Originally published Apr 18 2019

d. WikiLeaks Statements Dissembling About the Source of Stolen Materials (pp.48–49)

Beginning in the summer of 2016, Assange and WikiLeaks made a number of statements about Seth Rich, a former DNC staff member who was killed in July 2016. The statements about Rich implied falsely that he had been the source of the stolen DNC emails. On August 9, 2016, the @WikiLeaks Twitter account posted: “ANNOUNCE [sic]: WikiLeaks has decided to issue a US$20k reward for information leading to conviction for the murder of DNC staffer Seth Rich.” Likewise, on August 25, 2016, Assange was asked in an interview, “Why are you so interested in Seth Rich’s killer?” and responded , “We ‘re very interested in anything that might be a threat to alleged Wikileaks sources.” The interviewer responded to Assange ‘s statement by commenting , “I know you don ‘t want to reveal your source, but it certainly sounds like you’re suggesting a man who leaked information to WikiLeaks was then murdered.” Assange replied , “If there’s someone who’s potentially connected to our publication, and that person has been murdered in suspicious circumstances, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the two are connected. But it is a very serious matter … that type of allegation is very serious, as it’s taken very seriously by us.” After the U.S. intelligence community publicly announced its assessment that Russia was behind the hacking operation, Assange continued to deny that the Clinton materials released by WikiLeaks had come from Russian hacking. According to media reports, Assange told a U.S. congressman that the DNC hack was an “inside job,” and purported to have “physical proof ‘ that Russians did not give materials to Assange.
It should be noted that Mueller never made any attempt to interview Assange regarding the alleged proof he had for his assertions, nor to interview either Craig Murray or Kim Dotcom, both of whom claim to have knowledge of the sources.

As I have noted too many times, the Mueller indictment of GRU agents, which claims that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian agent who transferred the DNC documents to Wikileaks, is wholly lacking in credibility.

Mueller’s New Indictment — Do the Feds Take Us for Idiots?!
https://caucus99percent.com/content/mueller%E2%80%99s-new-indictment%E2%...

With respect to Guccifer 2.0, the report assumes that this persona represents the GRU — failing to cite any of the independent cyberanalysis from Adam Carter, the Forensicator, and Bill Binney pointing to Guccifer 2.0 as operating in American time zones, making file transfers strongly suggestive of thumbdrive retrievals, purposely adding “Russian fingerprints” to the meta-data of some of his releases, making an incompetent and inconsistent attempt to impersonate a native Russian speaker, and himself posting only documents that do no harm to Clinton’s campaign (like oppo research on Trump!) Also, it does not question why GRU agents would have any need to invent such a blustering persona (whereas G2.0 makes perfect sense if we assume that he was trying to incriminate Russian hackers as responsible for the upcoming DNC releases).

With respect to the alleged transfer of DNC emails from G2.0 to WIkileaks, the indictment states:

On July 14, 2016, GRU officers used a Guccifer 2.0 email account to send WikiLeaks an email bearing the subject “big archive” and the message “a new attempt.” The email contained an encrypted attachment with the name “wk dnc link I .txt.gpg.” Using the Guccifer 2.0 Twitter account, GRU officers sent WikiLeaks an encrypted file and instructions on how to open it. On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks confirmed in a direct message to the Guccifer 2.0 account that it had “the 1 Gb or so archive” and would make a release of the stolen documents “this week.” On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released over 20,000 emails and other documents stolen from the DNC computer networks. The Democratic National Convention began three days later.

In fact, this narrative makes no sense whatever, inasmuch as Assange had announced the impending release of “Hillary-related materials” on June 12th, over a month before the report alleges that G2.0 transferred the documents to Wikileaks. If the report is correct, we have to assume that, either Assange is psychic, or G2.0 had contacted Wikileaks sometime prior to June 12th — a contact for which Mueller evidently has no evidence — to inform him of his plan to transmit the emails. But this would require Assange to announce the impending release of emails he had not seen, from a source of dubious provenance. Anyone who appreciates Wikileaks’ careful curation and authentication of the documents it releases will realize that this is absurd. Furthermore, the report’s scenario would have required Wikileaks to have verified the absolute authenticity of over 20K documents and as many attachments in 4 days, which sounds ridiculous, given the long amount of time required to vet the Podesta emails released subsequently.

Furthermore, it is peculiar that neither the report nor the indictment offers a complete quote of Wikileaks’ message to G2.0, excerpting only the phrases “the 1 Gb or so archive” and “this week”. And the Forensicator has just recently determined that the size of the DNC emails and attachments released by Wikileaks on July 22nd was well in excess of 2 Gb — not “1 Gb or so”. Moreover, the report provides no proof that what G2.0 allegedly transferred to Wikileaks was in fact the DNC emails. G2.0 may well have contacted Wikileaks to leave a trail that might be interpreted as evidence of his transmittal of the DNC documents — which is precisely how Mueller has interpreted this.

Mueller refers to “the U.S. intelligence community” as assessing that “Russia was behind the hacking operation”. This is a lie. Assessments by the U.S. intelligence community are done in National Intelligence Assessments, which draw on contributions from all of the intelligence agencies, and include dissents from individuals who disagree with the findings. The ICA dealing with the supposed Russian hacking of the DNC was created by an ad hoc group hand-picked by Russophobes Brennan and Clapper from just 3 of the intelligence agencies. Furthermore, the document itself includes a disclaimer that the “assessments” therein should not necessarily be considered to be proven facts. As Ray McGovern points out, “assess”, in spyspeak, means “guess”. Moreover, the fact that the inherently risible Steele Dossier was included as an appendix to the classified version, at Brennan’s insistence, tells you all you need to know about the reliability of the ICA.

We all remember that our Intelligence Community — in a formal NIE — once assured us that Saddam was sitting on a vast horde of chemical weapons and a nascent nuclear weapons program. The unclassified version of the report gave the impression that the conclusion was unanimous — but in fact that classified versions contained a number of dissenting opinions, of which the public was not informed. Robert Mueller was one of those who assured the American public that Saddam had WMDs.

Robert Mueller on Iraqi War and WMDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTDO-kuOGTQ

And here’s something else peculiar about Mueller’s (redacted) report — the name “Crowdstrike” only appears in two footnotes citing a blog post by Dmitri Alperovitch of that company: Bears in the Midst: Intrusion into the Democratic National Committee. Since only Crowdstrike examined the DNC servers, as the DNC would not allow them to be examined by the FBI, I can only presume that Mueller takes as gospel the claims of a DNC-hired computer security firm with close ties to the Russia-hating Atlantic Council — a company which had been shown to be completely wrong in its previous attribution of hacks to Russian intelligence.

As a noted American statesman once stated: “Fool me once, shame on you — fool me twice — you can’t get fooled again.”