Senator Mark Warner is Dead Wrong on Russia by Publius Tacitus

 

 

 Almost all of the readers of this blog, I suspect, do not remember the House UnAmerican Committee hearings investigating communist subversion in the 1940s. I know that Colonel Lang was a youngster back then and does remember, but if you are younger than 69 you only know about it from history. I raise that because it appears to me that we are now in a full fledged new era of Red Scare. The Russians, so we are told, hacked our election and threatened our democracy. If you disagree with this and try to argue the other point then you are nothing more than a Putin puppet or Kremlin stooge.

 

Today's hearing put on by the Senate Intelligence Committee turned out to be nothing more than a boring piece of kabuki theater designed to portray Russia as a rising menace and the United States as an innocent naif simply trying to enjoy the blessings of democracy. The outrage expressed by Democrat and Republican Senators over "outside interference" in our sacred democracy goes is laughable. Do none of these legislators remember what the United States, via CIA covert actions, did in Iran, Guatemala, Italy, Greece, Vietnam or Chile, just to mention a few? An appreciation of irony appears to be a lost art in the fantasy world that is Washington, D.C.

 

Senator Mark Warner is part of this anti-Russia propaganda onslaught and has said some things this week that are demonstrably false. When he appeared yesterday alongside Senator Richard Burr, Warner insisted that those nefarious Rooskies had manipulated Google searches to return results favoring media claimed to be Russian propaganda outlets (e.g., RT and Sputnik News). He made this claim last Sunday on Face the Nation:

 

"We saw manipulation of certain algorithms, so that if you Googled certain items, you got Russia news, [RT] News, other false news. We saw the selective hacking into DNC and individuals that then tried to leak that information to benefit Mr. Trump," (Sunday). 

 

Senator Warner reiterated this point today during his remarks at the Senate Intel hearing:

 

“Let me start off on that. I think we know about the hacking and the selective leaking of information. But as a former tech guy, what really concerns me is at least some reports, and we have to get to the bottom of this, is that there were upwards of 1,000 paid Internet trolls working out of a facility in Russia, in effect taking over a series of computers which are then called a botnet. They can then generate news down to specific areas. It’s been reported to me, we have to find this out, specific areas in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania where you would not have been receiving off of whoever your vendor might have been, Trump versus Clinton, in the waning days of the election, but instead Clinton is sick, or Clinton is taking money from some source, fake news. We’ve also seen as well the fact that if you think about — if you look just, for example, if you googled election hacking during the period leading up to the election and immediately afterwards, you wouldn’t get Fox or ABC or New York Times. What you get is four out of the first five news stories that popped up were Russian propaganda. 

 

Do tell. Well, I cannot ignore a challenge. I did the Google search with the term he suggested, "election hacking," and limited the search to the time leading up to November 8. Here is what I got:

 

 

 

Search Results

How to Hack an Election in 7 Minutes - POLITICO Magazine

www.politico.com/.../2016-elections-russia-hack-how-to-hack-an-election-in-seven-m...

 

Aug 5, 2016 - When Princeton professor Andrew Appel decided to hack into a voting machine, he didn't try to mimic the Russian attackers who hacked into the Democratic ...

How Russian Spies Hacked This Election - Esquire

www.esquire.com/news-politics/a49791/russian-dnc-emails-hacked/

 

Oct 20, 2016 - How Russia Pulled Off the Biggest Election Hack in U.S. History. Putin, Wikileaks, the NSA and the DNC email fiasco that gave Trump and Clinton another reason to be at odds. ... Returning to the Panama Papers, Putin cited WikiLeaks to insist that "officials and state agencies in the ...

Fears of hacked election ebb in quiet, watchful night - USA Today

www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/11/08/cyber-issues-loom.../93460494/

 

Nov 8, 2016 - SAN FRANCISCO — Despite concerns about possible attempts to hack or otherwise tamper with the U.S. election, voting appears to have gone smoothly, with ...

How to Hack an Election - Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-to-hack-an-election/

 

Mar 31, 2016 - How to Hack an Election. Andrés Sepúlveda rigged elections throughout Latin America for almost a decade. He tells his story for the first time. By Jordan ...

Feds find evidence Florida election-systems vendor was hacked ...

www.cnn.com/2016/10/12/politics/florida-election-hack/

 

Oct 12, 2016 - Federal investigators believe Russian hackers were behind cyberattacks on a contractor for Florida's election system that may have exposed the personal data  ...

 

 

I do not see a single Russian source in this list. Don't take my word for it. Try it yourself. Do a Google search, select the custom date feature and set the search for 1 February 2016 thru 8 November 2016.

 

Much of the contrived hysteria about alleged Russian interference in our electoral process is downright nonsensical. I listened to Senator Warner's charges in disbelief:

 

As the hearing begins let’s take just one moment to review what we already know. Russia’s President Vladamir Putin ordered a deliberate campaign carefully constructed to undermine our election. First, Russia struck at our political institutions by electronically breaking into the headquarters of one of our political parties and stealing vast amounts of information. Russian operatives also hacked e-mails to steal personal messages and other information from individuals ranging from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta to former Secretary of state Colin Powell. This stolen information was then weaponized.”

 

Weaponized? If you recall, and again, don't take my word for it, the bulk of attention was not focused on the DNC emails and the Podesta emails; instead the majority of the email stories focused on Hillary Clinton's illegal use of a private server.  Just do a Google Search using the customized date feature and you will see that the coverage of the DNC emails and Podesta emails was largely ignored by most of the media.

 

The claim that Russia's propaganda outlets--RT and Sputnik News--along with "paid internet trolls" undermined the terrific campaign of that outstanding candidate, Hillary Clinton, only requires that you suspend all intelligent thought, develop Alzheimer's disease and refuse to look at any facts. Ignore the fact that Hillary Clinton did not spend much time or money in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Ignore the dissembling that Hillary engaged in with regards to her use of private emails and a personal server. Ignore her shrill voice and robotic appearance. Ignore her passing out on 11 September 2016. Ignore all of this and just blame the Russians for the Democrat debacle.

 

I continue to look for actual facts. Who were the paid trolls? How much were they paid? What articles of "fake" news took over the media coverage?

 

If you actually look at the facts about media coverage we can only conclude that the Russians were getting their ass kicked by traditional media. Politico reported:

A whopping 91 percent of news coverage about Donald Trump on the three broadcast nightly newscasts over the past 12 weeks has been 'hostile', a new study finds.

The study, conducted by the conservative Media Research Center, found that not only has Trump received significantly more broadcast network news coverage than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, but nearly all of that coverage (91%) has been hostile, according to the study.

In addition, the networks spent far more airtime focusing on the personal controversies involving Trump, such as his treatment of women, than controversies surrounding Clinton, such as her email practices or the Clinton Foundation.

 Joe Concha, in an article that appeared on the Hill last October, made the same point:

 

Quick review: The broadcast evening news programs on ABC, NBC and CBS covered allegations against Trump by several women who claim he sexually assaulted them for more than 23 minutes combined on Thursday night.

 

But revelations in the WikiLeaks email dump of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta — which included derogatory comments by senior campaign officials about Catholics, Latinos and the NAACP, sympathy for Wall Street, advocation for open borders and blatant examples of media collusion with said campaign — got a whole 1 minute and 7 seconds combined. Ratio of negative coverage of Trump vs. Clinton: 23:1.

 

In print on Thursday, it was no better. The New York Times — known as the paper of record — had 11 negative stories on Trump, including one in the sports section. But zero on Clinton/WikiLeaks. Ratio: 11:0.

 

So while it's understood the Trump allegations are an easier sell because sex always triumphs over substance, 23:1 and 11:0 is a prime example of a media that has gone off the rails with no hope of redeeming itself for some time, if ever.  

 

Russia is not the adversary that we faced during the Cold War. The Russia of the post-Communist era is a different beast. But it appears that very few of our current leaders, both Republicans and Democrats, do not want to hear that and are choosing instead to paint Russia as an implacable foe. That is not only ignorant, but dangerous. Let's focus on facts.

Comments

[Willybilly]

Agreed fully... but the problem is that even cooler heads and respected pundits are still trying to sell themselves and the public on this utterly ridiculous fallacy.... painting the usa as a banana republic easily manipulated....

[Seamus Padraig]

In fact, Google's search-algorithm is notorious for DISFAVORING alt-media sources. That's one reason why I abandoned Google several years back: their filter bubble. I now use DuckDuckGo.com, which does not track or store your results, and does not rely on filters.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

Hey, I am only a few months away from being 69, but I learned about the House UnAmerican Activites hearings because our local public school system had not yet been corrupted with socialist, pc nonsense. I was too young when it was going on, but it did often come up in my studies as I prepared to teach English.

You can't study Steinbeck without knowing his communist phase. And you can't teach "The Crucible" without knowing how Arthur Miller was using the Salem witch trials as a metaphor for the communist scare he had been subjected to.

But, my problem with your post is that your logic is too darned hard to deny, and to read through it takes a little time. It's not a Tweet, for heavens sake.

As am ex-English teacher, I often have fantasies of forcing students to read using the method in Clockwork Orange to try to force all the violent tendencies our of the main character in that novel. Only my idea would be to force some logic and knowledge into the heads of those who prefer scandal and nonsense.

And by the way, shouldn't we also have a history lesson about how some of our leaders--I believe Slick Willy one of them--did much after the fall of the USSR to install an economy in Russia that could not hold and ended up collapsing.

[Eric Newhill]

IMO, Warner and the rest know it's all BS. It's just all about having a chance to remind the public that Clinton won the popular vote and, in states she lost, it was really close. Therefore, Trump is illegitimate and Congress doesn't need to work with him at all - or something like that. The left wing base eats it up. US politics at its worst.

The republic is in its last stage of life with fly-over/rust belt America fighting for its life and the elites - especially the left leaning ones - telling them to eat cake (or high tech mumbo jumbo). Either this Russia matter + political spying gets settled and filed away in its proper place (the round file and prison, respectively) or all hell is going to break loose in a manner from which we will never recover, IMO.

[Mikey]

It will be interesting to see Google's official reaction to this, if any.

[doug]

Russia is certainly not the USSR. Much of this is purely political. The Democrats and portions of the Republicans see this as an opportunity to simply attack piggybacking on the strongly embedded negative association of the Russian lead COMINTERN. That was a very real threat. One I paid attention to as I had a deep antagonism towards Socialism let alone full blown Communism. When the USSR started disintegrating it was clear to me early on that it was real and due to the stagnation intrinsic in top down planning, an immutable aspect of socialism. Idealism easily runs amuck, paved with good intentions and all that. That's now in the dustbin of history.

But memes persist and the notion that Russia is somehow some intrinsic enemy bent on World domination is still there. They are a country with interests. One with a rather nationalistic people that have been through a lot of crap. But they also have, perhaps, a more realistic view of their limits than many of us in the West.

[kgw]

All this from those who say nothing about the theft of Socotra Island for yet another surveillance/drone base. The insane clown posse has never stopped, will it ever? /R Only when throttled to dust...

[Jim MacMillan]

Publius Tacitus: Is Marco Rubio also wrong that his campaign committee was hacked by Russians?

[Publius Tacitus]

Yeah, blame the Russians for his loss (snark is not directed at you, it is rhetorical). Does that make sense? What exactly was hacked? How did that adversely affect his campaign? I think Little Marco had other problems. Blame the Russians and/or Putin becomes the excuse for everything it would appear.

[scott s.]

Jim MacMillan:
It appears what Rubio has said is "former members of my presidential campaign team, who had access to the information of my presidential campaign, were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia" which seems to be a bit more restrained than your characterization. In particular we don't know who the "members" are, how they were "targeted" nor how the ultimate source "IP addresses" were determined.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

The NYT is now reporting that Nunes's sources were two WH officials, thus insinuating that it's just not important, i guess.

Hard ever to believe the NYT. What would this mean really if true?

[richard Armstrong]

PT,

You may not understand how the Google Advanced Search works.

Your query limiting results to the time "leading up to November 8" returned sites/posts that were created prior to November 8. It did not return results as they were prior to November 8.

There is no way to ask Google to display the results it would have delivered on any prior date.

Neither you, nor Senator Warner can conclusively state what results Google would have returned prior to the election unless you had taken a screen shot of those results at the time they were returned.

The issue is not and has never been whether or not Russians attempted to influence the election - the issue is whether or not there was collaboration by the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

Comey said the investigation “includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.”

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/blog/2017/03/20/comey-rogers-testify-house-intelligence-committee

[b]

In gact, the NYT reports that Nunes' claims about the intel reports are true. Deeply buried in the piece:

"the officials’ description of the intelligence is in line with Mr. Nunes’s own characterization of the material, "

[Fred]

Mikey,

indeed. If your company advertised on Google you got defrauded since their algorithms obviously didn't take your ads to the people you intended them for. You should sue.

[Fred]

Priam,

No, no. The NYT is stating publicly that administration officials - the leakers - are conducting surveillance of senior members of Congress. That would be Obama era officials - unofficially since they are not named and provided this hit-piece evidence on the condition of anonymity. The NYT would never make anything up. Just ask Judith Miller or Jason Blair.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

I have developed the theory that the "Gray Lady" has Dementia, but a long-standing form of it.

I didn't read the article and will have to look for it. I got second-had reporting fro a conservative site. I'll have to try to find it. But reading the NYT has always made me feel dirty. :-)

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

I use DDG too. Works fine.

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

Eric, it's also about distracting the Dem-voting sheeple from demanding of their party leaders a no- holds-barred inquiry into why their party. Got trashed up and down the ballot in 2016. And 2014. And 2010.

[Ex-PFC Chuck]

Eric, I'm reading Michael Grants "The Fall of the Roman Empirce" now and the parallels are simply frightening.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

I think you are right there, but it is hidden, actually drowned out by the drumbeat of the idea that Nunes must recuse himself. Spicer is a trooper, I think, and I have to agree with him that what's in the reports are far more important than how those reports made it too the light of day.

[Priam's Crazy Daughter]

O.K. I read it, and I think I understand what Fred is saying.

And, as usual, I have confirmed my opinion that the NYT is an evil force in American politics, has been for a long time.

Can't wait to get Publius Tacitus's opinion about this new development in the Nunes saga.

[helenk3]

if hilary had won would the Russian hack nonsense even be a story? How much air time did the selling of the uranium to Russia get? How much air time did the hilary e-mails get? they just dropped some more yesterday. see anything about it on msm?

for those so anxious to go to WW3 did they forget that obama decapitated our military? Or are they thinking they will make money off the military build up?

McCain been trying to get the US into a war with Russia for years. Do they have information on his Viet Nam prison days that he wants destroyed?
Lindsey who has never been on the battle field sure seems anxious to send others to one.

Have they not figured out yet that if we go to war with Russia, the whole ME along with Europe will become a hell that no one will recover from.

the democrats LOST not because of Russia but because of their own stupidity and contempt for the American citizen

[helenk3]

stolen from the crawdad hole. thought it was interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IClVKyb63m4

[Keith Harbaugh]

Well, I do remember the accusations of "McCarthyism", and criticism of HUAC that were so common in the 1950s.
The offensive question then:

"Are you now or have you even been a member of the Communist Party?"

The idea was that that was an outrageous question to ask. On the other hand, my opinion is that that was a quite justified question to ask of the people who were guiding America's opinions.

Now the question is:

"Have you ever been in communication with any Russians?

The idea, to some, is that any such communication is automatically suspect, or can be portrayed as suspect.

Sounds to me like the new McCartyism.

[David]

PCD,

One can think of the Times as "Pravda on the Hudson" and the Washington Post as "Izvestia on the Potomac" in that during the old days of the USSR, people read Pravda and Izvestia in order to find out what the party said was news. Today the Times and Post fill that role for the Borg.