, weaknesses, politics, and ambitions. Familiarizing themselves with a professor’s work will help them determine a pretext for contacting the professor and how best to influence or recruit the professor.
1019
1020
1021Most (or all http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/03/how-the-explosive-russian-dossier-was-compiled-christopher-steele) of Steele's sources are Russians. But an intelligence source doesn't always have to tell the truth--even the CIA gets fooled:
1022
1023
1024http://freebeacon.com/national-security/cia-fooled-by-massive-cold-war-double-agent-failure/
1025	The CIA was fooled by scores of double agents pretending to be working for the agency but secretly loyal to communist spy agencies during the Cold War and beyond, according to a former CIA analyst, operations officer, and historian.
1026
1027	The large-scale deception included nearly 100 fake CIA recruits in East Germany, Cuba, as well as the Soviet Union (and later Russia) who supplied false intelligence that was passed on to senior U.S. policymakers for decades.
1028
1029	"During the Cold War, the Central Intelligence Agency bucked the law of averages by recruiting double agents on an industrial scale; it was hoodwinked not a few but many times," writes Benjamin B. Fischer, CIA’s former chief historian.
1030
1031	"The result was a massive but largely ignored intelligence failure," he stated in a journal article published last week.
1032
1033	The failure to recognize the double agents and their disinformation designed to influence U.S. policies "wreaked havoc" on the agency, Fischer wrote in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence.
1034
1035	Fischer stated that the failure to prevent the double agent deception was dismissed by the CIA as insignificant, and that congressional oversight committees also did not press the agency to reform its vetting processes.
1036
1037
1038And Steele didn't mention how he vetted his sources--he just compiled what they said and sent it to his clients. He basically acted as a conduit from his sources to his clients, and now the world. But we know some of his sources were either lying or very misinformed, making the document, essentially, a well-crafted forgery:
1039
1040
1041https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/parliaments-intelligence-watchdog-to-scrutinise-trump-dossier
1042	Paddy Ashdown, the Lib Dem peer and former diplomat, said he thought the intelligence agencies would now be trying to get to the bottom of the veracity of the allegations but the dossier showed the hallmarks of the FSB [the modern-day KGB] planting false or heavily embellished information.
1043
1044	“In this hall of mirrors, anybody can indulge their wildest fantasy theory but you have to ask yourself who benefits. Clearly the CIA doesn’t. Clearly Mr Trump doesn’t. But every aspect benefits Russia,” he said.
1045
1046	“It absolutely leaves Britain in a difficult position and Moscow will make the most of that. But it doesn’t mean to say we can do anything about it.”
1047
1048
1049Forging documents to confuse about their operations and intent wouldn't be new to Russian intelligence:
1050
1051
1052https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP84B00049R000902220014-7.pdf
1053	The Soviet Forgery War
1054
1055	It sounds like a John Le Carre spy thriller. Soviet agents forge some official-looking U.S. documents and try to stir up anti-American sentiment in Europe. There are letters from President Regan, former secretary of State Haig and other high-ranking officials. There are suggestions about a military coup in Greece to overthrow Socialist Premier Papandreou, a secret agreement for a U.S. intelligence base in Sweden, a letter to King Juan Carlos of Spain about ways of countering opposition to joining NATO and efforts to neutralize the anti-nuclear movement in Europe.
1056
1057	Although it may sound like spy fiction, it's all too real. These are actual forgeries by the Soviet Union, which were uncovered by U.S. and allied intelligence and released to the press last week by the administration. The forgeries are only the latest in a long line of Soviet propaganda and covert action measures against the U.S.
1058
1059	...The Soviet Union's propaganda war has manifold aims: to influence world public opinion against U.S. policies; to portray the U.S. as an aggressive and "imperialist" power; to discredit those foreign governments and officials who cooperate with the U.S.; to obfuscate the true nature of Soviet actions and intentions, and to create a favorable environment for the execution of Soviet foreign and military policies.
1060
1061
1062Neither would leaking them to the press:
1063
1064
1065https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00965R000706950001-7.pdf
1066	Forgery is a favorite Soviet weapon in the Cold War but has never been an important part of the U.S. disinformation arsenal.
1067
1068	...Anonymous mailings. The KGB usually sends its "leaks" to the news media in plain brown wrappers with no return address, making it difficult to verify the document's authenticity. That often works with gullible or anti-American publications.
1069
1070	Realizing that the communist press has little credibility, the KGB tries to plant its forgeries in noncommunist publications. Even a tiny item will do: it can then be picked up and amplified as "a well-known fact" by the pro-Soviet press. After sufficient repetition, it is broadcast by the Soviet propaganda network, usually with the standard introduction, "As the whole world knows..."
1071
1072
1073And some of their forgeries have been very good:
1074
1075
1076http://iancpilarczyk.com/10-historical-documents-proven-to-be-fake/
1077	During World War II, the Tanaka Memorial was portrayed by the United States as a Japanese analog to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Even though the authenticity of the document has been widely discredited by modern scholars, the Tanaka Memorial was generally considered to be authentic in the 1930s-1940s, largely because Japan’s actions corresponded so closely to plans outlined in the document: the 1931 Mukden Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, The Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in 1940, and the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the subsequent war in the Pacific all seemed to provide corroborating evidence of its authenticity. In the modern era, many scholars believe the document to be a Soviet forgery meant to encourage war between China and Japan, while at the same time advancing Soviet interests.
1078
1079
1080https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Sword_and_the_Shield.html?id=9TWUAQ7Xof8C
1081	On the publication of the Tanaka memorandum, see Klehr, Haynes and Firsov, The Secret World of American Communism, pp. 52-3. The published version of the memorandum has been regarded by some scholars, unaware of the OGPU’s success at this period in intercepting Japanese communications in Harbin and Seoul, as a forgery fabricated by the OGPU. The KGB record of its interception, however, describes it as genuine. I t is possible, though Mitrokhin discovered no evidence of this, that the published version was doctored to improve its propaganda value.
1082
1083
1084Compare some of the events outlined in the Tanaka Memorial (like the Mukden incident) to the excerpts here: https://pastebin.com/e4qCs1AT The takeaway is: if Russian intelligence wants a forgery to appear credible, they can try to make its claims come true.
1085
1086Beyond confusing about their methods and goals, Russian intelligence likes to use forgeries to sew doubt and chaos:
1087
1088
1089http://www.fpri.org/article/2016/09/distinguishing-true-false-fakes-forgeries-russias-information-war-ukraine/
1090	A highly effective disruption method is to use genuine text or documents to mask false text or documents. The objective of interspersing false text or documents within genuine text or document batches is to make the adulterated appear credible.
1091
1092		[T]he USSR is not engaged constantly in an active, positive deception program designed totally to mislead us as to its intentions and objectives. To do so would be counterproductive to its own interests, and moreover would undermine the effectiveness of a positive deception program when it would be important that we accept it. A prerequisite for effective deception is to establish some degree of credibility.[28] [Emphasis added]
1093
1094	Another variation is to insert ostensibly false text to adulterate—and so intentionally discredit—an otherwise genuine document (or likewise, an ostensibly false document into a batch of genuine documents). Such actions are covert rather than clandestine since a clandestine action, if properly conducted, remains totally concealed, which would in this instance be self-defeating.
1095
1096	False information—especially in the form of fraudulent “official” documents and papers—is a potent disruptor. Just as the belief that some currency may be counterfeit undercuts faith in all currency, so, too, the belief that some documents (or some parts of some documents) are forgeries intentionally and effectively corrodes the credibility of all similar documents. This effect can be more debilitating when the target is intelligence professionals rather than lay readers.
1097
1098		Alertness to deception presumably prompts a more careful and systematic review of the evidence. But anticipation of deception also leads the analyst to be more skeptical of all of the evidence, and to the extent that evidence is deemed unreliable, the analyst’s preconceptions must play a greater role in determining which evidence to believe. This leads to a paradox: The more alert we are to deception, the more likely we are to be deceived.[29]
1099
1100	Disruption entails a greater degree of freedom in counterintelligence operations than mere deception. Ostensible forgeries interspersed within a larger document batch are a well-honed technique. Circulating fake and fraudulent documents, or causing false information to be published in legitimate outlets, is useful to provoke others to come forward to challenge the information or to amplify it.
1101
1102
1103Which is exactly what the dossier did:
1104
1105
1106http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/mar/21/discredited-dossier-detailing-trump-russian-collus/
1107	Desperate Dems cling to discredited spy dossier to link Trump to Russians 
1108
1109	By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Tuesday, March 21, 2017
1110
1111	In trying to bolster a discredited dossier by a former British spy, Rep. Adam B. Schiff on Monday recounted the document’s telling of a supposed meeting between an informal Donald Trump adviser and a Russian oligarch.
1112
1113	...Mr. Schiff’s praise of former MI6 agent Mr. Steele was a theme among Democrats on Monday as they questioned FBI Director James B. Comey and Navy Adm. Michael Rogers, director of the National Security Agency.
1114
1115	Democrats are attempting to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence, which hacked into Democrat Party emails.
1116
1117	At this point, Mr. Steele’s unverified dossier is their best public evidence. They have embraced Mr. Steele’s research, which makes the case for collusion even though it has been discredited by the press, its subjects and former intelligence officials.
1118
1119
1120http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/443752/trump-kompromat-story-its-all-disturbing
1121	The Trump ‘Kompromat’ Story Is Disturbing — Every Bit of It
1122
1123	by David French January 11, 2017 12:51 AM
1124
1125	...I won’t dignify the report with a link, but some of the rumors detail alleged personal misconduct. Others detail disturbing claims of coordination between Russian intelligence and Trump campaign officials — claims that can be investigated rather easily. In fact, news organizations were investigating those claims even as Buzzfeed vomited out the entire report.
1126
1127	The American people need to know what Russia is doing, what our president-elect or his team have done (if anything), and whether members of our own government are breaking the law to try to delegitimize Trump.
1128
1129
1130http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443816/donald-trump-dossier-intelligence-reports-question-russia-ties
1131	Is the Intelligence Community Trying to Undermine Trump?
1132
1133	by Michael Barone January 13, 2017 12:00 AM @michaelbarone
1134
1135	These unverified allegations are not useful for much except delegitimizing the president-elect.
1136
1137	One must add that it’s not clear that “intelligence agencies” let out the information. But if they did, it was in line with the report they delivered to President Barack Obama last week claiming with high degrees of confidence that Russian president Vladimir Putin directed the hacking and release of e-mails from the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.
1138
1139	...My ability to read the minds of leaders of the intelligence community is weaker than theirs to read Putin’s, and I lack knowledge of just how the 35-page dodgy dossier found its way into the computerized hands of BuzzFeed. But what we’re seeing looks an awful lot like an attempt by intelligence officials, probably including presidential employees, to delegitimize the president-elect and his administration. It’s in line with the warnings to Trump by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer not to tangle with the intelligence community.
1140
1141
1142http://www.weeklystandard.com/the-sordid-history-of-the-firm-behind-the-trump-russia-dossier/article/2006254
1143	The Sordid History of the Firm Behind the Trump-Russia Dossier
1144	
1145	...What's interesting about this revelation is that Fusion GPS has an institutional reputation for doing shoddy and underhanded political work, and nearly all of it has been at the behest of Democrats looking to attack Republicans. 
1146
1147
1148http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/01/25/tucker-carlson-grills-buzzfeed-editor-ben-smith-unverified-donald-trump-russia-dossier
1149	Tucker Grills BuzzFeed Editor Who Published Trump-Russia Dossier 
1150
1151	...He told Tucker that he wanted to give readers a chance to see the contents of the dossier - which had been presented to high-level government officials - and decide for themselves.
1152
1153	Tucker said that journalists see unverified, unsubstantiated reports all the time, and argued that Smith was politically motivated to publicly release this particular one.
1154
1155	"Clearly, BuzzFeed News has a pretty open political agenda masquerading as journalism," Tucker said. "I think you are hiding behind journalistic standards, when, in fact, they're political imperatives."
1156
1157
1158https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/alt-right-trolls-are-trying-to-trick-people-into-thinking-tr
1159	 Alt-Right Trolls Are Trying To Trick People Into Thinking Trump Dossier Was A 4chan Prank
1160
1161	Trump supporters are spreading misinformation about a dossier that was released by BuzzFeed News Tuesday full of unverified allegations against President-elect Donald Trump. 
1162
1163	...It claims that a dossier full of unverified allegations that Russia has compromising information on President-elect Donald Trump, released Tuesday night by BuzzFeed News, was actually a hoax perpetrated by 4chan.
1164
1165	As reported by BuzzFeed News, the dossier's source is understood to be a former British intelligence agent whose past work was described by CNN as credible and the New York Times as "a competent and reliable operative with extensive experience in Russia." 
1166
1167	 ...Wilson told BuzzFeed News that he doesn't believe it's a coincidence that Trump supporters are crediting 4chan.
1168
1169	"The eagerness of them grabbing on to this 4chan thing shows you that there's some nervousness," he said. "They don't want him to be the guy who was pushed over the finish line by these forces that are overt enemies of our country."
1170
1171	Comments from Reddit and 4chan seem to back up the idea that Trump supporters are organizing misinformation campaigns.
1172
1173
1174http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-gop-defense-tactic-targets-trump-russia-dossier-936009795668
1175	New GOP defense tactic targets Trump Russia dossier
1176
1177	Rachel Maddow points out how the Republican Party has switched to full push-back mode on the Trump Russia dossier and the overall investigation into ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russian interference
1178
1179
1180http://www.palmerreport.com/opinion/pee-pee-tape-confirmed-fbi-used-trump-russia-dossier-to-get-fisa-warrant-on-carter-page/2351/
1181	 Pee Pee Tape confirmed? FBI used Trump-Russia dossier to get FISA warrant on Carter Page
1182
1183	...When former MI6 agent Christopher Steele’s now infamous “Trump-Russia dossier” first leaked to the public in January of this year, much of the media treated it with great skepticism. They dismissed it as “unsubstantiated” every time they mentioned it, even as they painted far other less substantiated rumors as legitimate. Perhaps that’s because they wanted to distance themselves from one of the core claims of the dossier, now commonly referred to as the Pee Pee Tape. But the whole parameters just changed.
1184
1185
1186https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2017/04/19/pro-trump-websites-denial-after-reports-confirm-parts-trump-russia-dossier-were-corroborated/216098
1187	Pro-Trump Websites In Denial After Reports Confirm Parts Of Trump Russia Dossier Were Corroborated
1188
1189	Fringe Outlets And Fake News Purveyors Attack FISA Court Decision By Attempting To Discredit Dossier Used As Evidence
1190
1191
1192http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/13/donald-trump-brands-christopher-steele-failed-spy-conspired/
1193	President-elect Donald Trump has lashed out at the former MI6 operative who prepared a dossier claiming Russia had explosive intelligence on him as a “failed spy” as Theresa May distanced the British government from the former agent.
1194
1195	Mr Trump said Chris Steele, who spent two decades with the secret service, collaborated with his political rivals to concoct “phony allegations”. He dismissed the alleged conspirators as “sleazebag political operatives”, noting that Russia has denied collecting compromising information about him.
1196
1197	Mr Steele’s status as a former UK spy threatened to cause a diplomatic row, with the Russian embassy in London suggesting he was still working on behalf of the British government to damage both Mr Trump and the Kremlin.
1198
1199	The Prime Minister said in a press conference on Friday that the government had nothing to do with the so-called “dirty dossier”.
1200
1201	“From everything you will have seen it is absolutely clear that the individual who produced this dossier has not worked for the UK government for years,” she said.
1202
1203	...Mr Steele told him he had been trusted by the FBI because, “my track record as a professional is second to none”.
1204
1205
1206https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author
1207	Donald Trump dossier: intelligence sources vouch for author's credibility 
1208
1209	Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele, named as writer of Donald Trump memo, is ‘highly regarded professional’
1210
1211	Nick Hopkins and Luke Harding
1212
1213	On Thursday night, as the former spy was in hiding, having fled his home in the south-east of England, former colleagues rallied to defend him. One described him as “very credible” – a sober, cautious and meticulous professional with a formidable record.
1214
1215	The former Foreign Office official, who has known Steele for 25 years and considers him a friend, said: “The idea his work is fake or a cowboy operation is false – completely untrue. Chris is an experienced and highly regarded professional. He’s not the sort of person who will simply pass on gossip.”
1216
1217	The official added: “If he puts something in a report, he believes there’s sufficient credibility in it for it to be worth considering. Chris is a very straight guy. He could not have survived in the job he was in if he had been prone to flights of fancy or doing things in an ill-considered way.”
1218
1219	That is the way the CIA and the FBI, not to mention the British government, regarded him, too. It’s not hard to see why. 
1220
1221
1222https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/parliaments-intelligence-watchdog-to-scrutinise-trump-dossier
1223	Pressure is only likely to increase on the government from all sides to explain whether it had any knowledge of the dossier as it was being prepared by the former MI6 officer, who has been named as Christopher Steele.
1224
1225	...“It absolutely leaves Britain in a difficult position and Moscow will make the most of that.
1226
1227
1228https://www.dni.gov/index.php/newsroom/press-releases/item/1736-dni-clapper-statement-on-conversation-with-president-elect-trump
1229	We also discussed the private security company document, which was widely circulated in recent months among the media, members of Congress and Congressional staff even before the IC became aware of it. I emphasized that this document is not a U.S. Intelligence Community product and that I do not believe the leaks came from within the IC. 
1230
1231
1232http://www.nationalreview.com/article/443816/donald-trump-dossier-intelligence-reports-question-russia-ties
1233	“Fake news,” Trump charged at the news conference, turning back on his critics a meme they have been using to suggest that voters were gulled into voting for him. “I think it was disgraceful, disgraceful that the intelligence agencies allowed any information that turned out to be so false and fake out.”
1234
1235
1236http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/01/13/trump-sticks-knife-into-dossier-story-wont-let-intel-community-off-hook.html
1237	His “failed spy” slam refers to former British spy Christopher David Steele, who reportedly helped compile the dossier. Trump turned fire on the original sources of the material after slamming the media – namely CNN and BuzzFeed, the latter of which published the dossier itself – for reporting on the claims earlier this week.
1238
1239	But he also has continued to question the intelligence community’s role in the sordid allegations going public, reviving his charge Friday that they “probably” released it.
1240
1241
1242http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/03/28/fbi-scrutinized-by-congress-over-probe-into-alleged-russia-trump-link.html
1243
1244	The Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, is investigating whether the FBI wrongly included political opposition research from Trump’s opponents in its probe, and then paid the author of that controversial report, a former British spy, to work for the FBI on its investigation. The committee’s probe began March 6 with the letter Grassley sent the FBI and was furthered Monday with requests for information from the company that did the opposition research.
1245
1246	“When political opposition research becomes the basis for law enforcement or intelligence efforts, it raises substantial questions about the independence of law enforcement and intelligence from politics,” Grassley said Monday.
1247
1248	The House Intelligence Committee, headed by Rep. Devin Nunes, R- Calif., is looking into how classified documents containing foreign surveillance transcripts with references to Trump’s transition team were illegally disclosed to the media. The committee’s probe began Jan. 25.
1249
1250	...Most concerning, Grassley said, is that “Fusion GPS and Steele reportedly shared the dossier with the FBI, which then offered to pay Steele to continue his political opposition research on Trump.”
1251
1252	Grassley wants to determine “the extent to which the FBI has relied on the political dossier in its investigation.” The senator also has requested documentation from Fusion GPS as to who hired and paid them, when Steele was hired, how the FBI got involved and whether Fusion GPS was aware of the FBI paying Steele. 
1253
1254
1255(Note: Grassley is usually full of shit, and the FBI could have wanted to pay the guy to cover for spying on him or just to see what he and his sources would do. That said:)
1256
1257
1258https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/
1259	GRAHAM: Do you agree with me that a fusion was involved in preparing the dossier against Donald Trump? That would be interfering in our election by the Russians?
1260
1261	COMEY: I don't want to say.
1262
1263
1264This one document managed to:
1265
1266- spark a political firestorm between the U.S. left and right
1267- politicize, distort, and discredit the narrative of Russia's meddling to help Trump and their activities in general
1268- strain relations between the U.S. and the U.K.
1269- strain relations between U.S. intelligence agencies and Trump (things would probably be going a lot better right now if Trump trusted the USIC over his "advisors")
1270- embarrass MI6 and the FBI
1271- create a scandal for the FBI and spark an investigation into their conduct
1272
1273
1274Which raises the question: why on earth is Comey promoting it? 
1275
1276
1277http://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531643428/comey-opening-statement-for-senate-intelligence-hearing-annotated
1278	At the conclusion of that briefing, I remained alone with the President-Elect to brief him on some personally sensitive aspects of the information assembled during the assessment.
1279
1280	The IC leadership thought it important, for a variety of reasons, to alert the incoming President to the existence of this material, even though it was salacious and unverified. Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect; and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
1281
1282	...During the dinner, the President returned to the salacious material I had briefed him about on January 6, and, as he had done previously, expressed his disgust for the allegations and strongly denied them. He said he was considering ordering me to investigate the alleged incident to prove it didn’t happen. I replied that he should give that careful thought because it might create a narrative that we were investigating him personally, which we weren’t, and because it was very difficult to prove a negative. He said he would think about it and asked me to think about it.
1283
1284	...He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to “lift the cloud.” I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him.
1285
1286
1287http://time.com/4810345/james-comey-testimony-real-time-transcript/
1288	Chairman Richard Burr - North Carolina:
1289	In the public domain, is this question of the steel dossier a document that has been around now for over a year, I'm not sure when the FBI first took possession of it, but the media had it before you had it and we had it. At the time of your departure from the FBI, was the FBI able to confirm any criminal allegations contained In the steel document?
1290
1291	James Comey:
1292	Mr. Chairman, I don't think that's a question I can answer in an open setting. It goes into the details of the investigation.
1293
1294	...Chairman Richard Burr - North Carolina:
1295	At what point would that recruitment become a counterintelligence threat to our country?
1296
1297	James Comey:
1298	Difficult to answer in the abstract. But when a foreign power is using -- especially coercion or some sort of pressure to try to co-opt an American, especially a government official to act on its behalf that's a serious concern to the FBI and at the heart of the FBI's counterintelligence mission.
1299
1300	Chairman Richard Burr - North Carolina:
1301	If you've got a 36-page document of specific claims that are out there, the FBI would have to -- for counterintelligence reasons -- try to verify anything that might be claimed in there, one, and probably first and foremost, is the counterintelligence concerns that we have about blackmail? would that be an accurate statement?
1302
1303	James Comey:
1304	Yes if the FBI receives a credible allegation there is some attempt to coerce an American on behalf of a foreign power that's the basis on which a case is open.
1305
1306	Chairman Richard Burr - North Carolina:
1307	When you read the dossier, what was your reaction given that it was 100% directed at the President-Elect?
1308
1309	James Comey:
1310	Not a question I can answer in an open setting, Mr. Chairman.
1311
1312	...Susan Collins - Maine:
1313	And then on -- and that's why you volunteered the information. Then on the January 27th dinner, you told the President that he should be careful about asking you to investigate because, quote, you might create a narrative that we are investigating him personally, which we weren't. Were you limiting that statement to counterintelligence investigations or more broadly such as a criminal investigation?
1314
1315	James Comey:
1316	The context was similar, I didn't modify the word investigation. Again, he was reacting strongly against that unverified material saying I'm tempting you to order to investigate it and I said you want to be careful about that because it might create a narrative that we're investigating you personally.
1317
1318	...James Comey: ...I was speaking to him and briefing him about some salacious and unverified material. It was in a context of that that he had a strong and defensive reaction about that not being true, and my reading of it was, It was important for me to assure him we were not personally investigating him, and so the context then was actually narrower, focused on what I just talked to him about but very important because it was first true and second I was very, very much about being in kind of a -- kind of a J. Edgar Hoover type situation. I didn't want him thinking I was briefing him on this, to sort of hang it over him in some way, I was briefing him on it because we had been told by the media it was about to launch, we don't want to be keeping that from him, and if there was -- he needed to know this was being said. But I was very keen not to leave him with an impression that the bureau was trying to do something to him, and so that's the context in which I said, sir, we're not personally investigating you.
1319
1320
1321Comey made the dossier a centerpiece of his testimony with statements that are easy to interpret as hints of its credibility, which the media jumped on once again:
1322
1323
1324http://www.thedailybeast.com/comey-implies-trump-dossier-contained-credible-allegations
1325	Comey Implies Trump Dossier Contained ‘Credible Allegations’
1326
1327	Former FBI Director James Comey implied Thursday that the now-infamous 36-page dossier contained “credible allegations.” Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) asked, during Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee: “So if you got a 36-page document of specific claims that are out there...
1328
1329
1330https://thinkprogress.org/comey-testimony-dossier-b4ba129a5e22
1331	Comey suggests there’s some truth to allegations in the explosive Trump dossier
1332
1333	“Mr. Chairman, I don’t think that’s a question I can answer in an open setting because it goes into the details of the investigation,” said Comey, a response that seemed to catch Burr off guard.
1334
1335
1336https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-08/comey-opens-door-to-investigate-trump-dossier
1337	Comey Opens Door to Investigate Trump Dossier
1338
1339	If Trump was lying about having nothing to do with Russia -- or if he was lying about the charge that Russian intelligence had gathered compromising material about him because of a dalliance with Russian prostitute -- that would constitute a federal crime.
1340
1341	To be extremely clear, I’m not saying that I have any reason to believe that Trump lied to Comey. I don’t.
1342
1343	But the statements alone, coupled with the dossier that contradicts them, provide sufficient reason for Mueller to extend his investigation to consider Trump’s own Russia related conduct -- including the information discussed in the dossier.
1344
1345
1346http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/6/8/1669966/-Comey-just-verified-the-veracity-of-the-hooker-dossier
1347	Comey just verified the veracity of the 'hooker dossier'
1348
1349
1350http://dailycaller.com/2017/06/08/revealed-how-the-fbi-inadvertently-turned-an-unverified-trump-dossier-into-hard-news/
1351	Revealed: How The FBI Inadvertently Turned An Unverified Trump Dossier Into Hard News
1352
1353	Reporting on their existence makes little sense without any way to confirm the allegations made in the dossier.The establishment media, hostile to the president-elect, was champing at the bit to release the dossier, and the IC briefing was all the verification needed.
1354
1355
1356http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/09/ann-coulter-tucker-carlson-james-comey-hearing-not-clearing-trump
1357	"It's the most insane thing I've ever heard," Coulter said.
1358
1359	She added that the only documented collusion between Russia and Americans during the election was related to the defamatory Trump dossier.
1360
1361	"Whatever happened to that?" Coulter said. "That was a Russian-produced dossier, used by, first, Never Trumpers, then the Hillary Clinton campaign, then the FBI, and broadcast hysterically by CNN. That was a Russian-produced dossier. That is the only evidence we have of Russia trying to collude."
1362
1363
1364http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/06/09/comey-testimony-leaves-questions-unanswered-about-anti-trump-dossier.html
1365	Comey testimony leaves questions unanswered about anti-Trump dossier
1366
1367	As previously reported by Fox News, Comey considered the unverified dossier prepared by Steele to be so important, he insisted it be included in January's final intelligence community report on Russian meddling in the election.
1368
1369
1370This isn't the first time Comey has done this:
1371
1372
1373http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/18/politics/fbi-dossier-carter-page-donald-trump-russia-investigation/index.html
1374	Washington (CNN)The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.
1375
1376	The dossier has also been cited by FBI Director James Comey in some of his briefings to members of Congress in recent weeks, as one of the sources of information the bureau has used to bolster its investigation, according to US officials briefed on the probe.
1377
1378	...The dossier first came to light when CNN reported that a summary of it had been presented to President Obama and President-elect Trump back in December by top US Intelligence officials.
1379
1380	Comey's briefings to lawmakers stand in contrast to efforts in recent months by the bureau and US intelligence agencies to try to distance themselves from the dossier.
1381
1382	...Comey hasn't mentioned the dossier in all his briefings to lawmakers, according to people familiar with the briefings. To some of them, he has emphasized that the FBI gathered evidence as part of its investigation to support seeking FISA court approval and to take other steps as part of the probe that began last July, according to the officials briefed of the probe.
1383
1384
1385https://apnews.com/152579d488a740b2a8d39fbe2f34506d/biden-intel-officials-told-us-trump-allegations-might-leak
1386	Jan. 12, 2017
1387
1388	Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that top intelligence leaders told him and President Barack Obama they felt obligated to inform them about uncorroborated allegations about President-elect Donald Trump out of concern the information would become public and catch them off-guard.
1389
1390	In an interview, Biden said neither he nor Obama asked U.S. intelligence agencies to try to corroborate the unverified claims that Russia had obtained compromising sexual and financial allegations about Trump.
1391
1392	“I think it’s something that obviously the agency thinks they have to track down,” Biden said. He added later, “It surprised me in that it made it to the point where the agency, the FBI thought they had to pursue it.”
1393
1394	...“As a matter of fact, the president was like, ’What does this have anything to do with anything?’” Biden said. He said intelligence leaders responded by saying “Well, we feel obliged to tell you, Mr. President, because you may hear about it. We’re going to tell him,” referring to Trump.
1395
1396	Biden said intelligence leaders told him and Obama that they couldn’t say whether or not the allegations were true or untrue. He said there was “hardly any discussion” about the allegations in the briefing.
1397
1398
1399http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html
1400	January 11, 2017
1401
1402	(CNN)Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.
1403
1404	The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump.
1405
1406	The classified briefings last week were presented by four of the senior-most US intelligence chiefs -- Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers.
1407
1408
1409https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia
1410	CNN reported Tuesday that a two-page synopsis of the report was given to President Obama and Trump.
1411
1412	Now BuzzFeed News is publishing the full document so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.
1413
1414
1415http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/fbi-s-comey-told-trump-about-russia-dossier-after-intel-n706416
1416	A senior U.S. official said that it was FBI Director James Comey himself who pulled Trump aside after the briefing and spoke with him one-on-one about the so-called "dossier," 35 pages of memos prepared by a former British spy for an anti-Trump client prior to last year's election. 
1417
1418
1419http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-report-intelligence-community
1420	At the same time, the fact that the nation’s top intelligence officials chose to present a summary version of the dossier to both President Obama and President-elect Trump, as CNN reports they did last week, indicates that they may have had a relatively high degree of confidence that at least some of the claims therein were credible
1421
1422
1423http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-cia-officers-trump-dossier-russia-2017-1
1424	The CIA and the FBI would not have briefed the president and the president-elect on claims that Russia has compromising information on Donald Trump if they did not take the allegations seriously, said former CIA operatives and analysts who spoke to Business Insider.
1425
1426	"Most of the information that passes across the CIA's desk throughout the day ends up on the cutting-room floor because it's not deemed to be credible or relevant," said Evan McMullin, a former CIA operations officer who ran as an independent during the 2016 presidential election.
1427
1428
1429https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author
1430	At his press briefing on Wednesday, the president-elect dared the world’s media to scrutinise the 35 pages of claims, before throwing down a challenge – where’s the proof? Nobody had any. Case closed.
1431
1432	But in the rush to trample all over the dossier and its contents, one key question remained. Why had America’s intelligence agencies felt it necessary to provide a compendium of the claims to Barack Obama and Trump himself?
1433
1434	And the answer to that lies in the credibility of its apparent author, the ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele, the quality of the sources he has, and...
1435
1436
1437https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/decision-to-brief-trump-on-allegations-brought-a-secret-and-unsubstantiated-dossier-into-the-public-domain/2017/01/11/275a3a6c-d830-11e6-b8b2-cb5164beba6b_story.html
1438	Decision to brief Trump on allegations brought a secret and unsubstantiated dossier into the public domain
1439
1440	By Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Karen DeYoung January 11
1441
1442	As the nation’s top spies prepared to brief President Obama and President-elect Donald Trump on Russian interference in the 2016 election, they faced an excruciatingly delicate question: Should they mention the salacious allegations that had been circulating in Washington for months that Moscow had compromising information on the incoming president?
1443
1444	Ultimately, they concluded they had no choice. A 35-page dossier packed with details of supposed compromising personal information, alleged financial entanglements and political intrigue was already in such wide circulation in Washington that every major news organization seemed to have a copy.
1445
1446	“You’d be derelict if you didn’t” mention the dossier, a U.S. official said. To ignore the file, produced by a private-sector security firm, would only make the supposed guardians of the nation’s secrets seem uninformed, officials said, adding that many were convinced that it was only a matter of time before someone decided to publish the material.
1447
1448	Their decision appears to have hastened that outcome, triggering coverage of politically charged allegations that news organizations had tried to run down for months but could find no basis for publishing until they were summarized and included alongside a highly classified report assembled by the nation’s intelligence services.
1449
1450	...But U.S. intelligence officials appear to have been caught off-guard by the fallout, including a blistering attack by Trump, who accused spy agencies of engaging in Nazi-like tactics to smear him.
1451
1452	In an effort to contain the damage...
1453
1454	...But linking a collection of unsubstantiated allegations to a classified report that is supposed to convey the intelligence community’s firmest conclusions about Russian election interference has blurred the distinction between corroborated intelligence and innuendo.
1455
1456	Former U.S. intelligence officials described the inclusion of the summary — drawn from “opposition research” done by a political research firm — as highly unusual.
1457
1458	...“How did this former British intelligence officer talk to all these Russian officials and not get arrested for espionage?” the former official asked. Steele’s identity and association with his investigations firm are public, and are almost certainly known to Russian counterintelligence.
1459
1460	“They would have been all over him,” the former official said. “There are aspects of this [dossier] that are believable when you read it. There are other aspects that aren’t.”
1461
1462	Some details would seem relatively easy for the FBI to assess, including meetings between close associates of Trump and Putin allies.
1463
1464	But a senior law enforcement official acknowledged that other claims — including sweeping characterizations of relationships and rivalries inside the Kremlin — are more elusive. “This is not something we can validate or check out,” the official said. “It’s the view of people in Russia. It’s not like we can go out and determine its veracity.”
1465
1466
1467https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/
1468	KING: ...yourself, Admiral Rogers, Director Brennan, and General Clapper went to Trump tower to meet with President Trump. The media reports are that at the end of that meeting, Director Comey, you presented president-elect Trump with a copy of the now infamous or famous dossier. And I don't know how many people were in the room, but within hours, that was leaked to the media and that gave the media the excuse or the rationale to publish almost the entire dossier.
1469
1470	Do you -- does that violate any law? I mean you were at a classified briefing with the president-elect of the United States and it had to be a very, very small universe of people who knew that you handed them that dossier and it was leaked out within hours. Are you making any effort to find out who leaked it and do you believe that constitute a criminal violation?
1471
1472	COMEY: I can't say, Mr. King except I can answer in general.
1473
1474
1475The FBI knew the dossier was unverified and suspicious. The best thing they could have done would have been to ignore it, and the second best thing would to downplay it. Instead, Comey decided to brief everybody about the dossier and make it look like the FBI took it seriously. While members of the FBI were trying to discredit it, Comey's friend Benjamin Wittes (http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/24/politics/benjamin-wittes-james-comey-friend-anderson-cooper-cnntv/index.html) went to the media to tell everybody that the briefings meant the dossier has credibility:
1476
1477
1478https://www.wsj.com/articles/spy-agencies-investigating-claims-trump-advisers-worked-with-russian-agents-1484101731
1479	January 9, 2017 
1480
1481	Spy Agencies Investigating Claims Trump Advisers Worked With Russian Agents
1482
1483	By Shane Harris, Devlin Barrett and Alan Cullison
1484
1485	...The FBI has found no evidence that he traveled to the Czech Republic, where the meeting allegedly took place in August of last year, officials said.
1486
1487
1488https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-are-trump-allegations-hanging-around-when-they-havent-been-substantiated
1489	By Susan Hennessey, Benjamin Wittes
1490
1491	Thursday, January 12, 2017, 5:39 PM
1492
1493	On one hand, the fact that no specifics appear to have been validated should give everyone a lot of pause. If someone puts a lot of falsifiable facts on the table and large numbers of people spend large amounts of time trying to corroborate them and cannot do so, that generally tends to indicate that they are not true.
1494
1495	And yet, the intelligence community briefed the President. It appears the FBI is continuing its investigation. DNI James Clapper issued a statement yesterday, reading in part:
1496
1497		The IC has not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable, and we did not rely upon it in any way for our conclusions. However, part of our obligation is to ensure that policymakers are provided with the fullest possible picture of any matters that might affect national security.
1498
1499	This indicates that while the documents have not been validated, the government continues to take them seriously for some reason.
1500
1501	The intelligence community simply does not concern itself with every crazy allegation against a sitting or incoming President that might be circulating or out there in the ether. 
1502
1503
1504It's unclear why Comey acted like the dossier was important and continued to promote it, even as British and U.S. officials speculated that the document was a Russian fake. Reportedly, this isn't the only time Comey has confused U.S. officials and the public about Russian forgeries, either. When the FBI received a Russian intelligence document they determined to be a fake, Comey didn't tell lawmakers the document was fake when he briefed them on it:
1505
1506
1507https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/how-a-dubious-russian-document-influenced-the-fbis-handling-of-the-clinton-probe/2017/05/24/f375c07c-3a95-11e7-9e48-c4f199710b69_story.html
1508	How a dubious Russian document influenced the FBI’s handling of the Clinton probe
1509
1510	A secret document that officials say played a key role in then-FBI Director James B. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation has long been viewed within the FBI as unreliable and possibly a fake, according to people familiar with its contents.
1511
1512	In the midst of the 2016 presidential primary season, the FBI received what was described as a Russian intelligence document claiming a tacit understanding between the Clinton campaign and the Justice Department over the inquiry into whether she intentionally revealed classified information through her use of a private email server.
1513
1514	The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation.
1515
1516	Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.
1517
1518	But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau.
1519
1520	...From the moment the bureau received the document from a source in early March 2016, its veracity was the subject of an internal debate at the FBI. Several people familiar with the matter said the bureau’s doubts about the document hardened in August when officials became more certain that there was nothing to substantiate the claims in the Russian document. FBI officials knew the bureau never had the underlying email with the explosive allegation, if it ever existed.
1521
1522	...“It didn’t mean anything to the investigation until after [senior FBI officials] had to defend themselves,” said one person familiar with the matter. “Then they decided it was important. But it’s junk, and they already knew that.”
1523
1524	An FBI spokesman declined to comment. Comey did not respond to requests for comment.
1525
1526	...After the bureau first received the document, it attempted to use the source to obtain the referenced email but could not do so, these people said. The source that provided the document, they said, had previously supplied other information that the FBI was also unable to corroborate.
1527
1528
1529(Since it needs to be asked: is that source Christopher Steele?)
1530
1531
1532https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/
1533	GRASSLEY: Okay, moving on to another subject, the New York Times recently reported that the FBI had found a troubling email among the ones the Russians hacked from Democrat operatives. The email reportedly provided assurances that Attorney General Lynch would protect Secretary Clinton by making sure the FBI investigation “didn't go too far.”
1534
1535	How, and when, did you first learn of this document? Also, who sent it and who received it?
1536
1537	COMEY: That's not a question I can answer in this forum, Mr. Chairman, because it would call for a classified response. I have briefed leadership of the intelligence committees on that particular issue, but I can't talk about it here.
1538
1539
1540http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/26/politics/james-comey-fbi-investigation-fake-russian-intelligence/index.html
1541	In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.
1542
1543	Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.
1544
1545	...The Washington Post reported Wednesday that this Russian intelligence was unreliable. US officials now tell CNN that Comey and FBI officials actually knew early on that this intelligence was indeed false.
1546
1547	In fact, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe went to Capitol Hill Thursday to push back on the notion that the FBI was duped, according to a source familiar with a meeting McCabe had with members of the Senate intelligence committee.
1548
1549	...In classified sessions with members of Congress several months ago, Comey described those emails in the Russian claim and expressed his concern that this Russian information could "drop" and that would undermine the Clinton investigation and the Justice Department in general, according to one government official.
1550
1551	Still, Comey did not let on to lawmakers that there were doubts about the veracity of the intelligence, according to sources familiar with the briefings. It is unclear why Comey was not more forthcoming in a classified setting.
1552
1553	Sources close to Comey tell CNN he felt that it didn't matter if the information was accurate, because his big fear was that if the Russians released the information publicly, there would be no way for law enforcement and intelligence officials to discredit it without burning intelligence sources and methods. There were other factors behind Comey's decision, sources say. 
1554
1555	In at least one classified session, Comey cited that intelligence as the primary reason he took the unusual step of publicly announcing the end of the Clinton email probe.
1556
1557	In that briefing, Comey did not even mention the other reason he gave in public testimony for acting independently of the Justice Department -- that Lynch was compromised because Bill Clinton boarded her plane and spoke to her during the investigation, these sources told CNN.
1558
1559	Multiple US officials tell CNN that to this day Russia is trying to spread false information in the US -- through elected officials and American intelligence and law enforcement operatives -- in order to cloud and confuse ongoing investigations.
1560
1561
1562If these documents are Russian fakes, Comey hasn't done a very good job of making that clear. Is he acting on the belief that they're credible?
1563
1564
1565http://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531643428/comey-opening-statement-for-senate-intelligence-hearing-annotated
1566	and (2) to the extent there was some effort to compromise an incoming President, we could blunt any such effort with a defensive briefing.
1567
1568
1569http://time.com/4810345/james-comey-testimony-real-time-transcript/
1570	Chairman Richard Burr - North Carolina:
1571	If you've got a 36-page document of specific claims that are out there, the FBI would have to -- for counterintelligence reasons -- try to verify anything that might be claimed in there, one, and probably first and foremost, is the counterintelligence concerns that we have about blackmail? would that be an accurate statement?
1572
1573	James Comey:
1574	Yes if the FBI receives a credible allegation there is some attempt to coerce an American on behalf of a foreign power that's the basis on which a case is open.
1575
1576
1577Or was he just worried they'll leak to the press?
1578
1579
1580http://www.npr.org/2017/06/07/531643428/comey-opening-statement-for-senate-intelligence-hearing-annotated
1581	Among those reasons were: (1) we knew the media was about to publicly report the material and we believed the IC should not keep knowledge of the material and its imminent release from the President-Elect;
1582
1583
1584http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-fbi-leaks-idUSKBN12Y2QD
1585	FBI fear of leaks drove decision on emails linked to Clinton: sources
1586
1587 	FBI Director James Comey was driven in part by a fear of leaks from within his agency when he decided to tell Congress the FBI was investigating newly discovered emails related to Hillary Clinton, law enforcement sources said on Thursday.
1588
1589
1590https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/
1591	SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN (D-CALIF.): ...Why didn't you just do the investigation as you would normally with no public announcement?
1592
1593	COMEY: A great question, senator. Thank you. October 27, the investigative team that had finished the investigation in July focused on Secretary Clinton's emails asked to meet with me.
1594
1595	...And so I stared at speak and conceal. Speak would be really bad. There's an election in 11 days, Lordy, that would be really bad. Concealing in my view would be catastrophic, not just to the FBI, but well beyond. And honestly, as between really bad and catastrophic, I said to my team we got to walk into the world of really bad. I've got to tell Congress that we're restarting this, not in some frivolous way, in a hugely significant way.
1596
1597
1598Comey doesn't speak as to what the catastrophic consequences of "concealing" news of the emails on Weiner's laptop would have been (although he did conceal that the emails were duplicates: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/11/06/read-full-text-comeys-letter-new-clinton-emails/93398304/ which might have had consequences of its own: Clinton's polling didn't fully recover after the announcement). But if his Oct 28 letter was motivated by "fear of leaks," then we'd have to believe that all the Russians have to do to swing our elections is mail forgeries to the FBI. 
1599
1600But U.S. intelligence knows how to deal with Russian forgeries:
1601
1602
1603https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP91-00901R000600210056-1.pdf
1604	CIA, allies change policy, begin openly exposing Soviet intelligence
1605
1606	Washington (KNT)--The Central Intelligence Agency and allied intelligence agencies have declared open season on their KGB counterparts, exposing Soviet intelligence operations throughout the world.
1607
1608	In the weeks following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, there have been major exposures of Soviet spy networks in New Zealand, Spain, Canada and Japan. Agents have been exposed and, in some cases, expelled.
1609
1610	Intelligence veterans note that this flurry of "rollbacks" is in marked contrast to the days of detente when the tight little world of spy versus spy simmered clandestinely.
1611
1612	In addition, the CIA has given reporters and friendly intelligence agencies hundreds of pages of previously secret documents about the KGB's activities. They detail recent plots to discredit United States peace moves in the Mideast and to derail nuclear arms policy talks between the U.S. and Western European allies.
1613
1614	"There are always a lot of spy cases on the back burner," said a former U.S. counterespionage official, who kept tabs on the KGB during the Cold War. "Sometimes word comes down to bring them in. It's like deciding wen to play your trump in a card game."
1615
1616	Perhaps most damaging to the KGB was a hearing on Capitol Hill early this month. For the first time in the CIA's history, testimony by the agency's chief spy-master, the director of covert operations, was handed to reporters. Until then, John McMahon's identity as deputy director for operations was itself a secret.
1617
1618	Mr. McMahon's testimony disclosed a mass of sensitive data. It included copies of what Mr. McMahon called KGB forgeries of American diplomatic documents, which were part of an apparent scheme to undermine relations between the U.S. and Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat.
1619
1620	Mr. McMahon told the House Oversight Subcommittee on Intelligence that the KGB forged a letter over the fabricated signature of Herman F. Eilts, ambassador to Egypt, stating that the U.S. was planning to dump Mr. Sadat.
1621
1622	"We must repudiate him [Mr. Sadat] and get rid of him without hesitation," said the falsified letter, which was addressed to Adam Stansfield Turner, director of central intelligence. Mr. McMahon said the letter was planted in a Syrian newspaper October 1, and was the KGB's third forgery involving Mr. Eilts's "signature."
1623
1624	In his testimony, Mr. McMahon said, "The KGB exercises day-to-day operation responsibility for forgery efforts, but its annual and five-to-seven-year work plans are approved by the highest levels of the Soviet political authority."
1625
1626	In all, Mr. McMahon gave the subcommittee 16 documents he called KGB forgeries. They show the Soviet spy agency writing nonexistent press conferences for President Carter in which he made insulting remarks about Greece, an Army field manual urging subversion of host countries and many falsified diplomatic cables.
1627
1628	Mr. McMahon also disclosed a CIA estimate of how much the KGB spends a year--"our rough estimate of $3 billion a year is probably a conservative figure."
1629
1630	The CIA estimated that the KGB spent $200 million last year for support to guerilla groups, $100 million on clandestine radio stations and another #200 million for "special campaigns"--including an effort to stop American plans to build the neutron bomb and place nuclear missiles in Europe.
1631
1632	A spokesman for the House subcommittee said Mr. McMahon's testimony delivered in secret session February 6, was released last week to "dramatize" recent increases in Soviet forgery schemes. [author's aside: don't you wish we had a House Intelligence Committee like that today?] Mr. McMahon said the KGB had been using forgeries since the 1950s.
1633
1634
1635https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/
1636	COMEY: ...It was an incredibly painful choice, but actually not all that hard between very bad and catastrophic. I had to tell Congress that we were taking these additional steps. I prayed to find a third door. I couldn't find it.
1637
1638
1639If Comey knew there was a Russian plot to discredit our institutions, why would he let it affect his decision making? If he cares so much about transparency, why not educate the American public and expose the plot? That's what our intelligence agencies did before.
1640
1641Actually, I asked Comey to do exactly that. When I started doing this about a year ago, I knew the Russians were using propaganda to politicize their interference. I thought that our elected officials were too untrustworthy or partisan to convince the public of what was the Russians were doing. I had found and interacted with Russian propagandists promoting Trump and inciting violence and racism on social media, and I knew there was a lot more going on than what the government was telling us. What America needed, I thought, was someone honest and apolitical to tell us what was really going on. After hearing his speech in the July 7th Oversight hearings, I became convinced Comey was the answer to all of our problems:
1642
1643
1644https://www.c-span.org/video/?412315-1/fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-hillary-clinton-email-probe&start=11658
1645	Rep Desaulnier: Director, I just want to thank you as others have, and I know you don't need this. But I think the American people clearly need to hear it. You've done a wonderful job today. But there are moments in my political life and as an American where I despair for the future of this country, not often. But in those moments comes an individual like yourself, either by providence or good fortune or by the framework of the U.S. constitution. I really believe you served this country and all Americans well, irrespective of their party affiliation.
1646
1647	Really two lines of questions: one is I--another colleague has brought this up--but you mentioned just previous testimony about the bedrock and the importance of public confidence and public safety institutions, yours and all. So I just want to give you an opportunity, I think you have responded to this multiple times, but give you a little more opportunity because I think it's important for the American public to know that the system isn't rigged, that there are people such as yourself and the fifteen individuals who worked on this case and others that do their job and believe in the constitution of the United States. And if you have any further comments about comments that would say that the system's rigged and Americans should give up on the system.
1648
1649	Director Comey: One of the reasons I welcome to have the opportunity to have this conversation is I was raised by great parents who taught me you can't care what other people think about you. Actually, in my business, I have to, and deeply do, that people have confidence that the system's not fixed, against black people, for rich people, for powerful people. It's very, very important that the American people understand that there really are people that you pay for with your tax dollars who don't give a rip about Democrats or Republicans or this or that, who care about finding out what is true. And I am lucky to lead an organization that is that way to its core. I get a ten-year term to ensure that I stay outside of politics, but in a way it's easy. I lead an organization that is resolutely apolitical. We are tough aggressive people. If we can make a case, we'll make a case. We do not care what the person's stripes are or what their bank account looks like.
1650
1651	And I worry very much when people doubt that. It's the reason I did the press conference I did two days ago. I care about the FBI's reputation, I care about the Justice Department, I care about the whole system deeply. And so I decided I'm going to do something no director's ever done before. I'm not going to tell the Attorney General or anybody else what I'm going to say or even that I'm going to say it. They didn't know, nor did the media know what I was going to talk about until I walked out and offered extraordinary transparency which I'm sure confused and bugged a lot of people.
1652
1653	It's essential in this democracy that people see as much as they can so they can make their judgment. Again, they may conclude I'm an idiot, I should reason differently, but what I hope they will not conclude is that I'm a dishonest person. I'm here trying to do the right thing in the right way, and I lead 36,000 people who have that as their spine. That's what I want them to know. I don't care that people agree or disagree. That's what's wonderful about our Democracy. But at its core, you need to know there are good people trying to do the right thing all day long. And you pay for them and we'll never forget that.
1654
1655In Comey I saw someone devoted to the values of our country, unafraid to break norms to tell the American public what we needed to hear. I knew the Russians were trying to break-down the values that hold-together our society, and I saw that their propagandists were attacking Comey. So I made it my missions to defend Comey however I could, waging a sort of one-man counter-propaganda war on his behalf on social media.
1656
1657I kept watching Comey's hearings. When I saw that Congress was attacking him for his handling of the email investigation, I was sure Comey knew more than what he was letting on. I convinced myself that Comey knew there was a Russian plot to cause chaos and discredit our institutions, and I thought that Congress somehow didn't know about it, or that maybe Comey tried to warn them and they didn't believe him, and that's why they were attacking him. So I did my best to try find evidence of what the Russians were going to do and warn Congress. Like Comey, I was worried that there would be a catastrophe in the coming weeks.
1658
1659Around early October, I thought I had figured it out. I sent members of the Oversight Committee an email saying what I'd seen in media reports: that the Russians were plotting a campaign of chaos and violence on election day. On top of this, I warned them that the Russians could make this even worse by hacking our voting registration systems. I took Comey at his word when said the Russians wouldn't be able to tamper with the vote:
1660
1661
1662https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/114-91_22125.pdf
1663	Ms. LOFGREN. All right. I am hoping that we can get some insight in an appropriate classified setting on that. Now, we have watched with some concern—and I know you are also concerned—about the Russian intrusion into our election system. It has been reported to us that the Russians hacked into the Democratic National Committee database. They also hacked into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. And it seems that they are making an effort to influence the outcome of this election. We have been warned that the information stolen might not just be released but also be altered and forged and then released,in an effort to impact the election here in the United States. Yesterday, there were press reports—and I don’t know if they are accurate, and I am interested if you are able to tell us—that the Russians have also hacked the telephones of Democratic staffers and that there was a request for Democratic staffers to bring their cell phones into the FBI to have them mirrored. Can you tell us anything about that? 
1664
1665	Mr. COMEY. I can’t at this point. What I can say in response to the first part of your question, any hacking is something we take very seriously. Any hacking in connection with this Nation’s election system is something we take extraordinarily seriously, the whole of government. So it is something the FBI is spending a lot of time on right now to try and understand. So what are they up to and what does it involve and what is the scope of it to equip the President to decide upon the appropriate response. And so that is one of reasons I have to be very careful about what I say about it. That work is ongoing. I should make clear to folks when we talk about our election system, there has been a lot of press reporting about attempts to intrude into voter registration databases. Those are connected to the Internet. That is very different than the electoral mechanism in this country, which is not. 
1666
1667
1668So, I concluded that the Russians wouldn't be able to influence the election outcome, but they would be able to cause chaos or even violence by making it look like the vote was being rigged, just like what happened during the primaries:
1669
1670
1671http://tucson.com/news/local/officials-look-into-reports-of-pima-county-voting-problems/article_12c366a5-cea7-5152-89c1-b9b47e9ac379.html
1672	As Maricopa County voters dealt with excruciatingly long wait times, Pima County residents struggled with a different challenge on Tuesday: incorrect party-affiliation listings that prevented some from casting a ballot.
1673
1674
1675http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-04-25/poll-worker-voters-given-wrong-ballots-in-arizona-primary
1676	Voters dismayed with Arizona's problematic presidential primary voiced frustrations with long lines and registration issues Monday during a hearing for a court challenge to have the election results thrown out.
1677
1678
1679http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-voting-problems-20160607-snap-htmlstory.html
1680	California voters faced a tough time at the polls Tuesday, with many voters saying they have encountered broken machines, polling sites that opened late and incomplete voter rolls, particularly in Los Angeles County.
1681
1682	The result? Instead of a quick in-and-out vote, many California voters were handed the dreaded pink provisional ballot — which takes longer to fill out, longer for election officials to verify and which tends to leave voters wondering whether their votes will be counted.
1683
1684
1685http://koin.com/2016/04/20/voters-find-wrong-party-affiliation-on-oregon-registry/
1686	Voter registration errors aren’t just occurring in states like Arizona and New York. Some Oregonians claim their party affiliation recently changed on the state’s digital registry, and they don’t know why.
1687
1688	Elections Director Jim Williams says 120-150 voters are calling the Secretary of State’s office every day to complain about errors in party affiliations.
1689
1690
1691http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/voter_confusion_primary_ny.php
1692	Since shortly before the late deadline to register to vote in the April 19th presidential primary in New York, state Board of Elections spokesman Tom Connolly said his office has been fielding nearly 100 calls a day from voters who are "pissed off" about their registration status, for one reason or another. On social media, there are dozens of reports from voters who say they checked their registration online recently and found that their party affiliation had been switched, which is disqualifying because New York's primaries are closed, or that that their registration couldn't be found altogether.
1693
1694
1695https://news.vice.com/article/new-york-lawsuit-voter-registration-problems-primary
1696	More than 200 voters have signed onto an emergency lawsuit against the state — a majority of them Democrats — saying that their voter registration was inaccurately changed, never updated, or had disappeared altogether. Election Justice USA, a new voter suppression watchdog, filed the lawsuit on behalf of New York voters on Tuesday morning just before the polls opened.
1697
1698	Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement on Wednesday that he was "deeply troubled by the volume and consistency of voting irregularities" during the primary. Schneiderman's office set up a hotline for voters experiencing issues at the polls on Tuesday, and he said that his office received "more than one thousand complaints."
1699
1700
1701http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/officials-investigating-why-126000-voters-were-purged-from-ny-rolls/
1702	Multiple investigations were launched and a top election official was suspended this week after tens of thousands of registered voters were found to be missing from the rolls during Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York.
1703
1704
1705http://www.californiacountynews.org/news/2016/07/riverside-da-someone-changed-voters%E2%80%99-party-affiliations-without-consent
1706	Someone with access to voters' personal information used the state’s voter registration site to change the party affiliations of dozens of Riverside County residents ahead of the June 7 election, District Attorney Mike Hestrin said Wednesday. The revelation is raising serious concerns about voter fraud and the security of the state's online voter registration system in particular.
1707
1708
1709http://capitolfax.com/2016/07/21/foreign-hack-attack-on-state-voter-registration-site/
1710	The State Board of Elections (SBE) fell victim to a cyberattack that was detected on July 12, 2016. Specifically, the target was the [Illinois Vital Records System] database. Once discovered, State Board of Elections closed the point of entry. On July 13th, once the severity of the attack was realized, as a precautionary measure, the entire IVRS system was shut down, including online voter registration.
1711
1712
1713http://www.azfamily.com/story/32388223/fbi-trying-to-determine-if-arizona-voter-database-was-hacked
1714	State cybersecurity investigators are trying to determine if personal information about millions of Arizona voters was improperly accessed or tampered with after the FBI found evidence of a potential hack.
1715
1716	Arizona’s voter registration system remained offline [July 6, 2016] as a team combed the troves of data for any issues, said Matthew Roberts, a spokesman for the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office.
1717
1718
1719I sent all this to members of Congress, telling them now is not the time for partisan games, and we have to act to warn Americans of what the Russians have been doing and could do on election day. I told them Congress or Director Comey should warn the public that Russia could cause chaos and hack voting registrations again, lest Russia use their propaganda to blame their hacking on Clinton (whom many Trump supporters expected to rig the election  http://time.com/4533059/donald-trump-election-poll-hillary-clinton/), and potentially cause riots and unrest.
1720
1721Instead, a few weeks later, Comey sent his email investigation letter to the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Chaffetz immediately leaked it. Eleven days later, Trump won in a surprise victory.
1722
1723There was no chaos, riots, or terrorist attacks. As it turns out, the worries about election day violence might have been overblown:
1724
1725
1726https://qz.com/829357/us-presidential-election-2016-how-to-prepare-for-election-day-violence-if-trump-loses-or-wins/
1727	Americans like me who survived Ferguson understand just how bad Election Day violence could get
1728	Sarah Kendzior
1729	November 07, 2016
1730
1731	In August, Donald Trump’s adviser, Roger Stone, announced there would be a “bloodbath” should the GOP nominee lose. Since then, Trump’s white supremacist fans have given many indications that they intend to make good on his promise. Trump campaign chairman Steven Bannon has bragged of “voter suppression” efforts while fans proclaim plans of voter intimidation. Authorities have thwarted violence aimed at Muslim communities, including a planned bomb attack in Kansas and a planned Columbine-style shooting in California. A black church was burned, with Trump’s name spray-painted on the side.
1732
1733	Numerous militia groups, empowered by the recent acquittal of a militia in Oregon, have proclaimed they will enact vengeance in Trump’s name as well. Meanwhile, factions of the FBI—the organization that arrested the Kansas bombers and are responsible for tracking homegrown terrorism—appear to be pulling for a Trump win, leading some to question whether it can be trusted to carry out its nonpartisan duty to protect people targeted for violence.
1734
1735
1736https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/864347320460001281
1737	Bombshell: Initial Thoughts on the Washington Post’s Game-Changing Story http://www.lawfareblog.com/bombshell-initial-thoughts-washington-posts-game-changing-story … <-- Trump tells state secrets to Russians
1738
1739
1740https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/859951648369766400
1741	The Steele dossier story was broken in Oct 2016 by David Corn, head of Mother Jones Washington bureau. That's a "low-level blogger"?
1742
1743
1744https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/819581612480266240
1745	Intelligence sources vouch for credibility of Russia dossier author
1746
1747
1748https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/847446100072181761
1749	BBC News - Trump Russia dossier key claim 'verified'
1750
1751
1752https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/comey-testimony-reveals-trump-is-running-america-like-a-crime-boss/article35252262/
1753	Comey testimony reveals Trump is running America like a crime boss
1754	Sarah Kendzior
1755
1756
1757There were, however, reports of unusual statistical anomalies in key swing-states:
1758
1759
1760https://econsnapshot.com/2016/12/06/electronic-voting-machines-and-the-election/
1761	It’s tough to draw precise conclusions as to what these correlations mean. It’s still possible that there are other factors driving our results, other than electronic voting. But, what we do know is that results in key swing states differ in counties with electronic voting. Further, the patterns in these counties are not exhibited by other similar but not electorally important counties across the country. Additionally, electronic voting had no impact in swing states during the 2012 election. Taken together, it seems tough to dismiss the correlations that we have found in the data. While we don’t know how to interpret the findings practically, it certainly lends credence to the efforts to initiate recounts in several of the swing states.
1762
1763
1764http://tdmsresearch.com/2016/11/10/2016-presidential-election-table/
1765	According to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research, Clinton won four key battleground states (NC, PA, WI, and FL) in the 2016 Presidential Election that she went on to lose in the computerized vote counts.  With these states Clinton wins the Electoral College with a count of 306 versus 232 for Trump. Clinton also won the national exit poll by 3.2% and won the national vote count by 2.1% or about three million votes.
1766
1767	Exit polls were conducted in 28 states. In 22 states the discrepancies between the exit polls and the vote count favored Trump. In 12 of these states the discrepancies favoring Trump exceeded the margin of error of the state’s exit poll.
1768
1769
1770This was pretty disheartening, but I didn't stop. Since then, I have keeping up with the news, reading-up on active measures, finding and documenting Russia's propaganda and doing my best to figure out what they're up to and tell as many people as I can.
1771
1772A part of what drives me is seeing the mismatch between the narrative on Russian meddling that the public is getting versus what historians, verified experts, and suspected Russian propagandists are actually saying. After the Cold War, a big part of the Soviet's strategy was to pretend like they are weaker than they actually are--a common refrain in their propaganda is "Russia has the economy the size of Italy! How can they be a threat?" But this theme permeates a lot of their propaganda (e.g. "why does the big mean U.S. pick on little Russia?"), especially the misinformation about their activities. They present Russia's attack to the public as just a new twist on their routine cyberspying on U.S. officials ("This time, they released it!"), as if Putin paid off a few geeks in the KGB's basement to hack the DNC's emails and a courier to carry them to Wikileaks. You can see it in the Steele Dossier--arranging a bungled meeting to figure out how Trump can make "deniable" payments to freelance hackers, Putin "sacking" his advisor after his (obvious) connections to Trump are exposed, Russia making dual-use of Trump to spy on Putin's oligarch buddies, and the FSB conducting ad-hoc foreign recruitment by lying in wait for Westerners to make business trips to Russia before somehow snaring them with blackmail. And then pundits on The Daily Beast wonder: how do we handle this new era of cyber warfare?
1773
1774Just knowing about the illegals program from the spies arrested in 2010 casts suspicion on this whole narrative, and even trying a guess at its size is about enough to discredit it. Why have Micheal Cohen and Carter Page go back and forth with incriminating information between the Kremlin and the U.S. when you have a network of trained deep cover spies? Why bother making incriminating payments or orders to puppet like Trump, when you can build up a layer of trained agents of influence as his advisors?
1775
1776And for that matter, why bother with hacking at all? If the Kremlin has deep-cover spies all over U.S. policymaking circles, it only takes one in the DNC to lift their emails to Wikileaks in a plausibly-deniable way (or better, to recruit an actual American to do it). And if they have the likes of I.F. Stone, Seymore Hersh, and Glenn Greenwald on their spy roster, they could pick from a menu of semi-famous journalists to use as the middleman, perhaps waiting to break the story that the Russian hacking story was a "hoax all along."
1777
1778The beginning and end of the story of Russia's meddling that's presented to the public is that they spread some fake news on social media and hacked and released Hillary Clinton's emails, bringing connotations of a cheap and unsophisticated operation conducted almost entirely from Russia's soil. But if this is how the American public thinks of Russia's active measures, they're not going to guess if an article they're reading int New York Times is a Russian press placement, if an "expert" who's advice they follow is an agent of influence, or if the politician they support is working for a foreign government. And it distracts from the more insidious and sustained parts of active measures, like the promotion of racism (https://medium.com/@bb06/ideological-subversion-and-racism-f3d09421cf78) and other toxic worldviews. It's telling that U.S. officials need to point out that "Russia's meddling continues" in Congressional hearings--do people know how it continues? Why?
1779
1780The public needs to know that active measures is more than just hacking and elections. Right now I'm pretty sure the U.S. Government knows the American people are under attack, directly, by a foreign power. It is a great disservice to not let them know. That's why I've been doing what I'm doing--almost everything people need to know is in the public domain already, you just need to bring it to people's attention.
1781
1782That's why I've been unhappy with a lot of our Government officials, and at least a part of why I think some of them aren't loyal to the United States. We can do better than this:
1783
1784
1785https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/
1786	SPEIER: Thank you, Ranking Member. Thank you gentlemen for your service to our country.
1787
1788	You know, I think it's really important as we sit here that we explain this to the American people in a way that they can understand it. Why are we talking about all of this? So my first question to each of you is, is Russia our adversary? Mr. Comey?
1789
1790	COMEY: Yes.
1791
1792	SPEIER: Mr. Rogers?
1793
1794	ROGERS: Yes.
1795
1796	SPEIER: Is -- do they intend to do us harm?
1797
1798	ROGERS: They intend to ensure, I believe, that they gain advantage at our expense.
1799
1800	SPEIER: Director Comey?
1801
1802	COMEY: Yes, I wanna be -- harm can have many meetings. They're an adversary and so they wanna resist us, oppose us, undermine us, in lots of different ways.
1803
1804	SPEIER: So one of the terms that we hear often is hybrid warfare. And I'd like to just stand give a short definition of what it is. It blends conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber warfare. The aggressor intends to avoid attribution or retribution.
1805
1806	So would you say that Russia engaged in hybrid warfare in its effort to undermine our Democratic process and engage in our electoral process? Director Comey?
1807
1808	COMEY: I don't think I would use the term warfare. I think you'd -- you'd wanna ask experts in the definition of war. They engaged in a multifaceted campaign of active measures to undermine our democracy and hurt one of the candidates and -- and hope to help one of the other candidates.
1809
1810	ROGERS: I'd agree with the director.
1811
1812	SPEIER: All right, well, thank you both. I actually think that their engagement was an act of war, an act of hybrid warfare and I think that's why the American people should be concerned about it.
1813
1814	...LOBIONDO: OK. So very briefly the -- if you can describe the elements of the Russia's active measures in the campaign in the 2016 election. We've only got 35 seconds, but that's the first thing I want to get into about exactly what they were doing if you can tell us anything about that.
1815
1816	ROGERS: So we saw cyber used, we saw the use of external media, we saw the use of disinformation, we saw the use of leaking of information, much of which was not altered.
1817
1818	I mean, we saw several, if you will, common traits that we have both seen over time as well as I would argue that the difference this time was that the -- the cyber dimension and the fact that the release of so much information that they had extracted via cyber is a primary tool to try to drive an outcome.
1819
1820
1821https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/05/03/read-the-full-testimony-of-fbi-director-james-comey-in-which-he-discusses-clinton-email-investigation/
1822	SASSE: When we talk about things like cyber investigations right now, so often on cable TV it becomes a shirts and skins exercise. So without asking you to comment about anything that's retrospective about 2016, do you think it's likely that in 2018 and beyond you're going to see more targeting of U.S. public discourse and elections?
1823
1824	COMEY: I do. I think one of the lessons that particularly the Russians may have drawn from this is that this works. And so as I said last -- a month or so ago I expect to see them back in 2018, especially 2020.
1825
1826	SASSE: You regularly testify -- and correct me if I've -- if I've misheard you but I think you've regularly testified that you don't think the Bureau is short of resources. You don't come before us and make big increased appropriations requests. And yet those of us who are very concerned about cyber look at the U.S. government writ large and think were not at all prepared for the future.
1827
1828	Can you tell us what the FBI is doing to prepare for that 2018 and 2020 circumstance that you envision?
1829
1830	COMEY: Without giving to much detail, we have a -- enormous part of the FBI in our counter intelligence division and in our cyber division that focuses on just that threat and making sure that we do everything that we can to understand how the bad guys might come at us. And as I talked about earlier to equip the civilian agencies that are responsible for hardening our infrastructure with all the information we have about how they're going to come at us.
1831
1832	SASSE: And if you had international security domain increased resources, how would you spend another marginal dollar beyond what you expect to receive now?
1833
1834	COMEY: I probably have a tie between investing more in upgrading our systems to make sure we're keeping pace with the bar of excellence. And probably to hire additional cyber agents and analysts.
1835
1836
1837http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-director-james-comey-russian-tampering-election-576417
1838	FBI Director James Comey attempted to go public as early as the summer of 2016 with information on Russia’s campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election, but Obama administration officials blocked him from doing so, two sources with knowledge of the matter tell Newsweek.
1839
1840	Well before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) accused the Russian government of tampering with the U.S. election in an October 7 statement, Comey pitched the idea of writing an op-ed about the Russian campaign during a meeting in the White House Situation Room in June or July.
1841
1842	“He had a draft of it or an outline. He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, ‘I want to go forward. What do people think of this?’” says a source with knowledge of the meeting, which included Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and National Security Adviser Susan Rice.
1843
1844	But many in the room didn’t like the idea, and White House officials thought the announcement should be a coordinated message backed by multiple agencies, the source says. “An op-ed doesn’t have the same stature. It comes from one person.”
1845
1846
1847https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/three-white-house-officials-tied-to-files-shared-with-house-intelligence-chairman/2017/03/30/de4b8c30-1589-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html
1848	Farkas, in an interview with The Post, said she “didn’t give anybody anything except advice,” was not a source for any stories and had nothing to leak. Noting that she left government in October 2015, she said, “I was just watching like anybody else, like a regular spectator” as initial reports of Russia contacts began to surface after the election.
1849
1850	As a former staff member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a former Defense official involved with Russian affairs, she said she “got worried” that the Obama White House was not briefing Congress on what it knew. “I know how the Russians operate,” she said, and called former colleagues to make sure Congress was being informed.
1851
1852
1853http://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA00/20170309/105674/HHRG-115-FA00-Transcript-20170309.pdf
1854	UNDERMINING DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS AND SPLINTERING NATO: RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION AIMS
1855
1856	HEARING
1857
1858	BEFORE THE
1859
1860	COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
1861	HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
1862
1863	...Prepared Testimony and Statement for the Record of
1864
1865	Toomas Hendrik Ives
1866
1867	...What are the mechanisms of this asymmetric cyber war?
1868
1869	- Kompramat, is the Rssian term for publishing (real or fake) compromising materials on opponents;
1870	- hacking is breaking into servers and stealing data;
1871	- doxing, combines the two: to publish hacked documents to embarrass or harm opponents. The first large scale case of this were Wikileak's publication of some quarter million U.S. diplomatic cables in 2010, the most recent only this week the publication of CIA materials.
1872	- Finally there are *fake news*, an old propaganda trick but used far more effectively in the era of social media. KGB fake news in the 1980s of AIDS being invented by CIA had relatively little traction but today social media disseminates false stories with abandon.
1873
1874	All of these have been combined in the past year as a pincer movement on democratic elections. Hacked private mail is doxed; it appears in social and later mainstream media, after which fake news content spin on these same revelations takes off and goes "viral." Buzzfeed reported that...
1875
1876
1877	...STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE LINCOLN P. BLOOMFIELD, JR, CHAIRMAN EMERITUS AND DISTINGUISHED FELLOW
1878
1879	What I would say is look at Russia’s recent history. For the last 20 or 30 years the trend has been toward open democratization around the world. We saw autocracies disappear in Latin America, Central and Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the colored revolutions, starting with the Czech Republic and what happened in Poland years ago, and the fall of the Soviet Union, but then more recently in Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, and Georgia. This, of course, alarmed Mr. Putin and his secret service colleagues who thought that they would lose the whole thing. So what did they do? They tightened down and they moved in a different direction. And I want the members to think about how not only Russia but China, Iran, and Syria, and perhaps others, are regimes that are going to try to stick around forever. They are trying to stay in power as one-party states. How do they do this? They do it by repressing their dissidents, by parking money in foreign banks so that they have assets, by controlling all security services, all the guns, and by censoring the media—that is extremely important.
1880
1881	...Mr. ROHRABACHER. Well, here we are. Wherever you go, there you are. Let me just note that we just keep hearing sinister words after sinister words. Especially this last thing, oh, how sinister it is that he just showed the top of his passport. Give me a break. Come on. And, also, we got instead of a sinister report from your question to the Ambassador, no, it is not uncommon for people to meet with foreign Ambassadors and foreign diplomats. And how sinister is it that people met with a Russian Ambassador? I am sure that if they were going to plan something really rotten about the United States they would go to the Ambassador, the Russian Ambassador rather than some political operatives that they have running all over the place. This has, this has reached the absurd level of attacks. And let us note, that in order to get Russia, what we are now doing is destabilizing our own democratic system here with that kind of nonsense. I will have to say that during the Cold War, I want to remind everybody, I worked not only with President Reagan but my entire life was dedicated to defeating communism. I felt really great when Ronald Reagan helped us establish peace and the elimination of communism from Russia. We are now dealing with a national power. You know, it is a big power in the world. It is no longer being motivated by communist ideology that has it trying to overthrow democratic governments and replace them with atheistic communist dictatorships. 
1882
1883	...Mr. SHERMAN. We are here today because this goes beyond a foreign policy issue. This is an issue for the core of America’s democracy. The key issue is did the Trump campaign collude with Russian hackers in the cyber burglary of the Democratic National Committee and related entities? 
1884
1885	And a related question is whether Trump’s gratitude is pre-venting an appropriate response to Russia’s interference with democracy? Or whether his fear of what they might have on him is preventing that appropriate response? 
1886
1887
1888I know we can do better because we have before. Compare the above report from this year to this one from 1992:
1889
1890
1891http://intellit.muskingum.edu/russia_folder/pcw_era/sect_08a.htm
1892	Soviet Active Measures in the "Post-Cold War" Era 1988-1991
1893
1894	A Report Prepared at the Request of the United States House of Representatives Committee on Appropriations by the United States Information Agency
1895	June 1992
1896
1897	Executive Summary
1898
1899	Active measures is a Soviet term that refers to the manipulative use of slogans, arguments, disinformation, and carefully selected true information, which the Soviets used to try to influence the attitudes and actions of foreign publics and governments. In addition to examining disinformation, this report looks at the Soviet use of conciliatory, alarmist, and derogatory slogans and arguments in order to illustrate the wide variety of manipulative messages and themes used in active measures operations.
1900
1901	...Agents of Influence
1902
1903	One of the most effective, most difficult to detect, and least understood areas of Soviet active measures is the use of agents of influence. Agents of influence are foreigners who have been recruited by the KGB in order to be used to influence the opinions of foreign publics and governments. Agents of influence are extremely useful because they are perceived as loyal patriots of their respective countries who are simply expressing their own personal opinions, not scripts written by the KGB and designed to dovetail with the current actions and priorities of Soviet foreign policy apparatus. The covert influence campaigns that they wage in public and private are not only the most difficult type of active measures operation to identify, but also potentially the most potent if the agent of influence is a senior government official or a respected public figure.
1904
1905	In the June 6, 1992 issue of Human Events, Herbert Romerstein reported that "a retired high-ranking KGB officer with extensive knowledge about operations against the United States" had identified U.S. journalist I.F. Stone as a longtime Soviet agent of influence. Stone bitterly criticized the policies of the U.S. government for years in his influential private newsletter and other writings. 
1906
1907	...The Conciliatory Slogans Of New Political Thinking
1908
1909	In the minds of the Soviet "new thinkers," ending the Cold War did not mean that the systemic struggle between the "two social systems" would stop. Instead, it would shift from the Cold War arenas of the arms race, confrontation, and coercive diplomacy to new, primarily political areas of struggle. The Soviets needed to end the Cold War because their weak economy put them at an impossible disadvantage vis-a-vis an awakened West in an arms race which, if it continued, would mean their inevitable defeat. In order to avoid this and best preserve their power, the Soviet leaders needed to induce the West to abandon the arms race, while at the same time positioning themselves to wage a new form of political warfare against the West: one that sought to achieve power by conciliation rather than confrontation, the appeal of "all-human" values as opposed to "class" values, assigned a key role to the manipulation of international organizations, particularly the United Nations, and sought to use international law as a subterfuge for Soviet attempts to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries rather than the heavy hand of military power and coercive diplomacy.
1910
1911	As part of the shift to "new thinking," the Soviets did the unthinkable. They deliberately jettisoned the outmoded ideology of communism and embraced a new ideology based on "all-human" values and concerns. They did not do this because they had become converts to the democratic cause. Instead, the Soviet "new thinkers" came to the conclusion that governments, countries, and peoples could be more effectively manipulated by universalist, non-Marxist concepts than by Marxist ones, and set about trying to devise ways to use non-Marxist concepts to achieve traditional Soviet goals. "New thinking" was consciously designed as a communist foreign policy for the post-communist era. It was as if the "chameleons," not the "doves," had triumphed over the "hawks" in the Soviet foreign policy debate.
1912
1913
1914And I know our government can certainly do better than this:
1915
1916
1917https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP82-00047R000100520005-7.pdf
1918	Political Indoctrination in Rumania
1919
1920	The feeling of Rumanian youths is generally favorable towards the US. The majority are anti-Soviet and do not believe the anti-US propagands. Most of the hope to be delivered from Soviet domination through a war between the US and the USSR.
1921
1922	...The attitude of the Union of Working Youth (Uniunea Tineretului Muneitoreso - UTM) members was outwardly anti-US although only a small number were really Communist indoctrinated. The grammar school children were more likely to be anti-US due to the intensive indoctrination to which they were subjected. Some parents were careful not to let their children know they were listening to the Voice of America broadcasts for fear their children would report them to the authorities.
1923
1924
1925https://www.thecut.com/2014/02/over-half-kids-social-media-before-age-ten.html
1926	59 Percent of Tiny Children Use Social Media
1927
1928	A new study from the safety advisory site Knowthenet finds that 59 percent of kids join social networks before the age of 10. Kidlets: The only consistent thing about them, through all of history, is that they grow up too fast.
1929
1930	Yes, with their their chubby cheeks and their runny noses, they’re joining Facebook in hordes, setting up their very first social-media profiles. It’s the new rite of passage, isn’t it? Baby’s first profile picture. Baby’s first status update. Baby’s first ironic use of the “Like” button. Baby’s first change-in-relationship-status. Baby’s first subtweet.
1931
1932	Opinium, which conducted the survey, included reports from over 1,000 parents of kids ages 8 to 16, and 1,000 kids ages 8 to 16. They found that most of these kids (52 percent) signed up for Facebook (despite the posted age restrictions). Other popular social-media sites included WhatsApp (40 percent), BBM (24 percent), and Snapchat (11 percent).
1933
1934
1935http://www.smh.com.au/world/fake-news-why-the-west-is-blind-to-russias-propaganda-today-20170123-gtxbuw.html
1936	Fake news: Why the West is blind to Russia's propaganda today
1937
1938	Russia has skilfully exploited social media to divide the West and increase Moscow's power in Europe, the US and eventually Asia.
1939
1940	The use of social media as a platform to divide democracies works, in part, because the strategy preys on a fundamental blind spot in open societies: the origin and volume of voices taking part in an online discussion.
1941
1942	Western countries, inventors of the internet and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, tend to see discussion on social media as an open reflection of the public's views.
1943
1944	That very openness means outside voices can weigh into debates – not to broaden the discussion, but to co-opt arguments and redirect them toward conclusions that undermine Western society and government.
1945
1946	...This propaganda skews toward extremes, seeking to corrode the broad middle area of agreement needed for the functioning of liberal democracies, wherever they are found, including in the Asia-Pacific region.
1947
1948	The speed and diffusion of propaganda on social media can create a 360-degree effect for users, so that what they perceive is not seen so much as a coherent ideological message but as the natural and growing consensus of the crowd.
1949
1950	...Technology used in a certain way, in other words, can dramatically amplify the volume of an argument, view, voice or ideology.
1951
1952	This was true, especially with groups like the "alt-right", Woolley said, which were effective in making themselves appear much more popular than they were in reality.
1953
1954	Alt-right figures, in addition to promoting a racist world view, tend to parrot Russian views on global affairs, which itself is a feature of an internationalised movement.
1955
1956	...Psychology
1957
1958	At the same time, the focus of Russia's propaganda has changed from Soviet times, when it touted communism's material success and criticised the West's decadence.
1959
1960	Today's Russian propaganda "is very adaptive and it does not limit itself to any ideological framework", senior editor Olga Irisova of the Russian affairs journal Intersection Project told Fairfax Media.
1961
1962	This is true of the many voices over which it is carried, including state-backed broadcasters like Sputnik and RT which pride themselves on offering "alternatives" to traditional media. 
1963
1964	This is a significant change from the time of the Cold War.
1965
1966	"While during the Cold War it was more or less clear what narratives USSR propaganda charged with communist ideology would promote (capitalism versus communism as an alternative model for development; stories about how bad the life is for people in capitalist countries and how well the Soviet state cared for its people) ... the current Kremlin propaganda can promote almost any narrative that could undermine people's confidence in the liberal way of life," Irisova said.
1967
1968
1969https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-demographic-of-Pewdiepies-subscribers
1970	What is the demographic of Pewdiepie's subscribers?
1971
1972	It is reported that PewDiePie's subscriber base is mostly young teenagers between the ages of 13 and 16
1973
1974	...He attends to attract the much younger audience rather than the older audiences.
1975
1976
1977https://www.wired.com/2017/02/pewdiepie-racism-alt-right/
1978	YouTube star PewDiePie’s fall from grace riled up his 53 million subscribers, but unless you’re a Gen-Z videogamer, you may find the name splashed across many a headline this week unfamiliar. Lucky you. After The Wall Street Journal reported on his pattern of using anti-Semitic jokes in his videos, Disney’s Maker Studios cut ties with the internet celeb, and YouTube canceled the second season of his streaming reality show. People might applaud what look like swift measures, but the moves are long overdue.
1979
1980	...Given the impossibility of knowing whether he means what he says, you can’t always know how to respond when he does something like, say, hire people to hold up a sign saying “Death to all Jews.”
1981
1982	...But PewDiePie started racking up questionable jokes almost from the start of his YouTube career nearly seven years ago. Given that long tradition, and the fact he recently claimed that YouTube discriminates against him because he’s white, his fanbase goes beyond gamers. PewDiePie has become a bona fide white-supremacist hero.
1983
1984	...In another let’s-play video, he mentions that he can’t see people when they’re “too black,” and fans mention that he’s been known to say that “black things” scare him.
1985
1986	...This 2017 video, in which he decided whether he would “smash,” pass on, or sell particular people into slavery
1987
1988	...In a jittery rant, he claimed that “YouTube wants my channel gone. They want someone else on top. They want someone really extremely cancerous, like Lilly Singh. I’m white. Can I make that comment? But I do think that’s a problem.”
1989
1990	Singh—better known by her YouTube alias, Superwoman—is a Canadian-Indian rapper and comedian whose songs, parodies, and calls for positivity and #GirlLove have won her more than 11 million subscribers
1991
1992	...Check out the banner leading neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin’s The Daily Stormer, which the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the top hate site in America.
1993
1994	https://www.wired.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Screen-Shot-2017-02-14-at-1.34.51-PM-582x188.png
1995
1996	The image has been up for weeks, says Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s Intelligence Project. “With PewDiePie, the question is, How did it take them so long?” she says of Disney and YouTube dumping PewDiePie. “Neo-Nazis have been loving this guy. And because he has this massive following, they see those people as supporting their views.”
1997
1998
1999https://www.dailystormer.com/is-pewdiepie-racist/
2000	Is PewDiePie Racist?
2001
2002	Daily Stormer
2003
2004	And now, for the answer everyone has been looking for… Is PewDiePie an actual Nazi White supremacist?
2005
2006	Only a scientific test will yield the truth of the matter.
2007
2008
2009http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2016-09/russia-propaganda-eastern-ukraine-separatists-e-mails
2010	Cheerful Propaganda and Hate on Command
2011
2012	The evidence of the extent to which Russia is engaging in psychological warfare against the West is now available in black and white. 
2013
2014
2015https://www.dailystormer.com/tag/pewdiepie/
2016
2017
2018http://www.propornot.com/p/the-list.html
2019	...dailystormer.com...
2020
2021
2022https://www.marchfortruth.info/
2023	Across the country, peaceful demonstrations will be arranged on Saturday, June 3rd.
2024
2025	Our goals are simple:
2026
2027	An independent commission must be established and Congressional investigations should be properly resourced and pursued free of partisan interests;
2028
2029	As much information should be made available to the public as possible, and as soon as possible;
2030
2031
2032http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/04/531439721/march-for-truth-protesters-demand-independent-russia-investigation
2033	March For Truth Protesters Demand Independent Russia Investigation 
2034
2035	Thousands of protesters gathered around the country in a series of "March for Truth" rallies on Saturday. Demonstrators were calling for a congressional independent commission to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
2036
2037	In full view of the White House, protesters in Washington, D.C., demanded answers in the ongoing Russia probe. Chants of "Investigate Trump!" and "Resist, resist!" rang across the National Mall.
2038
2039	Some protesters even lined up together to spell out "Investigate Trump."
2040
2041	"I want to know what the ties are to Russia," said Atossa Shafaie, who joined protesters in the nation's capital. "I want to know how Russia has infiltrated our government. I don't think there's a question that they have."
2042
2043
2044https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.mcconnell.senate.gov+%22independent+commission%22&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min%3A6%2F3%2F2017%2Ccd_max%3A6%2F12%2F2017
2045
2046
2047If our government won't tell us what the Russian government is doing to us, it's up to us to figure it out ourselves. It's especially important to do our best to figure out their strategies and what they're planning next--the better we predict their plans, the harder we make it to for them to carry them out:
2048
2049
2050https://archive.org/stream/GolitsynAnatoleTheNewLiesForOldOnes/Golitsyn-NewLiesForOld-TheCommunistStrategyOfDeceptionAndDisinformation1984_djvu.txt
2051	To counter communist strategy and regain the initiative for the West, a new Western strategy is needed, based on a true under- standing of the situation, policy, and strategic disinformation of the communist bloc. Without a clear appreciation of the deceptive nature of Sino-Soviet rivalry and of "liberalization" and splits in the communist world, Western governments, whatever their political complexion, cannot recover from the crisis in their foreign policy and are at risk of sliding into false alliances with one communist state against another. If possible, a moratorium should be imposed on any form of rapprochement with any member of the communist bloc while the reevaluation takes place. The publication could then follow of an allied defense document setting out calmly and clearly the agreed overall Western assessment of current communist bloc policy and the means being used to implement it. Public discussion of the findings would be encouraged by conferences of the Western governments, of political groupings such as the Socialist International, and of the leaders of the moderate, pro- Western Third World nations; parallel professional exchanges would take place between the Western intelligence and counterinteUigence services.
2052
2053	The effect that an expose on this scale would have should not be underestimated. The communist bloc leaders and strategists would find, if the Western assessment were correct, that their next strategic offensives and moves in the deception plan had been preempted. The initiative would have been snatched from them. Their complicated political, diplomatic, and disinformation operations still in the pipeline would, if pursued, confirm the correctness of the Western assessment. The peoples of the communist bloc, the majority learning for the first time of the deceit on which their country's policy had been based, would — whatever their feelings about its morahty — realize that it would not work in the future and that their leaders had failed. While a communist regime remains successful, the people can be coerced into going along with it. It is when failure — or, at least, lack of new successes — sets in that, as was shown in Hungary and Poland in 1956, real and radical changes may happen. Exposure of a bankrupt policy would unleash powerful political pressures on communist leaders and on their re- gimes, parties, and governments, perhaps forcing them to change their conduct in international relations.
2054
2055	It will be argued by faint hearts in the West that to proclaim publicly that the full significance of the communist threat is now recognized and that a realistic response is on its way is only to drive the communist leaders to an openly hard-line attitude and even to war. But does this argument stand up? If the threat has been correctly evaluated and properly explained, it will be clear to public opinion that, although disinformation may have concealed the intentions of communist policy, its line could scarcely have been harder.
2056
2057
2058This, among other reasons, might be why maskirovka is so important to them--it's hard to fool someone who knows your next move.
2059
2060Last time I tried to guess what the Russians were going to do next, I got it dead wrong. But I think I am a little wiser now. That said, here's my best guess:
2061
2062First: any attempt to impeach Trump they will milk for as many partisan squabbles as they can get away with. This pretty much a given--increasing political polarization (http://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/political-polarization-in-the-american-public/) is basically a byproduct of active measures (just about any political scandal sparks partisan fighting, for example), and increasing polarization always hurts America. Supposedly, they had tried as much with Clinton's impeachment, although I haven't looked into that yet. Regardless, the current "Comey vs. Trump" set up is already polarized:
2063
2064
2065http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/poll-americans-trust-james-comey-over-trump_us_593c4814e4b0b13f2c6b1b69
2066	POLL: Americans Trust James Comey Over Trump
2067
2068	Views are deeply divided along political lines, although Trump’s doubters are notably more unified than his defenders. Seventy percent of Trump voters say they trust the president’s honesty more than Comey’s, while 89 percent of voters who supported Hillary Clinton put more faith in the former FBI director.
2069
2070
2071
2072..
2073
2074
2075Most of all, you should expect the Okhrana to do anything they can to continue hiding and obfuscating their goals and methods. Active measures depends on deception to work--but the more their targets comprehend how they are being fooled (and that they are being fooled in the first place), the less power they have wage war and influence the world. Their power derives from secrecy.
2076
2077Or at least a kind of secrecy: Major recent declassifications have made public the scope and nature of Russian intelligence activities:
2078
2079
2080Venona papers declassified        - 1996
2081
2082CIA Lin Piao reports declassified - 1999
2083
2084Vassiliev notebooks declassified  - 2009
2085
2086Illegals Program arrests          - 2010
2087
2088Mitrokhin Archive declassified    - 2014
2089
2090
2091Between these disclosures we know much of FDR's administration (including his top advisor) were Soviet spies, multiple famous Western journalists and scientist worked for the Soviets, Mao Zedong and Al Gore were likely useful idiots, the KGB had at least thousands of foreign agents, and such agents still operate in "deep cover" today. These disclosures also give insight into how their active measures work.
2092
2093For the most part, the Russians can no longer conceal the scope and nature of their operations--it's all in the public domain. But they can confuse, obfuscate, and manage the public perception of their operations:
2094
2095
2096https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/03/20/full-transcript-fbi-director-james-comey-testifies-on-russian-interference-in-2016-election/
2097	ROS-LEHTINEN: I'd like to ask you gentlemen if you could describe what, if anything, Russia did in this election that to your knowledge they did or they didn't do in previous elections, how -- how it was -- were their actions different in this election than -- than in previous ones.
2098
2099	ROGERS: I'd say the biggest difference from my perspective was both the use of cyber, the hacking as a vehicle to physically gain access to information to extract that information and then to make it widely, publicly available without any alteration or change.
2100
2101	COMEY: The only thing I'd add is they were unusually loud in their intervention. It's almost as if they didn't care that we knew what they were doing or that they wanted us to see what they were doing. It was very noisy, their intrusions in different institutions.
2102
2103	ROS-LEHTINEN: And what specifically based on this loudness did the FBI or the NSA do to prevent or counter this Russian active measure that we read about in the intelligence community assessment? As loud as they were, what did we do to counter that?
2104
2105	COMEY: Well, among other things, we alerted people who had been victims of intrusions to permit them to tighten their systems to see if they couldn't kick the Russian actors out. We also, as a government, supplied information to all the states so they could equip themselves to make sure there was no successful effort to affect the vote and there was none, as we said earlier.
2106
2107	And then the government as a whole in October called it out. And I believe it was Director Clapper and then-secretary Jeh Johnson issued a statement saying this is what the Russians are doing, sort of an inoculation.
2108
2109	ROS-LEHTINEN: And the loudness to which you refer, perhaps they were doing these kinds of actions previously in other elections but they were not doing it as loudly. What -- why do you think that they did not mind being loud and being found out?
2110
2111	COMEY: I don't know the answer for sure. I think part -- their number one mission is to undermine the credibility of our entire democracy enterprise of this nation and so it might be that they wanted us to help them by telling people what they were doing.
2112
2113	Their loudness, in a way, would be counting on us to amplify it by telling the American people what we saw and freaking people out about how the Russians might be undermining our elections successfully. And so that might have been part of their plan, I don't know for sure.
2114
2115	ROGERS: I've -- I agree with Director Comey. I mean, a big difference to me in the past was while there was cyber activity, we never saw in previous presidential elections information being published on such a massive scale that had been illegally removed both from private individuals as well as organizations associated with the democratic process both inside the government and outside the government.
2116
2117
2118What's a reason for them to be "loud" with their hacking? To push into the mind's of the public at large that hacking is how the Russians operate. And what better way to be "loud" than hack and release the emails of a U.S. Presidential candidate in the middle of one of the craziest elections in history? 
2119
2120You can see this same kind of "perception management" of their operations after the illegals arrested in 2010 (https://pastebin.com/r5PHGSnz). The spies' arrest sparked a minor media sensation--not because "deep-cover Russian spies are blending into American society and acting in inexplicable ways" but because "Anna Chapman is hot."
2121
2122It amounts to "hiding in plain sight"--almost everybody has a vague notion that Russian spies were arrested in the U.S., but what people remember about it is Anna Chapman and her poses. Absolutely everybody knows Russia intervened in the U.S. election, but what they might end up remembering is that Russia did it with hacking. Everyone can have a general idea of what the Russians did (cultivate Trump, swing the election, spread propaganda, employ spies) but have the wrong idea about how (hire him as a spy, hack Clinton's emails and that's it, troll social media a little, recruit only ethnic Russians who travel to Russia), and Russia's methods are obfuscated.
2123
2124Besides keeping Americans easier to fool for next time, it looks like obfuscating their methods has brought the Russians other benefits:
2125
2126
2127http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/01/10/u-s-public-says-russia-hacked-campaign/
2128	Democrats are also more likely to support the sanctions and actions taken against Russia as a response. Among those who have heard about the allegations, 51% of Democrats view the response as about right, while 37% say the sanctions and actions do not go far enough and just 7% say they go too far. By comparison, about a third of Republicans (35%) say the sanctions and actions against Russia go too far, while 39% say they are about right and just 17% say they do not go far enough.
2129
2130	Overall, about one-in three Americans (29%) currently call Russia “an adversary” and an additional 44% consider it a “serious problem, but not an adversary”; just 24% say it is “not a problem.”
2131
2132
2133It's easier to forgive Russia if you think all they did is lift Clinton's emails to Wikileaks to settle a score, and so easier for Russia to get away with it politically. But if Americans were to learn Russia turned our media, politicians, or even vote machines against us, things might be different.
2134
2135The Pew Research link shows another way the Russians can "hide in plain sight" by politicising their meddling itself. This election was the first time fewer Republicans were polled as seeing Russia as an adversary than Democrats (20% to 38% -- 39% to 19% three years earlier). The numbers aren't as important as the switch--a hint that Russia's meddling became politicized after the election. The danger comes from partisan motivated reasoning (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/how-politics-breaks-our-brains-and-how-we-can-put-them-back-together/453315/), which clobbers a partisan's capacity to reason about politicized issues in general. A Republican might have trouble accepting that their favorite conservative website is Russian propaganda, for example, or a Democrat might dismiss that Russian intelligence prefers agents of influence over blackmail, as it would imply Trump is less likely to be guilty of a crime. Russia politicizing their meddling makes it harder for people to figure out how it works.
2136
2137But probably the surest way Russian intelligence could hide their methods and goals is by silencing those who are in the best position to know them--the intelligence agencies of their adversaries. Western intelligence agencies--if not just about every other intelligence agency in the world--are probably angry enough by now that the Russians can't stop them from publishing more of their secrets (and arguably they could be faulted for not publishing them--how many lives could have been saved if the Chinese and Japanese suspected Zhang Zhizhong of trying to provoke a war, for example?). But if the Russians can't stop intelligence agencies from talking, they can try to stop the public at large from listening. Character assassination is a staple of active measures--if Russian intelligence can convince enough of the public that other intelligence agencies are scheming, lying, or incompetent (e.g. "These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction!"), those intelligence agencies are effectively silenced.
2138
2139Western intelligence agen
2140
2141
2142https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/cia-magic-video-investigation-uri-geller
2143	That Time the CIA Investigated a Magician to See if Magic Was Real
2144
2145
2146https://www.usatoday.com/videos/news/politics/2016/11/05/93316476/
2147	FBI investigating itself for dumping info so close to the election
2148
2149
2150https://thinkprogress.org/fbi-launches-internal-investigation-into-its-own-twitter-account-8d5fc2a81fdc
2151	FBI launches internal investigation into its own Twitter account
2152
2153
2154http://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/2/4/1629967/-Draft-plan-to-resurrect-CIA-s-secret-torture-dungeons-said-to-be-revised-because-of-broad-resistance
2155	Draft plan to resurrect CIA's secret torture dungeons said to be revised because of broad resistance
2156
2157	By Meteor Blades
2158
2159
2160https://www.infowars.com/why-the-cia-killed-kennedy/
2161	Why The CIA Killed Kennedy
2162
2163
2164https://stonecoldtruth.com/the-cias-legacy-of-lies/
2165	The CIA’s Legacy of Lies
2166
2167	By Roger stone
2168
2169
2170https://www.infowars.com/nsa-whistleblower-spy-grid-is-part-of-world-govt-takeover/
2171	Top NSA Official: Spy Grid Helping Establish World Government
2172
2173	...“Certainly it is population control, but not just of any given country – but of the world,” the whistleblower said. 
2174
2175	...“And in order to do that they need to be able to control the people of the world. So in order to do that, you have to have knowledge of them to know who’s doing what so you can stop it, or manipulate it any way you want.”
2176
2177
2178http://www.npr.org/2015/03/31/395829446/after-snowden-the-nsa-faces-recruitment-challenge
2179	After Snowden, The NSA Faces Recruitment Challenge 
2180
2181	"When I was a senior in high school I thought I would end up working for a defense contractor or the NSA itself," Swann says. Then, in 2013, NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked a treasure-trove of top-secret documents. They showed that the agency's programs to collect intelligence were far more sweeping than Americans realized.
2182
2183	After Snowden's revelations, Swann's thinking changed. The NSA's tactics, which include retaining data from American citizens, raise too many questions in his mind: "I can't see myself working there," he says, "partially because of these moral reasons."
2184
2185	This year, the NSA needs to find 1,600 recruits.
2186
2187
2188https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/17/us/politics/obama-putin-russia-hacking-us-elections.html
2189	Obama Confronts Complexity of Using a Mighty Cyberarsenal Against Russia
2190
2191
2192http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/16/technology/obama-us-vulnerable-to-hacking/index.html
2193	US more vulnerable to hacking than Russia, Obama says
2194
2195
2196http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-24/snowden-flees-to-russia-avoiding-extradition/4775048
2197	Snowden flees to Russia, avoiding extradition
2198
2199
2200https://www.facebook.com/davidcnswanson/photos/pb.297768373319.-2207520000.1495135478./10155263180063320/?type=3
2201	David Swanson
2202
2203	Who benefits most from blaming Putin for everything? This guy.
2204
2205
2206https://twitter.com/davidcnswanson/status/837734112144285697
2207	David Swanson
2208	
2209	Putin's trained dog finally identified
2210
2211	R[ussia] T[oday]
2212
2213	'She is being a guard dong' - Putin jokes as his pet barks at Japanese
2214
2215
2216https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/12/12/the-cia-never-ever-lies/
2217	The CIA Never Ever Lies
2218
2219	by David Swanson 
2220
2221	At moments like these, when every good responsible and enlightened liberal is recognizing the need to destroy the world in order to save it, by getting World War III started with Russia before Trump can move in and damage anything, I believe it is important to remember a few facts that will strengthen our resolve:
2222
2223	The oligarch who owns the Washington Post has CIA contracts worth at least twice what he paid to buy the Washington Post, thus making the Washington Post the most reliable authority on the CIA we have ever, ever had.
2224
2225	When the CIA concludes things in secret that are reported to the Washington Post by anonymous sources the reliability of the conclusions is heightened exponentially.
2226
2227	Phrases like “individuals with connections to the Russian government” are simply shorthand for “Vladimir Putin” because the Washington Post has too much good taste to actually print that name.
2228
2229	Claims to know extremely difficult things to know, like the motivations of said individuals, are essentially fact, given what we know of the CIA’s near perfect record over the decades.
2230
2231
2232https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/11/29/how-i-produce-fake-news-for-russia/
2233	How I Produce Fake News for Russia
2234
2235	by David Swanson 
2236
2237	Apparently I’ve written “fake news” on behalf of Russia
2238
2239
2240https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2602813/furious-mi6-chiefs-slam-ex-officer-chris-steele-for-appalling-judgement-over-donald-trump-dodgy-dossier-scandal/
2241	'HE's AN IDIOT' Furious MI6 chiefs slam ex-officer Chris Steele for ‘appalling judgement’ over Donald Trump dodgy dossier scandal
2242
2243	The foreign spy agency has told ministers their Russia operative showed “appalling judgement” over the incident.
2244
2245	MI6 Chief Sir Alex Younger is said to be livid if it is true that he accepted a commission to dig dirt on a US politician from a Washington DC rivals.
2246
2247	And one senior intelligence source branded the 53-year-old “an idiot.”
2248
2249	The source told The Sun: “Chris should never have accepted this bit of work.
2250
2251	“It was always going to come out at some stage, as was his involvement with it, and that is deeply embarrassing to the service.”
2252
2253	Mr Steele’s former colleagues from MI6 – real name, the Secret Intelligence Service – also said he should have made it clear that there was no proof for the lurid accusations about Donald Trump’s twisted sex games with Moscow prostitutes.
2254
2255	The source added: “There are hundreds of FSB guys running around the world at the moment saying all sorts of things, for all sorts of reasons”.
2256
2257
2258https://twitter.com/russianembassy/status/819525677175242752?lang=en
2259	Russian Embassy, UK
2260
2261	Christopher Steele story: MI6 officers are never ex: briefing both ways - against Russia and US President
2262
2263
2264https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_INFEKTION
2265	Operation INFEKTION was a KGB disinformation campaign to spread information that the United States invented HIV/AIDS as part of a biological weapons research project at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Soviet Union used it to undermine the United States’ credibility, foster anti-Americanism, isolate America abroad, and create tensions between host countries and the U.S. over the presence of American military bases (which were often portrayed as the cause of AIDS outbreaks in local populations).
2266
2267	According to U.S. State Department analysts, another reason the Soviet Union "promoted the AIDS disinformation may have been its attempt to distract international attention away from its own offensive biological warfare program, which [was monitored] for decades."
2268
2269	...Claims that the CIA had sent "AIDS-oiled condoms" to other countries sprang up independently in the African press, well after the operation was started. In 1987, a book (Once Again About the CIA) was published by the Novosti Press Agency, with the quote:
2270
2271		The CIA Directorate of Science and Technology is continuously modernizing its inventory of pathogenic preparations, bacteria and viruses and studying their effect on man in various parts of the world. To this end, the CIA uses American medical centers in foreign countries. A case in point was the Pakistani Medical Research Center in Lahore… set up in 1962 allegedly for combating malaria.
2272
2273	The resulting public backlash eventually closed down the legitimate medical research center.
2274
2275
2276http://www.csmonitor.com/1985/0228/zdis.html
2277	As for forgeries, these have been used by the Soviets since soon after the 1917 revolution. The most elaborate in recent years was ``US Army Field Manual 30-31B,'' an entire manual that urged American officers to spy on their host countries and in some cases subvert their governments. The fake manual first appeared in Turkey in 1975. It was later circulated in some 20 countries to try to implicate the CIA in the Red Brigades' murder of Christian Democrat leader Aldo Moro in Italy in 1978.
2278
2279
2280http://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/21/opinion/kgb-disinformation.html
2281	K.G.B. DISINFORMATION
2282
2283	The current concern in some Congressional and journalistic circles about Soviet ''disinformation'' activities in the United States news media rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of the K.G.B. program.
2284
2285	For more than 20 years, the Soviet Committee for State Security (K.G.B.) has secretly subsidized publications, planted rumors, and distributed forged documents as a minor but useful supplement to the large-scale anti-American propaganda campaign openly directed from Moscow.
2286
2287	The most effective part of the K.G.B.'s work has been the fabrication of documents designed to provide the third world with hard ''evidence'' of America's hostile intentions. Most forgeries have had as their target the elites and semiliterate peoples of the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. The publications have alleged a Central Intelligence Agency plan to unseat several Latin American regimes, a secret American commitment to Israel (for the Arab audience), assassination plots against the late President Sukarno of Indonesia (he was taken in) and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt (he was not). 
2288
2289
2290https://twitter.com/cjcmichel/status/821510721347395584
2291	The KGB did, however, seek to cover its own tracks by circulating forged documents indicating that the CIA was involved with the FLQ. On September 24, 1971 the Montreal Star published a photocopy of a bogus CIA memorandum dated October 20, 1970:
2292
2293		Subject Quebec. Sources advice that urgent action e taken to temporarily break contact with the FLQ militants since the Canadian government's measures may have undesirable consequences.
2294
2295	Questions followed in the Canadian parliament. Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared that if the CIA was operating in Canada, it was "without the knowledge or consent of the government." Twenty years later the forged memorandum was still being quoted in Canadian publications, even by some academic authorities. Further forgeries suggested CIA involvement with Quebec extremists were circulated on the eve of the visit to Canada by President Nixon in 1972.
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301 
2302
2303http://www.smh.com.au/world/fake-news-why-the-west-is-blind-to-russias-propaganda-today-20170123-gtxbuw.html
2304	US intelligence agencies see Russia behind this effort to denigrate Clinton and the Democrats. But such efforts aren't new.
2305
2306	...In fact, coordination between those stealing the documents and the sometimes-fringe media that publicise them is an important element of such propaganda. It is in the public domain first - and contextualised afterward. And who gives it context in this environment largely determines how the information is seen. This is how the mostly quotidian correspondence of the US Democrats could be shared as proof of Hillary Clinton's supposedly nefarious activities. 
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312probably: discredit/politicize USIC
2313ruin USIC capabilities
2314politicize/cast doubt on Russian methods
2315
2316
2317I guess it does make sense to:
2318
2319politicize CIA/narrative of Russian intervention as much as possible so that Repulicans, who typically like CIA/hate Russia, are reversed
2320
2321utterly destroy the narrative and USIC by reveailing Russia narrative to be fake (dossier, intel leak thing, maybe hacking, others?) and USIC top levels to be corrupt and scheming
2322
2323Republicans continue to hate CIA distrust Russia narratives
2324
2325liberals confused, defeated, maybe feel betrayed by USIC 
2326
2327key is that Republicans tend to be more bullheaded, so this wouldn't work as well the other way around
2328
2329would likely rely, in their view, on liberals soul searching and tears to finish off themselves
2330
2331fuck I'm cold
2332
2333this has gotten to my head lol
2334
2335but best case scenario for them is both Republicans and Democrats end up distrusting USIC
2336
2337
2338Politicizing any idea, event, institution, person, thing, etc. makes it easier for propagandists to control public perception around said thing.
2339
2340
2341http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/democrats-now-give-cia-higher-marks-republicans-do-s-really-n703206
2342
2343
2344
2345------
2346
2347
2348
2349
2350
2351
2352http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448480/james-comey-testimony-obstruction-justice-not-proven
2353
2354
2355------
2356
2357http://ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratperspective/inss/Strategic-Perspectives-11.pdf
2358
2359When the director’s study was completed in May 1973, it came in at 693 single-spaced pages, 
2360each  one  of  which  described  a  possible  violation.
236138
2362  In  1974,  the
2363  New  York  Times
2364  revealed  the  
2365report to the public and the story was confirmed by then CIA Director William Colby in De-
2366cember.
236739
2368  Congress  and  the  public  were  outraged,  and  by  early  1975,  the  White  House  faced  
2369eight separate congressional investigations and hearings on the CIA. The revelations about in-
2370telligence programs transgressing American civil liberties ushered in a period of intense public 
2371and congressional scrutiny. The scandals forced a reevaluation of the role of intelligence orga-
2372nizations in a free society. What emerged in the aftermath of the debate was a new American 
2373conception  of  intelligence  that  further  inclined  the  national  security  system  to  ignore  Soviet  
2374disinformation. This assertion requires a brief explanation.
2375William Colby assumed the position of CIA director in 1973 after President Nixon moved 
2376his  predecessor,  James  Schlesinger,  to  the  position  of  Secretary  of  Defense.  Before  assuming  
2377leadership  of  the  CIA,  Schlesinger  had  conducted  a  major  study  for  President  Nixon  in  1971  
2378on  the  need  for  reform  in  the  Intelligence  Community  attributed  to  rising  costs,  advancing  
2379technology,  and  organizational  inertia.
238040
2381  Colby  supported  the  study’s  reform  agenda,  and  the  
23821973 scandals gave him the opportunity to implement reform. By the time he was relieved from 
2383his position by President Gerald Ford in 1975, the CIA was a different organization. The debate 
2384over intelligence reform was intense, controversial, and complex, but it must be simplified and 
2385summarized here to explain its impact on the Agency’s approach to Soviet disinformation.
2386Colby’s reforms had the net effect of replacing what may be called a “traditionalist” view 
2387of intelligence with a “reformed” or uniquely American view, one that effectively downgraded 
2388the  importance  of  disinformation  and  deception.
238941
2390  First,  Colby  decided  in  favor  of  complete  
2391openness,  revealing  all  the  tawdry  secrets  of  the  CIA  (sometimes  referred  to  as  “the  Family  
2392Jewels”), ranging from failed assassination attempts of foreign leaders to spying on American 
2393citizens. Colby believed the CIA must be accountable to Congress not only as a Constitutional 
2394requirement, but also as a practical means of surviving the revelations about its past activities. 
2395Second, Colby oversaw a reprioritization of intelligence functions that reduced the emphasis on 
2396covert action, counterintelligence, and human intelligence sources in favor greater reliance on 
2397technical means of collecting information and better analysis.
239842
2399 Past public support for covert 
2400action  had  evaporated,  and  “rightly  or  wrongly,  a  certain  euphoria  about  détente  signified  to  
2401many that there was now [less need for] covert operations as a ready, effective weapon in our 
2402country’s Cold War arsenal.”
240343
2404 Third, in pushing for better analysis, Colby promoted emerging 
240515
2406Deception, Disinformation, and Strategic Communications
2407social science methodologies because he thought they would improve the CIA’s ability to sup-
2408port decisionmaking and would do so in a manner more consistent with a free society. He even 
2409believed that the Intelligence Community could become a “world class think tank,” participat-
2410ing in a “free trade of intelligence,” whereby nations recognize the “mutual benefit from the free 
2411flow  and  exchange  of  information,  in  the  fashion  that  the  strategic  arms  control  agreements  
2412recognize that both sides can benefit from pledges against concealment and interference with 
2413the other’s national technical means of verification (satellites etc.).”
2414
2415
2416	...By contrast, U.S. efforts to counter Soviet disinformation were anything but centralized, 
2417integrated,  and  timely—indeed  15  years  later,  attempts  to  counter  Soviet  disinformation  had  
2418virtually disappeared.