What we don’t know about Russia election hack

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Thomas Jefferson once wrote that newspaper articles should be classified into truths, probabilities, possibilities and lies.

I think the investigation of connections of President Trump and his supporters to Russia has uncovered possibilities and some probabilities, but few if any truths.

I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I don’t want to overlook any probabilities or truths.

Scott Ritter, in an article in Truthout, points out that this leaked NSA document, published by The Intercept, uses a color code to differentiate truths, probabilities and possibilities.

The green lines point to things that the NSA analysts say are true, the yellow lines to things that the NSA analysts say they believe are probable and the grey lines to things they believe are possible.

In short, we the people are at the same point we were before.  We don’t have any certain knowledge.   Smart people make different judgments based on the same facts.  All the more reasons for Congress, the special prosecutor and the press to pursue their investigations.

LINK

Leaked NSA Report Short on Facts, Proves Little in ‘Russiagate’ by Scott Ritter for Truthdig

Second thoughts on the Russian hack leaks

Cooler heads point out unanswered questions about Reality Winner’s NSA leaks about Russian intelligence activities during the 2016 U.S. elections, but come to different conclusions.

At this point, in almost everything related to Trump, Russia and secret intelligence agencies, the only that we the public know for sure is that we don’t know the whole story.

LINKS

A few thoughts on the leaks by TTG for Sic Semper Tyrannis.

Hey, Intercept, Something Is Very Wrong With Reality Winner and the NSA Leak by Peter Van Buren for Hooper’s War.

Was Russia Probing U.S. Electoral Systems? by Philip Giraldi for The American Conservative.

NSA reports Russia tried to hack voting system

A National Security Agency report, leaked to The Intercept, says that Russian military intelligence attempted to hack U.S. voter records shortly before the 2016 election.

The GRU reportedly was able to obtain passwords that enabled it to penetrate an electronic vote systems company.   The Intercept identified the company as VR Systems, which serves local election boards in eight states.  Using those passwords, the GRU attempted to penetrate at least 122 local governments.

The FBI has arrested a 25-year-old government contractor named Reality Leigh Winner on charges of giving the top-secret NSA documents to The Intercept.

Whether the Russian hackers succeeded and what, if anything, they did or tried to do to affect the election isn’t known.   And there is no indication that anybody in the Trump campaign was aware of any of this.

Leakers of secrets who won’t be punished

[Update 9/24/13.  The “leak” may have been disinformation.  No such conference call seems to have taken place.  Either the information came from other sources or it was bogus.]

Somebody leaked to The Daily Beast, an on-line newspaper, that the reason the U.S. State Department is closing embassies throughout the Middle East is information revealed in a conference call between Ayman al-Zawahiri, the top leader of al Qaeda, and more than 20 al Qaeda affiliates.

Al Zawahiri thought his communications were secure, but, because of the information leak, he now knows they aren’t.  If that information hadn’t been leaked, maybe it would have been possible use to continue eavesdropping and figure out the locations of al Zawahiri and other al Qaeda leaders.

Why then was the information leaked?  My guess is that the leakers’ purpose was to silence critics of the Obama administration who claim that the closing of the embassies was intended as a distraction from the controversy over Edward Snowden and the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program.

Unlike Snowden and others who leak information embarrassing to the government, these leakers will not be tracked down and punished, any more than earlier leakers who have revealed information about successful intelligence operations against al Qaeda.

The U.S. government has always been concerned about the leaking of information to the public that makes the government look bad, even when the information happens to be well-known to America’s enemies.  Since 2001, it has seldom if ever been concerned about leaking of information that may be helpful to America’s enemies but makes the government took good.

These leaks make me skeptical of the claim that the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping has thwarted plots that the agency can’t reveal because of national security considerations.  If there were successes, the information would be made known.  The pattern I see is that public relations trumps national security.

Bob Woodward’s leaks vs. Bradley Manning’s