2017 “smoking gun” report unearthed: Russians probably didn’t hack the DNC after all…

[TigerGrowls]

We knew this the whole time too.

2017 "smoking gun" report unearthed: Russians probably didn't hack the DNC after all... - Revolver News

Seems like many of our elections are built on lies.

www.revolver.news

July 11, 2023 (14h ago)

---

Most of you will remember the huge DNC uproar during the 2016 election. Emails from the DNC and Hillary’s campaign CEO, John Podesta, were published online by Wikileaks, causing quite a stir. The true origin and culprit who got their hands on the emails remains a mystery to this day, but our less-than-trustworthy intelligence community claims it was the “Russians” who hacked the DNC and handed the goods over to Julian Assange.
Assange, who typically refrains from discussing sources, was forced to refute the intelligence claims that Russians were the email providers. Assange claimed it wasn’t the Russians but someone “inside” the DNC.
Many believe the Wikileaks contact was Seth Rich, a disgruntled Bernie supporter and DNC employee, who was infuriated that Hillary had “stolen” the primary from Bernie. He allegedly sought to retaliate by distributing the emails. Seth was later murdered in DC, and his homicide remains very mysterious and unsolved.
Thus, the intel community, which propagated the whole fake Russia hoax, continues to push this absurd narrative that Russians hacked the DNC. However, a previously overlooked report from 2017 has come to light challenging the “Russia theory.” The report originates from a group called VIPS, “Veteran Intel Professionals For Sanity.” These veteran intelligence professionals say that based on their investigation, the DNC email theft was not a hack at all, but an inside leak that didn’t involve Russia — precisely what Julian Assange informed us.
The Nation highlighted the VIPS report back in 2017.

The Nation:

Stunning new report reveals new information on the so-called 2016 Russian “hack” at the DNC…
VIPS, formed in 2003 by a group of former US intelligence officers with decades of experience working within the CIA, the FBI, the NSA, and other agencies, previously produced some of the most credible—and critical—analyses of the Bush administration’s mishandling of intelligence data in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
The most recent VIPS memo, released on July 24, whatever its technical merits, contributes to a much-needed critical discussion. Despite all the media coverage taking the veracity of the ICA assessment for granted, even now we have only the uncorroborated assertion of intelligence officials to go on. Indeed, this was noticed by The New York Times’s Scott Shane, who wrote the day the report appeared: “What is missing from the public report is…hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack…. Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
As editor of The Nation, my purpose in publishing Patrick Lawrence’s article was to make more widely known the VIPS critique of the January ICA assertions, the questions VIPS raised, and their counter-thesis that the disseminated DNC e-mails resulted from a leak, not a hack. Those questions remain vital.

The Nation goes on to mention that a few of the article’s “conclusions” were presented as “facts,” whereas, in reality, they are actually opinions. This shouldn’t surprise anyone; as stories of this sort often get purposely ignored, and they aren’t fully investigated (like the DNC pipe bomb story), so we’re all left guessing and offering our opinions. If they fully investigated, we’d likely discover that our “opinions” were actually “facts.”

Subsequently, Nation editors themselves raised questions about the editorial process that preceded the publication of the article. The article was indeed fact-checked to ensure that Patrick Lawrence, a regular Nation contributor, accurately reported the VIPS analysis and conclusions, which he did. As part of the editing process, however, we should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties. And given the technical complexity of the material, we would have benefited from bringing on an independent expert to conduct a rigorous review of the VIPS technical claims.

Without the “DNC Russia hacked” theory, the already shaky house of cards built around the Russia hoax would completely crumble, leaving Hillary, the media, and the Democratic Party with nowhere to hide. They’d then have to start acknowledging a great deal of misconduct and criminal behavior. This is likely why they are rigorously gatekeeping information and making significant efforts to bury stories like this one from 2017. And they’ve done a good job. You probably weren’t even aware that a group named VIPS existed, investigated the DNC email scandal, and concluded it wasn’t Russia, did you?