Seth Rich

Exploration of Conspiracy Theories from Perspective of Esoteric Traditions

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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:13 pm

Who was Michael Hastings and why is his death being talked about after the Wikileaks Vault 7 CIA leaks?

The journalist was killed when his car crashed into a palm tree hours after he told friends he was onto a "big story"

The Sun

WIKILEAKS’ release of Vault 7 has reignited conspiracy theories about the CIA’s involvement in the death of Michael Hastings, an investigative journalist killed in a car crash in 2013.

The trove of secret information, which allegedly comes from the CIA’s Cyber Intelligence Centre, suggests US spies have explored hacking into vehicles remotely to carry out “undetectable assassinations”.

Here’s what we know about Hastings’ death, the Vault 7 documents and conspiracy theories that they could be linked.

Who was Michael Hastings?

The war correspondent and investigative journalist was killed when his car smashed into a tree and burst into a giant fireball in the early hours of June 18 2013.

Hastings – a vocal critic of government mass surveillance – had sent an email to colleagues and friends just 12 hours earlier, telling them he was onto a “big story” and was under investigation.

The Buzzfeed and Rolling Stone contributor, 33, wrote: “The Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates’.

“May be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices.

“I’m onto a big story and need to go off the radar for a bit.”

WikiLeaks also tweeted after the crash to say Hastings had contacted its lawyer Jennifer Robinson just before his death, claiming the FBI was investigating him.

The FBI took a “departure from normal policy” to deny that Hastings had ever been under investigation after receiving a barrage of calls about his death.

Hastings came to prominence after a profile he wrote for Rolling Stone on Stanley McChrystal, then commanding general in Afghanistan, which led to his resignation.

The journalist gained unprecedented access when he was stranded with McChrystal due to the Icelandic ash cloud in 2010.

What kind of car was Michael Hastings driving?

Hasting was driving a Mercedes C250 Coupe when he appeared to lose control and crash head-on into a palm tree at 4.25am in Hancock Park, Los Angeles.

Witnesses said the car appeared to be going at top speed creating “sparks and flames” before leaving the road.

But the LAPD said there was no sign of foul play in the crash.

Assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said afterwards: “We don’t know if he was just speeding and lost control, if he had a medical issue, if he passed out or had a heart attack … or if he had a mechanical failure.”

Was Michael Hastings killed by the CIA?

Conspiracy theorists claim Hastings could have been assassinated by an intelligence agency due to the story he said he was working on.

The Wikileaks’ release appears to confirm that this sort of technology has been explored, which it says would “permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations”.

But Hastings’ wife Elise and his brother Jonathan have both said they do not believe he was murdered.

Elise said he was working on a profile of CIA director John Brennan at the time of his death.

She told CNN: “I have no doubt that he was pursuing a hot story. He always had at least five hot stories going. That was Michael.
“My gut here is that it was just a really tragic accident and I’m unlucky in the world, the world was very unlucky.”

And his brother Jonathan said he believes Hastings was suffering a “manic episode”, possibly triggered by drugs.

He was trying to convince his brother to go into rehab, but Hastings snuck out of his apartment while he slept.

Jonathan told the blog Uncouth Reflections: “He crashed his car before anyone could do anything to help him.

“I was one of the last people to see him alive and I was one of the few people who could really put his behaviour on that day in context.”

Toxicology reports found traces of marijuana – which had been prescribed – and crystal meth in his system, but the coroner ruled these were not a factor in the crash.

Reports also say Hastings had bipolar disorder and suffered post-traumatic stress disorder after his time in Iraq and Afghanistan.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3038085/m ... wikileaks/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:20 pm

Who Killed Michael Hastings?

Reflexively distrustful, eager to make powerful enemies, the young journalist whose Mercedes exploded in Los Angeles one night couldn’t possibly have died accidentally, could he?


By Benjamin Wallace

NYMag.com | Published Nov 10, 2013

At the end of his life, Michael Hastings, like many of the progressive journalists he counted among his friends, felt besieged by an overreaching government. Hastings was living in Los Angeles, and at a Beverly Hills theater in April, he took part in a panel discussion about the documentary War on Whistleblowers: Free Press and the National Security State. Interviewed in May on The Young Turks, a talk show on Current TV, Hastings railed against the Obama administration, which “has clearly declared war on the press”; the only recourse, he said, was for the press to respond: “We declare war on you.” On May 31, he dashed off an urgent tweet: “first they came for manning. Then Assange. Then fox. Then the ap.drake and the other whistle-blowers. Any nyt reporters too.” He attended screenings of his friend Jeremy Scahill’s film Dirty Wars, which seeks to expose “the hidden truth behind America’s expanding covert wars,” and when leaks about the NSA began appearing in The Guardian, and Edward Snowden was charged with espionage, Hastings was deeply troubled by the revelations and the Justice Department’s response. On June 7, his last post for BuzzFeed, where he was a staff writer, focused on “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” and at the time of his death, Hastings was working on a profile of CIA director John Brennan for Rolling Stone.

It was for Rolling Stone, where Hastings had a contract, that he’d written “The Runaway General,” the 2010 article that resulted in the cashiering of General Stanley McChrystal, America’s commander in Afghanistan, and made his name as a journalist. Mark Leibovich, in this summer’s inside-the-­Beltway big read, This Town, describes Hastings’s McChrystal piece as “the most consequential” journalism of 2010 and possibly Obama’s entire first term. But despite going after big game, Hastings tended to be nonchalant about possible repercussions. “Whenever I’d been reporting around groups of dudes whose job it was to kill people,” he said once, “one of them would usually mention that they were going to kill me.”

By the middle of June, though, Hastings, then 33, had become openly afraid. Helicopters are a common sight in the Hollywood Hills, but he had told Jordanna Thigpen, a neighbor he’d become close to, that there were more of them in the sky than usual, and he was certain they were tracking him. On Saturday the 15th, he called Matt Farwell, his writing partner, and said Farwell might be interviewed by the FBI. Farwell was unsettled. “He was being really cagey over the phone, which was odd, very odd,” Farwell says. On the 17th, Hastings e-mailed colleagues at BuzzFeed to warn them that “the Feds are interviewing my ‘close friends and associates’ ”; he was “onto a big story” and needed to go “off the rada[r] for a bit … hope to see you all soon.”

“He was deeply agitated,” says The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur. Since Hastings didn’t want to say anything more over e-mail or the phone, Farwell, who lived in Virginia, set up a lunch for him the following Thursday with a trusted friend of Farwell’s, also in L.A., so that she could pass along whatever Hastings had to tell him on her forthcoming trip East.

The lunch never happened. At 4:20 a.m. on Tuesday, June 18, Hastings’s silver Mercedes C250 coupe, speeding south on Highland Avenue, crossed Melrose, jumped the median, hit a palm tree, and exploded. The charred body of the driver was identified by the Los Angeles coroner as John Doe 117 until fingerprints confirmed that the deceased was Michael Hastings.

Sergeant Joe Biggs, who met Hastings in 2008, when the reporter, on assignment for GQ, was embedded with his unit in Afghanistan, hadn’t spoken to his friend in three months, but Hastings had BCC’d him on the June 17 e-mail to BuzzFeed colleagues. “I tried calling him when I got that e-mail,” Biggs says, “ ’cause I felt so fucking scared, because it didn’t seem like him.” Biggs e-mailed BuzzFeed, too. “They weren’t helpful at all. I kept e-mailing back, ‘What should we do? I’m not a journalist. I don’t know how to go about this stuff.’ They never responded to me.” Biggs tried contacting other media to let them know about the ominous e-mail; the only person who got back to him was a local L.A. reporter. “If that thing didn’t get released,” Biggs told me when I first called him, two weeks after Hastings’s death, “people would keep thinking it was an accident.”

Hastings lived as he died. On the small side, with blue eyes and scruffy good looks that suggested Jude Law’s little brother, he did everything fast: chain-smoking Parliament Lights, calling and e-mailing people late at night, speaking in a jittery torrent, churning out copy. (The first, long draft of his McChrystal article was a 48-hour production.) “The dude was exhausting,” Farwell says. “He just kind of vibrated energy. He had a deep well of moral outrage and sadness that I think goes back to a lot of the hypocrisy he saw and felt.”

© 2014 New York Magazine Holdings LLC. All Rights Reserved.
http://nymag.com/news/features/michael- ... s-2013-11/
33


QOTD 10 March 2017 :

Jack Baruth

Three and a half years ago, I expressed some suspicion regarding the death of investigative journalist Michael Hastings. I didn’t have any inside information or unique knowledge on the subject; I just didn’t like the way the aftermath of the crash looked when evaluated in light of the “official” story that was being handed out at the time.

A lot of people thought I might have a point. Another, perhaps larger, lot of people thought I was crazy. Well, there’s now some information available to all of us, thanks to WikiLeaks, that might shed some additional light on the topic.


Part of the “Vault 7” release suggests that the CIA explored methods of performing “undetectable” assassinations via hacking into a vehicle control computer. It’s very far from being impossible; every modern automobile in production can perform two of the three major control operations — braking and acceleration — via computer control, and many cars are also able to steer via a computer command. But even if you don’t have computer-controlled steering, it’s child’s play to “steer” a car through the brakes. That’s how stability control works, you know.

Of course, it’s a long way from saying that it’s possible to kill someone remotely in their car to proving the CIA killed Michael Hastings, even if the CIA was or is passionately interested in the subject of vehicle assassination. But I think it’s safe to say the three traditional components of a murder — motive, means, and opportunity — are all present to a greater or lesser degree in this case.

What do you think? Am I being paranoid? Am I not being paranoid enough? Should I stop driving my Accord on the street and return to my trusty cable-operated, ABS-removed Plymouth Neon? Or will the CIA try another method of killing me? Maybe they’ll send me a really fine-looking girl, the way the opposition did in the movie “Munich.” I could live with that. Or die with it!
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2017/0 ... -hastings/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:50 pm

CIA planned to hack cars and trucks to carry out undetectable assassinations claims WikiLeaks

The hacking organisation made the admission as it announced it is about to release a huge trove of confidential documents from the CIA as part of its mysterious Year Zero series


16222Shares26CommentsByRachel Bishop15:15, 7 MAR 2017Updated10:58, 8 MAR 2017News

mirror | 2017-03-07T23:16:23Z


WikiLeaks has claimed the CIA planned to hack cars and trucks to carry out assassinations.

The secretive organisation said the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency used the phone's geolocation software to tap into vehicle control systems in modern cars.

The hacking organisation made the statement as it announced a huge release of confidential documents from the CIA as part of its mysterious Year Zero series, founder Julian Assange claimed.

It claims the CIA has been carrying out a global covert hacking program that exploits US and European companies.

It claims these include Apple's iPhone, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows and even Samsung TVs, which it says "are turned into covert microphones."

Mr Assange was set to speak about Year Zero on Facebook today, but a livestream of the event was reportedly hacked. It is not clear when the event has been rescheduled to.
The group said that from October 2014 the CIA was "looking at infecting the vehicle control systems used by modern cars and trucks" to possibly enable them to "engage in nearly undetectable assassinations."

They added: "The CIA's Mobile Devices Branch (MDB) developed numerous attacks to remotely hack and control popular smart phones."


They claimed these included iPhones, which account for 14% of the market and Google Android, "which is used to run the majority of the world's smart phones (85%) including Samsung, HTC and Sony. 1.15 billion Android powered phones were sold last year."

They claimed: "Infected phones can be instructed to send the CIA the user's geolocation, audio and text communications as well as covertly activate the phone's camera and microphone."

They said the CIA could then "bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied."

In an online statement on its website, Wikileaks also claims the attack against Samsung smart TVs was developed in cooperation with the UK's domestic intelligence agency MI5/BTSS.

It claims "Weeping Angel", developed by the CIA's Embedded Devices Branch (EDB), infests smart TVs, transforming them into covert microphones.

The organisation added: "After infestation, Weeping Angel places the target TV in a 'Fake-Off' mode, so that the owner falsely believes the TV is off when it is on.

"In 'Fake-Off' mode the TV operates as a bug, recording conversations in the room and sending them over the internet to a covert CIA server."

They also claimed the CIA also runs "a very substantial effort to infect and control Microsoft Windows users with its malware, infecting CDs, DVDs and USB sticks.

The hacking group said the publication release as part of Year Zero is from 8,761 documents and files from an isolated, high-security network situated inside the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence.

Wikileaks said: "Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized "zero day" exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation.


"This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA.

"The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive."

"By the end of 2016, the CIA's hacking division, which formally falls under the agency's Center for Cyber Intelligence (CCI), had over 5000 registered users and had produced more than a thousand hacking systems, trojans, viruses, and other "weaponized" malware.

"Such is the scale of the CIA's undertaking that by 2016, its hackers had utilized more code than that used to run Facebook.

"The CIA had created, in effect, its "own NSA" with even less accountability and without publicly answering the question as to whether such a massive budgetary spend on duplicating the capacities of a rival agency could be justified."

Mr Assange has been under investigation by the US since 2010 when WikiLeaks published confidential military documents.

In the same year, the Swedish Director of Public Prosecution opened an investigation into sexual offences Assange is alleged to have committed.

In 2012, facing extradition to Sweden, he took refuge at the Embassy of Ecuador in London after being granted political asylum.

In August 2014, he announced he would be leaving the embassy "soon".

© 2017 MGN Limited
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news ... ia-9982483
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:33 pm

Primary Sources: Emails Show FBI Worked to Debunk 'Conspiracy Theories' Following Michael Hastings' Death

By Jason Leopold

VICE News

When journalist Michael Hastings died in a car crash in Los Angeles last year, rumors immediately began to surface on social media suggesting his death was tied to a federal investigation into his work.

The claims attracted widespread media interest when WikiLeaks tweeted the day after the crash that Hastings had contacted the anti-secrecy group's attorney and said that the FBI was investigating him. The FBI was then bombarded by inquiries from journalists who tried to confirm or deny the allegations, and the bureau struggled to come up with a statement to debunk what it referred to as "rampant conspiracy theories."

"While we generally went with policy response of 'can't confirm or deny,' I'm not sure how we're supposed to even look into a tweet that says nothing about what he was allegedly being investigated for," Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman with the FBI's Los Angeles field office, wrote in an email to the FBI's national press office in response to their questions. "I've asked reporters why they're calling LA and they point to the car crash and fact that he appears to have lived here."

VICE News obtained dozens of internal FBI emails that provide a behind-the-scenes look at how the bureau managed the inquiries into Hastings' death and the rare steps it took to shoot down claims that he was the target of a federal probe. The documents were turned over in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit VICE News jointly filed with Ryan Shapiro, a doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in FOIA research.

Two days after Hastings died, Eimiller sent an email to Andy Neiman, her counterpart at the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), asking whether "fowl play" [sic] was suspected and whether the LAPD issued a statement.

"We're getting slammed with inquiries regarding what appear to be conspiracy theories surrounding Michael Hastings car crash," Eimiller wrote on June 20, 2013. "We're trying to rule out, if possible, any suggestion that Hastings was targeted by someone with the crash based on his alleged involvement as a witness or target of an FBI investigation. I think we're triple-checking but it doesn't appear he was under any sort of investigation."

Neiman responded to Eimiller stating, "LAPD investigators have not identified any evidence that suggests fowl play [sic] in the tragic fatal collision. The preliminary findings have lead investigators to believe that collision was a solo vehicle collision with speed being a primary factor. The investigation is ongoing. I hope that helps a little."

That day, Eimiller also sent out an email to FBI special agents across the country under the subject line "Urgent Media Issue" and linked to a New York magazine report about the growing conspiracy theories surrounding Hastings' death. She said the reports had attracted the interest of then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and the Department of Justice, and that FBI headquarters "would like to debunk growing conspiracy theory if possible (assuming that's what it is)."

"Has anyone's division been contacted in relation to an FBI investigation that may have led to foul play in the car crash death Tuesday of reporter, Michael Hastings," Eimiller wrote. "There are many reports on the Internet that Hastings was being investigated by the FBI. He died in a car accident in LA on Tuesday. Before his death, according to a tweet, he told others he worried he was the subject of an investigation. None of this is confirmed and the LAPD is reporting no foul play in car crash based on evidence. This is getting the attention of DOJ and the Director's Office."

FBI intelligence analysts were tasked with searching "all systems" to ensure there weren't any records to suggest Hastings was the subject of an investigation. FBI officials searched several of its databases and did not turn up any documents on Hastings. Additionally, the bureau's criminal division said Hastings was not on their radar.

"If all other divisions are comfortable that they have checked with the right contacts within your respective division, we'll advise HQ that we have not been contacted regarding this matter," Eimiller wrote. "We are getting ready to push out a statement to the press ruling out any investigation and want to ensure no info yet to be entered into the system surfaces after the fact."

The statement originally said, according to an email FBI headquarters spokesman Paul Bresson sent to his colleagues at the bureau and the Department of Justice, "At no time was Michael Hastings, or anything related to his work as a journalist, ever under investigation by the FBI."

Typically when the FBI is questioned about whether it is conducting an investigation, it responds by stating that it can neither "confirm nor deny."

Justice Department spokeswoman Nanda Chitre said in an email that someone else suggested the statement should be changed: "At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI."

The change is significant because the FBI did have one file about Hastings' work. On June 11, 2012, the FBI's Washington field office opened a file and submitted "unclassified media articles" to it in order to "memorialize controversial reporting by Rolling Stone magazine on June 7, 2012."

The articles in question included an investigative report Hastings wrote about the disappearance of US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, who was rescued by special forces earlier this year in exchange for five Taliban Guantanamo detainees.

The FBI located the three-page file on Hastings in a "cross-reference" file that pertained to an international terrorism investigation involving Bergdahl's disappearance. The bureau turned over the file about two months after Hastings died.

It's unclear why the document did not turn up when FBI agents and spokespeople searched the bureau's files.

The media inquiries about Hastings continued, despite the FBI's statement denying the rumors. On June 24, Eimiller sent an email to FBI headquarters:

Took a few calls over weekend using the Hastings statement. AP still asking today about it. Reporter says, "We just want to learn more about why Hastings thought FBI was talking to his close friends and associates - obviously rumor mill continues, anything to debunk rumors would be most appreciated .." I told reporter, "I'm not able to help you with credibility of rumors. The FBI has confirmed that Michael Hastings was not under investigation. Not sure I can help you further. Let me know if there is anything I can do, or stop doing, in Los Angeles. Thanks.

"Nope. I think that's perfect Laura," Bresson responded. "Just keep referring to the statement. Appreciate the job you've done on this."
https://news.vice.com/article/primary-s ... ings-death
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Fri Dec 15, 2017 10:43 pm

Report: Hastings Feared Tampering On Rented Mercedes

Deep Politics, Police State, Surveillance StateAugust 23, 2013 | David J. Krajicek

WhoWhatWhy

5_4_7A coroner’s report that found traces of narcotics in the remains of journalist Michael Hastings has helped frame the prevailing story of his death as a tragic, troubled-soul narrative.

He apparently had relapsed into drug use, and just hours before the muckraker was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles, a sibling had arrived to urge him into rehab.

But in the broadest post-mortem profile to date, Gene Maddaus writes in the LA Weekly that Hastings told a neighbor he feared that the rental Mercedes sedan he died in had been tampered with. Maddaus writes:

“One night in June, he came to (neighbor Jordanna) Thigpen’s apartment after midnight and urgently asked to borrow her Volvo. He said he was afraid to drive his own car. She declined, telling him her car was having mechanical problems.

“He was scared, and he wanted to leave town,” she says.

“The next day, around 11:15 a.m., she got a call from her landlord, who told her Hastings had died early that morning. His car had crashed into a palm tree at 75 mph and exploded in a ball of fire.”

The profile said Hastings was depressed and feared he was being watched by the government. “His behavior grew increasingly erratic,” Maddaus writes. He added, “Interviews with friends as well as the coroner’s report suggest that Hastings’ mental health was deteriorating.”

Hastings, 33, was a crusading journalist who died when his speeding Mercedes slammed into a palm tree at 4:20 a.m. June 18 on a 35 mph stretch of North Highland Avenue in L.A.’s Hancock Park neighborhood.

In its report released this week, the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Department concluded that the death was an accident.

Dr. James K. Ribe, L.A. County’s senior deputy medical examiner, said traces of amphetamine found in Hastings’s blood sample was “consistent with possible intake of methamphetamine many hours before death.” He said traces of marijuana metabolite in his blood also indicated “intake hours earlier.”

Ribe said Hastings died of “blunt force trauma consistent with a high speed front-end impact” and that narcotics were “unlikely contributory to death.”

The report’s narrative included several mentions of Hastings’s alleged use of various narcotics, apparently based largely upon comments from the brother who was attempting to intervene.

But another Hastings family member told WhoWhatWhy that the coroner’s report was “irresponsible.” The family member said via email, “The LAPD has done a really sloppy job investigating his case, and they were hoping for a mother lode of drugs in his system. When they didn’t get it in the toxicology lab results (science!), they had to insert speculation throughout their field report to compensate for their lack of an investigation. It’s so irresponsible.”

Dr. Ribe, who signed Hastings’s autopsy report, has been on the L.A. County coroner’s staff for more than 25 years. Like many big-city pathologists, he has been involved in a number of high-profile cases and controversies.

But Ribe is the rare coroner whose credibility has been officially called into question by a panel of judges.

In 2003, a California appeals court dismissed a murder conviction because prosecutors had failed to disclose to the defense that Ribe, a trial witness, had “credibility problems” and “a history of changing his testimony,” according to an account in the Los Angeles Times.

The ruling cited five instances in which Ribe changed his findings in homicide cases.

In addition, Ribe was involved in a controversy concerning the 2005 death of Eliza Jane Scovill, age 3. The coroner ruled that the child died of AIDS. Her mother, Christine Maggiore, is an HIV-positive activist–and a controversial figure in her own right–who has vehemently questioned Ribe’s ruling on the cause of death.

Finally, although an autopsy can prove that a person was killed as a result of a car wreck—no autopsy can prove whether or not that wreck was arranged.

https://whowhatwhy.org/2013/08/23/repor ... -mercedes/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Sat Dec 16, 2017 5:40 am

Wikileaks: CIA's Brennan on 'witch hunt' when Hastings was killed

digitaljournal.com

A 2010 email released by Wikileaks from a top-level CIA contractor asserts that CIA Director John Brennan, the subject of a story by now deceased journalist Michael Hastings, was on a "witch hunt" against "investigative journalists" perceived as hostile.

Hastings, a reporter for the Rolling Stone who ruffled many feathers in his career, was killed in an unusual high-speed car accident in which the vehicle exploded on impact with a tree, and perhaps before. Hastings' wife confirmed to San Diego 6 News Television, soon after the uncharacteristic high-speed automobile crash, that Hastings' next "big story," as he called it, was to be on Brennan. The email, written by Stratfor President Fred Burton and reported by San Diego 6, reads: Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources. Note -- There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode... The story on Brennan was never published. Stratfor was once called "The Shadow CIA" by Barron's. In 2012 WikiLeaks began publishing “The Global Intelligence Files,” over five million e-mails from the Texas-based company. The email has never been disavowed by Stratfor. When San Diego 6 reporter Kim Dvorak asked the CIA for comment on the email in the context of the Hastings' death, in an August, 2013 report, a CIA spokesman responded: ““Without commenting on information disseminated by WikiLeaks, any suggestion that Director Brennan has ever attempted to infringe on constitutionally-protected press freedoms is offensive and baseless.” ”Michael Hasting was killed on June 18, 2013, when the new Mercedes C250 SUV he had just leased hit a tree after running numerous red lights at over 100 mph in Los Angeles. A surveillance video at a pizza shop captured a fiery, violent explosion, which is uncharacteristic of high-speed impacts. Generations of advances in safety design have made accidents exhibiting these characteristics unheard of. Typically, high speed impacts, even in past generations of automobiles, are characterized by a violent, horrific-sounding crunching of metal and glass, but no gas explosion. Fire can follow, but ignition usually takes place after the initial impact, as fuel vapors heat up and come into contact with hot surfaces. According to the National Fire Protection Association, only 3% of cars catch on fire as the result of crash impacts, and impact explosions are not a statistical category. The pizza shop video shows a fireball which explodes outward for hundreds of feet in all directions and immediately lights up the night sky. Skeptics of the official LAPD conclusion, that no foul play was involved, cite a witness who said that "It sounded like a bomb going off in the middle of the night." Witnesses also reported the car was already on fire before it hit the tree. Hastings crash video taken from pizza shop surveillance camera Hours before he died, Hastings sent out a series of frantic emails to friends and colleagues, indicating that be believed he was being investigated by the FBI and sounding "panicked," according to his friend Sgt. Joe Biggs, whom he had met in Afghanistan. In an in-depth interview with San Diego 6 reporter Kim Dvorak, and Hastings friend Sgt. Biggs, Biggs tells RT interviewer Abby Martin that he had received an email indicating that police had been present at Hastings' house that day, and that Hastings had been seen looking underneath his car. The San Diego journalist Kim Dvorak expresses her belief, after extensive investigation, that the Hastings crash was not a simple one-car accident, and may have involved foul play. She notes the police are withholding evidence such as the "black box" onboard the vehicle, which would have recorded all electronic events involving the car's controls. San Diego 6 report After Hastings' death, his notes on the Brennan story were suppressed, according to WesternJournalism.com, and in any event the Rolling Stone never published the story despite pledges to do so. After at first saying that“At no time was Michael Hastings, or anything related to his work as a journalist, ever under investigation by the FBI,” the FBI subsequently revised its statement to: “At no time was journalist Michael Hastings ever under investigation by the FBI.” Freedom of Information Act requests from reporters revealed that the FBI had indeed cataloged some of Hastings' articles, and discussed him in heavily redacted documents.Brennan was architect of CIA "Disposition Matrix" capture/kill listCIA Director Brennan made news during his confirmation hearings in early 2013, when he was nominated for the position by Obama. Of particular concern to some senators was Brennan's role in creating the “Disposition Matrix,”an Obama administration project started in 2010, described by government officials as a "next-generation capture/kill list." Brennan also served under the George W. Bush administration, first as chief-of-staff to CIA Director George Tenet, then as deputy executive director of the CIA. Of the “Disposition Matrix” run by the executive branch National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC,) and heavily shaped by Brennan in his role as Obama National Security Advisor, Glenn Greenwald for the UK Guardian wrote: “What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight.” Before his Senate confirmation vote for CIA Director, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul mounted a filibuster against Brennan's confirmation, saying: ““No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country."” Brennan was eventually confirmed by a vote of 63-34. RT interview of San Diego 6 reporter Kim Dvorak and Hastings friend Sgt. Joe Biggs Similar concerns moved Oregon Senator Ron Wyden to write a letter to Brennan asking him to clarify if he believed the extrajudicial assassination system, deemed unconstitutional by civil libertarians, applied to American citizens on American soil. Brennan wrote back that he believed it did not. This did not assuage the concerns of many on this issue, however, since the Obama administration gave a different answer when US Attorney General Eric Holder refused to rule out the assassination of American citizens within the United States. Brennan has become controversial on other issues. Right-leaning sources accuse Brennan of being behind the US policy of running arms to Al Qaeda-linked Syrian rebels. In an unusual public comment on the case, former Bush national counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke told the Huffington Post: “it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on...” After denying he was a "conspiracy guy," the former top US counter-terrorism official went on to say: “ ...in the case of Michael Hastings, what evidence is available publicly is consistent with a car cyber attack.”Typical high-speed crash



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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Sat Dec 16, 2017 7:56 pm

Entertainment, courtesy of Harry Reed and some tax money. kd

Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program

By HELENE COOPER, RALPH BLUMENTHAL and LESLIE KEANDEC. 16, 2017

nytimes.com | Dec. 16, 2017

WASHINGTON — In the $600 billion annual Defense Department budgets, the $22 million spent on the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program was almost impossible to find.

Which was how the Pentagon wanted it.

For years, the program investigated reports of unidentified flying objects, according to Defense Department officials, interviews with program participants and records obtained by The New York Times. It was run by a military intelligence official, Luis Elizondo, on the fifth floor of the Pentagon’s C Ring, deep within the building’s maze.

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012. But its backers say that, while the Pentagon ended funding for the effort at that time, the program remains in existence. For the past five years, they say, officials with the program have continued to investigate episodes brought to them by service members, while also carrying out their other Defense Department duties.

The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space.

On CBS’s “60 Minutes” in May, Mr. Bigelow said he was “absolutely convinced” that aliens exist and that U.F.O.s have visited Earth.

Working with Mr. Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based company, the program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift.

Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Mr. Reid, who retired from Congress this year, said he was proud of the program. “I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” Mr. Reid said in a recent interview in Nevada. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Two other former senators and top members of a defense spending subcommittee — Ted Stevens, an Alaska Republican, and Daniel K. Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat — also supported the program. Mr. Stevens died in 2010, and Mr. Inouye in 2012.

While not addressing the merits of the program, Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at M.I.T., cautioned that not knowing the origin of an object does not mean that it is from another planet or galaxy. “When people claim to observe truly unusual phenomena, sometimes it’s worth investigating seriously,” she said. But, she added, “what people sometimes don’t get about science is that we often have phenomena that remain unexplained.”

James E. Oberg, a former NASA space shuttle engineer and the author of 10 books on spaceflight who often debunks U.F.O. sightings, was also doubtful. “There are plenty of prosaic events and human perceptual traits that can account for these stories,” Mr. Oberg said. “Lots of people are active in the air and don’t want others to know about it. They are happy to lurk unrecognized in the noise, or even to stir it up as camouflage.”

Still, Mr. Oberg said he welcomed research. “There could well be a pearl there,” he said.

In response to questions from The Times, Pentagon officials this month acknowledged the existence of the program, which began as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. Officials insisted that the effort had ended after five years, in 2012.

“It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding, and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change,” a Pentagon spokesman, Thomas Crosson, said in an email, referring to the Department of Defense.

But Mr. Elizondo said the only thing that had ended was the effort’s government funding, which dried up in 2012. From then on, Mr. Elizondo said in an interview, he worked with officials from the Navy and the C.I.A. He continued to work out of his Pentagon office until this past October, when he resigned to protest what he characterized as excessive secrecy and internal opposition.

“Why aren’t we spending more time and effort on this issue?” Mr. Elizondo wrote in a resignation letter to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis.
Mr. Elizondo said that the effort continued and that he had a successor, whom he declined to name.

U.F.O.s have been repeatedly investigated over the decades in the United States, including by the American military. In 1947, the Air Force began a series of studies that investigated more than 12,000 claimed U.F.O. sightings before it was officially ended in 1969. The project, which included a study code-named Project Blue Book, started in 1952, concluded that most sightings involved stars, clouds, conventional aircraft or spy planes, although 701 remained unexplained.

Robert C. Seamans Jr., the secretary of the Air Force at the time, said in a memorandum announcing the end of Project Blue Book that it “no longer can be justified either on the ground of national security or in the interest of science.”

Mr. Reid said his interest in U.F.O.s came from Mr. Bigelow. In 2007, Mr. Reid said in the interview, Mr. Bigelow told him that an official with the Defense Intelligence Agency had approached him wanting to visit Mr. Bigelow’s ranch in Utah, where he conducted research.

Mr. Reid said he met with agency officials shortly after his meeting with Mr. Bigelow and learned that they wanted to start a research program on U.F.O.s. Mr. Reid then summoned Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye to a secure room in the Capitol.

“I had talked to John Glenn a number of years before,” Mr. Reid said, referring to the astronaut and former senator from Ohio, who died in 2016. Mr. Glenn, Mr. Reid said, had told him he thought that the federal government should be looking seriously into U.F.O.s, and should be talking to military service members, particularly pilots, who had reported seeing aircraft they could not identify or explain.
The sightings were not often reported up the military’s chain of command, Mr. Reid said, because service members were afraid they would be laughed at or stigmatized.

The meeting with Mr. Stevens and Mr. Inouye, Mr. Reid said, “was one of the easiest meetings I ever had.”

He added, “Ted Stevens said, ‘I’ve been waiting to do this since I was in the Air Force.’” (The Alaska senator had been a pilot in the Army’s air force, flying transport missions over China during World War II.)

During the meeting, Mr. Reid said, Mr. Stevens recounted being tailed by a strange aircraft with no known origin, which he said had followed his plane for miles.

None of the three senators wanted a public debate on the Senate floor about the funding for the program, Mr. Reid said. “This was so-called black money,” he said. “Stevens knows about it, Inouye knows about it. But that was it, and that’s how we wanted it.” Mr. Reid was referring to the Pentagon budget for classified programs.


Contracts obtained by The Times show a congressional appropriation of just under $22 million beginning in late 2008 through 2011. The money was used for management of the program, research and assessments of the threat posed by the objects.

The funding went to Mr. Bigelow’s company, Bigelow Aerospace, which hired subcontractors and solicited research for the program.

Under Mr. Bigelow’s direction, the company modified buildings in Las Vegas for the storage of metal alloys and other materials that Mr. Elizondo and program contractors said had been recovered from unidentified aerial phenomena. Researchers also studied people who said they had experienced physical effects from encounters with the objects and examined them for any physiological changes. In addition, researchers spoke to military service members who had reported sightings of strange aircraft.

“We’re sort of in the position of what would happen if you gave Leonardo da Vinci a garage-door opener,” said Harold E. Puthoff, an engineer who has conducted research on extrasensory perception for the C.I.A. and later worked as a contractor for the program. “First of all, he’d try to figure out what is this plastic stuff. He wouldn’t know anything about the electromagnetic signals involved or its function.”

The program collected video and audio recordings of reported U.F.O. incidents, including footage from a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet showing an aircraft surrounded by some kind of glowing aura traveling at high speed and rotating as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard trying to understand what they are seeing. “There’s a whole fleet of them,” one exclaims. Defense officials declined to release the location and date of the incident.

“Internationally, we are the most backward country in the world on this issue,” Mr. Bigelow said in an interview. “Our scientists are scared of being ostracized, and our media is scared of the stigma. China and Russia are much more open and work on this with huge organizations within their countries. Smaller countries like Belgium, France, England and South American countries like Chile are more open, too. They are proactive and willing to discuss this topic, rather than being held back by a juvenile taboo.”

By 2009, Mr. Reid decided that the program had made such extraordinary discoveries that he argued for heightened security to protect it. “Much progress has been made with the identification of several highly sensitive, unconventional aerospace-related findings,” Mr. Reid said in a letter to William Lynn III, a deputy defense secretary at the time, requesting that it be designated a “restricted special access program” limited to a few listed officials.

A 2009 Pentagon briefing summary of the program prepared by its director at the time asserted that “what was considered science fiction is now science fact,” and that the United States was incapable of defending itself against some of the technologies discovered. Mr. Reid’s request for the special designation was denied.

Mr. Elizondo, in his resignation letter of Oct. 4, said there was a need for more serious attention to “the many accounts from the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond-next-generation capabilities.” He expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling Mr. Mattis that “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Mr. Elizondo has now joined Mr. Puthoff and another former Defense Department official, Christopher K. Mellon, who was a deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, in a new commercial venture called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. They are speaking publicly about their efforts as their venture aims to raise money for research into U.F.O.s.

In the interview, Mr. Elizondo said he and his government colleagues had determined that the phenomena they had studied did not seem to originate from any country. “That fact is not something any government or institution should classify in order to keep secret from the people,” he said.

For his part, Mr. Reid said he did not know where the objects had come from. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” he said. “We do not know.”

But, he said, “we have to start someplace.”



© 2017 The New York Times Company
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Mon Dec 18, 2017 6:36 am

Navy Airmen and an Object That ‘Accelerated Like Nothing I’ve Ever Seen’

By HELENE COOPER, LESLIE KEAN and RALPH BLUMENTHALDEC. 16, 2017

nytimes.com | Dec. 16, 2017

The following recounts an incident in 2004 that advocates of research into U.F.O.s have said is the kind of event worthy of more investigation, and that was studied by a Pentagon program that investigated U.F.O.s. Experts caution that earthly explanations often exist for such incidents, and that not knowing the explanation does not mean that the event has interstellar origins.

Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Jim Slaight were on a routine training mission 100 miles out into the Pacific when the radio in each of their F/A-18F Super Hornets crackled: An operations officer aboard the U.S.S. Princeton, a Navy cruiser, wanted to know if they were carrying weapons.

“Two CATM-9s,” Commander Fravor replied, referring to dummy missiles that could not be fired. He had not been expecting any hostile exchanges off the coast of San Diego that November afternoon in 2004.

Commander Fravor, in a recent interview with The New York Times, recalled what happened next. Some of it is captured in a video made public by officials with a Pentagon program that investigated U.F.O.s.

“Well, we’ve got a real-world vector for you,” the radio operator said, according to Commander Fravor. For two weeks, the operator said, the Princeton had been tracking mysterious aircraft. The objects appeared suddenly at 80,000 feet, and then hurtled toward the sea, eventually stopping at 20,000 feet and hovering. Then they either dropped out of radar range or shot straight back up.

The radio operator instructed Commander Fravor and Commander Slaight, who has given a similar account, to investigate.

The two fighter planes headed toward the objects. The Princeton alerted them as they closed in, but when they arrived at “merge plot” with the object — naval aviation parlance for being so close that the Princeton could not tell which were the objects and which were the fighter jets — neither Commander Fravor nor Commander Slaight could see anything at first. There was nothing on their radars, either.

Then, Commander Fravor looked down to the sea. It was calm that day, but the waves were breaking over something that was just below the surface. Whatever it was, it was big enough to cause the sea to churn.

Hovering 50 feet above the churn was an aircraft of some kind — whitish — that was around 40 feet long and oval in shape. The craft was jumping around erratically, staying over the wave disturbance but not moving in any specific direction, Commander Fravor said. The disturbance looked like frothy waves and foam, as if the water were boiling.

Commander Fravor began a circular descent to get a closer look, but as he got nearer the object began ascending toward him. It was almost as if it were coming to meet him halfway, he said.

Commander Fravor abandoned his slow circular descent and headed straight for the object.

But then the object peeled away. “It accelerated like nothing I’ve ever seen,” he said in the interview. He was, he said, “pretty weirded out.”

The two fighter jets then conferred with the operations officer on the Princeton and were told to head to a rendezvous point 60 miles away, called the cap point, in aviation parlance.

They were en route and closing in when the Princeton radioed again. Radar had again picked up the strange aircraft.

“Sir, you won’t believe it,” the radio operator said, “but that thing is at your cap point.”

“We were at least 40 miles away, and in less than a minute this thing was already at our cap point,” Commander Fravor, who has since retired from the Navy, said in the interview.

By the time the two fighter jets arrived at the rendezvous point, the object had disappeared.

The fighter jets returned to the Nimitz, where everyone on the ship had learned of Commander Fravor’s encounter and was making fun of him.

Commander Fravor’s superiors did not investigate further and he went on with his career, deploying to the Persian Gulf to provide air support to ground troops during the Iraq war. But he does remember what he said that evening to a fellow pilot who asked him what he thought he had seen.

“I have no idea what I saw,” Commander Fravor replied to the pilot. “It had no plumes, wings or rotors and outran our F-18s.”

But, he added, “I want to fly one.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/us/p ... -navy.html
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Mon Dec 18, 2017 6:57 am

The Pentagon’s Secret Search for UFOs

Funded at the request of Harry Reid, the program probed a number of encounters military pilots had with aircraft they believed didn’t operate like anything they had seen before.

By BRYAN BENDER

POLITICO Magazine

The Pentagon, at the direction of Congress, a decade ago quietly set up a multimillion-dollar program to investigate what are popularly known as unidentified flying objects—UFOs.

The “unidentified aerial phenomena” claimed to have been seen by pilots and other military personnel appeared vastly more advanced than those in American or foreign arsenals. In some cases they maneuvered so unusually and so fast that they seemed to defy the laws of physics, according to multiple sources directly involved in or briefed on the effort and a review of unclassified Defense Department and congressional documents.

The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program, whose existence was not classified but operated with the knowledge of an extremely limited number of officials, was the brainchild of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who first secured the appropriation to begin the program in 2009 with the support of the late Senators Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) and Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), two World War II veterans who were similarly concerned about the potential national security implications, the sources involved in the effort said. The origins of the program, the existence of which the Pentagon confirmed on Friday, are being revealed publicly for the first time by POLITICO and the New York Times in nearly simultaneous reports on Saturday.

One possible theory behind the unexplained incidents, according to a former congressional staffer who described the motivations behind the program, was that a foreign power—perhaps the Chinese or the Russians—had developed next-generation technologies that could threaten the United States.

“Was this China or Russia trying to do something or has some propulsion system we are not familiar with?” said a former staffer who spoke with POLITICO on condition of anonymity.

The revelation of the program could give a credibility boost to UFO theorists, who have long pointed to public accounts by military pilots and others describing phenomena that defy obvious explanation, and could fuel demands for increased transparency about the scope and findings of the Pentagon effort, which focused some of its inquiries into sci-fi sounding concepts like "wormholes" and "warp drives." The program also drafted a series of what the office referred to as "queried unverified event under evaluation," QUEU reports, in which pilots and other personnel who had reported encounters were interviewed about their experiences.

Reid initiated the program, which ultimately spent more than $20 million, through an earmark after he was persuaded in part by aerospace titan and hotel chain founder Bob Bigelow, a friend and fellow Nevadan who owns Bigelow Aerospace, a space technology company and government contractor. Bigelow, whose company received some of the research contracts, was also a regular contributor to Reid’s reelection campaigns, campaign finance records show, at least $10,000 from 1998 to 2008. Bigelow has spoken openly in recent years about his views that extraterrestrial visitors frequently travel to Earth. He also purchased the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, the subject of intense interest among believers in UFOs. Reid and Bigelow did not respond to multiple requests for comment.



According to a Pentagon official, the AATIP program was ended “in the 2012 time frame,” but it has recently attracted attention because of the resignation in early October of Luis Elizondo, the career intelligence officer who ran the initiative. In his resignation letter, addressed to Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Elizondo said the efforts of his program were not being taken sufficiently seriously.The Pentagon official could not confirm Mattis had actually seen the letter.

"We tried to work within the system," Elizondo told POLITICO in a recent interview. "We were trying to take the voodoo out of voodoo science."

He described scores of unexplained sightings by Navy pilots and other observers of aircraft with capabilities far beyond what is currently considered aerodynamically possible. The sightings, Elizondo told POLITICO, were often reported in the vicinity of nuclear facilities, either ships at sea or power plants. "We had never seen anything like it."

But, in his view military leadership did not appear alarmed by the potential threat. "If a Russian 'Bear' bomber comes in near California, it is all over the news," he said. "These are coming in the skies over our facilities. Nothing but crickets."

Shortly after his resignation, Elizondo was listed as one of the key players in a for-profit company called To The Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-founded by Tom DeLonge, an entertainment mogul and former guitarist and vocalist for the rock band Blink-182. An April 2016 profile of DeLonge in “Rolling Stone” magazine described his fascination with theories about extraterrestrial space travel as an “obsession.”

In a video advertising the company, DeLonge describes To The Stars as a “public benefit corporation” that has “mobilized a team of the most experienced, connected and passionately curious minds from the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, Department of Defense, who have been operating under the shadows of top secrecy for decades.”

The founders say they believe “there is sufficient credible evidence of UAP [unidentified aerial phenomenon] that proves exotic technologies exist that could revolutionize the human experience.”

The goal of the academy’s researchers, it says on its website, is “to use their expertise and credibility to bring transformative science and engineering out of the shadows and collaborate with global citizens to apply that knowledge in a way that benefits humanity,” adding “without government restrictions.”

Also helping drive the effort is Chris Mellon, a former Democratic staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence. Other members of the company include a former high-level CIA official and the former director of advanced systems at Lockheed Martin’s super-secret Skunk Works facility in California.

“I think we’re all frustrated by the fact that our government and science neglects some of the most interesting and provocative and potentially important issues out there,” Mellon says in the video.

POLITICO learned of the Pentagon program earlier this fall, shortly after Mellon and his colleagues rolled out their new private effort, which is now seeking investors with a minimum purchase of $200 in common stock shares. Its website claims 2,142 investors, who have purchased slightly more than $2 million worth of shares.

At a recent press conference for To The Stars in Las Vegas, Mellon described one of the sightings reported by U.S. Navy pilots: "It is white, oblong, some 40 feet long and perhaps 12 feet thick … The pilots are astonished to see the object suddenly reorient itself toward the approaching F/A-18. In a series of discreet tumbling maneuvers that seem to defy the laws of physics, the object takes a position directly behind the approaching F/A-18. The pilots capture gun camera footage and infrared imagery of the object. They are outmatched by a technology they’ve never seen."

“They did not exhibit overt hostility,” Elizondo, listed as director of global security and special programs for To The Stars, explained in a recent published interview of the series of reported encounters. “But something unexplained is always assumed to be a potential threat until we are certain it isn’t. On the bright side, I believe we are closer than ever before in our understanding of how it operates.”

The Pentagon’s AATIP program marked a 21st-century effort to replicate some of the decades of inconclusive research undertaken by the Pentagon in 1950s and 1960s to try to explain thousands of reported sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, by military and civilian pilots and average citizens—particularly an effort known as Project Bluebook that ran from 1947 to 1969 and is still a focus of intense interest for UFO researchers.

The more recent effort, which was established inside the Defense Intelligence Agency, compiled “reams of paperwork,” but little else, the former staffer said.

Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed to POLITICO that the program existed and was run by Elizondo. But she could not say how long he was in charge of it and declined to answer detailed questions about the office or its work, citing concerns about the closely held nature of the program.

“The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program ended in the 2012 time frame,” White said. “It was determined that there were other, higher priority issues that merited funding and it was in the best interest of the DoD to make a change.”

White added: “The DoD takes seriously all threats and potential threats to our people, our assets, and our mission and takes action whenever credible information is developed.”

But some who were aware of the effort in its earliest days were uncomfortable with the aims of the program, unnerved by the implication that the incidents involved aircraft that were not made by humans.

“I thought it was a little bizarre at the time,” recalled a former senior intelligence official who knew about Reid’s role first-hand. He asked those in the know: “Tell me what this is, and what we are doing and what is going on and that we aren’t doing something that is nonsense here.”

“I was concerned the money was being funneled through it to somebody else who was an associate of Harry Reid’s,” added the former official, who asked not to be identified. “The whole circle was kind of a bizarre piece.”

Reid enlisted the support of Inouye, then chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, as well as Stevens, who two sources involved in the effort were told had related to Reid that as a pilot he had personally witnessed similar unexplained aerial phenomenon.

There was also interest among some analysts at the DIA who were concerned that the Russians or Chinese might have developed some more advanced systems. Reid’s views on the subject were also shaped by a book about the Skinwalker Ranch, co-authored by his acquaintance George Knapp, the former congressional staffer said.

“When this was brought to Senator Reid he said, ‘There is enough here and I am obligated if this is a national security issue to invest some money in this,’” he explained. “Stevens and Inouye agreed with this.”

“I still remember coming back from that meeting and thinking of the implications of what Reid said,” the former senior official said. “I remember being concerned about this. I wanted to make sure it was supervised and we were using the appropriation to do actual research on real threats to the United States.

He said he was assured that the research being done was valid. “It was not a rogue individual out of control.”

The former staffer said that eventually, however, even Reid agreed it was not worth continuing.

“After a while the consensus was we really couldn’t find anything of substance,” he recalled. “They produced reams of paperwork. After all of that there was really nothing there that we could find. It all pretty much dissolved from that reason alone—and the interest level was losing steam. We only did it a couple years.”

“There was really nothing there that we could justify using taxpayer money,” he added. “We let it die a slow death. It was well-spent money in the beginning.”

Theodoric Meyer and Gabriel DeBenedetti contributed tp this report.

© 2017 POLITICO LLC
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Wed Dec 20, 2017 8:21 pm

House IT Aides Ran Car Dealership With Markings Of A Nefarious Money Laundering Operation




The Daily Caller | 5:27 PM 12/19/2017




The used car dealership known as CIA never seemed like an ordinary car dealership, with inventory, staff and expenses.

On its Facebook page, CIA’s “staff” were fake personalities such as “James Falls O’Brien,” whose photo was taken from a hairstyle model catalog, and “Jade Julia,” whose image came from a web page called “Beautiful Girls Wallpaper.”

If a customer showed up looking to buy a car from Cars International A, often referred to as CIA, Abid Awan — who was managing partner of the dealership while also earning $160,000 handling IT for House Democrats — would frequently simply go across the street to another dealership called AAA Motors and get one.

“If AAA borrows a car to Cars International and they have a customer, it was simply take the car across the street and sell it, and then later on give the profit back or not,” Nasir Khattak, who ran the longstanding AAA dealership, testified in a lawsuit. “There was no documentation… If you go and try to dissect, you will not be able to make any sense out of them because there were many, dozens and dozens, of cars transferred between the two dealerships and between other people.”

Khattak did not explain why he would ruin his existing business to help the Awans. “All of those transactions was to support Cars International A from AAA Motors,” he testified. “That’s why I did not make any money from my dealership because my resources were supporting Cars International A.”

He said only Imran Awan knew what became of the money. “It was Imram, [Abid] Awan’s brother, who was running the business in full control,” he said.

Imran Awan and his family members were congressional IT aides who investigators said made unauthorized access to the House Democratic Caucus server thousands of times. At the same time as they worked for and could read all the emails of congressmen who sat on committees like Intelligence, Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs, they also ran a car dealership that took money from a Hezbollah-linked fugitive and whose financial books were indecipherable and business patterns bizarre, according to testimony in court records.

While Imran and Abid Awan ran their car dealership in Falls Church, Va. in the early part of the decade, Drug Enforcement Agency officials a few miles away in Chantilly were learning that the Iranian-linked terrorist group frequently deployed used car dealerships in the US to launder money and fund terrorism, according to an explosive new Politico expose.

The money that disappeared between the Awans’ dealership, some $7 million in congressional pay, the equipment suspected of disappearing from Congress under their watch, and their other side businesses — all while they displayed few signs of wealth and frequently haggled in court over small amounts of money — raise questions about whether the Awans might have been laundering money or sending it to a third party.

“Based on the modest way Awan was living, it is my opinion that he was sending most of his money to a group or criminal organization that could very well be connected with the Pakistani government,” said Wayne Black, a private investigator who served as law enforcement group supervisor in Janet Reno’s Miami public corruption unit. “My instincts tell me Awan was probably operating a foreign intelligence gathering operation on US soil.”

Officials told Politico that prosecutors refused to help them punish top Hezbollah operatives involved in its money laundering network because of political concerns, such as fears of jeopardizing the Obama administration’s deal with Iran. Similarly, the Awans, who had close relationships to House Democrats including Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Gregory Meeks, have not been charged with any crimes surrounding the dealership nor with their House activities. The disclosure of a House IT breach shortly before the election by Pakistani-born Democratic staffers would have had political fallout.

Shortly before the 2016 election, investigators found huge amounts of House equipment unaccounted for under the Awans’ stewardship, and when they looked into the family further, they found that they had logged in to members’ computers for whom they did not work. There were signs that the House Democratic Caucus’ server “is being used for nefarious purposes” by the Awans, according to a House investigation, and “steps are being taken to conceal their activity.”

Politico tells the story of Ali Fayad, a “Ukraine-based arms merchant suspected of being a Hezbollah operative moving large amounts of weapons to Syria:”


Lebanese arms dealer Ali Fayad Ali Fayad, a suspected top Hezbollah operative whom agents believed reported to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a key supplier of weapons to Syria and Iraq, was arrested in Prague in the spring of 2014. But for the nearly two years Fayad was in custody, top Obama administration officials declined to apply serious pressure on the Czech government to extradite him to the United States, even as Putin was lobbying aggressively against it.

Abid Awan is married to a Ukranian named Nataliia Sova, who was herself on the House payroll as an IT aide in 2010 and 2011 for Reps. Emmanuel Cleaver, Ted Deutch, and Gabby Giffords. Abid incorporated Cars International in 2008, and Cars International A in 2009, taking out loans from the Congressional credit union while omitting the dealership from House financial disclosures. It was not clear how he could have been working at both the dealership and a high-paid congressional job.

In 2010, the CIA dealership took a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar, who is of Iranian heritage and was a minister in the Iraqi government, according to court records. Al-Attar is a fugitive wanted by the U.S. government. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, wrote that Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012–shortly after the loan was made.

The money was moved from Ali Al-Attar through accounts intended for Fairfax County real estate. Both Imran Awan and Khattak — who also put up $200,000 in cash as an investor in CIA — had realtors licenses.

It’s not clear where the dealership’s money was going, because it was sued by at least five different people on all ends of a typical car business who said they were stiffed. CIA didn’t pay the security deposit, rent or taxes for its building, it didn’t pay wholesalers who provided cars, and it sold broken cars to people and then refused to honor the warranties, the lawsuits say.

“The consignment agreements state it clearly that either Mr. Awan sells the cars for the agreed price no less $62,200 or return my cars back. I need my cars back,” Issmail Alchaleh, one wholesaler, wrote in court documents. Some of the consignment agreements use the same VIN for multiple cars.

Abid declared bankruptcy in 2010 to discharge debts racked up by the car dealership. One person who was listed on bankruptcy documents as being owed money by the dealership, Rao Abbas, later appeared on the House payroll as an IT aide, even though his most recent job experience was working at McDonalds. Democrats have refused to explain why they hired him.

Abid kept ownership of two houses in the bankruptcy by saying he was separated or divorcing from Sova, but even this year, they were still together, and Sova used Abid’s residence when incorporating her own car companies. Sova established a mysterious company called Alain LLC in 2009, followed by Discover EZ Car Buying Co. in 2014 and Regional Car Center Inc. in 2015. Virginia incorporation documents list Abid’s home address as the businesses’ location, and a Google search did not reveal any evidence of the dealerships existing, which is incongruous for a line of work where basic revenue depends on making sure potential customers know where to find them.

Other opaque companies, such as New Dawn 2001 and Acg LLC, were also established in 2011 out of Imran’s house.

A relative of the Awans told TheDCNF that Abid sent huge quantities of iPads and iPhones to Pakistan and that Imran frequently talked about Russia. They also sent money to a Pakistani police officer. The brothers’ stepmother, Samina Gilani, said in court documents that when the family spends time in Pakistan, the brothers are escorted by a motorcade of Pakistani government agents. Rep. Yvette Clarke, a New York Democrat who employed Abid, filed paperwork saying that $120,000 in technology equipment went missing while Abid managed it for the office.

Despite brothers Imran, Abid and Jamal and Imran’s wife, Hina Alvi, all making chief-of-staff level salaries of $160,000 on Capitol Hill, they displayed few signs of wealth in the US, further raising questions about where all the money was going. Abid is in a lawsuit against his stepmother after Abid replaced her with himself on his father’s life insurance policy, and his attorney, Jim Bacon, told a judge he needed money. Imran’s lawyer said his children were living in squalor. They reported few holdings on their House ethics disclosures.

They bought houses will little money down, then rented them out, insisting that rent be paid in cash, tenants told TheDCNF. Sources said the FBI generated Suspicious Activity Reports hundreds of pages long based on large cash deposits and international wires.

Members of Congress have refused to acknowledge what is well-known among the House bureaucracy, that investigators found conclusive evidence that the Awans wantonly violated House IT regulations. “There’s no question about it: If I was accused of a tenth of what these guys are accused of, they’d take me out in handcuffs that same day,” a fellow House IT aide said. But fellow IT aides with knowledge pertinent to the case said the FBI hasn’t even interviewed them.

Politico’s money-laundering story echoed similar themes: “Right now, we have 50 FBI agents not doing anything because they know their Iran cases aren’t going anywhere,” including investigations into allegedly complicit used-car dealers, a prosecutor said.



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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Wed Dec 20, 2017 8:26 pm

Ex-Dem IT aide Imran Awan could flee to Pakistan if restrictions lifted, DOJ warns

By Brooke Singman | Fox News

Fox News | .com

The Justice Department warned Monday that ex-Capitol Hill IT aide Imran Awan is a “flight risk” and could flee to Pakistan if a judge approves his request to lift “all of the conditions of his release.”

U.S. Attorney Jessie Liu filed a motion before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, urging the court to deny the request from Awan, who is facing fraud and other charges.

Awan, a former IT aide for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, is currently enrolled in the High Intensity Supervision Program (HISP) with conditions that he abide by an electronically monitored curfew of 12 a.m. to 6 a.m. and a limit on traveling beyond 150 miles from his residence, according to court documents. Awan and his attorney want to lift those conditions, including the electronic monitoring bracelet.

Federal prosecutors warned this could give Awan an opening.

“While the government possesses Awan’s Pakistani passport, nothing prevents him from obtaining a new Pakistani passport at the Embassy in D.C. That passport would permit Awan to board a flight and leave the country at any time,” the motion read. “The government asserts that Awan is a flight risk and that his participation in HISP is by far the least restrictive condition that can be imposed on him to ensure his return to Court.”

More
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/12 ... warns.html
33




Wasserman Schultz Named One Of Congress’ ‘Most Ethically Challenged’ For House IT Scandal

The Daily Caller | 5:27 PM 12/18/2017

Independent government watchdog Foundation for Accountability & Civic Trust (FACT) named Democratic Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz one of Congress’ “most ethically challenged” members for her role in the House IT scandal.

Wasserman Schultz was named the second most ethically challenged member; every congressman on Congress’ list of secret harassment settlements tied for first.

Two of Wasserman Schultz’s former IT aides, Imran Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, have been indicted on charges of conspiracy against the United States. Evidence gathered in a cybersecurity probe in the House of Representatives revealed a litany of violations, although the two aides have not yet been charged in that probe.

FACT filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics in July after Wasserman Schultz continued employing Awan for months after Capitol Police said he was under investigation, and even after he was banned from the House network. Wasserman Schultz seemingly planned to continue paying Awan even after he moved back to his native country of Pakistan.

The Democratic congresswoman also tried to intimidate Capitol Police into handing over a laptop that she indicated belonged to her. She later changed her story and said the laptop belonged to Awan. The laptop’s hard drive has played a central role in the legal case against the former Democratic IT aides.

Republican Florida Rep. Ron DeSantis said in August that the House IT scandal, which remains ongoing, is “one of the all-time congressional scandals in the last 30 years.”

© Copyright 2010 - 2017 | The Daily Caller
http://dailycaller.com/2017/12/18/wasse ... t-scandal/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:12 am

Boykin asks United Nations for help fighting Chicago violence

WLSMegan Hickey and Craig Wall

ABC7 Chicago | CHICAGO (WLS) --

Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin headed to the United Nations in New York Thursday to ask for help fighting violence in Chicago.
"I'm hoping to appeal the UN to actually come to Chicago and meet with victims of violence and maybe even possibly help out in terms of peace keeping efforts," Boykin said.

Boykin boarded a plane to New York City for a meeting with an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. It's a meeting that's been planned for more than a month and stems from disconcerting violence numbers seen this year in Chicago. Violence which is felt particularly hard in many African American communities.

"We've had over 600 people killed by gun violence already this year alone. That is a huge number, in my community of Austin we've had 450 people shot and 80 people killed this year alone 18 so we have to do more to protect these communities," Boykin said.

The mayor's office says the call for UN peacekeepers is a political stunt. The police superintendent said it's a nice idea, but it's not the answer to Chicago's violence.

"I appreciate the commissioner's energy and his anxiousness to help reduce the gun violence in Chicago, I really do commend that, but at the end of the day the UN has no jurisdiction here, they really have no jurisdiction in this country," Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson said.

Other suggestions for helping Chicago police have included bringing in the National Guard, but that too has been dismissed as a gimmick or not practical. Johnson said that despite a record number of murders last year, new policing strategies are having an impact.

"This year we are down about 110 in raw numbers from the murders last year and about, over 700 shootings down, so I'm pleased with it. It's not cause for celebration but it is showing progress," Johnson said.

Commissioner Boykin said that that his 40-minute meeting went very well. He said he learned the UN is working on a global youth violence report, which should be finished soon.

Boykin said the assistant secretary general offered to come to Chicago when it's done and share the findings.

(Copyright ©2017 WLS-TV. All Rights Reserved.)
http://abc7chicago.com/politics/boykin- ... e/2780474/
33





Massive United Nations Train Carrying Tanks, Humvees Seen Near Chicago - Mysterious White Bus Seen In Florida

allnewspipeline.com

A massive United Nations armament train completely loaded down with tanks and other weapons of war was recently videotaped in Wheaton, Illinois as shared in the brand newvideo below from Gary Franchi of The Next News Network. Gary files a report from the actual scene of this latest sighting of UN vehicles in America; All News Pipeline has reported upon several of these sighting across America for the past year+ and there have been several of them as outlined below.

Why is the United Nations hauling massive amounts of military machines of war across America as seen in this video? We have seen UN helicopters flying over Washington state as well as UN medical and war vehicles on the highways. Is this more proof that the world government is getting prepared for the forthcoming collapse of America? As Franchi asks, is this somehow tied to Jade Helm 15? Why are so many of these military trains we have been seeing recently been traveling at night?

http://allnewspipeline.com/Massive_UN_T ... hicago.php

33




Top cop: U.N. has 'no jurisdiction' in Chicago
Ese Olumhense

chicagotribune.com

A day after Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin called for United Nations intervention to stop what he called a “quiet genocide” in Chicago’s black community, the city’s top cop laughed at the proposal, saying the organization had “no jurisdiction” in Chicago.

“I appreciate the commissioner’s energy,” Chicago police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said at a Friday morning news conference. “But I think that, first of all, the U.N. has no jurisdiction in Chicago — none.”

Boykin’s energy, Johnson said, would be “better spent building bridges and relationships in the city, and with our local partners, state partners and federal partners here to address violence.”

Responding to Johnson’s comments Friday, Boykin, who has announced he is running for re-election, doubled down on his claim that genocide was indeed taking place in Chicago. And though he said he looked forward to working with Johnson to reduce gun violence, the commissioner also challenged the police chief to ensure that CPD is working to improve its “abyssmally low” clearance rate.

“If this was happening in a Third World country, we would be sending in peacekeepers,” Boykin said Friday. “The facts suggest that this is genocide,” he later added.

Those facts, he said, include not only the rate of gun violence affecting Chicago’s black community but the locations of food deserts, persistent health disparities, drug abuse crises and “Great Depression levels” of unemployment.

“The conditions have been set up in such a way that they cause the people who live in these communities to destroy each other,” Boykin said.

Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson, who is running for Boykin’s seat on the Cook County Board, said Boykin has called for “war on his constituents.”

“His call for U.N. intervention not only puts all citizens at risk, but also continues to pit law enforcement workers against the citizens they have sworn to serve and protect,” Johnson said in a statement Friday. “Our children are not terrorists.”

Twitter @essayolumhense

Copyright (c) 2017 Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/loca ... story.html
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Sat Dec 23, 2017 1:31 am

2017 Seth Rich retrospective ..
I can't vet the site but, the facts seem accurate. kd


Seth Rich and 4 Others Killed within 6 weeks of each other

Conservative Daily News

Seth Rich and four other men, all tied to Hillary Clinton, mysteriously died within weeks of each other.

Background on Seth Rich

Seth Rich was a 27-year-old DNC staffer and Bernie Sanders supporter. He got wise to the shenanigans of the DNC as they worked to rob the nomination from Bernie so Hillary Clinton would get it.

Seth sent at least 20-40,000 e-mails with 13,000 attachments to WikiLeaks. A few weeks before the election he was walking home from his girlfriend’s apartment at 4 a.m. in a nice section of Washington D.C. when he was shot twice in the back and killed. The police defined it as a botched robbery, though evidence does not seem to support it. His wallet, expensive gold, cell phone and gold necklace were not taken.

There is supposedly a tape showing two men doing it, but it is being held by the D.C. police.

Media deflecting

The Mainstream Media (MSM) is pushing invalidated, unsubstantiated and crazy conspiratorial stories about President Trump colluding with Russia to win last year’s election. But liberal media won’t touch the story about former DNC staffer Seth Rich being gunned down in Washington DC last year.

Democrats and their media continue to push the false tale that Trump worked with Russia to steal the 2016 Presidential election. This lie is being promoted on all media outlets as a matter of fact even though there is no evidence to support the accusation. Democrats and the MSM have argued that Trump somehow supplied DNC emails to WikiLeaks that impacted the election and gave the victory to Trump. This is false. For example, DNC emails were released by WikiLeaks before the election but for the most part, the MSM ignored them. Also, the emails contained information that showed unethical, if not criminal, actions by John Podesta and Hillary Clinton before the campaign, but there is no information to date that proves that the emails released were in any way false or made up.

In one of his e-mails sent out Podesta said: “the leaker must be made an example of.” The Wiki Leaks e-mails revealed that John Podesta and Robbie Mook concocted the Russia/Trump story before the election and released it within 24 hours of Hillary losing.

DNC Cover Up

In a groundbreaking report, it was discovered that Donna Brazile, former DNC Chairwoman, and high-ranking DNC rep, tried to put an end into the Seth Rich investigations. Ms. Brazile allegedly called the private investigator handling the case, accused him of “snooping” and demanded to know why the investigation was still going on.

“The high-ranking DNC official that called the police after I inquired about Rich’s case was Donna Brazile,” veteran homicide detective Rod Wheeler told WND. “Why shouldn’t I reveal who it was?”

A spokesman for the Rich family has repeatedly criticized Detective Wheeler, who was hired by Rich’s family in March to find the DNC staffer’s murderer, for not ruling out the possibility that Rich may have leaked DNC emails to WikiLeaks. The Rich family recently sent Wheeler a “cease and desist” order to stop his investigation into the murder.

The acting spokesperson for the family of the late DNC staffer and suspected WikiLeaks source Seth Rich is a man named Brad Bauman who happens to be directly connected to Media Matters founder and George Soros-backed propagandist David Brock.

Disobedient Media has previously reported that Brock and his affiliated organizations have ties to the Chinese government, foreign special interests, and organized crime. Brock’s ties to foreign interests may mean that he is in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, 22 U.S.C. § 614.

Brock’s organizations have been active in harassing and attacking journalists looking into the Seth Rich story. Affiliates of Brock have taken to Change.org to attack companies advertising with Fox 5 DC. The boycott campaign is organized by Karl Frisch, a former senior fellow at propaganda group Media Matters for America who spent his time at the organization helping develop “long-term strategy to target Fox News as a political actor.” Media Matters has also targeted Fox News anchor Sean Hannity for discussing the case.

In August Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich. Julian Assange also suggested in August that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks informant.

Conservative Media Feels the Pressure

Radio and TV Talk show host Sean Hannity was hot on the trail of the Seth Rich murder when he was suddenly contacted by Seth’s brother and told to quit talking about his brother because it was very hurtful to the family. Why wouldn’t they want their son’s murder caught and exposed? Sounds like they were pressured to stop him by higher-ups.

Now one of the sons of Rupert Murdoch, the executive chair of Fox News, reportedly pressured Sean Hannity to drop coverage of the Seth Rich investigation.


Following Sean Hannity’s embarrassing buckling on coverage of the Seth Rich case, sources at Fox News told Big League Politics that he was pressured to relent by one of the Murdoch’s sons, “One of the Murdoch sons was all up his ass over this,” another insider told Big League Politics.

While his statements on the show indicated that he was cowering to Media Matters, who had called for a boycott of his advertisers — it seems that one of Murdoch’s sons was actually behind it.

During a broadcast of his show Tuesday night, Hannity said that he had spoken with the family of Seth Rich earlier in the day, and that “out of respect for the family’s wishes, for now, I am not discussing this matter at this time.”

After the show aired however, he claimed he was inching ever closer to “the truth” behind the DNC staffer’s murder, something he would not stop trying to attain..

The fake news MSM can report on fake Russian ties with NO evidence, but Hannity can’t report on a mysterious death tied to the evidence that was given to Wikileaks??? Sounds like a cover-up of the highest order to stop the messenger to me.

Clinton Body Count adds five in six weeks

Seth was one of five people who died in a six-week period who were all connected to Hillary in some way. The others were:
•Victor Thorn, a 54-year-old Clinton researcher who wrote several books on Bill Clinton’s sexual assaults and drug running through Mena, Arkansas. He was found dead from a gunshot wound on a mountaintop near his home. He once said, “if anyone tells you I committed suicide, don’t believe them. I would never commit suicide.”
•The very next day Shawn Lucas, a prominent lawyer who delivered a subpoena to Debbie Wasserman Shultz in a class action lawsuit on the primaries being rigged against Sanders was found dead on his bathroom floor faced down. Medical examiners tried to say it was a heart attack, but his girlfriend said he was in perfect health.
•Joe Montano a Filipino American and aide to Sen.Tim Kaine died at age 47 of a heart attack a week before the Democrat convention and right before the Wikileaks e-mails came out. What did he know if anything?
•United Nations official John Ash died when a barbell fell on his neck right before he was to testify against Hillary in a bribery scandal and was connected to a Chinese official who was being tried on smuggling in millions of dollars to here. He had been previously connected to Bill and Hillary in the Chinagate scandal when Bill was president. Ash’s death was first ruled a heart attack but later changed to a barbell accident just like in the plot of a Columbo episode.
These deaths all happened within six weeks of each other all before the Dem convention and around the time of the Wiki-leaks release. More recently the heavyset black doctor many people saw next to Hillary all the time died right before he was to testify before Trey Gowdy’s committee. He was 35 and the cause of death was a heart attack. Are all these deaths coincidences?

This is why the FBI, Congress, and the media are pushing the Fake Trump/Russia story so hard so they don’t have to investigate all these deaths which they know most likely leads to Hillary and maybe even Obama. Americans need to know the truth about who ordered the death of Seth Rich because it may be one of the worst politically motivated crimes in the history of our nation.

It has to be investigated and all the persons involved in the cover-up revealed. It is all exposed in a Wikileaks but the left is working on the art of distracting to keep them all out of prison. The media is bought and paid for by the left,

I recently saw these two comments which make sense.

Poor old Anthony Wiener is probably going to be off’ed in prison before anything else happens. You know he is a patsy for them. He will be killed and it will be said it was for sexual perversion or they hated him because he is a pedophile. But the truth will be that he was about to make a deal with Sessions.

Seth Rich’s parents, who are loyal democrat extremists, are working overtime to shut down all discussions, all investigations and all facts about Seth’s murder because they all lead to one culprit who has a LONG HISTORY of eliminating/rubbing-out her problems: CROOKED HILLARY. Sure seems to me like they don’t really want their son’s murder solved.

Texas Republican congressman Blake Farenthold recently said, “My fear is our constant focusing on the Russians is deflecting away for some other things that we need to be investigating. There’s still some question as to whether the intrusion of the DNC server was an insider job or whether or not it was the Russians. There’s stuff circulating on the internet,” Congressman says Feds Need to Investigate Seth Rich Murder | iPatriot

https://www.conservativedailynews.com/2017/05/131533/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Sun Dec 24, 2017 3:51 am

A Christmas gift from Ed Snowden and friends. I will wait until it's vetted by the hacker community before using it. But, it looks very good. I've had physical security issues at work and this looks like a partial solution.

Edward Snowden’s New App Uses Your Smartphone to Physically Guard Your Laptop

Micah Lee

The Intercept

Like many other journalists, activists, and software developers I know, I carry my laptop everywhere while I’m traveling. It contains sensitive information; messaging app conversations, email, password databases, encryption keys, unreleased work, web browsers logged into various accounts, and so on. My disk is encrypted, but all it takes to bypass this protection is for an attacker — a malicious hotel housekeeper, or “evil maid,” for example — to spend a few minutes physically tampering with it without my knowledge. If I come back and continue to use my compromised computer, the attacker could gain access to everything.

Edward Snowden and his friends have a solution. The NSA whistleblower and a team of collaborators have been working on a new open source Android app called Haven that you install on a spare smartphone, turning the device into a sort of sentry to watch over your laptop. Haven uses the smartphone’s many sensors — microphone, motion detector, light detector, and cameras — to monitor the room for changes, and it logs everything it notices. The first public beta version of Haven has officially been released; it’s available in the Play Store and on F-Droid, an open source app store for Android.

Snowden is helping to develop the software through a project he leads at the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which receives funding from The Intercept’s parent company. I sit on the FPF board with Snowden, am an FPF founder, and lent some help developing the app, including through nine months of testing. With that noted, I’ll be forthright about the product’s flaws below, and have solicited input for this article from people not involved in the project.

Also collaborating on Haven is the Guardian Project, a global collective of mobile security app developers.

Haven is an external solution to a problem computer makers traditionally attempted to handle from within their devices. Some laptops, for example, offer “secure boot” through a special tamper-resistant chip called a Trusted Platform Module, which tries to ensure that the computer’s bootloader code hasn’t been modified to be malicious. But there are various ways this could go wrong: there can be bugs in the code that does the verification, attackers could connive to get their code marked as trustworthy, or malicious code could be inserted after the bootloader. Some computer users have tried the low-tech solution of painting glitter nail polish on their laptop screws, creating a sort of seal that would be broken during a tampering attempt.

“Due to how current laptops, and probably most other computing devices, are made today, it is virtually impossible to systematically check later if the laptop has been compromised or not,” said Joanna Rutkowska, founder of the secure Qubes operating system, who invented the term “evil maid” in 2009 as part of her work as a security researcher.

Here’s how Haven might work: You lock your laptop in a hotel safe — not a secure move on its own — and place your Haven phone on top of it. If someone opens the safe while you’re away, the phone’s light meter might detect a change in lighting, its microphone might hear the safe open (and even the attacker speak), its accelerometer might detect motion if the attacker moves the laptop, and its camera might even capture a snapshot of the attacker’s face. The Haven app will log all of this evidence locally on the Android device.

You can configure Haven to send you real-time encrypted alerts of what it detects to your other phone, the one you carry with you, when an intrusion is detected. You can choose to get encrypted Signal notifications, and you can also configure Haven to run a Tor onion service website (that is, a darknet site), and use Tor Browser on another device to connect in and view all of the alerts — all without giving anyone else access to these evidence logs unless you choose to share them. Haven also supports SMS text notifications, which can be intercepted but which might be more reliable in some situations.

Protecting my laptop against evil maid attacks is my primary use-case for Haven, but it isn’t the only reason people might be interested in using the app.”I can imagine this might be useful to victims of domestic abuse who are worried about their abusers spying on them in some way,” Eva Galperin, director of cybersecurity for Electronic Frontier Foundation, said. Galperin is familiar with the security challenges of evil maid attacks, but has not tested out Haven herself. “This might be useful for teenagers who are concerned about their parents, or who are concerned about nosy partners, or friends [spying on them]. Or if you’re in college and you’re worried about your roommate,” she added.

Galperin’s main concern about Haven is false positives. “If you’re concerned about people coming into the room and moving things, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have ill intent. Or you could be setting things up on a hair trigger, and then you end up with a bunch of false positives and get paranoid for no reason,” she said. “Maybe the maid isn’t evil. Sometimes the maid is just a maid.”

Haven can also be used as a cheap home or office security system to detect break-ins or vandalism while you’re away, positioning the phone to send you photographs when someone walks within range. Or you can use it to monitor for wildlife in rural areas, or to capture evidence of human rights violations and disappearances.

Based on my experience testing Haven so far, here are some of the things to consider.

You definitely need a separate Android device to use Haven effectively, but you don’t actually need to pay for phone service for that device if you don’t want to. Without phone service, here are your options for using Haven:
•You could choose to not get notifications on your other phone at all, and instead just check the local Haven logs once you get back to the room you’re monitoring.
•You could connect to a wifi network (like the hotel’s network) on your Haven phone, and configure Haven to run a Tor onion service website directly on the phone. You can then use Tor Browser on a computer, Orfox on an Android phone, or Onion Browser on an iPhone to load this website to check for intrusion alerts. To do this, you need to install the Orbot app, which is Tor for Android, on your Haven phone as well.
•You could also connect to wifi and configure Haven to send you real-time Signal notifications as intrusion events happen. This is the most user friendly way of getting alerts. However, without phone service, it’s not trivial to set up because you’ll need to obtain an extra phone number to register a new Signal account with, like described in this article.

If you do pay for phone service for your Haven phone:
•If your phone plan includes mobile data, you don’t have to worry about wifi being available. In fact, I’d recommend disabling wifi and only using mobile data.
•You can use the Haven app to register a Signal account using your spare phone’s phone number, to send encrypted notifications to your normal phone via Signal.
•You can also choose to have Haven send SMS notifications to your normal phone on intrusion events, instead of using Signal.

If you’re going to be gone for a long period of time, you might need to keep your Haven phone plugged in so that it doesn’t run out of battery and power off. This means you can’t keep your laptop and Haven phone in a hotel safe for too long before the battery dies. But, considering hotel safes are not very secure, it’s not too different to just leave your laptop and Haven phone on the desk or bedside table, plugged in.

Another thing to consider is the the security of your Haven phone itself.

A clever attacker who knows that you’re using Haven could jam the wifi, mobile data, and SMS wireless frequencies, preventing Haven from sending you notifications. The attacker could then attempt to access the phone to delete the local evidence logs from the device as well.

For this reason, it’s important to lock down your Haven phone. Lock your phone with a strong passcode or password, and make sure your phone is encrypted. You can change your lockscreen and security settings from the Settings app. Also, install all updates for Android and for all of your apps, and turn off all radios that you aren’t using, like bluetooth and NFC. If you can, use mobile data and turn off wifi as well. This will reduce the attack surface of the phone, making it more difficult for an attacker to hack it once they’ve entered your room.

Rutkowska said she “absolutely” believes there is a need for technology like Haven, and suggested that the developers add “a hearbeat signal… for remote logging.” That would help warn users when the device loses a network connection, for example due to signal jamming. She also thinks most users will disable real-time notifications because “getting lots of Signal messages is annoying” — better to have a log that can be consulted later. To protect it from tampering, such a log could be cryptographically signed. It could also be pushed to a remote location, like a git version-control repository running on a distant server.


If an attacker can both jam your Haven phone’s radio signals and also hack into it to delete the evidence of intrusion, it’s possible for them to then still do an evil maid attack on your laptop without getting caught. However, Haven makes such an attack considerably more expensive, with less certainty of success, than if all they had to deal with was tampering with your laptop.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Haven can only monitor for intrusions if you actually use it. During my time testing it, more than once I positioned my Haven phone in the right place, made sure it was connected to wifi so I could get notifications, and plugged in so the battery wouldn’t die, but then forgot to actually activate the app. Several hours later when I returned to my room and found the Haven phone deactivated, I had no way of knowing if an intrusion occurred or not.

Finally, Haven is still in early development. There are still kinks that need to be worked out, plenty of bugs that need to be fixed, and plenty of features that would make it more useful and more reliable. There are false positives; once, I came back to find over 80 intrusion alerts, all of them the sounds of loud cars or sirens driving by my Manhattan hotel room. And sometimes, actual events don’t get logged when they should — I ran into issues where camera motion events weren’t getting triggered at all on my device, but that bug has been resolved for me now. It would be prudent to wait for the Haven app to mature before relying on it in high security situations.

But even now, it’s much better than leaving your laptop exposed to physical attacks without any monitoring while you’re heading out for drinks after a long day at a conference.

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/22/sno ... ur-laptop/
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Re: Seth Rich

Postby kinderdigi » Sun Dec 24, 2017 4:12 am

Edward Snowden made an app to protect your laptop

By Sarah Jeong@sarahjeong Dec 23, 2017, 9:00am EST

The Verge

Earlier this year, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden met with Jacqueline Moudeina, the first female lawyer in Chad and a legendary human rights advocate who has worked tirelessly to bring former dictator Hissène Habré to justice. Habré was convicted of human rights abuses — ordering the killing of 40,000 people, sexual slavery, and rape — by a Senegalese jury in 2016.

Snowden told Moudeina that he was working on an app that could turn a mobile device into a kind of motion sensor in order to notify you when your devices are being tampered with. The app could also tell you when someone had entered a room without you knowing, if someone had moved your things, or if someone had stormed into your friend’s house in the middle of the night. Snowden recounted that pivotal conversation in an interview with the Verge. “She got very serious and told me, ‘I need this. I need this now. There’s so many people around us who need this.’”

Haven, announced today, is an app that does just that. Installed on a cheap burner Android device, Haven sends notifications to your personal, main phone in the event that your laptop has been tampered with. If you leave your laptop at home or at an office or in a hotel room, you can place your Haven phone on top of the laptop, and when Haven detects motion, light, or movement — essentially, anything that might be someone messing with your stuff — it logs what happened. It takes photos, records sound, even takes down changes in light or acceleration, and then sends notifications to your main phone. None of this logging is stored in the cloud, and the notifications you receive on your main phone are end-to-end encrypted over Signal.

Snowden hasn’t carried a mobile device since 2013, but in the last couple of years, much of his time has been taken up by prying apart smartphones and poking away at their circuit boards with the aid of fine tweezers and a microscope. In 2016, he collaborated with hardware hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang on Introspection Engine, a phone case that monitors iPhone outputs, alerting you to when your device is sending signals through its antenna.

Snowden is notoriously careful about the technology around him. In the documentary Citizenfour, Snowden is shown taking increasingly extravagant precautions against surveillance, going as far as to drape a pillowcase (his “Magic Mantle of Power,” he says, deadpan) over himself and his computer when he types in a password. Famously, he also asked journalists to place their phones in the hotel fridge, to prevent transmission of any surreptitious recording through their microphones or cameras.

Snowden at least has a pretty understandable reason to be paranoid — and while he doesn’t expect the rest of the world to adopt his somewhat inconvenient lifestyle, he’s been trying to use his uniquely heightened threat model to improve other people’s lives. “I haven’t carried a phone but I can increasingly use phones,” he said. Tinkering with technology to make it acceptable to his own standards gives him insight into how to provide privacy to others.


“Did you know most mobile phones these days have three microphones?” he asked me. Later he rattled off a list of different kinds of sensors. It wasn’t just audio, motion, and light, an iPhone can also detect acceleration and barometric pressure. He had become intimately familiar with the insides of smartphones while working with Bunnie Huang, and the experience had left him wondering if the powerful capabilities of these increasingly ubiquitous devices could be used to protect, rather than invade, people’s privacy — sousveillance, rather than surveillance.

It was Micah Lee, a security engineer who also writes at the Intercept, who had the first spark of insight. For years, developers with access to signing keys — particularly developers who deal with incredibly sensitive work like the Tor Project — have become fairly paranoid about keeping their laptops in sight at all times. This has much to do with what security researcher Joanna Rutkowska dubbed “the evil maid attack”. Even if you encrypt your hard drive, a malicious actor with physical access to your computer (say, a hotel housekeeper of dubious morals) can compromise your machine. Afterwards, it’s nearly impossible to tell that you’ve been hacked.

Snowden and Lee, who both sit on the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, partnered with the Guardian Project, a collective of app developers who focus on privacy and encrypted communications, to create Haven over the last year. Snowden credited Nathan Freitas, the director of the Guardian Project, for writing the bulk of the code.

Though “evil maid” attacks are not a widespread concern — “we’re talking about people who can’t go into the pool without their laptops,” said Snowden, “that’s like nine people in the whole world” — Haven was conceptualized to benefit as many people as possible. Micah Lee points out in his article for The Interceptthat victims of domestic abuse can also use Haven to see if their abuser is tampering with their devices. Snowden told me that they had thought very deliberately about intimate partner violence early on.

“You shouldn’t have to be saving the world to benefit from Haven,” said Snowden, but acknowledged that the people most likely to be using Haven were paranoid developers and human rights activists in the global south. Andy Greenberg describes in WIRED how the Guardian Project worked with the Colombian activist group Movilizatario to run a trial of the software earlier this year. Sixty testers from Movilizatario used Haven to safeguard their devices and to provide some kind of record if they should be kidnapped in the middle of the night.

It was this case scenario that sprung to the mind of Jacqueline Moudeina when she spoke with Snowden earlier this year. “In many places around the world, people are disappearing in the night,” he said. For those dissidents, Haven was reassurance that if government agents break into their home and take them away, at least someone would know they were taken. In those cases, Haven can be installed on primary phones, and the app is set to send notifications to a friend.

I asked Snowden what it was like to collaborate on a software project while in exile in Russia. It wasn’t that bad, he said. Since he became stranded in Russia in 2013, technology has progressed to the point where it’s much easier to talk to people all over the world in secure ways. The creators of Haven were scattered all over the globe. “Exile is losing its teeth,” he told me.

More than anything, Snowden is hoping that Haven — an open source project that anyone can examine, contribute to, or adapt for their own purposes — spins out into many different directions, addressing threat models of all kinds. There are so many different kinds of sensors in mobile phones that the possibilities were boundless. He wondered, for instance, if a barometer in a smartphone could possibly detect a door opening in a room.

Threat models don’t have to involve authoritarian governments kidnapping and torturing activists. Lex Gill posted on Twitter that her partner had been testing Haven with a spare phone for a month, and she had begun to use it to send “helpful reminders.”

And when Nathan Freitas explained his most recent project to his young children, he discovered yet another use case. “We’re going to use it to catch Santa!” they told him excitedly.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/23/168 ... ptop-phone
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