"Anatoly, you will not believe what the idiots proposed to me!" (Dramatization)

 

"Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington discussed the possibility of setting up a secret and secure communications channel between Trump’s transition team and the Kremlin, using Russian diplomatic facilities in an apparent move to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, according to U.S. officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Ambassador Sergey Kislyak reported to his superiors in Moscow that Kushner, son-in-law and confidant to then-President-elect Trump, made the proposal during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2 at Trump Tower, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by U.S. officials. Kislyak said Kushner suggested using Russian diplomatic facilities in the United States for the communications.

The meeting also was attended by Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser."  Washpost

-------------------

 So, what is revealed in this Washpost story?

1.  US SIGINT successfully intercepts and decrypts what must surely be encrypted Russian diplomatic communications.  You may think it is obvious that this is true but it is not obvious.  Governments always want to believe that their own communications are secured by systems that prevent penetration and decryption by their international adversaries.  A great deal of time and effort are expended on maintaining that illusion.  This story states above the fold, right corner that US officials who either produced the report of the intercept or received the report of this successful intercept outside the IC in State, Defense, the NSC, etc. informed the Washington Post of the frailty of Russian diplomatic communications.  I was once a fixture in the world of Special Security.  It was a basic belief in this field that a breach of security like this one reported in the Washpost would result in a massive effort by the penetrated party to change and improve communications systems.  Translation - US SIGINT might have to start all over again in the process of breaking into those communications.

2.  Jared Kushner does not seem to have understood the possibility that US SIGINT would intercept and decrypt any line of communications he managed to establish through Russian diplomatic facilities.  Conclusion -  He was a very ignorant fellow in such matters.

3.  LTG (ret.) Flynn was present at the meeting.  Flynn is a career intelligence officer who had been Director of DIA.  Surely, HE, knew better but evidently said nothing to Kushner like - Hey, dummy rich kid - you can't do something so stupid!  But, on the other hand, maybe it was Flynn's idea!  Yes!  I will bet that is the truth.  Flynn probably wanted to talk to the Russian generals privately.  Another dummy heard from!

4. US officials, evidently properly cleared, chose to violate their oath of clearance access to reveal one of the Crown Jewels of US intelligence from a sense of pique or frustrated revolutionary zeal.  These people can be IC officials or more likely they are cleared individual recipients who work in non-IC parts of the government.  IMO they deserve hanging.

Was Kislyak "taken aback" by the proposal.?  This was so brainless an idea that I would think that was true.  pl   

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/russian-ambassador-told-moscow-that-kushner-wanted-secret-communications-channel-with-kremlin/2017/05/26/520a14b4-422d-11e7-9869-bac8b446820a_story.html?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_kushner-705pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.6a520d843117

Comments

[different clue]

Larry Kart,

I don't know enough to guess how likely or unlikely another Constitutional Convention would ever be. But I fear that if we had one, it would "run away". And a Runaway ConCon might burn the Constitution into ash and then busy itself making little mud pies with the ashes.

[Larry Kart]

I'm not thinking of what the centralizing nationalists might want; they are, I believe, not among those in favor of a new constitutional convention because they fear the changes it might bring. Rather, I'm thinking of changes to the constitution via a new constitutional convention like a balanced budget amendment or attempts to regulate various so-called social issues. Is it not the case that support for a new constitutional convention comes almost exclusively from the Right, which hopes to thus bring to pass changes in the constitution like the ones I just mentioned?

[J]

Colonel,

Here's a DTIC public released student research report from 1981 Garmisch regarding маскировка:

http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a112903.pdf

[turcopolier]

J

I ran a year long study of maskirovka in DIA. pl

[different clue]

TV,

To suspect that Trump is not fit for office is not to retro-decide that Clinton would have been fit for office after all.

My low opinion of many aspects of Trump does not elevate my opinion-after-the-fact of Clinton. Nor does it make me wish in hindsight that I had voted for Clinton after all. I always considered Trump a dangerous risk worth running to avoid the certain danger of a President Clinton.

And so it might well seem for bks.

[Eric Newhill]

Fred,
Good point. I don't see where any of these people are saying they did it on Trump's behalf.

I begin to think that Guccifer2 in a US person.

I begin to think that this is all a US operation.

I will sorely disappointed if Trump doesn't clean these people up and out. Maybe even one car accidents are in order for some of them.

[Keith Harbaugh]

Re

US officials, evidently properly cleared,
chose to violate their oath of clearance access to reveal
one of the Crown Jewels of US intelligence

If the WaPo story is true, then that is a very true statement.
If those individuals are found,
the death penalty, preferably by firing squad,
would be the appropriate punishment.

[Cold War Zoomie]

"...some SIGINT reports are disseminated in "raw" form to recipients who are not analysts."

Thanks for the clarification. That's a side of "production" I didn't know, as usual. Back to minding the cogs in the machine.

[Keith Harbaugh]

TTG, I am starting to wonder if some Americans are not part of
the "far ranging Russian info op" you hypothesize.
Specifically, consider the first few paragraphs (above the section header) of
“The ‘Soft Coup’ of Russia-gate” by Robert Parry
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/13/the-soft-coup-of-russia-gate/
where Parry seems to think worrying about Russian attempts to bug the Oval Office is laughable.
Parry compares worrying about such things to vintage-1960 comedies and satires:

One could picture Boris and Natasha,
the evil spies in the Bullwinkle cartoons,
disguised as photographers
slipping listening devices between the cushions of the sofas.

Or we could hear how Russians are again threatening to “impurify all of our precious bodily fluids,”
as “Dr. Strangelove” character, Gen. Jack D. Ripper,
warned us in the 1964 movie.

I am willing to believe that the USG/MSM stories about, say,
the supposed chemical weapon attack in Syria
are spin to promote the interests of Israel,
but I am not willing to dismiss very proper concerns about Russian intelligence efforts.
For those totally naïve about such things, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)

Why would Parry dismiss such concerns?
That part of his article is clearly consistent with known Russian interests.

[SAC Brat]

Too weird, what a coincidence. I ran across that video two days ago while looking for the soundtracks for the Russian films Brother and Brother 2. "When passing through Passport control (in the United States), look confident and smile. They like that."

Like Audie Murphy and many others, Lyudmila Pavlichenko was probably too real for film.

A lot of Russian films are becoming available on the internet. Some films are a bit over the top (which country isn't filled to the tonsils with patriotic pom-poms and have a case of frog-butt?) but some give a perspective that was airbrushed out in the west for a long time.

I am not implying I like the Russians, but I think it is important to get into other peoples heads and see what they are seeing. Why not?

[Yeah, Right]

No, I didn't say that.

I said that I agreed that any "black bag job" on Trump Tower done under the authorization of a FISA or other court warrant would be legal.

What I pointed out (correctly) is that the absence of such a FISA warrant doesn't not mean that Trump Tower has not been bugged, and I brought up the instance of Tricky Dickie's plumbers to illustrate that point.

This is my theory: there is no reason to believe the claim that this intel was obtained by decrypting the communications between Moscow and its ambassador in Washington.

There is good reason to doubt that claim i.e. if it were true then this would itself constitute a major breach of "sources and methods".

So my theory is that this part of the story is false, in which case the intel had to have be obtained in some other manner.

As in: someone had a bug in that room.

I'm not saying that Obama ordered such a bugging.
I'm not saying that the US IC put such a bug in there.

All I'm suggesting is that the source of this intel was a bug in that room, and it went from there to WaPo via Person Or Persons Unknown.

[turcopolier]

Yeah, right

You should copyright that fantasy. A problem with your plot is that you don't actually have any real knowledge of how intelligence works in the US. pl

[turcopolier]

Keith Harbaugh

"I am not willing to dismiss very proper concerns about Russian intelligence efforts. For those totally naïve about such things, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) Why would Parry dismiss such concerns? That part of his article is clearly consistent with known Russian interests." Parry thinks it is bullshit because he is a grownup and can see that the Russian government of today is not the USSR. It has equities and they would be endangered by screwing around like that. pl

[turcopolier]

J

I mentioned to SWMBO that you evidently think me gullible and deceived by Russian maskirovka. She thinks that is funny having lived with me for 53 years and watched me operate against the Soviets. As I recall you were in OSI. CI people see a wilderness of mirrors everywhere. It is the James Jesus Angleton Syndrome. pl

[SAC Brat]

I feel sympathetic to the Russians. To observe all of what is happening in the US must be like being in a tree stand on a nature preserve and seeing a troop of monkeys come across a case of grenades and other armaments nearby. As a retired US Air Force engineer at church a few weeks ago said to me, "Why can't we have a Lavrov?"

Since one of the simplified explanations for the dissolution of the Soviet Union was that the populace lost faith in the elites and the news organs if the US had adults around they may want to figure out how to steer away from those rocks. Hell, if we asked nice, maybe some folks from outside the US could give some useful advise.

To paraphrase an old joke, no news and no truth.
https://sputniknews.com/russia/201705181053745864-trump-lavrov-joke/

[The Twisted Genius]

Jack,

I see no evidence that the Russians changed the outcome of the election. We cannot attempt to answer that question until we understand the full scope of the Russian info op. IMO Hillary lost that election because of her stale and outmoded ideas, most notably her fatally flawed foreign policies. I think her much vaunted ground game was equally outmoded. The Trump/RNC ground game was way more sophisticated and far reaching than anyone gives them credit for. It was an information operation (like all political campaigns) worthy of anything the Russians could have developed. It certainly wasn’t just a get out the vote campaign. It was also a suppress/discourage the vote campaign. Whether the Trump/RNC info op was executed in collusion with the Russian info op is what the current investigation seeks to discover.

[The Twisted Genius]

Fred,

I remember the stories about the Clintons being deeply involved with the Chinese during the Clinton administration. That was treasonous and scandalous at the time. And Big Grandma was supposed to be bought and paid for by the Saudis just last year. The DNC purposefully built a notably undemocratic primary process with a superdelegate system to guarantee the primacy of the smoke filled back room. They did that because they admired the past orderliness of the RNC process. What an unmitigated disaster that turned out to be. All this sordidness cannot be used to justify RNC and Trump team sordidness. Sunlight purifies all... although all those in power seem to abhor the sunlight like Nosferatu.

[The Twisted Genius]

Ishmael,

"1-Did the RNC support Trump without qualification during the election cycle in the USA? Do they do so now?"

Even though the RNC hated Trump for a long time, they came to embrace him and are now tied to the same mast as he is.

"2-Do you think it was the Russians or a disgruntled Sanders supporter who supplied the DNC correspondence to Wikileaks?"

I think the Russians did it. It's also possible that some insider leaked info, too. Why dismiss any possible theory?

"2-b:Who killed that fellow? SMERSH?"

I haven't the slightest idea. His is just one of 93 unsolved murders in DC from 2016. The official poster for his investigation identifies the three detectives working the case and has a number for passing on any information to help the case, even anonymous information.

"3-Did Ms. Clinton violate security rules by using unprotected servers?"

She sure did. She and others also violated security policies by passing classified info over that server.

"4-Do you consider Salon.com a reliable source? Does their reporting of the Syria story stand up to scrutiny?"

Sure. It's not without it weaknesses and biases, but I find it a reasonable info source among others. This particular story was first reported by the NYT in December 2016 and by the WSJ recently. The Salon piece is just based on the WSJ reporting. Their Syria reporting doesn't seem half bad baed on this list.

http://www.salon.com/topic/syria/

Ishmael, I'm not a betting man. However, I'd be curious to see a theory laid out as to how the BORG orchestrated all this. They're certainly spinning it all to serve its own purposes, but that far different from orchestrating the whole thing.

[Procopius]

Looking at Flynn's bad choices, I find myself wondering if he had a minor stroke or some other slight brain trauma. Like Dr. Ben Carson. A few years ago both men were considered brilliant in their fields. Now I don't know about Dr. Carson -- perhaps it's common for surgeons to have gifted hands and no mental accomplishments. In the case of LTG Flynn, though, something seems to have changed about the time he was appointed DNI director. He seems to have taken offense, for example, at being reminded that he was required by law, after his retirement, to get permission from the Secretary of the Army to accept money or gifts from foreign employers.

I agree that the people who decide to burn assets as in this case must believe it is more important to remove Trump, but I don't know their reasons for thinking so. I think Pence will be at least an order of magnitude worse. I can't even begin to imagine if Pence gets removed, too, how much worse Paul Ryan would be.

[Stephanie]

I was being flippant, and didn't mean to suggest that. My apologies and thank you for clarifying.

[Procopius]

But why do you think the Russians are a threat to the suspected source within ISIS? It wasn't the Russians who released the information publicly, and I am doubtful that the channel the information came through was throug Israel. Since the paymaster of ISIS is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, they are much more likely to have that information, and I don't think it's in their interests to have ISIS succeed in blowing up airliners. By the way, I also think Obama's whimsical imposition of sanctions was terrible policy.

[Procopius]

If you read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, you can get a clearer idea of how this works. Judge Gary used to invite all the owners of steel companies to join in a "little dinner" at his home, where the conversation would include discussions of what a good price level for steel the following week would be. The Supreme Court decided some years later that the tobacco companies didn't need to actually meet to reach consensus on what their prices should be. Newspaper publishers and senior editors don't actually have a committee that reaches consensus and hands orders down, they all have similar experience and backgrounds, they have lunch together, they often do each other favors, they talk, they know what each other's opinions are. The "Deep State" is the same. Back in the '50s we referred to them as The Eastern Establishment, the descendants of the New England aristocracy who had a generations-long tradition of "public service," i.e. running the government the way they thought it should be run. John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles were from that milieu.

I strongly agree, though, that much of the current hysteria is largely being driven by the Democratic scammers and highly paid "consultants" who are trying to hold on to the money and power they get from their positions.

[Linda]

He wasn't president when the meetings took place

[Yeah, Right]

"A problem with your plot is that you don't actually have any real knowledge of how intelligence works in the US."

True enough, I do not have first-hand knowledge of how intelligence works in the USA.

But I will point out that everyone here is (quite correctly) utterly aghast at the notion that a US official would reveal to the Washington Post that Russian diplomatic communications are being decrypted.

Indeed, it is such an unbelievable thing for a US official to do that I really don't understand why anyone would blithely accept that If He Said So Then That Must Be How It Happened.

Why, exactly, is it "fantasy" to suggest that a competent US official would attempt to disguise how the intel was obtained?

Wouldn't that be standard practice for "how intelligence works in the US"?

[turcopolier]

Yeah Right

Trump Tower is in mid-town Manhattan, a huge building. The rooms in question would be on upper floors. The building has massive 24/7 security systems and monitoring. Their are armed guards everywhere day and night. The release of such highly classified material is the most likely answer to the puzzle of how the WP got Kizlyak's re[port. pl