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President Barack Obama reportedly told Russian President Vladimir Putin in October that directly interfering with the U.S. election could result in an "armed conflict." According to NBC News, Obama opted to use the red phone to contact Moscow directly, a communication system that dates back to the Cold War. It's not an actual telephone, but instead sends a secure email message between the two countries. "International law, including the law for armed conflict, applies to actions in cyberspace," part of the Oct. 31 message read, according to NBC. "We will hold Russia to those standards."

arly last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides. Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

Saboteurs in the U.S. intelligence community posing as patriots have been working hard to drive President Donald Trump from the White House. Former National Security Agency intelligence analyst and former War College professor John R. Schindler bragged on Twitter last week about the spy-led plot his friends are conducting against the president. “Now we go nuclear,” he tweeted. “IC [intelligence community] war [is] going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior IC friend, it began: ‘He will die in jail.'” “US intelligence is not the problem here,” Schindler added. “The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details,...

The FBI supports the the CIA's assessment that Russia acted to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidency, The Washington Post reported Friday, citing U.S. officials. "Earlier this week, I met separately with (Director) FBI James Comey and DNI Jim Clapper, and there is strong consensus among us on the scope, nature, and intent of Russian interference in our presidential election," CIA Director John Brennan said in an intra-agency message, the Post reported. Two U.S. intelligence officials confirmed to NBC that FBI Director James Comey and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper concur with the CIA's view of Russian involvement...

Attorneys for The New York Times and the Justice Department are due in federal court Tuesday as part of a lawsuit seeking to force the Pentagon to release full copies of more than a thousand pages of work-related emails Defense Secretary Ash Carter sent and received from his personal account. Carter, who became Pentagon chief in February 2015, acknowledged in December he conducted official business on his personal email account during his first few months in office, in violation of department rules.

The Washington Post editors refuse to publicly release the smoking gun “anonymous letter” that serves as the foundation of their sensational charge that White House advisor Jared Kushner sought a secret, back-channel to Russian officials. The “anonymous letter” was part of a front-page article claiming the president’s son-in-law sought to set up a private communications channel to Russian officials during a discussion with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. The piece was published Sunday and received high profile coverage throughout the long Memorial Day weekend. “The Post was first alerted in mid-December to the meeting by an anonymous letter, which said, among...

U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has revised and retracted statements it used to buttress claims of Russian hacking during last year's American presidential election campaign. The shift followed a VOA report that the company misrepresented data published by an influential British think tank. (snip) VOA reported Tuesday that the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which publishes an annual reference estimating the strength of world armed forces, disavowed the CrowdStrike report and said it had never been contacted by the company. Ukraine's Ministry of Defense also has stated that the combat losses and hacking never happened. (snip) After CrowdStrike released its...

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog, Last week, I published two posts on cyber security firm CrowdStrike after becoming aware of inaccuracies in one of its key reports used to bolster the claim that operatives of the Russian government had hacked into the DNC. This is extremely important since the DNC hired CrowdStrike to look into its hack, and at the same time denied FBI access to its servers. Before reading any further, you should read last week’s articles if you missed them the first time. Credibility of Cyber Firm that Claimed Russia Hacked the DNC Comes Under Serious Question What...

An ex-KGB chief suspected of helping the former MI6 spy Christopher Steele to compile his dossier on Donald Trump may have been murdered by the Kremlin and his death covered up. it has been claimed. Oleg Erovinkin, a former general in the KGB and its successor the FSB, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow on Boxing Day in mysterious circumstances. Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister and now head of Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, who is repeatedly named in the dossier.

Satellite Pics Suggest Iran, North Korea Cooperating on Nuclear Research by TheTower.org Staff | 12.29.16 4:28 pm The discovery of a working North Korean missile site that was previously thought to be inactive may suggest that the country is cooperating with Iran on ballistic missile and nuclear technology, Voice of America reported Wednesday. PRESS RELEASE: Strategic Sentinel Finds Previously Unknown North Korean Site Read more here: https://t.co/NJk9a9LBgd#NorthKorea #VOA @W7VOA pic.twitter.com/f3S24izQOn — Strategic Sentinel (@StratSentinel) December 28, 2016 Satellite images taken and analyzed by the intelligence firm Strategic Sentinel discovered a missile silo in Geumchang-ri, a mountainous area in North Pyongan...

WASHINGTON — An influential British think tank and Ukraine’s military are disputing a report that the U.S. cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike has used to buttress its claims of Russian hacking in the presidential election. The CrowdStrike report, released in December, asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists. But the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) told VOA that CrowdStrike erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion. IISS disavowed any connection to the CrowdStrike report. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense also has claimed combat losses and hacking...

In the 1964 movie “Dr. Strangelove,” the part of Brig. Gen. Jack D. Ripper, described in Wikipedia as a “paranoid ultra-nationalist,” was played by Sterling Hayden. If the movie was made today, the role would go to Michael T. Flynn — on the face of it as much a paranoid ultra-nationalist as the fictitious Ripper. Flynn, though, is no fictional creation. He’s Donald Trump’s choice for national security adviser. Flynn, a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired lieutenant general, is already known for his bizarre tweets, not to mention his bizarre management style. (He was ousted...

Islamic State published a video on Sunday threatening Egyptian Christians and showing the last statement of a man it said was responsible for the deadly bombing in December of a Coptic cathedral in Cairo. The masked man in battle-dress, whom the group identified as Abu Abdallah al-Masri, is seen encouraging militants all over the world not to give up and promising Islamists jailed in Egypt they will be freed soon, when the group "liberates" Cairo. President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had already identified the bomber as a 22-year-old student called Mahmoud Shafik, and it is believed Abu Abdallah al-Masri was his...

In 1977, Carl Bernstein published an exposé of a CIA program known as Operation Mockingbird, a covert program involving, according to Bernstein, “more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency.” Bernstein found that in “many instances” CIA documents revealed that “journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.” Fast-forward to December 2016, and one can see that there isn’t much need for a covert government program these days.

(Full article title: Out of work: Chelsea Clinton's husband Marc Mezvinsky shut down his hedge fund in December just weeks after Hillary lost election) Marc Mezvinsky quietly shut down his hedge fund Eaglevale Partners back in December. Bloomberg reports that Mr. Chelsea Clinton and his partners are now working to return money to investors, including Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd C. Blankfein. The decision to shutter the fund came just a few weeks after Mezvinsky's mother-in-law Hillary lost the election to president Donald Trump. Mezvinsky has kept a low profile ever since Hillary's loss in the election, but was photographed by...

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods. The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions...

All our Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, is missing is a fiddle. For the duration of the seemingly endless Syrian civil war, she has figuratively fiddled while that country burns. Now, with one foot out the door from a tenure that has all but obliterated her once formidable reputation as an anti-genocide activist, she’s decided to kick Israel in the teeth. What most amazes me about this past Friday’s anti-Israel resolution that was cooked up by Barack Obama, John Kerry, Susan Rice, and Power is not that it took place. We have long known that the quartet had...

SNIPA hushed up fact concerning Kerry’s personal life, involves his younger daughter from his deceased first wife, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry. Kerry’s daughter married Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahid, an Iranian-American physician and the son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles, in October 2009.SNIPKerry’s family connection to Iran is no secret, and in the melting pot that is the United States, it is not entirely surprising. What is significant is that as part of the wedding preparations, Kerry went to a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. He undoubtedly met the best man...

John F. Kerry was late to his own party. Staffers, journalists and other officials were gathered in the ornate Benjamin Franklin salon at the State Department on Dec. 14 for early Christmas festivities. But the secretary of State was nowhere to be seen. Kerry was on the telephone to various world leaders, trying to find out about a major diplomatic meeting — from which the United States had been excluded. The gathering, which sought to broker a resolution to the devastating Syrian conflict, took place six days later in Moscow and involved the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

Prior to the UN Security Council vote on anti-Israeli settlement resolution 2334, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with a Palestinian delegation in early December in Washington to discuss the draft, agreeing to cooperate, according to transcripts released by Egyptian daily Al-Youm Al-Saba'a. According to the report, Kerry along with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice, met with Secretary General of the PLO Executive Committee Saeb Erkat and Majed Faraj, head of the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Service. The reported transcripts reflect statements by numerous Israeli officials claiming that the resolution was orchestrated by the Obama administration. The source...