Posted on 03/02/2018 5:48:32 AM PST by b4its2late
It seems Nellie Ohr was well aware the National Security Agency can intercept and store every communication on the Internet. Did that affect her decision to become a ham radio operator?
In the late 1950s, when I was entering early adolescence, I became an amateur radio operator. It was like joining a very large audio-visual club whose geekiness was on steroids. Along with knowledge of electronics and Morse code, being a total techno-weirdo was an absolute pre-requisite.
The world back then seemed to be a much larger place, and communicating with foreign countries via the short-wave spectrum was a challenging and random proposition. So it was fun and exciting to communicate by code or voice with hams in remote parts of the planet. At least at first.
Unfortunately, the conversations were confined to exchanging names and locations, describing the strength and clarity of the other operator’s signal, and discussing the type of equipment and antenna being used. This never varied.
For example, I once had a chance contact with a Christian missionary in the far-away Belgian Congo. At the time, the Belgians were relinquishing colonial control, Katanga Province had declared independence, and a bloody civil war had broken out. The missionary briefly mentioned in passing that the communist-backed Simba rebels were lurking about, but so far so good. With that small detail out of the way, he then quickly moved on to truly important matters such as the fact that he was using a homemade transmitter, a Hammarlund HQ-110 receiver, and a dipole antenna. And that was that.
It made no difference whether I was communicating with Great Britain, Alaska, Kwajalein, or across the street. The conversation was always the same, and it became mind-numbingly boring. After high school, I let my ham license lapse and had no further contact with amateur radio until a few years ago, when I met an active operator at a social event.
Upon learning that I had once been a ham, he urged me to return to the fold. I responded by holding up my cell phone and pointing out the obvious. With this little device, I could use voice, email, or text messages to easily and reliably contact anyone else similarly equipped anywhere on the face of the earth. Equally important, I could speak to people who might have something more to talk about than signal strength and equipment. So why in today’s world would I or anyone else become a ham operator?
A Curious Question Indeed
That brings us to Nellie Ohr, holder of amateur radio call sign KM4UDZ. Ohr graduated from Harvard University in 1983 with a degree in history and Russian literature. She studied in the Soviet Union in 1989 and obtained a PhD in Russian history in 1990.
For those of you who may be tempted to read her 400-plus page PhD thesis, here’s a spoiler alert: in murdering untold millions, Joseph Stalin may have engaged in some “excesses” which, in her words, “sometimes represented desperate measures taken by a government that had little real control over the country.” Translated into simple English, she meant, “Hey, cut the guy some slack. Creating a proletarian paradise can be tough and anybody can get carried away.”
She is said to be fluent in the Russian language and an expert on cybersecurity. Her husband is Bruce Ohr, the former number four official in President Obama’s Justice Department.
According to a sworn court filing by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson, she was hired by that firm to conduct opposition research on behalf of the Clinton campaign against candidate Donald Trump. In his statement, Simpson acknowledged bank records reflect that Fusion GPS contracted with her “to help our company with its research and analysis of Mr. Trump.”
At the same time, Fusion GPS retained the services of former British spy and FBI informant Christopher Steele to obtain derogatory information from his Russian sources about Trump. The final Fusion GPS product became the now-discredited eponymous Steele dossier, which James Comey’s FBI and Obama’s DOJ used to obtain Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to spy on a Trump campaign member.
Who Are Nellie and Bruce Ohr?
The so-called Nunes memorandum by the Republican majority on the House Intelligence Committee states Nellie Ohr was “employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump” and added that her husband “later provided the FBI with all of his wife’s opposition research.” Sen. Lindsey Graham has stated publicly that she “did the research for Mr. Steele.”
We now know that, before the House Intelligence Committee, Simpson disclosed that he met personally with Bruce Ohr “at his request, after the November 2016 election to discuss our findings regarding Russia and the election.” That committee also learned that during the election campaign, Bruce Ohr met with Steele, the dossier’s author.
It has also come out that Bruce Ohr failed to report the source of his wife’s income from Fusion GPS on his DOJ ethics disclosure forms. Such disclosure is mandatory, and Ohr’s omission raises many questions.
For example, under the law, such an omission could be considered evidence tending to prove his consciousness of guilt. Why would he, in effect, conceal by omission his wife’s employment by the firm that produced the meretricious Steele dossier that his own employer, the Obama DOJ, submitted under oath to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for authorization to spy on the Trump campaign and presidency? Was he trying to hide his connections with Fusion GPS? If so, why? And what inference should a jury draw from such concealment?
He is not alone in this regard. What about Nellie Ohr’s ham radio license?
Why Did Nellie Ohr Suddenly Become a Ham in 2016? Ohr is a member of Women in International Security, which describes itself as supporting “research projects and policy engagement initiatives on critical international security issues, including the nexus between gender and security.” She has done cybersecurity consulting for Accenture, a politically connected firm, for which she gave a presentation on “Ties Between Government Intelligence Services and Cyber Criminals – Closer Than You Think?”
Did she develop an overwhelming middle-aged desire to talk to geeks over the radio?
It is apparent that, between her own professional experience and her marriage to a top DOJ official, she was well aware of the ability of the National Security Agency to intercept and store every communication on the Internet. Did this knowledge have anything to do with her mid-life decision to become a ham radio operator and communicate outside cyberspace?
I got into amateur radio because I was a horny, zit-infested teenager with no hope of ever successfully interacting with members of the opposite sex. Faced with that reality, I sublimated my priapic energies into learning electronics and building radios. My sublimated adolescent urges were so strong that, on several occasions, I almost invented the Internet 20 years before the Pentagon and Al Gore got around to it.
That’s why I became a ham. So what’s Nellie’s excuse? Did she develop an overwhelming middle-aged desire to talk to geeks over the radio? Was this a case of Sudden Onset Geek Syndrome? Or is there some other less benign explanation?
What Was Happening When Nellie Ohr Got Her License On May 23, 2016, she received a technician-level amateur radio license. The timing is significant. The presidential campaign was underway and she and her employer, Fusion GPS, were digging for dirt in Russia to use against Trump. Given her cybersecurity knowledge, was Nellie Ohr hoping to use non-cyber short wave communications to hide her participation in that nefarious effort from the NSA?
Recall that, in early 2016, NSA head Admiral Mike Rogers became aware of “ongoing” and “intentional” violations and abuse of FISA surveillance, which he subsequently exposed in testimony before Congress. Thereafter, pressure mounted within the Obama administration to fire him.
Rogers and his NSA posed a potential threat to Fusion GPS’s operation as well as the anti-Trump elements at the FBI and DOJ.
The week after the presidential election, when he was facing removal from his post, Rogers visited the president-elect at Trump Tower. On November 19, 2016, Reuters reported that Rogers’ decision “to travel to New York to meet with Trump on Thursday without notifying superiors caused consternation at senior levels of the [Obama] administration.”
The day following Rogers’ visit, the president-elect’s transition team vacated Trump Tower and moved its operations to New Jersey. Was this because Rogers had warned Trump that he and his transition team were being subjected to illegal government surveillance? While that is unknown, it is clear that Rogers was not and had never been an Obama team player, such that he and his agency posed a potential threat to Fusion GPS’s operation as well as the anti-Trump elements at the FBI and DOJ.
So, was Nellie Ohr’s late-in-life foray into ham radio an effort to evade the Rogers-led NSA detecting her participation in compiling the Russian-sourced Steele dossier? Just as her husband’s omissions on his DOJ ethics forms raise an inference of improper motive, any competent prosecutor could use the circumstantial evidence of her taking up ham radio while digging for dirt on Trump to prove her consciousness of guilt and intention to conceal illegal activities.
This type of circumstantial evidence can be quite powerful. For example, a video of a nun buying a bustier at Victoria’s Secret would not be direct evidence that she was having an affair. But it most assuredly would prompt a jury to seriously wonder about her motives and commitment to celibacy. The same can be said for Nelly’s ham license. Just what was she up to?
Undoubtedly further information on this topic will be forthcoming. But, in the meantime, it is fair to ask in the ham vernacular of yesteryear, “Dit-dah-dah; dah; dit-dit-dah-dit?” That’s Morse code for “WTF?”
George Parry is a former federal and state prosecutor who practices law in Philadelphia. He blogs at knowledgeisgood.net and may be reached at kignet1@gmail.com.
If you haven't, I would highly recommend checking out the Dan Bongino website, specifically, if you want to catch up on this, go to this link: Dan Bongino Web Page with Episode 628-scroll almost all the way to the bottom
Beginning at Episode 628 on January 8th, he begins to reveal in well explained detail what is going on with this fraudlent dossier.
The podcasts are entertaining and informative, but the links he provides for each show are invaluable.
He has been talking in great detail about this. Dan Bongino worked in the NYPD for about four years before joining the Secret Service, and worked on the Presidential Protection detail.
He knows what he is talking about, and has great insight into all this.
That's not true. I distinctly remember also talking about the weather.
The past year has seen cyberthreat actors arrested, indicted or identified in intelligence reports by US and European governments that many experts believe point to potential ties between government intelligence services and cybercrime actors. In this session learn about the drivers and mechanisms between state and criminal cooperation through a case study that will explore how seemingly ordinary cybercrime can be combined with strategic espionage.
Ten bucks says the case study involves the Russians and the St. Petersberg troll farm, among other things.
The thing is, ham transmissions are almost entirely En Clair. I’m not entirely clear on using encryption while transmitting in modes like PSK etc, but I do know you can’t use language that obscures or obfuscates what you’re communicating. I also know that when it comes to radio, there’s almost always *someone* listening. Ham, for better or worse (as alluded to in the article), has a lot of basement-dweller types, people with no social lives, nothing better to do than sink thousands of dollars into elaborate radio shacks that often include scanners and monitors that can pick up transmissions across an incredible span of frequencies, and record them for later review.
Amateur radio is only a mysterious, “secret” form of communication to someone who isn’t very familiar with it. In reality, odds are high that if you transmit on ham frequencies, someone heard you. Further, the “Technician” license is the lowest class (something you can get with relative ease in about two weeks of studying). It has a limited range of bands you can transmit on, and they’re bands used by a lot of folks. If she had managed to land an “Amateur Extra” license that opens up a bunch of obscure frequencies, I *might* be willing to believe she intended it as a backchannel form of communication, but there’s no way she’s hiding anything with only a Technician license.
I’ve been to the NSA.
If they communicated via Amateur Radio, IT’S RECORDED...........................
‘Hiding’ is relative.
They also used the deep web so that their superiors
would be slow to catch their comms re humping and sedition.
And disposable phones, too.
k
The author’s characterization of current ham radio conversations reflecting the same subjects of radio-tech exchange as in his youth is only partially correct. On some conversations, you’d think you were at a medical conference with the exchange of info on various maladies of the oldsters behind the microphone. While there are some who wish to keep the exchange of “geek - geek - geek” as a reply to “geek - geek - geek”, it is possible to engage in a substantive conversation occasionally.
Ohr’s license level is what makes it curious as it is relatively limited on authorized frequencies and modes for long-distance communications. I’m not saying it wasn’t possible but it will be interesting to find out exactly how she used ham radio for communication support of her enterprise.
Good. Hope so.
Yep, he’s the man. Been following him ever since he started subbing for the Great One.
Deep web and disposable phones? I had not heard that. Can you expand a bit?
Well that article was a bust. I figured he would get down in the dirt and explain why amateur frequencies are covert enough to be used for what Ms. Ohr allegedly did.
Perhaps a case of hiding in plain sight? Ham radio is so basic no fool would ever use that for traitorous plots so why bother to monitor it?
“but there’s no way she’s hiding anything with only a Technician license.”
You are assuming she followed the rules.
L
Did they have communication codes? i.e. “The moon rises with the east wind” “The birds in the orchids are restless” “The elephant will walk on its normal path when the winds join” or just 1329 7593 2223 9908 7643 etc.. Their own little SOI’s?
“If they communicated via Amateur Radio, IT’S RECORDED...........................”
So what? They have a record of Hillary’s deleted emails, too, but no one can see them.
Unless she used a UHF/VHF transceiver through a web portal, text or voice, I don't see how she would gain security. That was my first thought when I read about her. That is a possibility.
Now ask another question? Did they own a boat? Did it have commercial radio on board. If not they may have tried to use the much cheaper amateur radio approach to coms on the boat. That would be a benign explanation.
Until I read your article I did not know about international connections by Nellie, other than with Steele.
Note, I've been a licensed Ham Op since 1976 (Advanced), Extra since 1986 and hold commercial radio license too. Have taught classes for both types of licenses.
I'm not as active as I once was, but back in the day I ran with the super techs and engineers. Miss that.
Yes and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Russian who advised her how to avoid surveillance.
“it’s recorded” Bump!
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