The Terrorists Among US10| The IO Echo Chamber Scott Shane Joel Harding

by George Eliason for The Saker Blog

At the beginning of October, I was contacted by the New York Times, @ScottShane for an interview about US President Donald Trump. The biggest pressing question he had revolved around how (not if) I’m guiding US foreign policy and advising President Donald Trump on Ukraine and the deep-state war in the US from Donbass. Try reading that over your first sip of coffee. Exactly.

Welcome to the new IO. They keep setting up an elegant chessboard just to play a middling game of checkers.

Information Operations (IO) in action are defined by “What would we do? Disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive, corrupt, usurp or destroy the information. The information, please don’t forget, is the ultimate objective of cyber. That will directly impact the decision-making process of the adversary’s leader who is the ultimate target.” – Joel Harding

While I’m including the entire interview, I will scatter parts of it throughout as it pertains to what Scott Shane was attempting as a smear piece against alternative media. As for my connection to smaller publications than the New York Times, for all intents and purposes, they seem to have a lot stricter publishing guidelines. They wouldn’t print an innuendo journalist effort like the following effort-

When I started reading his article “The CrowdStrike Plot: How a Fringe Theory Took Root in the White House”, I was expecting something heady or at least thought-provoking. What he delivered instead sadly was an unvetted, undocumented attempt to take a swipe at something he had no grasp of. I wasn’t what he expected and in one of my answers to him, I encouraged him to really vet the basis of his question, triple-check his sources, and then fact check it until he knew the information was absolutely clean. His insinuation was…weird. I got a chuckle and you might too.

Why is a NYT, Pulitzer winner contacting me? We both write in the two areas that have the biggest geopolitical impact since before the 2016 election. The good part about this is after reviewing both of our creds and articles, you will need to fully decide if you’re going to give a deep state narrative priority or fact-based journalism.

“Together we’ll see if we can send that to enough people to make a case against him, embarrass him and make it impossible for his to show his face without being labeled a bad journalist, a liar, guilty of perjury, and a dirty propagandist…Photographs can be photoshopped, so can videos. Eyewitness accounts are suspect. Reporters stories are only as reliable as the news sources and that means they are not reliable. Even if the most reliable person in the world says something, their word can always be branded speculation, biased or that they are a paid troll, be it Russian or otherwise (although I really don’t know of any others).”Joel Harding Aug 31, 2015

@scottshane trotted out after I wrote the articles showing the timeline for the deep state coup going on right now. This was done from the perspective of the planners and on a timeline fashion with milestones and comments of progress from the planners.

It was directly after I positively identified the changes made to legitimize the first whistleblower were part of a cookie-cutter methodology from the Next Generation Regime change authors I identified.

So, yes, I was amused.

Looking at it from a head to head perspective, facts should win over politics when the fabric of society and the future are at stake.

His NYT profile page reads; Scott Shane is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he has written about national security and other topics. He was part of teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2017 for coverage of Russia’s hacking and other projections of power abroad and in 2018 for reporting on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Donald Trump campaign and administration.

While I don’t know if any of the Pulitzer judges will do a face-palm over this, I do know the IO planners for Ukraine and US election interference are cheering his effort on.

Except, they already stated in no uncertain terms, there were no remotely successful attempts by Russians to influence the 2016 election.

“In response, another senior wrote: Perhaps we could stop telling the Kremlin their ops were so successful when there is little evidence their activities did anything to affect the outcome…and now for something completely different.  Good news. Russian propaganda is being ignored in the United States.”

And

“It is entirely possible the DNC hired online trolls, regardless their geographic origin, to undermine the US President-elect since their party is currently reeling from a crushing loss. – Joel Harding

 “Perhaps the DNC is hiring Russian trolls to wage guerilla warfare on Donald Trump’s nascent administration. I have no proof, so I put this in the form of a question.”- Joel Harding November 2016

Scott Shane’s Facebook’s Russia-Linked Ads Came in Many Disguises has a plausible reason even if he got the story wrong.

I’m not accusing the DNC of hiring Russian trolls to attack Trump, undermine his success, or throw the legal electorate process into disarray and confusion.  I’m not even accusing the DNC of hiring trolls, although that has already been proven.

But what’s that expression again? “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”- Joel Harding December 11, 2016

So now we have the man that marked the inauguration of Ukraine’s Internet Army which had 40,000 trolls on opening day insinuating they were working for the DNC and Team Clinton.

“One of the really neat things about this election is seeing all my information operations and information warfare friends on social media, contributing and commenting, looking darned intelligent! Theirs is normally the voice of reason, maturity, and intelligence.” Joel Harding

Email between Ali Chalupa (Consultant for the DNC) and Luis Miranda, Communication Director for the DNC) dated 5/3/16

“In addition, already 21 November Dmitry Zolotukhin met with his US counterpart, team representative Bellingcat Aric Toler, who conducted a similar training for journalists in Kyiv on the invitation of Media Development Foundation. They also discussed the possibility of holding a conference in Kiev on thematic instruments OSINT-use techniques in the modern media.”

One of the Media Development Center’s sponsors is NATO. It is a project of the US Embassy in Kiev because of the association with the embassy’s diplomatic paper, the Kyiv Post.”

Dimitry Zolotukhin is the Deputy Minister of Information in Ukraine which does Intel and targets dissenters,  the Pravy Sektor/ Fancy Bear hackers answer directly to him. In the notice above which was prepared by his office, it is noted Bellingcat’s Aric Toler is working in an equal capacity to him in the USA.”- How Fancy Bear Destroyed Eliot Higgins Bellingcat Credibility\

The private Intel operatives hired by Alexandra Chalupa to do opposition research against Paul Manfort and Donald Trump were the Ukraine’s Intel Hacker groups. Because they worked for her, Bellingcat, and the Atlantic Council, they would need password access at the DNC.

Ukraine Cyber Alliance and CyberHunta work for the Ukrainian Information ministry. According to cyber expert Jeff Carr, Alperovich and the Ukrainians were the only 2 groups that had key components to hack. This relationship extended through the Atlantic Council.

Why did this relationship start?

The hackers were Alexandra Chalupa’s Oppo Researchers. They are the core of InformNapalm and work with the US Intel Community and Atlantic Council.Their manager was a Ukrainian contractor for the US State Dept.Crowdstrike worked for DNC and Team Hillary at the same time they did.Through the Atlantic Council the hackers worked with Andrea and Irena Chalupa on other projects.Because of Alexandra Chalupa and a Ukrainian State Department contractor Ukraine Intel hackers had access the entire time they worked for the DNC.

Would cyber Oppo researchers need access to the DNC server itself?

If they didn’t have permission to download or retrieve information- It’s a hack. It should be noted that Clinton kept 6 seats to State Department servers after she left for Oppo research that Ukrainian Intel had access to because of this situation.

At the same time, let’s look at Mueller’s Russians and see where they really fit in.

From 2014- Oct 2016 the Ukraine’s Intel and hacking group had a Russian component. Mueller indicted that group. It’s called Shaltay Boltay. Led by former FSB and GRU, they were a Russian criminal gang. Shaltay Boltay, AKA Anonymous International, worked for Ukrainian Intel throughout the election.

Shaltay Boltay wrote the story of the Internet Research Agency from Ukraine fabricating Russian interference. They worked for Clinton on the Ukrainian team doing Oppo Research. As part of CyberHunta, they would need password access to do their job.

The IRA (Internet Research Agency) was the tie Mueller unsuccessfully tried to use showing Donald Trump’s collusion with Russia. In fact, this is a part of the basis for @scottshane articles on the subject. And it is the only narrative proof for Mueller that was available.

Here’s the problem. The collusion work of the IRA was only known through a blog written by Ukrainian Intel hacking group CyberHunta, from Ukraine. They worked through the Information ministry created by Joel Harding. They were in Ukraine actively trying to hurt the Russian government. They were not in Russia.

Scott Shane ignores the fact that everyone involved are working with, working for, or is part of very few groups involved in this ongoing IO. The fact that every individual group or company I’ve written about, are tied together working on the same project set should raise concern by itself.

The Russian criminal gang were hired by Alexandra Chalupa. In October 2016 they went back to Russia and were convicted for treason

Further proof of relationship is in the Surkov government hack in Russia. From Ukraine, Shaltay Boltay was credited with the hack. After, it was the Ukrainian Intel group CyberHunta that released the emails to the Atlantic Council. Ukrainian Cyber Alliance bragged to RFE/RL they changed the geopolitics of the entire world by themselves in 2016.

Did you know HRC’s extended group was among those that wrote the rules governing cyberwar including attribution that made catching Russians for the DNC hack possible? It’s kind of like rewriting the whistleblower policy was supposed to work for the first Trump-Ukraine whistleblower, but with better results.

The Atlantic Council worked on this. Dimitry Alperovitch from Crowdstrike is their resident expert. As far as attribution, as long as there was a Russian in the room with former FSB or GRU ties, it could loosely be attributed to the Russian government according to Rule 17, article 8 Tallinn Manual on cyberwar.

The FBI, the DNC, and Team Clinton knew Shaltay Boltay did the Yahoo hack in 2013 that stole Huma Abedin’s State Dept passwords. The only reason Hillary Clinton’s campaign would have to provide this particular group of hackers passwords to do their job as Oppo researchers would be to throw a shadow on the Russian government.- Fancy Bear Exposed-the People Behind the Hacking Group

But, unlike Scott Shane, I work hard to find the professionals doing the IO work or guiding it. Here we have a group of professional IO operators. Joel Harding is happy because of how well they are doing their job in America trying to sway the 2016 election.

These statements take away the value of Scott Shane’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize entirely, all by themselves. The statements are directly from the IO planner coordinating the media effort behind the anti-Russian effort Shane Scott is part of which took wings in the US as a deep state coup.

In June 2016, the Ukrainian US State Dept. contractor, Christina Dobrovolska went to Washington to meet with her boss at a conference. She brought a Ukrainian Delegation to meet the OUNb Ukrainian Diaspora leader Nestor Paslawsky in New York and got Joel Harding rehired for another year.

If we look at Scott Shane’s article titled How a Fringe Theory About Ukraine Took Root in the White House, we see like a 2x Pulitzer winner, he brought out the big gun to show his narrative is true.

From @scottshane -“Ukraine is the perfect scapegoat for him because it’s the enemy of Russia,” said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center in Washington who regularly visits Ukraine and is writing a book called “How to Lose the Information War.”

She noted that a number of Ukraine-linked stories, some of them distorted or exaggerated, have been pulled together by Mr. Trump’s supporters into a single narrative.

“Now it seems like all of these conspiracy theories are merging into one,” Ms. Jankowicz said. She studies disinformation, she said, but Mr. Trump produced one claim she’d never come across.“I do this for a living, and I’d never heard anyone say the servers were in Ukraine,” she said.

In 2016-2017, Scott Shane’s star expert Nina Jankowicz worked in Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, providing strategic communications advice to the MFA’s Spokesperson according to her bio at Foreign Policy International.

This means she was also working with Ukraine’s Information Ministry which does cyber Intel. She was working with Christina Dobrovolska who was the State Dept. liaison to OUNb Diaspora heads like Nestor Paslawsky. The idea Nina was working with Ukrainian Intel people and Alexandra Chalupa is not so farfetched because her position put her in contact with Joel Harding who beyond all this IO madness, wrote Ukraine’s Information Policy.

Nina’s contact with the IO coup group extends to the German Marshall Fund where Aaron Weisburd and Clint Watts are also experts. Jankowicz had contact with Karen Kornbluh because of her State Dept position as well as being another resident expert at the German Marshall Fund.

Kornbluh is on the board of what was the Broadcasting Board of Governors which oversee RFE/RL and other projects. Joel Harding worked at the BBG during this timeframe influencing major media outlets.

According to Mr. Shane’s article –Mr. Eliason and other purveyors of Ukraine conspiracies often point to the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington, as the locus of the schemes. The Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk has made donations to the council and serves on its international advisory board; Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s co-founder, who was born in Russia and came to the United States as a child, is an Atlantic Council senior fellow.

That connection seems slender, but it may be the origin of Mr. Trump’s association of a wealthy Ukrainian with CrowdStrike.

So as not to disappoint Shane, his expert is an Atlantic Council expert and writes at EUvsDisinfo as well. For those not in the know, they were sued by news publications that label publications Russian propaganda.

The Atlantic Council signed a contract to work for/with the UWC (Ukrainian World Congress) and everything they do supports the Information Operation originally intended for Ukraine.

From Mr. Shane’s article- “Mr. Eliason and other purveyors of Ukraine conspiracies often point to the Atlantic Council, a research group in Washington, as the locus of the schemes. The Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk has made donations to the council and serves on its international advisory board; Dmitri Alperovitch, CrowdStrike’s co-founder, who was born in Russia and came to the United States as a child, is an Atlantic Council senior fellow.

That connection seems slender, but it may be the origin of Mr. Trump’s association of a wealthy Ukrainian with CrowdStrike.”

So, are the connections actually slender? Only for people stuck inside a narrative box.

I think this next point may sink Mr. Scott into a deep depression. He refers to alternative media in such a dismissive way that it needs addressing.

Scott Shane-“George Eliason, an American journalist who lives in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists fought Ukrainian forces, has written extensively about what he considers to be a “coup attempt” against President Trump involving American and Ukrainian intelligence agencies and CrowdStrike. He said he did not know if his writings for obscure websites might have influenced the president.”

Although the interview is carried in full below, this will give an idea of the contextual value of Scott Shane’s work.

From Scotts article-“CrowdStrike and Ukrainian Intel are working hand in glove,” he wrote in an email. “Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the U.S. to take a hardline stance against Russia? Are they using CrowdStrike to carry this out?”

My actual response to the question– Crowdstrike and Ukrainian Intel are working hand in glove. This is a sad fact proven by others including Jeff Carr. If the key components to the hack are in the hand of only 2 parties, it is simply making a determination of liability to the event.

What’s more important is determining Crowdstrike’s liability in the Intel Community coup attempt that’s being reported in mainstream media by journalists like Tucker Carlson, Sheryll Atkinson, and even former Congressman Ron Paul.

Now, you might understand why I got a chuckle from his article. If he based his 2017 Pulitzer on information from Crowdstrike, Dimitry Alperovich backed his attribution of a Russian Hack at the DNC on a lie he invented. If a Pulitzer Prize winner is afraid to publish what is actually said by an interviewee, he’s scared to death of the facts.

Let me show you what I mean. Part of the evidence Dimitry Alperovich used in his justification for the DNC hack Russian attribution was destroyed by VOA in an embarrassing way. This was his backing proof of Russian involvement. Shane’s work is backed by this fiasco whether he realizes it or not. You have to take the time to vet sources.

According to Alperovitch “The malware used to track Ukrainian artillery units was a variant of the kind used to hack into the U.S. Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the presidential election this year  said CrowdStrike co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch.”

When VOA asked Crowdstrike about the sources they responded “We cited the public, third-party reference source that was quoted,” VOA was told. “But the source referenced in the CrowdStrike report on its website is not the site of the actual IISS, but an article on The Saker, a site that presents a largely pro-Russian version of events in Syria and Ukraine.”

How careful is Crowdstrike and Alperovitch with information? After all, they were dealing with Ukrainian Intelligence directly. Alperovitch even has a twitter social relationship with Ukraine’s hackers.

The chain of information went like this:  IISS Report(think tank) –>Colonel Cassad (Russian blogger)–> the Saker(analytical blog/ translator)—>Alperovitch/ Crowdstrike(information purposely misquoted to create Russian hacker) —>FBI—>CIA—>ODNI (DNI report)—-> You scratching your head wondering who makes this intel crap up. This is one of the DNI report’s secret sources and one that the whole report rests on.- Indict Clinton For the Russian DNC Hack January 16, 2017

To keep things simple, Shane’s 2017 Pulitzer is partly based on Alperovitch misquoting one of the analytic platforms Scott Shane disdains and I write for.

@scottshane do you feel the Pulitzer people are doing a face-palm about right now?

Now, alone this is damning, but it is taken from what is now a 10 part of the series over 30,000 words deep in dense proof provided from the same people who gave Robert Mueller his Russian narrative. They drew @scottshane into to take the feet out from my work. Instead, he makes the case for my work with his own choice of experts and takes away the narrative fictions that won his Pulitzer instead. Maybe you can return them quietly.

If it was just the NYT article, I’d probably still take the time to answer it. But it’s not. This is a coordinated 3-prong effort. That puts it square in the Information Operation coup against the US Presidency.

NBC ran the same type of article in the same timeframe. “Trump seized on a conspiracy theory called the ‘insurance policy.’ Now, it’s at the center of an impeachment investigation.

Just months after Trump’s inauguration, conspiracy theorists pushed a fanciful and unsubstantiated narrative in which the DNC framed Russia for election interference.”

And third, one of the private Intel companies working for Ukraine was able to push the following into the Senate Intel Committee. What they are doing is trying to turn the pressure this article series and the work of many other journalists back onto the journalists and news platforms. This will stop investigations on the IO coup as well as push the Senate toward impeaching the President of the United States based on their fabrications.

As noted in Part 8, Bellingcat and Eliot Higgins have been part of the Intel coup against the Presidency since it began. The timeline and milestones in the article is where they discussed their progress.

When I told Eliot Higgins about my findings and the proof was there, here was his response.

The choice is whether the fabric of United States democracy will be irreparably torn or not. If they win, the world loses.

If you couple both efforts with @scottshane‘s, it’s looks damning. All three have the same goal. All three efforts are within the same timeframe. It looks like a coordinated effort to destroy the fact-based story and give the narrative priority.

But, let’s give Scott Shane’s 2018 Pulitzer another whirl, shall we? In the end, and to Shane’s chagrin, DNI James Clapper’s candid admission the only proof he had of Russian influence on the 2016 election was Hillary Clinton (HRC) losing Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. “It stretches credulity to conclude that Russian activity didn’t swing voter decisions.”

Scott Shane won Pultizer Prizes for two consecutive years, 2017-18. It’s quite an honor, very prestigious. But, my question is how that is possible if he relied on Crowdstrike’s information that was debunked by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty?

Now, for the Pulitzer Prize, your work was judged by 17 judges. In 2018, there were three or four from the NYT and one from the Washington Post. Both papers push the same narrative.

What are my qualifications to answer NYT Pulitzer Prize winner Scott Shane and his light on facts, heavy on narrative fictions?

My credentials are a little different. For 2017-2018, a few article series I wrote on how privatized Intelligence was taking shape and the problems with it taking preeminence over government agencies was listed #2 for both years by Project Censored. The other side to that was how privatized Intel was using these tools on the public at will, out of spite, and for money. The first-place story was one that was never written at all.

Project Censored’s list shows stories with the greatest national impact that are under-reported, pushed own or censored outright.

Stretched across thirty campuses, the initial round of judging is between over 200 news stories that go through five rounds of judging before making the top 25.  Faculty and students vet each candidate story in terms of its importance, timeliness, quality of sources, and corporate news coverage. If it fails on any one of these criteria, the story is not included. 

Once Project Censored receives the candidate story, we undertake a second round of judgment, using the same criteria and updating the review to include any subsequent, competing corporate cove In early spring, we present all VINs in the current cycle to the faculty and students at all of our affiliate campuses, and to our national and international panel of judges, who cast votes to winnow the candidate stories from several hundred to 25. 

Once the Top 25 list has been determined, Project Censored student interns begin another intensive review of each story using LexisNexis and ProQuest databases. Additional faculty and students contribute to this final stage of review.

The Top 25 finalists are then sent to our panel of judges, who vote to rank them in numerical order. At the same time, these experts—including media studies professors, professional journalists, and a former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission, among others—offer their insights on the stories’ strengths and weaknesses.

Thus, by the time a story appears in the pages of Censored, it has undergone at least five distinct rounds of review and evaluation. – Project Censored

.

I’ve opened up a type of story that generally doesn’t get told until at least 20 years later. My articles are fact dense. This is part 10 in series that is the first time in journalism I’m aware of an IO coup or Intel Community crimes were opened up at the beginning of the stream, not forensically, after the fact. Most of the actors and actions were accounted for as they occurred.

The publications I write for seem to have a much higher standard of fact grading than the NYT is on this particular story and wouldn’t accept less than extremely dense sourcing from me. The stakes are too high. Some of the editors are even adversarial and had to be convinced beyond a shadow this was happening.

In 2005, at the beginning of Hurricane Katrina, I designed a methodology that would close the levees in New Orleans in less than a week. I contacted the USACE (United States Army Corps of Engineers) at the Pentagon which was where they were trying to get their heads around the stopping damage from happening and not losing the city.

I explained the plan to Colonel Paul Tan, who became my liaison. There were five plans on the table from five different national size contractors. When they heard mine, it became clear it was the only option.

Only one company in the world had the equipment to do this. I contacted the vice president of Erickson Aircrane and convinced him of why it could be done with his equipment. Great people at Ericson. They broke contract with the state of Washington and moved $30,000,000 worth of gear and support to Alabama to stage from. The base problem was you couldn’t get a barge in because the water was too shallow. You couldn’t do the work from dry ground so a crane couldn’t get in.

We could do it from the air successfully by reversing some the normal steps to account for head pressure on the water flow. The other side of that is understanding both the logistics and developing a schedule of procedures that was bulletproof.

Scott, pull the FOIA. My name and our company are prominent in the discussions and minutes early on from the Pentagon decisions.

The commander on the ground in New Orleans had the final word and decided to stay with the sandbags.

After it was over, we, Erickson Aircraft and our company were supposed to demonstrate the methodology for Michael Chertoff and FEMA as a next-gen option. He never set up a schedule.

Erickson’s vice president at the time, Lonny Alaramos, didn’t sign on to the plan for profit. He did it because so many people needed help and an entire city was being destroyed.

In 2011, the Fukashima meltdowns happened. I designed a methodology I gave to a nuclear operator for a bid on the Fukashima project to cut radiation exposure. It went into one of the unsuccessful remediation bids at the time. I used to have locked high rad clearance and about five years before my wife designed the protocol to keep reactors and pools safe during refueling that started to be used internationally. Non-Orthodox Means and Methods to achieve Radiation barriers and establish minimum of ALARA

If you want to have an interesting conversation, I can talk you through a remediation plan for the site at Fukashima I never bothered to publish. The graft and criminality was already apparent with the energy company.

Why add this to the conversation at all? I don’t generally talk about experiences like this because for most people, it’s too esoteric and outside their experience.

What these events show is the ability to go into large unknown situations under stress and not only grasp them fast but create forward-thinking solutions very quickly.

What Scott Shane was especially interested in was whether or not I was shaping Russia and Ukraine policy from Lugansk People’s Republic in Donbass. Topping it off, he asked a couple of times whether or not the President of the United States was getting his information about the DNC hack directly or indirectly from me. And whether or not I was comfortable with that.

Scott Shane-I’m especially wondering where President Trump got his info on this before he first discussed it publicly in April 2017:

Scott Shane– I’ve seen this piece of yours and wondered if there are other items from you or others that might have influenced the president

Scott Shane-Would it worry you if you thought President Trump was getting some of his thinking on this from your writings, presumably secondhand?

I wrote about the rise of unqualified starting Intel guys a few years back. The 2017 ODNI report was stuffed with them including Crowdstrike’s Alperovitch who was its centerpiece. Many of the superstars of the Intel Community sadly lack even reasonable experience or training in the field.

Yet, it is their expertise you want the President of the United States to continue to base decisions on? The unfiltered, non-fact graded political and income inspired reports they send regularly to Congressmen, agencies, and companies are what is destroying diplomacy and peace in the world. Here are some of your great Intel guys, once the trappings are laid bare ever since the Clinton administration pushed this mess into being.

US intelligence agencies built their methodologies on the methods and help of an out of work web-designer, a pornographer suffering from toxic black-mold induced delusions, a gift shop employee, a stay at home dad whose last job was selling underwear, and a man that heard coded intel messages in fax transmission beeps. Unfortunately, this isn’t a joke.-

Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Intel and News Building

This is what passes for advanced trainers in the Intel field in the Western world today for OSINT and online Intel gathering. This! This is what trains the entire ODNI and all the agencies including the FBI, CIA, and NIA.

If you ask if I was comfortable with a President of the United States getting actionable Intelligence or evidence from one of these people, their companies or associates? Nope. No. Never.

2 “Open-Source” Intelligence Secrets Sold to Highest Bidders

Early on, Eliason reported, the private contractors who pioneered open-source intelligence realized that they could circulate (or even sell) the information that they gathered before the agency for which they worked had reviewed and classified it. In this way, “no one broke any laws,” Eliason wrote because the information “shifted hands” before it was sent to an agency and classified. [For one account of how early open-source intelligence contractors worked, see Benjamin Wallace-Wells, “Private Jihad,” New Yorker, May 29, 2006.]

This loophole created what Eliason described as a “private pipeline of information” that intelligence contractors could use to their advantage. Members of Congress, governors, news outlets, and others often wanted the same “intel” that the CIA had, and, Eliason wrote, open-source intelligence contractors “got paid to deliver Intel for groups looking for specific insights” into creating or influencing government policy. 

As a result of these changes, according to Eliason’s second article, “People with no security clearances and radical political agendas have state sized cyber tools at their disposal,” which they can use “for their own political agendas, private business, and personal vendettas.”

Although WikiLeaks’s Vault 7 exposé received considerable corporate news coverage, these reports failed to address Eliason’s analysis of the flaws in open-source intelligence and private contractors. A notable exception to this was a March 2017 Washington Post editorial by Tim Shorrock. Noting that WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange had said the CIA “lost control of its entire cyberweapons arsenal,” Shorrock’s editorial reviewed the findings from his previous reports for the Nation and concluded that overreliance on private intelligence contractors was “a liability built into our system that intelligence officials have long known about and done nothing to correct.”

You asked if I was comfortable if he was getting his actionable Intel from me? Nope. No. Never. YOU shouldn’t be either.

The real question Mr. Shane is whether or not you feel comfortable that these unqualified people have been influencing and appearing in the PDB unedited since Bill Clinton was in office. Do you?

Is this a practice you would stop?

The Intel community is gearing up with 4-5 million new hires off the street. Software jockeying has hit a new low. They will influence the PDB. Are you comfortable?

Here’s the caveat. If you were earning your Pulitzers, you would have picked up on it.

I write facts. Facts are funny like science experiments. They can be reproduced by different people because they don’t change. Facts are documentable. Facts are what should be in the US President’s Daily Brief (PDB).

I am quite comfortable with all of my articles being fact-checked, fact graded, certified, scrubbed of politics, and used to decide foreign or domestic policy inside the. In fact, I recommend it.

As far as investigating and apprehending criminals, @scottshane should look at local and federal law. That is a law-enforcement issue. Not his, not mine. Exposing the people, groups, and NGOs so as to draw attention to their crimes is the job of a journalist.

Just so you know, Intel decisions and policy based on my writing is catching on a little in the EU. At least parts of this series have been distributed to every EU ministry and official. The damage these particular cyber terrorists and seditionists have done isn’t welcome with open arms anymore. Like every other terrorist act by a national on foreign soil, it’s a matter of time before they bring it home like Bellingcat’s Aric Toler is now.

NYT Scott Shane interview

Shane, Scott Hi George — I’m trying to track the Trump CrowdStrike-Ukraine theory back in time and I see you have labored in this field for years. Would you have time for a call, or just for an email exchange? I probably have until tomorrow.

I’m especially wondering where President Trump got his info on this before he first discussed it publicly in April 2017:

https://apnews.com/c810d7de280a47e88848b0ac74690c83

I’ve seen this piece of yours and wondered if there are other items from you or others that might have influenced the president: https://washingtonsblog.com/2017/01/crowdstrikes-russian-hacking-story-fell-apart-say-hello-fancy-bear-2.html

George Eliason– Hi Scott, I can give some basic answers but I really don’t know what President Trump thinks about. I must have lost my invitation to that BBQ.

What I would like to do is reverse the order of your questions because it makes the most sense.

Scott Shane– I’d like to hear your views now, and whether they’ve changed. Would it worry you if you thought President Trump was getting some of his thinking on this from your writings, presumably secondhand?

George Eliason-The only US President I know for sure was influenced directly by what I write is former US President Barrack Obama. He unequivocally modified foreign policy regarding Ukraine because of what I write.

I started writing articles detailing what was happening in Kiev +political background on January 2014. In March 2014, I was the only English speaking journo getting published in the west at all from Donbass.

On March 6, 2014, Obama signed an Executive Order that made even American journalists sanctionable who challenged the newly installed coup group V. Nuland bought cookies for.

Obama, the self-proclaimed “Killa” already demonstrated a willingness to drone strike Americans based on accusations. No investigation. No trial. Just drone em.

If he signed that executive order and I was the only American in the region. 2+2 invariably has the same result. If he didn’t know I was there or what I was writing, there was no need to formulate said executive order.

Scott Shane– George — Thanks for the reply. I understands that you don’t personally know the president. But you have been a significant voice for the view that Trump is voicing — that the official version of the 2016 hack is false ands that Ukrainian hackers were responsible. For instance you published this a few months before the president first talked about ties between CrowdStrike and Ukraine:

https://washingtonsblog.com/2017/01/crowdstrikes-russian-hacking-story-fell-apart-say-hello-fancy-bear-2.html

George Eliason-Crowdstrike and Ukrainian Intel are working hand in glove. This is a sad fact proven by others including Jeff Carr. If the key components to the hack are in the hand of only 2 parties, it is simply making a determination of liability to the event.

What’s more important is determining Crowdstrike’s liability in the Intel Community coup attempt that’s being reported in mainstream media by journalists like Tucker Carlson, Sheryll Atkinson, and even former Congressman Ron Paul.

The New York Times, your own paper, broke stories about the problem as they forecast it, almost 20 years ago along with News Week and a slew of other MSM publications.

The story of corruption and the possible criminal actions of the newly privatized deep state was updated 15 years ago by your publication and a lot of others.

Around 2007, RJ Hillhouse had enough respect that the DNI answered her charges publically.

Tim Shorrock detailed this magnificently in 2015. The top end of a private deep state replaced the Intel Agency heads in the hierarchy. In 2017, the ODNI and FBI bowed to Crowdstrike and refused to do their job which was to investigate a supposed criminal act.

I detailed this Intel Community coup so closely I was able to list milestones. I suggest you look closely.

• https://10.16.86.131/the-terrorists-among-us-the-coup-against-the-presidency/
• https://10.16.86.131/the-terrorists-among-us9hillary-clintons-democratic-coup-against-the-presidency/

The set up to the Ukraine whistleblower story is from a cookie-cutter formula given by the people at Rand that wrote the instruction manual for Next Generation Regime change.

What I feel is irrelevant. What you feel is irrelevant. Once the proof is there, and it is, do you protect the Office of the Presidency and the Republic itself? Or not?

My position is this. If former President Barrack Obama was somehow caught in this position, as much as I hate him, I would defend him and his presidency.

This is the same Barrack Obama that ordered drone strikes on Americans based on the people working with Crowdstrike today. Why are they all tied into Ukrainian Intelligence and the hackers?

Great journalists like Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett are going across warzones reporting. Should they have to worry that their work crosses some private companies narrative and could get them killed by supposedly friendly agencies?

Look at the current series I am writing, the same Intel Community Icon that reported to Congress that US drone strikes on an Americans was successful. In it, you’ll find a screenshot of Aaron Weisburd and Elliot Higgins of Bellingcat concluding Beeley’s reporting must not be allowed to make it into the President’s Daily Briefing.

As a journalist, you should angry for them.

George Eliason-Here’s the rub. In 2016, before anyone looked seriously at Donald Trump as “Putin’s guy,” Bernie Sanders was labeled “Putin’s guy.” The same exact method I’ve described being used now was used on Sanders. This means unless everyone that gives a damn about the country stops and takes a real look, Sanders should go play golf instead. He won’t make it out of the primary.

Sanders won. Sanders won. Sanders won. Sanders was…irrelevant.

This is the deeper part of the Crowdstrike crime story. This is. No candidate has a shot in hell of getting through the Democratic primary unless they are signed on to this mess.

Let’s be clear. My politics don’t matter. But for the sake of the argument, I am a conservative who writes for progressive and centrist publications.

I look at someone like Rob Kall of OpEdNews and wish he ran for Congress despite not agreeing with every position. He’d be great. Washington of Washington’s blog has been a heroic voice and will be glad the New York Times recognizes their work.

Some of the better geopolitical analysis is coming from The Saker blog. There are many good alternative news sources across the spectrum and they all matter.

Scott Shane- If Dimitri Alperovitch is working for Ukrainian Intelligence and is providing intelligence to 17 US Intelligence Agencies is it a conflict of interest?

Ukraine has been screaming for the US to start a war with Russia for the past 2 1/2 years. Using facts accepted by leaders on both sides of the conflict, the main proof Crowdstrike shows for evidence doesn’t just unravel, it falls apart. Is Ukrainian Intelligence trying to invent a reason for the US to take a hard-line stance against Russia? Are they using Crowdstrike to carry this out?

Scott Shane- Also, it would be helpful to know a bit more about you — where you grew up, education, how you landed in Ukraine, what work you’ve done there, who pays you now? Have you ever been paid by an army of the Russian state or Russian media, or DPR or LPR?  Or have you always been expressing independent views?

George Eliason-Sure. As you can see in the multiple screenshots above, the same Intel community guys that want to stop some of the world’s best women reporters at any cost, have spent 5 years trying to find me.

So with that in mind, right now the world seems to trust them. I’ve been very clear they need to be investigated and jailed. I remind them this on a regular basis.

But, what do they think of me when you get past the IO. I’m not associated with Russia or Russian media.

George Eliason-I am an American. What do you need to know about me? I am one of the few people to turn down the Carnegie Hero Award. I jumped into a flood that took down 8 bridges and failed to save a woman and her granddaughter.

It broke me for a long time. For the last 5 years, I’ve been writing about Ukraine, Donbass, and the IO, this has been out of pocket other than a camera I crowdfunded.

LNR wasn’t sure I existed until a year ago. I volunteered to monitor the elections here. The only contact I have with Russia is an occasional interview with the Russian Federation’s Permanent Deputy Representative to the UN, Dimitry Polanskiy.

As far as the Russian Army, in 5 years, I’ve yet to come across them. I did a cross-region check in 2014 specifically to ferret them out because western media insisted they were here. I documented the passports and did weapons checks. Weapons all have a manufacture date. The newest weapon was I think, 1967. The oldest rifle was 1919. No Russian army was here to pay anyone.

Lastly, what do I do for work? Today, I’m in between gigs. If you know someone in need of a decent researcher or investigative journalist send them my way.

Scott Shane Addenda questions

George, Plan right now is to cite you and quote you in the piece.

Scott Shane– Question: Obviously there has been much discussion of CrowdStrike and Ukraine, including by you. But some of what Trump said is hard to trace. Do you believe that “a very rich Ukrainian” owns CrowdStrike? Do you believe the hacked DNC servers are hidden in Ukraine? If not, do you have any idea where he’s getting that?

George Eliason-

Scott,

A rich Ukrainian owning Crowdstrike would be a new one on me. That’s not something I’d write without clean lines all the way through the research. The next question isn’t something you asked the other day. Great question and probably the only one I’m not willing to answer at the moment.

I’d like to take the content of the interview and publish whole after you publish. I don’t see any problems with that, do you?

best

George

End Interview

Let’s talk about the servers. Donald Trump mentioned servers in his phone call to Zelenskiy.

If it concerns Crowdstrike, how many servers would the US president be interested in? When he left office, Petr Poroshenko tore out the only server room in Ukraine secure enough to hold those servers.

Petr Poroshenko said he had to take the servers, they didn’t belong to him. Maybe someone should dust off their Pulitzer and go ask him instead of asking me.