So, If It Wasn't 'The Russians,' Who Was It?

This is really awkward. Via Zerohedge, it appears that the supposed Novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal by "the Russians" was, well, made up by the British. In other words, the evidence was submitted to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and OPCW said, Nope, nothing Russian about this stuff. But the British kept saying it was, anyway, and even got The Financial Times to help fake the story.

Austria officially confirmed this week that the British Government’s allegation that Novichok, a Russian chemical warfare agent, was used in England by GRU, the Russian military intelligence service, in March 2018, was a British invention.

Investigations in Vienna by four Austrian government ministries, the BVT intelligence agency, and by Austrian prosecutors have revealed that secret OPCW reports on the blood testing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, copies of which were transferred to the Austrian government, did not reveal a Russian-made nerve agent.

Two reports, published in Vienna this week by the OE media group and reporter Isabelle Daniel, reveal that the Financial Times publication of the cover-page of one of the OPCW reports exposed a barcode identifying the source of the leaked documents was the Austrian government. The Austrian Foreign Ministry and the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz und Terrorismusbekämpfung (BVT), the domestic intelligence agency equivalent to MI5 or FBI, have corroborated the authenticity of the documents.

The Austrian disclosures also reveal that in London the Financial Times editor, Roula Khalaf, four of the newspaper’s reporters,  and the management of the Japanese-owned company have fabricated a false and misleading version of the OPCW evidence and  have covered up British government lying on the Skripal blood testing and the Novichok evidence.

This leaves my whole worldview in smoking ruins so please don't try to tell me there's a Chris Steele angle to this story--not while I'm still in mourning for my lost innocence.

The next thing you know, we'll be asked to believe that the CIA fabricated the "Russiagate" evidence, that "the Russians" didn't actually hack the DNC. 

Oh, the disillusion!

Chris Steele: Hillary Knew, Susan Rice And Victoria Nuland, Too

The Alfa Bank's defamation suit against Christopher Steele continues to bear fruit. John Solomon has an excellent round up of what's been learned from Steele's testimony in depositions:

Steele reveals he believes Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice knew about his anti-Trump research

Rice denies former British spy's account, which comes in a novel litigation by three Russian businessman suing over Britain's data laws.

Importantly, Steele testified that it was his clear impression--based on statements by Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS--that he was ultimately working for the Clinton Campaign, no matter what the technicalities of the money being laundered to Fusion GPS through the DNC and the Perkins Coie law firm.

But the bombshell--something I'm sure John Durham is also aware of--is that Steele passed that knowledge about the Clinton sponsorship of the dossier on to the FBI, and Steele kept notes to that effect.

UPDATED: Was Seth Rich Julian Assange's "internal Source" At The DNC?

CTH has a new post up titled: "IMPORTANT – Video Confirms Butowsky Lawsuit Claim: Julian Assange Told Ellen Ratner DNC Emails Received From Seth Rich – Not a Russian Hack…"

This is what we discussed just a week ago in Seth Rich In The News Again. The CTH title is a bit misleading, as I understand this new information. Ellen Ratner does not state that Assange told her that Seth Rich was his DNC source who provided the DNC emails--Assange never identifies his confidential sources. Rather, Ratner does confirm that Assange told her that the DNC emails were not received from the Russians but instead were obtained from a source internal to the DNC. It could have been Seth Rich, but it could have been someone else. OTOH, and in all fairness, it might also have been the case that Assange was lying and that he did receive the emails from the Russians.

But here's the real problem.

Imagine yourself as a Special Counsel, charged with investigating claims that the Trump campaign colluded with "the Russians" to obtain help to win the 2016 presidential election. I key issue in your investigation is the claim--made by the DNC through their contractor, Crowdstrike--that the Russian government "hacked" the DNC server, stole a huge trove of emails, and gave those emails to Assange at Wikileaks. The issue for you is whether Wikileaks was simply a cutout, whether "the Russians" gave those emails to Wikileaks precisely so that Wikileaks could disseminate them publicly to help the Trump campaign. To assess that claim, you need to know:

1) Who actually took those emails?

2) How did the emails got to Wikileaks?

3) Was the Trump campaign involved in some, all, or any of this?

Seth Rich In The News Again

There's a story that came out earlier today that injects the whole Seth Rich - DNC narrative into the public view again. Here's the slightly more than 25 word version:

A businessman and ex Fox Business contributor named Ed Butowsky has, through his lawyer Ty Clevenger, filed a lawsuit in which he alleges--among much else--that Fox analyst Ellen Ratner told him that she had been informed by Julian Assange that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Obviously, IF TRUE, this is mind boggling. It's that "if true" that gives pause.

This is Ed Butowsky, via Wikipedia:

Edward "Ed" Wayne Butowsky (born February 12, 1962) is an American financial adviser and former Fox Business Network commentator. Butowsky was purportedly banned from the network's building in August 2017 after he gained notoriety over his role in a story published and subsequently retracted by Fox News concerning the murder of Seth Rich and his alleged ties to WikiLeaks.

Here is Ty Clevenger's account of the facts that Butowsky alleges in his lawsuit, linked to FR:

Briefly Noted: The Stone, The Hopester, The Barr

Here we are, we got what we wanted--Barr and Durham are conducting a real investigation the way it's supposed to be done--and the result is pretty much no leaking, no revelations. Tough on us.

In the meantime ...

The Roger Stone Case

Roger Stone is doing a good job demonstrating that the entire Russia Hoax narrative--importantly including the Russia-hacked-the-DNC part of it--is ... a hoax. This is an important, and public, supplement to the Barr/Durham investigation of the ICA.

Stone's argument in pre-trial motions is simply this: The Team Mueller search warrant affidavits against Stone simply assumed that Russians hacked the DNC--that's part of their probable cause narrative. Problem: Probable cause is normally based on independently verifiable information or testimony. In this case the FBI, which is behind the search warrant, did essentially NO investigation to justify the Russia-hacked-the-DNC narrative. They did not examine the DNC server, having been refused access to the physical evidence by the lawyers for the purported victim, the DNC. What they did was to rely on a redacted report by a private company, Crowdstrike, hired by the DNC--which very arguably has an interest in smearing Stone and Trump. Further, Crowdstrike appears not to have followed standard protocols for handling the physical evidence, protocols that the FBI would have been held to had they obtained the physical evidence. And now, having relied on that narrative for purposes of the search warrant Team Mueller wants to say that they can't be held to prove the underlying narrative. Stone says the evidence should all be thrown out and, IMO, that's reasonable. However, all bets are off with Judge Amy Berman Jackson. My understanding, subject to correction, is that if Jackson rules against Stone an interlocutory appeal should be allowed. We shall see.

Hope Hicks v. Dem Impeachment Theater

Roger Stone Questions DOJ on Predicate of Russia DNC Hack

That's the exact title of CTH's post: Roger Stone Questions DOJ on Predicate of Russia DNC Hack. This is, IMO, an important development. There are many--including acknowledged experts in the field such as William Binney--who have challenged the entire "Russian hacking" narrative. That narrative--bolstered by the tendentious and misleading (at best) IC "assessment" and by repeated hacking hoaxes falsely attributed to Russia--is finally being challenged in court. Here's the Wikipedia summary of Binney's position:

Binney claims the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election is false, and that the Democratic National Committee e-mails were leaked by an insider instead.[23][24][25] He has appeared on Fox News at least ten times between September 2016 and November 2017 to promote this theory.[18][23][24] Binney said that the "intelligence community wasn't being honest here".[23] He has also been frequently cited on Breitbart News.[18] In November 2017 it was reported that a month earlier, Binney had met with CIA Director Mike Pompeo at the behest of President Trump.[23]

Stone's motion to suppress contains two attachments that provide technical support for his position. The first is a Declaration by Binney that provides his background and expertise hand his opinions and conclusions regarding the purported hack of the DNC server. The second attachment is the statement of another acknowledged expert who presents his analysis and conclusions, which agree with those of Binney.

Sundance makes important points about this:

Remember: The DNC Was NOT Hacked By The Russians

The current buzz about the Russia Hoax--which will certainly continue through the weekend and into next week--is about the apparent willingness of the disgraced former FBI Deputy Director, Andrew McCabe to demolish the whole Russia narrative in order to be sure that others will go down with him--and most of all, Rod Rosenstein. Paradoxically as it may seem, this may be a good time to recall a key part of the whole Russia Hoax narrative, one that has largely been ignored: the patently false claim that the DNC was hacked by Russians. This episode has special significance because of the active involvement of the Clinton campaign attorneys from Perkins Coie, who were also intimately involved in contracting with Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS for the Steele "dossier" on behalf of the Clinton campaign.

Fortuitously, yesterday The Gateway Pundit had a guest article on the subject by no less an expert than William Binney (with an assist from Larry Johnson). For anyone not familiar with Binney, here is the Wikipedia version of his career:

Binney ... [after joining the Army with a BS in Math] was found to have strong aptitudes for mathematics, analysis, and code breaking, and served from 1965 to 1969 in the Army Security Agency before going to the NSA in 1970. 

Binney was a Russia specialist and worked in the operations side of intelligence, starting as an analyst and ending as a Technical Director prior to becoming a geopolitical world Technical Director. In the 1990s, he co-founded a unit on automating signals intelligence with NSA research chief Dr. John Taggart. Binney's NSA career culminated as Technical Leader for intelligence in 2001. He has expertise in intelligence analysis, traffic analysis, systems analysis, knowledge management, and mathematics (including set theory, number theory, and probability).

After retiring from the NSA, he founded, together with fellow NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, Entity Mapping, LLC, a private intelligence agency to market their analysis program to government agencies.

The Government took a dim view of Binney's post-retirement whistleblowing. Although Binney has never been arrested, much less tried, for any of his activities, Government efforts to discourage his activities led to incidents such as this: