First posted November 16, 2016.
I regularly update and re-publish.
Update, March 1st 2018
Ms. Kaverzina grew worried after Facebook revealed last September that it was cooperating with the authorities to look into Russian advertising on the platform. “We had a slight crisis here at work: the F.B.I. busted our activity (not a joke),” she wrote to a relative, according to the indictment. “So, I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues,” she added. “I created all these pictures and posts, and the Americans believed that it was written by their people.”
Mr. Podkopaev was an analyst for the “translator project.” He conducted research on the United States and drafted social media messages for the organization, according to the indictment.
Mr. Vasilchenko posted to, monitored and updated social media accounts while posing as Americans or as American grass-roots organizations. He led two subgroups focused on political interference in the United States, including the election. On Vkontakte, he shared a meme in October 2016 that imagined a drinking game in which players took a shot every time Mr. Trump talked about building a wall along the Mexican-United States border or making America great again, told voters to believe him, or complained about being treated unfairly; and every time Mrs. Clinton coughed, sipped water, laughed awkwardly, or mentioned her daughter or President Barack Obama.
Mr. Venkov inhabited multiple social media personas, according to the indictment. Someone with that name belongs to a Facebook group of social media marketing professionals and posted a photo last May of himself wearing a Republican elephant pin.
Excerpt from The New York Times: The Troll Farm: What We Know About 13 Russians Indicted by the U.S.
Update January 03, 2018
Donald Trump is president’ for almost a year and as we begin 2018 it turns out that everything I thought I saw in 2016 is true.
This excerpt from a January 02, 2018, piece in the New York Times is written by
the two founders of Fusion GPS.
Fusion GPS was the research firm first hired by the Democrats for opposition research on Donald Trump.
Fusion GPS hired Christopher Steele who produced the Trump Dossier.
Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?
What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I. The Republicans’ Fake Investigations
Let that sink in, the guy looking for dirt on Trump discovered a crime in
progress.
On January 3, 2018 we have this piece in the UK Guardian:
Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book seen by the Guardian. Trump Tower meeting with Russians ‘treasonous’, Bannon says in explosive book
And on December 18, James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence had this to say:
It’s weird when ones worst fears are true.
Below is the original post, November 16, 2016
The former director of the KGB does not have friends; he has subjects, operatives, and useful idiots: he has puppets.
Putin’s favored weapon against enemy governments is weaponized disinformation.
A disinformation campaign is a long-term strategy designed to divide a nation’s people, cause them to mistrust their own system of government and to ultimately lose their sense of reality.
The only conspiracy Trump’s supporters don’t buy is the one where they
are used as unwitting tools.
Putin’s targets are people so uninformed they don’t know a sitting
President has a constitutional obligation to fill vacant court seats.
For a glimpse of how Putin’s propaganda exploits and promotes
ignorance, see the video below.
A vote stolen with lies is still a stolen vote.
Putin hacked the 2016 elections and he won .
That’s some wild ass conspiracy theory, right?
Wikileaks BOMBSHELL
Am I the only citizen to notice the absence of WikiLeaks bombshells after
the 2016 election?
Assange vanished only to emerge on Faux News last night. 1/03/2017
This was not only the dirtiest campaign in U.S. history, it was the most psychologically abusive.
For Russia and Putin, a Surprise Gift from America
“If Europe was important, however, finding the means to sow doubt and insecurity about the political system in the United States, the last remaining superpower, was the big prize.
Television has been relentless in trying to paint the American system as flawed, suggesting that the process was not better than that in Russia. One prominent Russian politician even joked about it before the votes came in.
Gennadi A. Zyuganov, the longstanding leader of the Communist Party, said that Mrs. Clinton was smart but not good for Russia. “If Americans will vote honestly, I think Trump will make it, but if they will vote like here, then Hillary will win,” he said.
If the Cold War was rooted in ideological differences, the new Russian goal is to show that all political systems are equally bad. Also by interfering in conflicts like those in Ukraine and Syria, Mr. Putin has sought to reassert Russia’s role as a global power to be reckoned with.
Dmitry Kiselyev, the most prominent anchor on state television, called the United States election campaign the dirtiest in that country’s history, saying it provoked “disgust” toward what is somehow still called democracy.“
The photo that illustrates the story in the New York Times gives me chills:
I like to say the difference between a Conspiracy Theory and a Conspiracy are facts.
Fact: The U.S. Government is still taking action against what it describes as a Russian attack on our political Process.
Fact: Putin’s preferred weapon against ‘enemy’ states is Weaponized Disinformation.
The New York Times, AUG. 5, 2016 For Putin, Disinformation Is Power
Fifteen years ago, a few months into his presidency, Vladimir V. Putin told Larry King on CNN that his previous job as a K.G.B. officer had been like that of a journalist. “They have the same purpose of gathering information, synthesizing it and presenting it for the consumption of decision makers,” he said. Since then, he has excelled at using the media to consolidate power inside Russia and, increasingly, to wage an information war against the West.
So the apparent hacking by Russian security services of the Democratic National Committee emails, followed by their publication by WikiLeaks, should come as no great surprise to Americans. It is only the latest example of how Mr. Putin uses information as a weapon. And the Kremlin has cultivated ties with WikiLeaks for years.
The Boston Globe, September 2016 How much is Russia trying to influence internal US affairs?
“US intelligence and law enforcement agencies are investigating what they see as a broad covert Russian operation in the United States to sow public distrust in the presidential election and in US political institutions, intelligence and congressional officials said.”
The Wall Street Journal, November 2014 Putin’s Disinformation Matrix
Propaganda is closely integrated with the Kremlin’s model of ambiguous warfare, which relies on rapid action, covert troops, the creation of a digital fog of war, and inflaming ethnic and sectarian tensions. Western governments shouldn’t overreact to RT’s presence in the West. But they can take the opportunity to revamp and modernize their own public diplomacy, targeting ethnic-Russian audiences to ensure that accurate reporting stands a chance amid the blizzard of Moscow’s lies.
Fact: Russia is the confirmed the culprit in the computer hacks on the DNC.
The New York Times July, 2016 Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.
American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have “high confidence” that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.
But intelligence officials have cautioned that they are uncertain whether the electronic break-in at the committee’s computer systems was intended as fairly routine cyberespionage — of the kind the United States also conducts around the world — or as part of an effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election.
Bloomberg, October 7, 2017 U.S. Publicly Blames Russia for Hacking to Disrupt Elections
The U.S. said publicly for the first time that intelligence agencies are “confident that the Russian government directed” the hacking of American political groups and leaked stolen material in order to interfere with the Nov. 8 election.
“These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process,” the Office of Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security said in a joint statement on Friday. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
The Washington Post, June 14, 2016 Russian government hackers penetrated DNC, stole opposition research on Trump
Russian government hackers penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee and gained access to the entire database of opposition research on GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, according to committee officials and security experts who responded to the breach.
The intruders so thoroughly compromised the DNC’s system that they also were able to read all email and chat traffic, said DNC officials, and the security experts
Fact: Trump’s first act as President is the unleashing of Vladimir Putin
CNN November 15, 2016 Trump, Putin speak about future of US-Russia ties
Putin “called to offer his congratulations on winning a historic election,” according to a Trump statement. The two leaders discussed issues including shared threats, strategic economic issues, and the historical US-Russia relationship.
The two men also spoke about working to normalize relations between the two countries and emphasized the importance of creating a foundation of bilateral ties through trade, the Kremlin said.
They also discussed the need for “joint efforts in the fight against common enemy No. 1” — international terrorism and extremism.
Fact: The hack was an attack on our political process and thus and act of war.
Fact: Trump is protecting the perpetrator.
Here’s what bothers me the most.
This is the most devastating attack on the United States in the
history of our Nation.
And most of us still want to deny that it happened.
If you haven’t seen this 2013 Episode of the Black Mirror, The Waldo Moment, have a look.
It’s eerie viewing in light of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections.
Update March 09, 2017
2016 NATO Defense College Handbook of Russian Information Warfare
Rg 2016
