Was CIA Director John Brennan hacked? The laff line in this story is that the CIA head used an AOL account. It's always a little surprising to be reminded that AOL still exists. World Nut Daily describes the hacker as a high school stoner, although his motives (if accurately reported) go beyond "the lulz"...
“We are not doing this for personal satisfaction, we’re doing this for #FreePalestine and #FreeGaza,” the Twitter account of the supposed hacker said in response to a question from the Daily Mail Online about the motives for the hack.The obvious comparison, of course, goes to that infamous email server used by Hillary Clinton. There are indications that Brennan's email account included information which should have been kept hush hush...
Among the information found in Brennan’s AOL account were Social Security numbers of a dozen top American intelligence officials and his own 47-page application for a top security clearance, the New York Post reported.Yow. Imagine the outcry if that kind of material had been found on Hillary's account. Apparently, the emails also included some discussion of CIA's fondness for "harsh" interrogation tactics.
More here:
The supposed hacker, who also gained access to a Comcast email account owned and used by Jeh Johnson, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, described himself as an “American high school student who is not a Muslim.” He never divulged his identity to the Post, though he did confirm that he was operating a certain Twitter account that had been boasting about the hack."Not a Muslim"? Hm! World Nut Daily said otherwise. Gosh -- if you can't trust WND, who can you trust?
I'll betcha that this story dies pretty quickly. Unlike...
Hillary's damned emails. Michael Isikoff has looked into the controversy surrounding one 2011 email message which the Republicans have been touting as conclusive evidence that Hillary used her server to transmit classified information. The CIA disagrees, saying that the email in question contained nothing classified.
Let me simplify the story for you. It all comes down to this...
A guy named Mousa Kousa used to be the head spy and foreign minister for Libya, back when Khaddafy was running the joint. Kousa defected to the UK in 2011, around the time that email was sent. Before he skipped out, Kousa met with a CIA guy and divulged some information. I don't know what he said.
Kousa also spoke to Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA guy (one of the good ones, in my opinion) who had, after leaving the Agency, teamed up with Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary's friend. As everyone knows by now, Blumenthal and Drumheller were looking for business opportunities in Libya. Kousa told Drumheller about Khaddafy's planned response to a UN resolution.
And that's it. There's really nothing more to the story.
Look: Just because Kousa chose to talk to some local CIA guy doesn't mean that the Agency owned him. He's a foreign national. He was, and presumably still is, free to say what he pleases to anyone he likes.
I presume that he said what he said to Drumheller for reasons of his own. Drumheller relayed the information to Blumenthal, who sent it off to Hillary. There was no breach of classified information here.
Allow me to illustrate the point.
Let's say that you have lunch with a guy who, unknown to you, is a CIA operative. Let's say that you tell him: "I met a bigfoot on my last camping trip. Nice guy. We played chess and ate popcorn." Let us further say that this CIA guy (for whatever reason) includes your bigfoot story in a document that gets a big, fat classification stamp. That stamp applies only to that document. You are still free to talk about your dinner with bigfoot to anyone you like. You can tell it to the FSB or ISIS or Fox News or Sidney Blumenthal or Coast to Coast or anyone else. It's your choice. And if the people to whom you tell the story decide to tell others, they may do so without any worries that they have divulged classified information.
The Republicans in Congress, particularly Trey Gowdy, are trying to make a maniac's hell-broth out of a simple matter. What nonsense.
Why aren't they up in arms about the Brennan hack?
A mystery death. Former BBC journalist Jacky Sutton was found dead in an Istanbul airport. "Questionable" is far too soft a word to describe the situation: We are supposed to believe that this woman hanged herself because she missed a flight to Iraq.
Christian Bleuer, a research fellow at the Australian National University who also knew her well, tweeted:A week before her death, Sutton met with an expert on ISIS.
Jacky Sutton worked in Afghanistan & Iraq. Toughest woman u could meet. Turkish police say she committed suicide cuz she missed her flight?
— Christian Bleuer (@ChristianBleuer) October 18, 2015
He added:
I'm not into conspiracies, but if the Turks say a security camera at Istanbul-Ataturk was "malfunctioning," then Jacky Sutton was murdered.
— Christian Bleuer (@ChristianBleuer) October 18, 2015
Definitely keep an eye on this one. And if you ever hear that I've offed myself, don't let anyone tell you that I became despondent after missing the bus that goes downtown.
Added note: It turns out that Republican Trey Gowdy is the one who let Kousa's name slip out into public view. Good one, Trey!
A thought has belatedly occurred to me: What if Drumheller was the CIA's source of information? In other words, what if Kousa met with Drumheller, said "Here's what Khaddafy will do..." -- and Drumheller decided to pass this nugget along to both the CIA and his pal Sidney?
We know that Drumheller left the Agency some time previous, over a matter of conscience. Although it was an acrimonious divorce, it is possible that he maintained contacts with someone back at headquarters.
Even if this scenario is true, there is still no harm and no foul in that email to Hillary. Drumheller, after leaving the Company, was a private citizen. He was free to say whatever he liked to anyone he liked, as long as he was not divulging classified data that he learned while still employed by the Agency.
2 comments:
Kevin Drum is such a lightweight phony. Today he writes off Blumenthal as a silly GOP target
w/o mentioning the business wheelings and dealings. Is this par for the course for Drum, imperialist neolibissm all the way? Not befitting of Mother Jones.
The John Brennan story sounds more like nonsensical fertilizer, contrived to smear any newsworthy items that may arise from IOF assaults on the largest open air prison/laboratory.
Holding nose. I'm also a bit skeptical that the D/CIA:
a.)Resorted to using AOL servers instead of something like Intellipedia that even his Snowden Op underling was using over at BAH? or was that Palantir?
b.)Forgot about all the Rainbow Books, network security architecture and protocols set up possibly by PTech (h/t KPFA Guns and Butter)
This could be what John Young at Cryptome might call a controlled leak Joseph. It could also be a ridiculously conspicuous honey trap, testing a trial balloon, on how gullible American's will give traction to this story or not. The SSI #'s of those exposed officials could be a falsehood or a set up. To think, some script kiddy (Ferris Bueller is not a muslim), is out there, knocking down the heavy hitters of the IC, whom squash their inter-rivalries and surrender their jurisdiction over to the FBI is a hoot of a story that belongs on loonwatch.
Thanks for the giggles, but more importantly for the research you've done with the following link.
http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-right-wing-nuts-are-right-obama.html
S9
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