Justin Raimondo is the latest to take apart the intelligence agencies’s report on alleged Russian intervention in the election. From Raimondo at antiwar.com:
Three intelligence agencies – the CIA, the FBI, and the NSA – have issued their much-touted report on alleged Russian intervention in the presidential election, and after reading it one question remains: Where’s the evidence?
We are told from the outset that the actual evidence that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta’s emails as part of a wide-ranging campaign to put Donald Trump in the White House cannot be revealed: “source and methods” must be kept secret. This in spite of DNI director James Clapper’s pledge that he would declassify as much of the evidence as possible in the interests of transparency: but then again, Clapper is an admitted liar.
One interesting note is that the key conclusion – that Vladimir Putin personally ordered a Russian campaign to “denigrate” poor little Hillary Clinton and elect Trump – is endorsed with “high confidence” by the CIA and the FBI, but only with “moderate confidence” by the National Security Agency. The NSA dissent is significant because if there is any hard evidence behind these assertions, it is surely the NSA – with its ability to intercept communications of Russian officials – that would secure it.
Hiding behind the old “sources and methods” pretext, we are then treated by our spooks to a compilation of arbitrary assertions interspersed with complaints about the supposedly key role played by RT, formerly Russia Today, a news organization run by the Russia government which very few people in this country even know about, never mind listen to. Both RT and Putin, we are told, said mean things about the US, Hillary Clinton, and “the liberal-democratic order.” Will the republic survive?
To continue reading: Where’s the Evidence?
