Rod Wheeler Retracts Seth Rich Murder Claim

Story on DNC staffer's murder dominated conservative media -- hours later it fell apart

So, um, was the lie earlier or now, I can't keep up...

Wheeler, who was under contract with the family of Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer who was fatally shot in July, told WTTG-TV evidence existed that proved Rich had been in contact with Wikileaks before his death.

snip

Fox News on Tuesday morning joined in the chorus, publishing a lead story on its website about the "DC MURDER MYSTERY." The story said Wheeler had made the claim Wikileaks had been in contact with Rich. It added that a federal investigator, who it said had spoken on the condition of anonymity, corroborated it.

But Tuesday afternoon, Wheeler told CNN he had no evidence to suggest Rich had contacted Wikileaks before his death.

Wheeler instead said he only learned about the possible existence of such evidence through the reporter he spoke to for the FoxNews.com story. He explained that the comments he made to WTTG-TV were intended to simply preview Fox News' Tuesday story. The WTTG-TV news director did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

This story does not comport with the videos posted earlier today and yesterday.

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Centaurea's picture

Maybe someone made Wheeler an offer he couldn't refuse.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

@Centaurea

What I was thinking... kinda looks possible, don't it?

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

earthling1's picture

@Ellen North @Ellen North
that Wikileaks would have a record of these emails. But for Assange to step forward with them, or corroborate their existence, would make him a material witness. Which would exert enormous pressure on Ecuador to extradite or expell him for a murder investigation. Who do tptb want more?

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

@earthling1

Good point - one which may very likely have occurred to The Dark Side.

Actually, NSA and any of 16 other (public/private) agencies spying on the public probably have them as well, but national security doesn't seem to actually matter unless it can be used against a whistle-blower revealing crimes among public officials, election-rigging political parties, or of the NSA and any of 16 other (public/private) agencies spying on the public.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Pricknick's picture

@Centaurea
into a half assed situation unless you have protection.
Screams bullshit.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

MsGrin's picture

@Centaurea That's a distinct possibility.

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'What we are left with is an agency mandated to ensure transparency and disclosure that is actually working to keep the public in the dark' - Ann M. Ravel, former FEC member

lotlizard's picture

@Centaurea https://duckduckgo.com/?q="dylan+avery"+"private+investigator"+barry+jennings&t=ffsb&ia=web

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Pricknick's picture

about likely nothing.
Hullabaloo about an unproven subject. While I have very little doubt about the nefarious ways and means of those few who cause harm, this was nothing but a false flag........for now.
Shit happens to good people also.

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

@Pricknick
how many people are slain annually in "botched" robberies in Washington D.C.?.

Bayesian statistical analysis allows us to estimate the likelihood of this being what the Metropolitan DC police are claiming it is. It appears that on average these days, DC has about 150 homicides per year. We could troll through the statistics to eliminate all of the things we are pretty confident this was not; however, technically, we should not eliminate those things, but rather attach a prior probability to them. For example, if 50% of all homicides are drug-related, we should assume, a priori that there's a 50% chance that this one was as well. BUT: We might want to adjust that for various other known or easily estimated factors, such as "How many victims of drug-related homicides are white professionals?"

The bottom line is that if we analyze homicides over the last 5 years in DC, we should be able to attach a likelihood to the event of a young white male professional being slain in a botched robbery. We might, for example, discover that not a single one of the 700+ murders (I haven't tried to look up the stat) in DC over that interval corresponded to the proffered scenario. We might even discover that murders in DC of young white male professionals are extremely rare, relative to the overall murder rate. If so, the prior probability of an event like "botched robbery" would drift down to a rather low number, and the prior probability of other explanations would correspondingly rise.

As it happens, I'm not an investigative journalist OR a professional statistician, so I'm in no position to offer actual estimates -- but somebody out there (as in: somebody at the DC Metropolitan police) certainly has both the data and the skills, but chooses not to share the analysis with us.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

Alligator Ed's picture

@UntimelyRippd to be accepted by the PTB. It's like Vince Foster's suicide by a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head.

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Pricknick's picture

@UntimelyRippd
First: Explain that in under one hundred words.
You can analyze to your hearts content. The heart does not care.
You will never reach those who don't understand your premise.
Peace

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Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Pricknick I think most people believe that Seth Rich was murdered for political reasons. Most people who know who he is and what happened to him, anyway.

Proving it scientifically or legally is another matter, but if you're bringing up the heart, or what people believe--we have little to worry about there; most people who know about this shit already believe that someone connected with the Clintons murdered him.

The reason is that the Clintons have behaved too badly for too long, and there are too often dead bodies and other unsavory things that pop up in their environs; it's not something anybody would use for proof, but when ordinary little person homo sapiens sees that sort of thing happening, they tend not to wait for proof. That's both a sad thing and a useful one; sad, because often that leads to people being unjustly condemned in people's hearts and perceptions without proof; useful, because smoke often does indicate fire, and the little guy usually wants to steer away from both. That's why the little guy often forms his opinion without waiting for proof--because it's safer to do so.

I usually don't invoke evolution, but I'd say there might be an adaptive value to being the monkey that doesn't wait for proof but runs away when he sees smoke.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

snoopydawg's picture

according to this article about Seth

It’s worth noting that these latest allegations come from an unnamed source to Fox News and from Rod Wheeler, who has been employed as a commentator by Fox News in the past, having appeared on the network numerous times over the past decade. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Rod Wheeler appeared on Bill O’Reilly’s show in 2007 making the outrageous claim that “gangs of lesbians” were going around the country raping young girls, even alleging that the gangs carry pink guns.

“Now, the other thing, too, that our viewers are going to find very, very interesting, is the fact that they actually carry—some of these groups carry pink pistols,” Wheeler told Bill O’Reilly. “They call themselves the pink-pistol-packing group. And these are lesbians that actually carry pistols. That’s 9-millimeter Glocks. They use these. They commit crimes, and they cause a lot of hurt to a lot of people.”

He belongs to a mega Christian church that is against equal rights for LBGT, so I think we need to wait for a more reliable source.
http://www.inquisitr.com/4223039/family-of-seth-rich-denounces-rod-wheel...

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Alligator Ed's picture

@snoopydawg 1. Follow the money. This is the tried and true way to the truth.

The second rule is evaluate the source. This is not as reliable as rule one. Many sources are biased but some stories are not affected by that bias. The Seth Rich case is not about LGTB, it is about political murder. Granted the story of the Pink Pistol gang is utter nonsense, a fact which DOES seriously degrade Wheeler's credibility.

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Wink's picture

@snoopydawg
out to be true. We spent the better part of a year here battling the pink pistelero wielding Konichiwa bitches. Or not.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

@snoopydawg
and Wikileak's proffered reward sufficient without Wheeler.

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gulfgal98's picture

@gustogirl which I made in a previous comment on another essay.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

All Wheeler 'retracted' was a statement misattributed to him by the station that he had evidence Rich had been in touch with wikileaks. He says he found out about that from the Fox reporter.

It's worth noting the station has stated it has independent verification of the wikileaks claim from an anonymous 'Federal Investigator'.

It's also worth noting that Wheeler hasn't retracted any of his other statements regarding the laptop custody issue nor the allegations of a cover up by police.

So no, he did not 'retract the Seth Rich murder claim'. He simply cleared up a missatribution of a statement made by different source.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger
I was hoping someone would point that out.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger Standard doubt creation: impeach a piece of the story; if you cast doubt on a part, most people will doubt the whole.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Song of the lark's picture

In the morning? Good time to get robbed and shot if you ask me.

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@Song of the lark
And he was a DNC insider. And he was shot.

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@Song of the lark Interesting that you would think 4 a.m. to be particularly dangerous to be walking the streets; crime incident statistics show it's generally the opposite for that time of the early morning. Between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. typically show the lowest amount of crime, both violent/non-violent. Stands to reason, especially for violent crime, as there is much less 'opportunity' in that there are no real targets if the streets are barren. Why would a predator choose to 'stalk the streets' during a time they will most often be empty?

Day after day, you think a mugger would choose to hunt around for a victim during the time of day that has least chance they will be able to actually find anybody to rob?

But, as Linda pointed out, in this case, though laden with wallet, cash, phone, keys, watch and gold necklace...not a thing was stolen. Though there is that pesky email of someone wanting to make an example of their leaker...that stands in writing. Think this might be a suitable example to deter further DNC leaks? Seems a good question that would be investigated in a murder of the likely leaker, where nothing was stolen and no other motive presents.

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gulfgal98's picture

@ChezJfrey One question I have not seen answered is where was Rich between the time he left the bar at 1:30 am and when he was shot at 4 am? Does anyone here know?

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

dervish's picture

@gulfgal98 The location settings usually log everyplace you've been, and when you were there.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

@gulfgal98 @gulfgal98

His girlfriend presumably heard the murder occur. Who knows, maybe she also got an unrefusable offer. On the other hand a drunk person talking on the phone at 4:20 am, in a gentrifying neighborhood, would get the attention of anybody else who happens to be lurking.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Song of the lark @Timmethy2.0 Yeah, but that "anybody" would at least take his cash and necklace.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal @Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

I'm getting most of my info from the only article I've really read about it, but this article also points out that the bullets came from a cheap gun, not a professional hit person's gun, so that would have been a really well done detail if it was a hit.

edit: The part about the bullets coming from a cheap gun is no longer in the article, although I could have read that somewhere else and attributed it falsely to the above referenced article.

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Beware the bullshit factories.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Timmethy2.0 Well, if it was a hit, leaving the wallet and cell phone and necklace is an interesting choice. Either the person doing the hit was a bit of a dumbass, and didn't stop to think that removing the stuff would make it credible as a typical street crime, or they want people to know it was a hit but be unable to prove it.

Hard to make an example of somebody if people believe he really was shot because somebody wanted to lift his wallet.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal

Hard to make an example of somebody if people believe he really was shot because somebody wanted to lift his wallet.

Precisely my thinking. We already have prime examples of extreme 'messages' being sent by people at that level; we know they like extreme 'messages' and hold no compunction.

Al-Awlaki's teenage son serves as an example. No relevance or cause, his father already dead a week or so before, but kill him anyway. "I'll kill you, and your whole family!" "It's worth it!"

Besides, they are never held accountable and there are never consequences, and the blah, blah spiral of nonsense that ensues, ebbs sense away into memory holes and vast echo chambers of sycophants continue their rehearsed chants, where any deviation is brushed away as crazy talk.

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@Song of the lark @Song of the lark

Going by what I've read, apparently he was walking home from a local bar, through a nice, low-crime neighborhood.

Edit: haven't read much, or was too tired to recall anything about that time gap mentioned down here.

Great point made about the phone recording locations, which would be useful for once, if anyone, such as the police or FBI, appeared to be using/publicizing it.

In an article I vaguely recall reading through half-closed lids last night, there was a reference to a camera capturing two shadowy figures apparently following Seth just before he was shot. And I'll bet that someone will be discussing that just down from here.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

gulfgal98's picture

@Ellen North was impounded by the police and has never been released.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

Thanks!

And, it figures. The more I hear about this, the more density my suspicions develop. Going to need a wheelbarrow pretty soon...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Song of the lark It would have been a good time to get robbed. So it's interesting that he wasn't.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

we will ever come to knowing who leaked the DNC emails to Wikileaks is in Assange's statement posted below. He will never identify the source. This is as close as it comes to understanding what happened, and for me it's definitely good enough. No one else has credibility on this issue, and Assange has never lied to us, whereas the CIA and our intelligence community do so routinely with horrific consequences. Whistleblowing is the exposing of government wrong-doing. Nothing exposed by Manning, Snowden, or Assange has hurt national security. All of it has exposed crimes by government agencies and their contractors. Therein lies the motive to lie.

http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dead-dnc-staffer-had-contact-with-wikileaks/

Murdered DNC staffer reportedly sent 40,000 internal emails to WikiLeaks
Published: 1 day ago. Updated: 05/16/2017 at 11:21 PM

… In an August 2016 interview on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur, Assange appeared to suggest that Rich, 27, was the source of the WikiLeaks-exposed DNC emails.

“Our whistleblowers go to significant efforts to give us material, at often very significant risks,” Assange said. “There was a 27 year old, works for the DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons other than that he was walking down the street in Washington.”

The interviewer interjected, “That was just a robbery, I believe, wasn’t it?”

Assange replied, “No, there’s no finding.”

The interviewer asked, “What are you suggesting?”

“I’m suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that,” Assange said.

“But was he one of your sources then?” asked the interviewer.

“We don’t comment on who our sources are,” Assange said. “We have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States. Our sources are, you know, our sources face serious risks. That’s why they come to us, so we can protect their anonymity.”

Assange continued: “Others have suggested that [Rich was murdered]. We are investigating. If you understand what happened in that situation with Seth Rich, I think it is a concerning situation. There’s not a conclusion yet. We wouldn’t be willing to state a conclusion, but we are concerned about it. More importantly, a variety of WikiLeaks sources are concerned when that kind of thing happens.”

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@Linda Wood

Really, I don't see how Julian could have put it more clearly without directly saying by name that the murder victim was the leaker which, as has been pointed out, might get Assange called into court and out where Hillary's question about 'why can't we couldn't just drone him?' might be more easily enacted - and there may be concerns about the leaker's family being placed at risk as well. It certainly appears quite possible that they're under threat.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

If I were an investor and they were a business, I'd take one look at their history and run the other way. Do not pour more money down their scandal hole, don't prop up a c-suite that most customers can't even relate to anymore.

Clinton dynasty PR is failing. Make it so.

https://issuu.com/edwardbernays/docs/resistance_and_persuasion

Peace

P.S. Thank you MsGrin! Sorry I forgot to say thanks for writing the essays, bringing the updates here to C99. I probably would not be following along otherwise. thx

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@eyo

Must also add my thanks here to MsGrin!

I so often get sidetracked and forget to mention my appreciation for the informative and interesting essays posted here, in part, I suppose, because the general quality is so high that one just unconsciously assumes that the authors take that appreciation as a given.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

To this day, many people believe Rather's story was weak or non existent. It was not.

A false copy of accurate information regarding W's lackluster and truncated Guard service was created and then planted in the path of Rather's investigation. When Rather subsequently included that document in his report, it was challenged and revealed to be a "fake". In the public eye Rather's entire report was deemed "fake", Rather lost his job and the entire National Guard story was swept into the dustbin.

How quickly we forget how simple and effective a well placed bit of disinformation inoculates the public from seeing the truth and the man (or woman) behind the curtain.

IT'S A CONSPIRACY THEORY!!!!

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

lotlizard's picture

@ovals49

How quickly we forget how simple and effective a well-placed bit of disinformation inoculates the public from seeing the truth and the man (or woman) behind the curtain.
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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@ovals49 It's encouraging how many people here are responding as you are.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@ovals49

In these days when government officials testify to Congress under oath with the "least untruthful" lies, accepting at face value everything the government says is nucking futs. Period. (Some theories are nucking futs, too, though.) https://caucus99percent.com/content/theory-conspiracy-theory-or-healthy-...

BTW, the big media authority on Trump and Comey lately? Mr. Least Untruthful Testimony to Congress himself, Clapper.

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Assange has inferred it several times. I don't believe the Clintons or the media. I certainly find it suspicious that the family has a DNC crisis mouthpiece speaking for it.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

detroitmechworks's picture

Continuing to fight this one will turn into a meat grinder.

The MSM has decided it's a conspiracy theory and will defend Clinton to the death.

I just find it funny that the story about "The Story" has gotten far more attention than the actual story.

Original topic no longer being discussed, instead it's all about who told who and who said what.

MSM mission accomplished.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGNjxTnU9wA]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks Logically, that means there's no point fighting any story in the press. In fact, the only thing worth doing with the press is keeping watch on which forms of psychological manipulation they're using today.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

detroitmechworks's picture

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal Best you can do is get in, hit hard and get out before they bring in the big guns and try to shift the battle to their position.

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@detroitmechworks that can be worth doing. IMO, what would be even better is to build the alternative. Been thinking that for about 25 years now. This website is a step in that direction. We almost got there with Occupy, when Global Revolution had it so you could flip through the various channels associated with each encampment.

We need a network of small, local media that are solidly progressive.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

There is zero question that Rich was murdered. The incontrovertible evidence of his murder is his dead body with a fatal bullet wound that was not self-inflicted. So, no one needs to-- or should--retract, withdraw or contradict a claim that Rich was murdered. He was.

The only questions are who murdered him near his home at 4:30 am without taking his wallet, watch, phone, or anything else (that we know of) and why. As to those questions, there may or may not be clues or circumstantial evidence, but we know of no incontrovertible evidence.

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earthling1's picture

All this talk of Assange inferring Rich was a source. True or not?
I can fully understand the right winger putting up $130,000. But I don't understand the DC police offering $25,000. Thats a lot of taxpayer money for a murder/botched robbery that then languishes in a cold case file/under some rug.
Doesn't pass the smell test.

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Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.

gulfgal98's picture

@earthling1 Wikileaks put up a $20,000 reward in this case. That is in addition to the $25,000 by the DC police and $105,000 by the guy who hired Wheeler on behalf of the Rich family. So the total reward money is $150,000.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98

I'm kinda wondering about this being bait, potentially in at least some cases. A promise of anonymity to any witnesses who makes contact, an arranged meeting in some dark alley away from prying eyes and - no more witness.

The one guy, the ex-homicude detective, is saying to any witnesses, tell either me or the police; the right-wing guy, I don't recall saying anything about the police.

But $130,000 from a right-wing guy for any witness to the year-old murder of a DNC employee from a Dem family being surrounded by Dem operatives, with the purported hostility between two quietly behind-the-scenes collaborating halves of the corporate Two-Faced Trade-Off party?

Interesting...

I wonder if any other murders have not been investigated yet in that area... (reads too many detective novels...)

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Ellen North I've wondered whether this Wheeler guy is a tool, too.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@gulfgal98

and $105,000 by the guy who hired Wheeler on behalf of the Rich family. So the total reward money is $150,000.

Some of the earlier reports that I read suggested that Wheeler was being paid by a Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman. I don't think that is necessarily true. Burkman has just kicked in $100,000 to the reward fund to anybody that has a tip that would lead to the killer's conviction.

Newsweek - September 16, 2016 - Seth Rich’s Death: Why a GOP Lobbyist Will Pay $100,000 To Learn Who Killed the DNC Staffer

Republican lobbyist Jack Burkman is offering $100,000 for information into the unsolved killing of Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. The 27-year-old was gunned down while walking home from a Washington, D.C., bar in the early hours of July 10.

Now I know that people are going to laugh at the next source, but what I caught was just something posted in passing - not really related to the main story.

Wordnet Daily - May 17, 2017 - Private eye: DNC poking nose into Seth Rich murder

Detective Rod Wheeler, who started his investigation into Seth’s death in March, told WND he was stunned Monday when he learned from Rich’s family that the DNC contacted them about the case.

Obviously March of this year, as Seth Rich was still alive last March (of 2016)

Now go look at this Gofundme account set up by Seth's brother, Aaron. It was created on March 19, 2017.

Seems like that Gofundme Account is the "third party" that is paying for Wheeler's services.

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@LoneStarMike

Has anyone/everyone seen this (best read in full at source, if at all possible) yet?

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/propagandists-have-been-using-dishone...

Caitlin Johnstone
Rogue Journalist
May 18

Propagandists Have Been Using Dishonest Manipulations To Kill The Seth Rich Story ...

...Through this frenzied, sustained effort (probably with the help of some well-placed shills as well), the mass media propaganda machine has succeeded in largely shutting down the buzz around the Seth Rich story. They’re even low-key bragging about it; CNN’s frequently-cited attempt to extinguish the Seth Rich fire is titled “Story on DNC staffer’s murder dominated conservative media — hours later it fell apart.” Friendly reminder while we’re on the subject that CNN recently staged a fake interview featuring a seven year-old girl who doesn’t speak English reading blatant, scripted war propaganda to its unsuspecting audience in order to manufacture consent for regime change in Syria.

The arguments being advanced by CNN and other establishment propaganda outlets as to why you should stop thinking about Seth Rich and trust Big Brother rely heavily on deliberate conflation of the anonymous federal investigator’s claims in the Fox News report with a separate statement made by private investigator Rod Wheeler. The Wheeler report has received far more attention, partly because it appeared first and partly because that’s what these propaganda outlets have been moving the focus onto, but nothing solid has come out which contradicts the anonymous source’s claims through Fox apart from a very vague FBI denial that it is currently investigating Rich’s murder. ...

... Wheeler is much easier to dismiss than the Fox News report, which is why all these new establishment articles focus predominantly on him. He contradicts himself, he’s said some insane things about gay people, and it turns out that some of the things he said in the highly-publicized Fox 5 interview were simply to “preview” the report that Fox News was about to make hours later. Excuse me? A “preview”? So this wasn’t Fox News corroborating Wheeler’s statements with its report, but Fox breaking its own original story that Wheeler commented on prior to its release? Odd then that they keep talking about Wheeler, isn’t it?

The propagandists do this because their goal isn’t just to criticize the story, their goal is to kill interest in the story. If they were to attack the statements of Fox’s anonymous federal investigator, they wouldn’t have much to work with beyond “Well, all we have to go on is the say-so of your anonymous source, and your say-so that that source is legit. That’s not sufficient proof!” Which would be a fine and valid criticism, but it wouldn’t make people feel stupid and want to slink away and shut up about Seth Rich. By deliberately conflating the mostly-irrelevant Wheeler interview with the very relevant Fox News report, they’re able to say “Look! Your whole entire argument is based on on that ridiculous guy! Look how wrong he is! Don’t you feel stupid now?” In using this deceitful tactic, the propagandists have successfully derailed a lot of the perfectly understandable excitement around the Fox News report by the anonymous federal investigator.

WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks

ANNOUNCE: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.
10:58 AM - 9 Aug 2016

Why are the establishment propagandists so keen on killing interest in the Seth Rich story? Because it throws a fat monkey wrench in their geopolitical manipulations, of course. America’s unelected power establishment wants to smack down the Putin government, which has been unashamedly involving itself in key strategic locations like Syria and the Crimean peninsula, and has been collaborating with China and its allies to eventually weaken the hegemony of the US dollar in that region. In order to reignite Cold War tensions with Russia and stage a proxy war with the Kremlin in Syria, the oligarchs need the consent of the public, because otherwise you’re dealing with 320 million heavily-armed Americans who’ve got a problem with the way you’re risking the lives of their families by tempting a possible nuclear holocaust over fossil fuels on the other side of the planet. They also need the public to hate Russia because that’s a major part of the way they’re leveraging Trump into walking back on his non-interventionist campaign promises; if he doesn’t take a hard stance against Russia he’ll feed into the “Putin’s puppet” narrative, which you know Mr. “look how big my hands are” doesn’t like.

Seth Rich kills all that. If he leaked the DNC emails, then the Russians didn’t hack them. If the Russians didn’t hack them, then the story that Putin is this omnipotent supervillain bound and determined to spread fascism across the free world doesn’t really work, and they also lose the story of Trump colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election by weaponizing WikiLeaks. If they lose all that, then all they have left is a billionaire president and his cabinet of businessmen who’ve had some business associations with a newly-capitalist nation looking to spend some money. And Putin stays in Crimea, and the deep state doesn’t get its dick in Syria. And the American oligarchs lose power and influence. Can’t have that.

WikiLeaks ✔ @wikileaks

Seth Rich's new "family spokesman" is Brad Bauman a professional Democrat crisis PR consultant with the Pastorum Group.
4:38 PM - 11 Aug 2016

Besides the conflation, the propagandists have also been working to kill the Seth Rich story by constantly harping on about a statement purportedly made by Rich’s family voicing displeasure about the conspiracy theories surrounding his death. This is a completely empty argument; the Russia hysteria doesn’t just affect the Rich family, it affects every living organism on planet Earth. We’re all at risk in the American power establishment’s relentless escalations with a nuclear superpower, and if Seth Rich is the leaker we desperately need to know. This isn’t some trivial morbid curiosity we’re talking about here, and if it’s true that our curiosity about it does indeed bother Rich’s family, I’m sorry, but we’ve all got families too. We’ll try not to bother you while we figure this thing out. So no, I personally will not be losing any interest or enthusiasm in this issue. There is now more reason than ever to doubt the official narrative we’ve been given by these known liars and manipulators, and we shouldn’t allow ourselves to be gaslighted into shutting up about this thing. Fight back.

Caitlin Johnstone might be one of the best things we have going for us...

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

edg's picture

it should read "Rod Wheeler Retracts Seth Rich Murder Claim WikiLeaks Attribution".

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incorrectly actually causes confusion. People have been using "infer," when I believe they mean "imply."

First, we do not know for certain that Assange knows who gave wikileaks the emails. He probably does, but he has not said that. If Assange knows who gave wikileaks the DNC emails, Assange has no need to infer anything about the identity of the leaker. He may or may not be implying something about that, but, AFAIK, he is not inferring a thing.

Some of us have been inferring things from the facts that (1) Assange did put up a reward for info about Rich's death and (2) Assange did re-tweet about Wheeler's story. Neither of those things, however, automatically mean that Rich was the leaker of the DNC emails. It could mean nothing more than Assange--or someone who may have put up the cash for the reward using Assange as a front man--really, really wants to know more about Rich's death. Or, it could mean that Assange, who can't identify a source, even a dead source, is trying to tell us something in the only way he can. We just don't know, one way or the other.

I have less than zero objection to theorizing. However, I think it is very important to know the difference between our own assumptions, which may or may not be correct, and evidence that can mean only one thing and lead to only one conclusion.

And, in this particular instance, it happens also to be less confusing to know the difference between infer and imply. If it weren't for the potential for clouding the issues, I would not have posted about it at all. (FWIW, I personally don't have a great opinion of people who correct grammar, spelling or usage publicly just for the sake of correcting.)

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@HenryAWallace
whether or not Assange actually knows the identity of any particular leaker to Wikileaks. But the fact that his associate has publicly said the following is interesting:

http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dead-dnc-staffer-had-contact-with-wikileaks/
Murdered DNC staffer reportedly sent 40,000 internal emails to WikiLeaks
Updated: 05/16/2017

In December 2016, Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and an associate of Assange, said he personally flew to Washington, D.C., to meet one of the DNC leakers.

“Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,” Murray told the Daily Mail. “The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.”

A couple of things are interesting to me: first, the statement that the source had legal access to the information; and second, that he personally flew to Washington, D.C., to meet one of the DNC leakers, and that neither of the leaks came from the Russians.

The legal access part could mean that at least one of the leakers was someone in law enforcement acting under a warrant. The second part, that there is more than one leaker, may mean that the DNC is or was infiltrated by people acting to sabotage the Democratic Party.

In any case, Seth Rich could have been investigating those possibilities, or he may have been working with the FBI in some way. This part of the same article also raises a big question about the FBI and this case:

http://www.wnd.com/2017/05/dead-dnc-staffer-had-contact-with-wikileaks/
Murdered DNC staffer reportedly sent 40,000 internal emails to WikiLeaks
Updated: 05/16/2017

… A federal investigator who reviewed an FBI forensic report detailing the contents of Rich’s computer generated within 96 hours after his murder told Fox News that Rich made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time.

MacFadyen, an early mentor and defender of the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, died of lung cancer in October 2016.

The investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between DNC leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen before May 21.

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lotlizard's picture

Consider two examples well-known in the Netherlands.

People take it for granted that both Dutch and Israeli governments have been lying about El Al flight 1862 (the Biljmermeer airplane crash) all along, from start to finish.

People also assume — to the point that reference to the “filmrolletje” is a standing joke — that the government is lying about the supposed destruction of a certain roll of film in 1995. The official story is that it was ruined beyond recovery in a botched attempt to develop it in a government darkroom using the wrong chemicals.

According to the Dutch soldier who took the photos — and turned the film over to the proper authorities, in hindsight a mistake fatal to the cause of truth — the film roll contained incontrovertible proof of the Serb massacre of civilians after the fall of Srebrenica. Making the existence of the photos even more inconvenient was the possibility that they also would have proved complicity on the part of the Dutch UN peacekeepers.

Although the Dutch Wikipedia article about the massacre contains a whole section about the allegedly ruined film roll, the English Wikipedia article lacks this section.

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