Another response to Publius Tacitus concerning those meddlesome Russians - TTG

In the latest posting by Publius Tacitus concerning this subject, he made the following claim.

“In other words, if the Russians really were in a full court press beyond their normal propaganda activities, then the intelligence community should have been galvanized to collect more information and should have briefed the leaders of the Senate and House intelligence committees. That did not happen. Key Republican leaders DID NOT, I repeat NOT, receive such a briefing. For example, Devin Nunes, the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, did not get briefed by Brennan or any of his minions on this subject.”

I took issue with this interpretation of events in a response to a question posed by Fred.

“Brennan started briefing the Gang of Eight individually beginning with Reid. He finished all individual briefings on 5 Sep 2016 commenting that it proved difficult to get appointments and talk with certain Republicans. Obama also sent Comey, Jeh Johnston and Lisa Monaco to brief the "Gang of Twelve" that included the chairmen and ranking minority members of Homeland Security and Intelligence to seek bipartisan support to respond forcefully to the Russians in early Sep 2016. McConnell reacted forcefully to stifle the intelligence and any forceful response saying “he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics.”” 

I got it mostly right, but upon further research I discovered I was wrong about the 5 September date. It was 6 September. Publius Tacitus still took issue with this insisting “Brennan did not brief all of the Republicans.” I offered further proof of my claim in two comments which Publius chose not to publish. That is his prerogative as a guest writer here. I’ve decided to continue the discussion in this post. That is my prerogative as a guest writer… subject to the final decision of Colonel Lang, of course. Both Publius and I must abide by those decisions.

I offer the testimony of John Brennan given before the HPSCI on 23 May 2017 to bolster my case that Brennan did brief the “Gang of Eight” on the intelligence community’s initial findings that Russia was interfering with the 2016 elections. 

“Again, in consultation with the White House, I PERSONALLY briefed the full details of our understanding of Russian attempts to interfere in the election to congressional leadership; specifically: Senators Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr; and to representatives Paul Ryan, Nancy Pelosi, Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff between 11th August and 6th September [2016], I provided the same briefing to each of the gang of eight members.”

“Given the highly sensitive nature of what was an active counter-intelligence case [that means the FBI], involving an ongoing Russian effort, to interfere in our presidential election, the full details of what we knew at the time were shared only with those members of congress; each of whom was accompanied by one senior staff member.” 

This particular transcription of Brennan’s remarks was done by a darling of the deep state conspiracy crowd, sundance. Sundance was also kind enough to provide a video of Brennan’s remarks. Note that Brennan names those he briefed and that list included Nunes. Sundance accepts Brennan’s account of these meetings and, in fact, uses those remarks to beat Comey over the head over a related issue.

As long as I’m writing a post, I might as well address a couple of other points raised by Publius Tacitus. There was no “formal lack of response by the intelligence community.” Prior to the briefing of the “Gang of Eight,” Brennan established an intelligence task force of a couple dozen analysts from CIA, NSA and FBI to focus on the issue of Russian interference. This is probably the same team that wrote the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment. The establishment of this task force was preceded by intelligence obtained by the CIA through some kind of SIGINT, HUMINT or bilateral (FVEY) operation that detailed Putin’s direct involvement in the cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the US election. This intelligence also captured Putin’s instructions on the operation’s eventual objectives, to defeat or at least damage Clinton, and help elect Trump. Brennan sent this intelligence directly to Obama by courier prior to the “Gang of Eight” briefings. I remember the widespread outcry when the existence of this intelligence came out. It appeared to blow an apparent US penetration of Russian government secure communications. Maybe it did. But Brennan’s call to FSB director, Alexander Bortnikov, on 4 August 2016 warning him to knock it off probably tipped off the Russians long before the public outing of the intelligence as did Obama’s face to face warning to Putin at the G20 Summit that he knew what Putin was doing and warned him to knock it off.

In addition to this intelligence, the IC had at that time intelligence from Estonia (and maybe others) about Page’s June trip to Moscow, the Dutch observation of Cozy Bear activities and the report from Australia about Popadopoulis’ drunken ramblings in a London bar. None of that came from the Steele dossier. All of that is conveniently ignored by the deep state conspiracy theorists. All the information Reid referenced in his letter to Comey probably came from his briefing by Brennan, but we can reasonably disagree on the role or non-role of the Steele dossier. 

In my earlier response to Publius Tacitus, I noted the forcefulness of McConnell in preventing a public release of intelligence about Russian meddling or a public response to that meddling. At that point in time, the Republican desire to keep this issue quiet can be seen as a reasonable maneuver of political electioneering… or healthy skepticism. However, perhaps there’s more to it than that. There are dueling conspiracy theories swirling around this whole Russia thing. Nunes was close to Flynn and was on the Trump transition team. I think he’s too close to this to not recuse himself altogether, rather than this half-hearted recusal he currently claims. His continued efforts to derail the Mueller investigation smacks of conspiracy in my mind. 

We still need to wait for the Mueller investigation to run its course and hope that the results will be released to the public.  We need that and the results of the ongoing FBI IG investigation. Until then we’ll continue to gleefully argue our respective points in a vacuum. Unless your comments are unusually abrasive and contribute nothing to the conversation, I’ll publish them.

TTG

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2017/05/23/massive-contradiction-john-brennan-completely-contradicts-fbi-director-james-comey-on-congressional-notification/

Comments

[Anna]

How would you asses the cognitive level of the authors of the latest indicment? What about the mental state of Mr. Rosenstein? -- "US indicts 13 Russians for 2016 election meddling, but ‘no allegations’ they influenced outcome." https://www.rt.com/news/419044-us-election-meddling-indicts/
"Moscow has repeatedly refuted the claims of alleged meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. Russian President Vladimir Putin also ridiculed such claims, suggesting that the US was “not a banana republic” to be treated that way." -- Sigh.

[Richardstevenhack]

Mueller has indicted the Internet Research Agency.

These are the guys the Russians arrested as...wait for it...CIA spies!

A Brief History of the “Kremlin Trolls”
https://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/

Quote:

Everything what we know now about the so-called “Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin’s favorite chef,” came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.

They were arrested in November 2016 and revealed as the FSB and former FSB officers

End Quote

Read Scott Humor's piece - he goes into some detail about who these people really were: anti-Russian Russians who created fake accounts and posted troll comments.

[The Twisted Genius]

sheperd,

Reference your comment at #70

You work in the field of media influence and understand what is going on. I appreciate that understanding. It is clearly a hard thing to explain concisely. As you know, I was thinking about writing a post on that a while back. Trying to summarize it clearly is beyond me. I'm having enough trouble trying to understand the whole process myself. I've found the work of Jonathan Albright to be helpful. He's a professor and researcher of journalism and news who has published a lot of his research at medium.com. There is no one article that summarizes the entire phenomenon, but reading the full body of his work lays it out pretty well. Here's a blurb from the Tow Center for Digital Journalism where he's based.

"Jonathan Albright is the Research Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism. Previously an assistant professor of media analytics in the school of communication at Elon University, Dr. Albright’s work focuses on the analysis of socially-mediated news events, misinformation/propaganda, and trending topics, applying a mixed-methods, investigative data-driven storytelling approach."

When Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders" came out, there was a mighty popular uproar against the idea that peoples behavior could be unwittingly modified through the techniques of advertising. I feel the present use of modern media technology and techniques is just a logical development of Packard's ideas. Most people are clueless about this.

https://medium.com/@d1gi

[shepherd]

Anna, (your comment at 77)

The real number of years the average wage of the core work force has not risen is 40, not 17. It's more than a generation. I'm deeply concerned about this. A more troubling statistic to my mind is that while the median household income in the US is around 60K, if you take the bottom 60%, the median household income is only 33K. The latest tax cut will only reinforce this. I think this makes us much more vulnerable to Russian influence rather than otherwise.

[Eric Newhill]

Murali,
Whatever marker they set on my final resting place must read, "He was a "Here lies a die hard primitive.Proudly deplorable unto his last breath"

[Anna]

Judging from the most recent indictment of the alleged 13 Russian trolls, the Mueller's investigations are only able to produce legalistic diarrhea: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-16/indictment-just-start-mueller-probe-continue-months

[GeneO]

Anna -

It is!

TTG never claimed any such thing. Please reread his post.

[Dr.puck]

And this escaped Mueller?

Luckily it is so first order that it will no doubt lead to a revision of the indictment. Maybe Mueller should interview Mr. Humor.

[NancyK]

Who are we to believe Mueller or Hannity on Fox news or Breitbart. I fear many Americans believe the latter. A sad day when some Americans feel Putin has more credibility than the FBI.

[turcopolier]

NancyK

government should be trusted? The framers of the constitution did not think so. pl

[Account Deleted]

Come on TTG, shooting someone dead in the middle of Fifth Avenue is one thing, dealing with Russians - in the New McCarthy Era - is quite another.

[Account Deleted]

David Habakkuk

Re the 'twerp' formerly of GCHQ (Matt Tait): I did a little digging and found his BEng final year project from Imperial College, if you are interested. His was the only one listed among the 'Distinguished Projects' not to have a link (GCHQ protocol to scrub it perhaps?) but fortunately the URL pattern is initial.surname and it is still on the server. Whatever else he is, he isn't stupid. With 'low-level' coding knowledge like this I can see why GCHQ was interested. A guy with these talents contributing to Lawfare and running a course at Texas Law seem less than obvious career moves, to say the least.

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/teaching/distinguished-projects/2009/m.tait.pdf

[Babak Makkinejad]

Very solid work, amazing that is the work of a single person.

[Anna]

"...while the median household income in the US is around 60K, if you take the bottom 60%, the median household income is only 33K. The latest tax cut will only reinforce this. I think this makes us much more vulnerable to Russian influence rather than otherwise."
Do you seriously believe that the electorate in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania has been mighty influenced by "Russian meddling" on Facebook and by BlackLivesMatter marches in NYC and not by the unfairness of the wealth distribution in the US? Or you think that Mrs. Clinton's many charms would have certainly prevailed over the (supposedly) anti-war Trump if not the "Russian meddling?" It is not hard to imagine that the US healthcare system scandal, the triumph of Wall Street, and the disfigured soldiers coming back home to their "deplorable" parents from the never-heard places thousands miles away could be the reason for the votes against Clinton. There are two major problems that the US faces today: The lack of mechanisms for influencing the government (see https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/is-america-an-oligarchy) and the related problem of politicized national security apparatus, which is unconstitutional (by the way, James Comey and Robert Mueller have ran the FBI for the past 16 years). Moreover, what has been a level of trust in the US Congress BEFORE the last elections that were supposedly screwed by "Russian meddling?" Here are the data: http://www.people-press.org/2017/05/03/public-trust-in-government-remains-near-historic-lows-as-partisan-attitudes-shift/