Don’t Be So Sure Russia Hacked the Clinton Emails

by | Nov 2, 2016

Don’t Be So Sure Russia Hacked the Clinton Emails

by | Nov 2, 2016

Last summer, cyber investigators plowing through the thousands of leaked emails from the Democratic National Committee uncovered a clue.

A user named “Феликс Эдмундович” modified one of the documents using settings in the Russian language. Translated, his name was Felix Edmundovich, a pseudonym referring to Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky, the chief of the Soviet Union’s first secret-police organization, the Cheka.

It was one more link in the chain of evidence pointing to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the man ultimately behind the operation.

During the Cold War, when Soviet intelligence was headquartered in Dzerzhinsky Square in Moscow, Putin was a KGB officer assigned to the First Chief Directorate. Its responsibilities included “active measures,” a form of political warfare that included media manipulation, propaganda and disinformation. Soviet active measures, retired KGB Major General Oleg Kalugin told Army historian Thomas Boghart, aimed to discredit the United States and “conquer world public opinion.”

As the Cold War has turned into the code war, Putin recently unveiled his new, greatly enlarged spy organization: the Ministry of State Security, taking the name from Joseph Stalin’s secret service. Putin also resurrected, according to James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, some of the KGB’s old active- measures tactics.

On October 7, Clapper issued a statement: “The U.S. Intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations.” Notably, however, the FBI declined to join the chorus, according to reports by the New York Times and CNBC.

Read the rest at Reuters here.

 

Our Books

Shop books published by the Libertarian Institute.

libetarian institute longsleeve shirt

Our Books

cb0cb1ef 3fcb 417d 80d8 4eef7bbd8290

Recent Articles

Recent

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracy Cannot Lead to Self-Governance

Democracies end up anti-democratic because only a tiny minority of radicals (politicians, interest groups, major corporations, etc.) achieve power centralized in the capital. They work the levers of government, place their servants in power, and advertise via...

read more
TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

TGIF: The US Empire’s 72-Year War on Iran

The likely temporary Israel-Iran ceasefire notwithstanding, if you need proof of how despicable Donald Trump is, consider this: When asked last week if he would ask Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran, which had already said it would stop retaliating...

read more

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This