Counterintelligence

February 16, 2018

Special Counsel Issues Indictment of Russians – 2016 Election Interference

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, Disinformation, News Reporting — Bill @ 12:10 pm

On Friday, February 16, 2018, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office released a federal grand jury indictment naming 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies as defendants. The indictment alleges the defendants interfered in the 2016 presidential election.

Here is a link to the 37-page indictment issued today.

The indictment itself is a far more reliable and complete information source than the news media for the details of when, how, and by whom the offenses against the United States were allegedly committed.

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February 13, 2018

Appoint a Presidential Commission

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, News Reporting, Public Corruption, Trump Impeachment — Bill @ 1:52 pm

With American citizens finally becoming more aware of the scope and gravity of the institutional corruption involved in and around the 2016 election, members of Congress are receiving increasing demands to appoint another Special Counsel.

As I opined in my OpenCdA post on January 12, 2018, entitled So It Never Happens Again …, merely appointing yet another Special Counsel to look into the allegations of apparent criminal wrongdoing associated with the 2016 national general election would be an incomplete approach.

I don’t dispute there are grounds for such a Special Counsel. However, I believe the job of rehabilitating corrupted and crippled agencies whose missions are critically important to the national security is too much for a Special Counsel.

Before you conclude I’m overstating the scope of work required for rehabilitation, consider this:

Credible evidence released by diligent House and Senate committees has provided solid reasons to believe that the following government bodies have some involvement either as alleged violators or as victims in the numerous and various statutory and administrative rule violations:

Central Intelligence Agency (alleged violator)
Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) (victim)
Department of Justice (alleged violator)
- Federal Bureau of Investigation (alleged violator)
Department of State (alleged violator)
Federal Election Commission (victim)
Former President Obama and his Executive Office of the President (alleged violator)
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (victim)
Internal Revenue Service (alleged violator)
National Security Agency (alleged violator)
US Congress (victim)

Very arguably the most important objective of rehabilitation has to be to restore the public’s confidence in our federal agencies to perform their duties honestly and diligently. (Lest we forget, the honest and diligent employees of all the alleged violator agencies are ‘the public,’ too.) Thus far, the Mueller Special Counsel effort has produced little or nothing to accomplish that objective.

There is another objective that no Special Counsel will have the courage to touch: An open and frank discussion of the miserable failure of our First Amendment-protected news media to provide timely, accurate, and complete reporting of verified information (not opinion) to We, the People.

That discussion must include but not start with the performance of reporters or editors or news directors. It must start with media owners’ lack of understanding the importance of timely, accurate, complete news reporting. Then these owners must be questioned about their lack of commitment to that same reporting.

In part the failures of federal agencies have apparently been aided and abetted by the First Amendment-protected news media’s decisions to ignore or under-report those failures. The media owe We, the People, some answers for their seemingly aiding and abetting alleged crimes that have been committed against all the people of the United States.

If the public’s confidence in the integrity of some critical agencies and their employees is to be restored, we need a Presidential Commission with far more horsepower, moral courage, and integrity than we are likely to ever see from another Special Counsel like Robert Mueller.

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February 9, 2018

It’s Called ‘Sanitizing’

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, Public Corruption, Trump Impeachment — Bill @ 8:23 pm

Today the President determined that the Democrat response to the Republican HPSCI memo could not be properly declassified and released to the public as written.

The letter from White House Counsel Don McGahn to the HPSCI Chairman Devin Nunes was released today. The unclassified letter offered the Executive Branch’s assistance to the HPSCI Minority in making revisions which would allow public release of the minority’s memo.

The process of rewording classified information to permit the information to be released to the public is called “sanitizing.”

Sanitizing is a very common practice, and when done honestly and diligently by knowledgeable, skillful writers, their desired message can be conveyed without revealing sensitive national security information.

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Congress Getting Very, Very Warm …

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, Public Corruption, Trump Impeachment — Bill @ 12:30 pm

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and its Chairman Devin Nunes are getting very, very warm when it comes to ‘unmasking’ the apparent corruption and exploitation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) by some Mahogany Row players in the Obama Justice Department (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

On February 7, 2018, Chairman Nunes sent a formal written request, a letter to the Presiding Judge of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, requesting, “… transcripts of any relevant FISC hearings associated with the initial FISA application or subsequent renewals related to electronic surveillance of Carter Page.”

Clearly, Chairman Nunes and the HPSCI need to see all of the material submitted to the FISC to determine the extent of the representations, if any, made to the Court in obtaining a FISA warrant and its three renewals to use the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct an unlawful electronic surveillance on US citizen Carter Page.

Beyond that, it is very possible the HPSCI’s examination of these materials may reveal a pattern of deception practiced by officials in both the DoJ and FBI in seeking or securing other FISA warrants against US citizens unlawfully “unmasked” after incidental contact with persons lawfully the targets of FISA interceptions.

(P.S.: It appears that even Sulzburger’s Slimes at the New York Times can no longer continue to ignore the post mortem stench of the Obama administration. On February 6, 2018, the New York Times Company submitted a motion to the FISA Court requesting that the Court “… order publicatiion of all of its orders authorizing surveillance of Carter Page, a United States citizen, together with the application materials and renewal application mateerials upon which those orders were issued.”)

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July 29, 2017

Debbie Does Dulles

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Administrative Incompetence, Counterintelligence, Espionage, News Reporting, Public Corruption, Trump Impeachment — Bill @ 8:05 am

On Monday, July 24, 2017, Special Agents of the US Capitol Police (USCP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Capitol Hill IT contractor Imran Awan as he tried to board an airplane at Dulles International Airport and fly to his homeland of Pakistan via Qatar. The FBI affidavit supporting his arrest alleges Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, filed a fraudulent mortgage loan application.

Hina Alvi had already pulled their children out of school, stuffed over $12,000 in cash and some household goods in cardboard boxes, and left the United States (some might say “fled the United States”) for Pakistan.

Before July 24th, few readers could probably recall hearing anything about Imran Awan. They might have heard something about some damaged computer equipment belonging to some members of Congress being found at a home rented by Awan and his wife. They might have read deep into the already sketchy skews stories that one of the computers found belonged to Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In fact, good ol’ Debbie threatened the USCP in public if it dared process the purloined computer for evidence.

Otherwise, because the AWAN storyline did not involve pimping unsubstantiated gossip about President Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, the national skews media weren’t especially interested. Nothing to see here. Move along. Move along.

Except there was and is something to see.

It seems that Representative Schultz had arranged for Industrious Imran to be the go-to IT contractor for several Democrat members of the House of Representatives, some of them on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. In fact, Industrious Imran and his partners had each been raking in an unusually high amount of money from these contracts for several years.

OpenCdA urges our handful of readers to take the time and read the series of articles by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

There are quite a few reasonable and interesting questions likely to be asked by the USCP and the FBI to determine if the computers and the emails on them contained any personal or national security information that could be used to manipulate and control the members of Congress on behalf of any foreign intelligence service.

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March 30, 2017

SSCI Hearings: Russian Influence on the 2016 US Presidential Election

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Coeur d'Alene Election, Counterintelligence, Disinformation, MSS, News Reporting, Trump Impeachment, Voter Fraud — Bill @ 8:24 pm

On Thursday, March 30, 2017, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) held an entire day of public hearings in Washington, DC. The SSCI was looking into the allegations that the Russians had influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election which elected Donald F. Trump to be the 45th President of the United States. The nature of its duty, Congressional oversight of US intelligence activities, results in very few open public hearings.

OpenCdA watched these hearings lasting just over five hours. Congressional hearings are nearly always predominantly boring speechifying by self-serving elected Congressional representatives. These two hearings today were not boring, and there was nearly no partisan speechifying.

The Senators on the SSCI were exceptionally well-prepared and asked on-point, insightful questions. The content of their questions and the perspectives and expertise offered by the witnesses suggested that Congress has finally recognized the ongoing threat that information warfare or information operations presents to the United States. Senators took these hearings and the information from them very seriously. We should, too.

OpenCdA urges citizens who are serious about understanding how effectively the Russians use information warfare strategies and tactics to offset a superior kinetic warfare force will find these five hours of hearings remarkably understandable and educational. The same readers will also better understand just how effectively Russia has manipulated our free press (AKA: the skews media) to influence public opinion. Unfortunately, the hearings also revealed in living color just how derelict our elected officials have been since about 1990 in recognizing the existence, let alone the gravity of info war and info ops.

Here are links to video of Thursday’s hearings.

Morning Hearing: Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns

Afternoon Hearing: Disinformation: A Primer in Russian Active Measures and Influence Campaigns

OpenCdA hopes that especially younger readers will take time to watch these hearings. You need to understand just how your choice of news delivery platform, often social media like Twitter and Facebook and not just the traditional print and broadcast media, is being manipulated to shape the disinformation you read every day. You will also hear just how easily the Russians turned President Trump’s frequent Tweets against him.

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January 10, 2017

Case in Point …

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, Trump Impeachment — Bill @ 1:04 pm

In its stories on January 5, 2017, and also on January 10, 2017, The Washington Free Beacon for-profit online newspaper has reported that “Ben Rhodes, a White House deputy national security adviser who led the administration’s efforts to mislead Congress about the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, is under [Congressional] scrutiny in the wake of disclosures he was declined interim clearance status by the FBI in 2008 …”

Under the circumstances, Congress is properly trying to determine if Rhodes was cleared by the FBI to receive access to national security information. Specifically, Congress wants to know if Rhodes had been denied an interim security clearance.

Being denied a security clearance after an appropriate background investigation has been completed and adjudicated is different from simply not applying for the security clearance. Clearances are generally denied when the applicant is unsuitable to hold the clearance. (more…)

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July 11, 2015

OPM Hack — The Real Damage

Filed under: Probable Cause — Tags: Counterintelligence, Espionage, MSS — Bill @ 7:46 am

By now readers probably know that Katherine Archuleta, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), resigned Friday. Her politically-expedient “resignation” was inevitable after the compromise of sensitive information in the personnel files of at least 21.5 million present and former federal employees, files OPM is responsible for securely maintaining and storing. The feds suspect that the Ministry of State Security of the People’s Republic of China, the Guojia Anquan Bu or Guoanbu, is behind the data breach.

Ho-hum. We’ve heard this all before — same song, different orchestra. This time, the amount of data swiped was huge, but so what? Should you or I really care if the Guoanbu filched a ton of Social Security numbers from OPM? No. And yes.

No, because it’s doubtful the Chicoms intend to raid Social Security’s funds (Besides, Congress beat them to it years ago.)

Yes, because if the hack was committed by the Guoanbu or any other competent foreign intelligence agency, the files they got were very sensitive investigative files on applicants for US government security clearances and special accesses. Investigative files — information uncovered during the course of an applicant’s background investigation — not just Social Security numbers. Those files would include credible derogatory information that might reflect on the applicant’s suitability to have access to sensitive classified and special access information affecting the national security. In most instances some of those investigative files are off-limits to even the applicant. That’s precisely the information a foreign intelligence service would love to get its hands on when its case officers are spotting prospective Americans who might be persuaded or induced to betray the United States. (more…)

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