{"id":96449,"date":"2017-08-07T12:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T11:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=96449"},"modified":"2017-08-06T11:42:13","modified_gmt":"2017-08-06T10:42:13","slug":"has-seymour-hersh-debunked-russia-gate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/08\/has-seymour-hersh-debunked-russia-gate\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Seymour Hersh Debunked \u2018Russia-gate\u2019?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hersh Says Seth Rich Contacted WikiLeaks<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4 Aug 2017 – <\/em>Journalist Seymour Hersh has given us good reason to believe what many have long suspected: that the \u201chacking\u201d of the Democratic National Committee, which supposedly delivered the White House to Donald Trump, was an inside job. In a recorded phone conversation<\/a> (here\u2019s a transcript<\/a>) with Ed Butowsky, a Republican operative who has been financing an investigation of the Seth Rich affair, Hersh told Butowsky that Seth Rich, who worked for the DNC and was murdered on July 10, 2016, was in contact with WikiLeaks, and wanted money for access to the DNC emails.<\/p>\n

Hersh doesn\u2019t buy the conspiracy theory surrounding Rich\u2019s death: he sees it as a random event, one that wasn\u2019t too unusual given the neighborhood Rich lived in \u2013 and yet this haphazard tragedy may have led to the unraveling of the mystery that is, today, at the core of our politics: the controversy over who delivered the DNC\/Podesta emails to WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n

The Democrats, the media, and the War Party contend that the Russians hacked into the DNC, and fooled John Podesta into handing the keys to his emails over to them: a full-fledged federal investigation, complete with a special counsel, is now busy trying to find evidence of the Trump campaign\u2019s collusion with this nefarious plot. On the other hand, the case for Russian \u201chacking\u201d has been fragile<\/a> from the start<\/a>, and has only gotten less tenable<\/a> as time goes on<\/a>. Now another blow has been delivered to the \u201cPutin did it\u201d conspiracy theory, one that may indeed prove fatal.<\/p>\n

Hersh contends that, upon Rich\u2019s death, the District of Colombia police went into his apartment \u2013 with a warrant \u2014 and examined his computer, but they couldn\u2019t get into it. So they called in the DC cyber unit, which didn\u2019t do much better, and so they called in the FBI\u2019s Washington field office, the cyber unit, and they got in. \u201cWhat I know came off an FBI report,\u201d says Hersh. \u201cDon\u2019t ask me how. You can figure it out.\u201d Well, yes, we can indeed. He goes on to say:<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd so what the report says is that sometime in late spring, we\u2019re talking June you know summers in June 21st, late spring would be after, I presume, I don\u2019t know, I\u2019d just say late spring, early summer and he makes contact with WikiLeaks. That\u2019s in his computer and he makes contact.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hersh notes that the last DNC\/Podesta emails posted by WikiLeaks are from late May 2016, or \u201cearly summer,\u201d a timeline that fits in with the sequence of events: his contact with WikiLeaks followed by his death in what appears to be a random shooting. Hersh continues:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, they found what he\u2019d done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails. Some juicy emails from the DNC,<\/strong> and you know, by the way all this shit about the DNC, um, you know, whether it was hacked or wasn\u2019t hacked, whatever happened, the democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that he [Seth] offered a sample, an extensive sample, you know I\u2019m sure dozens of emails and said \u2018I want money.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This note of realism \u2013 \u201cI want money\u201d \u2013 for the first time provides us with something that has previously been missing from the arguments of those who have claimed that the \u201chacks\u201d were an inside job, and not a case of Russian cyber-warfare: motive<\/em>. After all, why would Rich, supposedly a loyal employee of the DNC and a committed Democrat, hand over embarrassing emails that would hurt Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign? Well, now here we have it. If true, this not only explains why Rich would do such a thing, but also why the Rich family is furiously denying that their son was in any way connected with the DNC\/Podesta email revelations.<\/p>\n

Hersh goes on to detail what is in the FBI report:<\/p>\n

\u201cThen later WikiLeaks did get the password, he had a Dropbox, a protected Dropbox, which isn\u2019t hard to do, I mean you don\u2019t have to be a wizard IT, you know, he was certainly not a dumb kid. They got access to the Dropbox.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so, according to Hersh, WikiLeaks must have reached a deal with Rich, and the rest is history. It\u2019s not clear to me what \u201cThey got access to the Dropbox\u201d means: is Hersh talking about WikiLeaks, or the FBI? In any case, Rich apparently took precautions to cover his ass, as Hersh relates:<\/p>\n

\u201cHe also, and this is also in the FBI report, he also let people know, with whom he was dealing, and I don\u2019t know how he dealt, I\u2019ll tell you about WikiLeaks in a second. I don\u2019t know how he dealt with the WikiLeaks and the mechanism but he also, the word was passed according to the NSA report, \u2018I\u2019ve also shared this box with a couple of friends so if anything happens to me it\u2019s not going to solve your problem.\u2019 Ok. I don\u2019t know what that means.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, something did<\/em> happen to him, but we\u2019ll pass over that and note that Hersh mentions \u201cthe NSA report.\u201d So the FBI, in investigating this case, turned to the National Security Agency, which has access to everyone\u2019s online communications, and came up with evidence confirming that Rich was in contact with WikiLeaks, that he had a secure Dropbox, and that he was concerned that he might be in danger. Hersh says \u201cthe word was passed\u201d \u2013 but to whom? There are more mysteries here than we can uncover with just these bits of information.<\/p>\n

According to Hersh, a warrant exists for the DC police entry into Rich\u2019s residence. There\u2019s also a report from the FBI, which Hersh has not seen, as far as I can tell, but which has perhaps been read to him. As Hersh puts it:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have somebody on the inside, you know I\u2019ve been around a long time, and I write a lot of stuff. I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. This person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he\u2019s a very high-level guy and he\u2019ll do a favor. You\u2019re just going to have to trust me.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hersh\u2019s record speaks for itself: from exposing the My Lai massacre<\/a> to ripping the lid off the false flag Syrian \u201cchemical attack,\u201d<\/a> he\u2019s made a career out of unmasking the lies and machinations of the War Party. I\u2019ll take his word over the word of some anonymous spook leaking to the Washington Post<\/em> any day of the week. And perhaps this is the time to point out that there\u2019s just as much evidence for what Hersh is telling us as there is for the tall tales of \u201ccollusion\u201d with Moscow that have been retailed by the \u201cmainstream\u201d media for a solid year.<\/p>\n

The \u201cRussia-gate\u201d conspiracy theory never had any real evidence to support it aside from the arbitrary assertions of three US intelligence agencies: the \u201cproof\u201d they submitted to the public was laughable, as Jeffrey Carr<\/a> and other cyber-warfare experts have pointed out<\/a>. Yet we don\u2019t have the actual evidence to support Hersh\u2019s contentions, although if he\u2019s right there is indeed a paper trail: the warrant, the FBI and NSA reports, and probably more.<\/p>\n

However, it is an exercise in elementary logic to take the simplest explanation for how the DNC\/Podesta materials got out \u2013 an insider with access did it for money \u2014\u00a0 rather than assume it was an elaborate Russian conspiracy involving teams of hackers, the Russian intelligence agencies, and Vladmir Putin himself. Apparently our brainless media, not to mention our not-very-intelligent \u201cintelligence community,\u201d have never heard of Occam\u2019s Razor<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Hersh, who has been around the block several times, and is intimately familiar with how the intelligence community operates \u2013 as well as being personally familiar with the individuals involved \u2013 is onto the game that\u2019s being play here. In his words:<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a narrative of how that whole fucking thing began, it\u2019s a Brennan operation, it was an American disinformation and fucking the fucking President, at one point when they, they even started telling the press, they were back briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, fucking cock-sucker Rogers, was telling the press that we even know who in the GRU, the Russian Military Intelligence Service, who leaked it. I mean [it\u2019s] all bullshit\u2026. Trump\u2019s not wrong to think they all fucking lie about him.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s all bullshit: Russia-gate, the \u201ccollusion\u201d gambit, and the whole avalanche of fake \u201cnews\u201d that purports to describe a Russian conspiracy to \u201cundermine our democracy.\u201d It\u2019s a lie, pure and simple. More than that: it\u2019s an exact inversion of the truth. Because what\u2019s happening is that a vast intelligence-gathering apparatus is being utilized to undermine an elected President and undertake what is in effect a \u201clegal\u201d coup d\u2019etat<\/em>. But then again, projection has always been an essential element of the War Party\u2019s methodology.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not surprised that Hersh\u2019s revelations have been studiously ignored, even by some \u201calternative\u201d news sites. Despite this ominous silence, there has been one attempt to cut Hersh off at the pass: National Public Radio ran a piece<\/a> about the lawsuit<\/a> Butowsky is being served with in which Hersh\u2019s conversation is quoted. NPR tellingly edits out what Hersh actually said in that conversation, but does cite Hersh purportedly saying Butowsky misunderstood him.<\/p>\n

However, it looks like Hersh didn\u2019t know he was being recorded, because the recording directly contradicts both Hersh and what NPR is reporting. An email exchange between Butowsky and Hersh, in which the former pleads with the famous journalist to go public, has been published<\/a>, and when a reporter called him for comment Hersh clammed up:<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018I\u2019m not going to comment about that stuff, I mean, come on, I live in the real world.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen asked to confirm that it was him speaking on the bombshell audio recording, he stated, \u2018I\u2019m not going to talk to anybody about that. No comment.\u2019\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While Hersh is being called on<\/a> to clear this matter up, there are several reasons why he might not do so, at least quite yet. He could be working on his own story, and \u2013 in the same vein \u2013 doesn\u2019t want to burn his source, who would be understandably nervous about possibly being outed.<\/p>\n

Whatever is going on here, Hersh\u2019s contentions are now public. The truth, whatever it may be, is going to come out.<\/p>\n

_______________________________<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at <\/em>The American Conservative<\/em>, and writes a monthly column for <\/em>Chronicles<\/em>. He is the author of <\/em>Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement<\/em> [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and <\/em>An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard<\/em> [Prometheus Books, 2000].<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 antiwar.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 Aug 2017 – Journalist Seymour Hersh has given us good reason to believe what many have long suspected: that the \u201chacking\u201d of the Democratic National Committee, which supposedly delivered the White House to Donald Trump, was an inside job. Hersh says Seth Rich contacted WikiLeaks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-96449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anglo-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}