April 20, 2017

Is There a Russian Mole Inside the NSA? The CIA? Both?

Source: thedailybeast.com

The latest leak by the Shadow Brokers hackers exposed classified information that could only have come from within the NSA, setting the stage for a Cold War ritual—the mole hunt.

A message from Vladimir Putin can take many forms.
It can be as heavy-handed as a pair of Russian bombers buzzing the Alaska coast, or as lethal as the public assassination of a defector on the streets of Kiev. Now Putin may be sending a message to the American government through a more subtle channel: an escalating series of U.S. intelligence leaks that last week exposed a National Security Agency operation in the Middle East and the identity of an agency official who participated.
The leaks by self-described hackers calling themselves “the Shadow Brokers” began in the final months of the Obama administration and increased in frequency and impact after the U.S. bombing of a Syrian airfield this month—a move that angered Russia. The group has not been tied to the Kremlin with anything close to the forensic certitude of last year’s election-related hacks, but security experts say the Shadow Brokers’ attacks fit the pattern established by Russia’s GRU during its election hacking. In that operation, according to U.S. intelligence findings, Russia created fictitious Internet personas to launder some of their stolen emails, including the fake whistleblowing site called DCLeaks and a notional Romanian hacker named “Guccifer 2.0.”

“I think there’s something going on between the U.S. and Russia that we’re just seeing pieces of,” said security technologist Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer at IBM Resilient. “What happens when the deep states go to war with each other and don’t tell the rest of us?”
The Shadow Brokers made their deubt in August, appearing out of nowhere to publish a set of secret hacking tools belonging to the “Equation Group”—the security industry’s name for the NSA’s elite Tailored Access Operations program, which penetrates foreign computers to gather intelligence. At that time, the Shadow Brokers claimed to be mercenary hackers trying to sell the NSA’s secrets to the highest bidder. But they went on to leak more files for free, seemingly timed with the public thrusts and parries between the Obama administration and the Russian government.

From the start, outside experts had little doubt that Russian intelligence was pulling the strings. “Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility,” exiled NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tweeted last August. “Why did they do it? No one knows, but I suspect this is more diplomacy than intelligence, related to the escalation around the [Democratic National Committee] hack.”

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/20/is-there-a-russian-mole-inside-the-nsa-the-cia-or-both.html

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Would love to see this dissected on Maddow.

April 13, 2017

On this day in 1953 the CIA OKs MK-ULTRA Mind-Control Tests

on this day in 1953, the then-Director of Central Intelligence officially approved project MKUltra.

The project, which continued for more than a decade, was originally intended to make sure the United States government kept up with presumed Soviet advances in mind-control technology. It ballooned in scope and its ultimate result, among other things, was illegal drug testing on thousands of Americans. It wasn’t the first time that the American government “without permission or notice, secretly gathered information on its people,” writes Melissa Blevins for Today I Found Out. But MKUltra has gone down in history as a significant example of government abuse of human rights, and for good reason.

The intent of the project was to study “the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior,” according to the official testimony of CIA director Stansfield Turner in 1977. The project was conducted in extreme secrecy, Turner said, because of ethical and legal questions surrounding the program and the negative public response that the CIA anticipated if MKUltra should become public.

Under MKUltra, the CIA gave itself the authority to research how drugs could: “promote the intoxicating effects of alcohol;” “render the induction of hypnosis easier;” “enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture and coercion;” produce amnesia, shock and confusion; and much more. Many of these questions were investigated using unwitting test subjects, like drug-addicted prisoners, marginalized sex workers and terminal cancer patients–”people who could not fight back,” in the words of Sidney Gottlieb, the

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-we-know-about-cias-midcentury-mind-control-project-180962836/

April 10, 2017

The CIAs Secret Experiments

April 2, 2017

Donald Trump says US will act alone on North Korea if China fails to help

Source: The Guardian

The US is prepared to respond to North Korean nuclear threats on its own if China fails to pressure Pyongyang, Donald Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Sunday.

“Well, if China is not going to solve North Korea, we will,” the president said. “That is all I am telling you.”
Trump will host the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, this Thursday and Friday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, where the two leaders are expected to discuss North Korea, China’s ambitions in the South China Sea and trade.
Trump said he had “great respect” for Xi and “great respect for China”, adding: “I would not be at all surprised if we did something that would be very dramatic and good for both countries and I hope so.”

About North Korea, he said: “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t. And if they do that will be very good for China, and if they don’t it won’t be good for anyone.”

Asked what might motivate China to help, Trump said: “I think trade is the incentive. It is all about trade.”
Trump’s deputy national security adviser, KT McFarland, told the FT there was a “real possibility” North Korea could be capable of hitting the US with a nuclear-armed missile by the end of Trump’s first term.

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/02/donald-trump-north-korea-china

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he wants a war baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad

April 1, 2017

Tom Price Intervened on Rule That Would Hurt Drug Profits, the Same Day He Acquired Drug Stock

Source: propublica.org

On the same day the stockbroker for then-Georgia Congressman Tom Price bought him up to $90,000 of stock in six pharmaceutical companies last year, Price arranged to call a top U.S. health official, seeking to scuttle a controversial rule that could have hurt the firms’ profits and driven down their share prices, records obtained by ProPublica show.

Stock trades made by Price while he served in Congress came under scrutiny at his confirmation hearings to become President Trump’s secretary of health and human services. The lawmaker, a physician, traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of shares in health-related companies while he voted on and sponsored legislation affecting the industry, but Price has said his broker acted on his behalf without his involvement or knowledge. ProPublica previously reported that his trading is said to have been under investigation by federal prosecutors.

On March 17, 2016, Price’s broker purchased shares worth between $1,000 and $15,000 each in Eli Lilly, Amgen, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, McKesson, Pfizer and Biogen. Previous reports have noted that, a month later, Price was among lawmakers from both parties who signed onto a bill that would have blocked a rule proposed by the Obama administration, which was intended to remove the incentive for doctors to prescribe expensive drugs that don’t necessarily improve patient outcomes.

What hasn’t been previously known is Price’s personal appeal to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services about the rule, called the Medicare Part B Drug Payment Model. The same day as the stock trade, Price’s legislative aide, Carla DiBlasio, emailed health officials to follow up on a request she had made to set up a call with Patrick Conway, the agency’s chief medical officer. In her earlier emails, DiBlasio said the call would focus on payments for joint replacement procedures. But that day, she mentioned a new issue.

Read more: https://www.propublica.org/article/tom-price-intervened-rule-hurt-drug-profits-same-day-acquired-drug-stock

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While in Congress, HHS Secretary Tom Price acted to help kill a rule that would hurt drug company profits shortly after his broker bought him up to $90,000 worth of pharmaceutical stock.

GOP insider trading has been going on for a long time