Posted on 01/05/2017 8:10:50 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Never? Not once? The FBI has consistently asserted that the hack of the Democratic National Committee was an operation linked to the Russian government, even if they were less convinced that the Russians wanted to elect Donald Trump as a result. Last night, however, BuzzFeed’s Ali Watkins reported that the DNC has told her that the FBI never requested access to their servers, nor has any other government agency. Instead, they relied on a report from a private vendor:
The FBI did not examine the servers of the Democratic National Committee before issuing a report attributing the sweeping cyberintrusion to Russia-backed hackers, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Six months after the FBI first said it was investigating the hack of the Democratic National Committee’s computer network, the bureau has still not requested access to the hacked servers, a DNC spokesman said. No US government entity has run an independent forensic analysis on the system, one US intelligence official told BuzzFeed News.
“The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.
So who did check out the hacked servers? The DNC brought in a well-respected outfit called Crowdstrike to check out their systems, and it was Crowdstrike that concluded that the DNC was the victim of a Russian-government hack. “Crowdstrike is pretty good,” Watkins’ intel-community source told her, adding that they had no reason to believe that Crowdstrike got it wrong.
As pretty good as Crowdstrike might be, cyberattacks are federal crimes. Add to that the espionage implications involved with a hostile government intrusion, and this story doesn’t add up at all. This kind of crime should have had the FBI seizing the evidence and creating a chain of evidence in order to build a case should the opportunity for prosecution arise. The CIA and/or the NSA should have conducted their own probe of the servers to check for potential means to track back the attacks. Those are fairly obvious first steps to take under any circumstances, let alone the highly public circumstances of these hacks both then and over the last several weeks.
One could assert that political organizations might not be too comfortable having law-enforcement and intelligence agencies delving into their communications, and for good reason. However, the communications got released to the public anyway, so that’s a bit like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted. Certainly the DNC should have gotten over that last shred of modesty by then, and the FBI and intelligence community should have been eager to get their hands on the hardware. And yet, they still haven’t done so to this day, according to BuzzFeed. Hmmmmm.
It’s curious, and this report from Reuters is even more curious:
U.S. intelligence agencies obtained what they considered to be conclusive evidence after the November election that Russia provided hacked material from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks through a third party, three U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
U.S. officials had concluded months earlier that Russian intelligence agencies had directed the hacking, but had been less certain that they could prove Russia also had controlled the release of information damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The timing of the additional intelligence is important because U.S. President Barack Obama has faced criticism from his own party over why it took his administration months to respond to the cyber attack. U.S. Senate and House leaders, including prominent Republicans, have also called for an inquiry.
Well, isn’t that convenient timing. Put these two stories together, and it appears that the intelligence and law-enforcement communities didn’t take a very strong interest in chasing down evidence until after the election, too. That doesn’t mean the Russians weren’t behind it all — that still seems more likely than not — but it sure makes it look like the Obama administration, FBI, and the intelligence community didn’t care about it enough to act until the results of the election embarrassed the White House.
Buh, buh, buh, but..... they were “tracking” the Boston Marathon Bombers before they killed all those people, right?
Eff the FBI
Obama’s FBI has destroyed its own reputation. They must have a complete house cleaning at the top to return professional law men to leadership roles. Start draining the swamp right there.
Ya think that the FBI was hamstrung by the Dorkbama the Muslim eunuch administration and his low achievement quota boys and girls?
My feeling is that the vast majority of the FBI folks loathe this cretin and are looking forward to a leader who lets them do their job.
Looks to me like Crowdstrike gave the conclusion it was paid to give and the FBI didn’t want to do anything which might disturb or contradict that conclusion.
Bingo.
This story needs to be repeated... everywhere possible.
Crowdstrike needs to be investigated
Who are the principle agents ? Etc
“it sure makes it look like the Obama administration, FBI, and the intelligence community didn’t care about it enough to act until the results of the election embarrassed the White House”.
And where was the uproar two years ago when the Chinese perpetrated a major hack against the government itself? Where was the controversy? Where was the finger-pointing? Where were the retaliations? Where were the editorials?
From WMD to Remember the Maine! Take the information, deduct 50% and put the rest through a mirror.
The Dems suddenly have found ‘Russians under the bed’. A new red scare for a new age, how quaint.
This is after the Russians marched into Georgia and then Hillary gave them the reset button. That aggression did not seem to bother the Dems.
This is after Bill Clinton received $500K for a speech in Russia from a small investment bank - the trouble is that there are no I-banks, it was a front for Putin. No one is upset that Bill took $500K to grease the skids for Uranium One. These crying Dems are hypocrites, and this sudden ant-Russian toughness is too little and too late.
It was FDR who surrendered eastern Europe to those bastards.
Wonder who the new FBI and CIA directors will be?
So like any private company it may provide the conclusion the customer, in this case the DNC, wants.
So it reasonable to say that DNC would be motivation to be able to say the leak was due to an outside hack vs and inside leak?.. the answer is clearly yes
And went in the history has the US Government started an action against a foreign government on the word of a private company?..
Does the FBI have jurisdiction enabling it to investigate the DNC computers??
Shouldn’t be the other way around? The DNC should ask the AG to have the FBI investigate?
Why do we even need 17 ‘intelligence’ agencies if we outsource the work to private companies that are “pretty good”?
Fire them. Put a bunch of “pretty good” private companies on the on the payroll as contractors do to the work our agencies apparently won’t do.
It would save a fortune in government pensions and benefits
This still misses the point?
Russians hacking the DNS probably did happen. But that doesn’t mean they leaked the info. That was an insider that leaked it.
Hell Russians have been hacking us for damn near ever so this isn’t news. The guy murdered from the DNC is most likely the source of the leak—he was pissed about Bernie being scammed by the DNC.
Both directors of the CIA and FBI need to go and the both restructured (CIA greatly downsized and budget reduced, everything it does is illegal and not in the bill that created it in 1948 anyway.)
Both directors of the CIA and FBI need to go and the both restructured (CIA greatly downsized and budget reduced, everything it does is illegal and not in the bill that created it in 1948 anyway.)
The FBI outsourcing of the server investigation went to a company with a CEO who has a Russian name. Demitri ????
And these are the guys that gave us the information that sent us to war in Iraq.
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