Cliff Kincaid
Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times examines the question of who hacked the Democratic National Committee and whether the trail leads to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “We know from reliable reporting that Russian hackers are not independent actors, and that they have been busy,” he writes. “And it’s eerie, at best, that Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks chose this moment to release the stolen emails (and complete a strange triangle that runs from him to Putin to Edward Snowden).”
For his part, on his Twitter page, Snowden said, “If Russia hacked the #DNC, they should be condemned for it. But during the #Sony hack, the FBI presented evidence.”
This is funny on Snowden’s part. Snowden sits in Russia, a guest of Putin, and Assange has acted like an agent of Russia. Trevor Loudon’s report on Assange documents his service to Moscow and associations with a number of Marxist or pro-Russian groups. Snowden is probably personally involved in the leak and could easily get to the bottom of why it happened.
“This has the appearance of a foreign power directly interfering in an American election, and that’s not something to take lightly,” Noah Rothman writes in Commentary. He goes on, “Rather than applaud and leverage this development, as he has, Donald Trump would be much better served by condemning it. If the Russians are set on undermining the Democratic Party in this election, it won’t be long before the public is asked to consider why that might be.”
Rothman has a point, but the more important issue is why the DNC and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used private or unsecure servers that were open to these foreign adversaries. One can argue that Mrs. Clinton, in particular, invited this foreign meddling in the election. Who knows what the Russians still have in their bag of tricks? The point is that Mrs. Clinton is a security risk and the Russians may still have emails to use against her.
Pro-Putin commentator Don Hank reported back in June, “I was invited to participate in a conversation among a group of friends who are hoping that the Kremlin will turn over their cache of Hillary emails obtained via the Romanian hacker ‘Guccifer’ just in time to smear her prior to the November election.”
Even earlier, Catherine Herridge of Fox News reported back in May that the Romanian hacker known as “Guccifer” had claimed he easily—and repeatedly—breached former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server in early 2013. The Clinton campaign denied the charge, but Herridge reported that “Guccifer” said “he first compromised Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal’s AOL account, in March 2013, and used that as a stepping stone to the Clinton server.”
“Guccifer” has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, unauthorized access to a protected computer, aggravated identity theft, cyberstalking and obstruction of justice.
Mrs. Clinton’s emails may be even more valuable than the documents stolen and released by Snowden. After all, Clinton’s emails discussed the intentions of U.S. policymakers.
This is actually an old story involving the Clintons. As Reed Irvine and I reported back in 1998, the Ken Starr report on President Clinton revealed that Clinton had warned his sexual plaything Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern, “that a foreign government may be monitoring their telephone conversations and that they should concoct a cover story to explain them.” Here is exactly what the Starr report says about this matter: “According to Ms. Lewinsky, she and the President had a lengthy conversation that day. He told her that he suspected that a foreign embassy (he did not specify which one) was tapping his telephones, and he proposed cover stories. If ever questioned, she should say that the two of them were just friends. If anyone ever asked about their phone sex, she should say that they knew their calls were being monitored all along, and the phone sex was just a put-on.”
Nothing has really changed, except that emails have now been monitored and compromised in Mrs. Clinton’s case.
As we said back in May, “The evidence demonstrates that she is a full-blown security risk who should be indicted for her reckless criminal conduct as Secretary of State.” Hillary made herself into a security risk.
Now we are waiting for the next shoe to drop. Does it have something to do with Bill Clinton, the Clinton Foundation, or Hillary’s own personal scandals?
Whatever the scandal, it’s not the fault of Donald J. Trump. Trump may have something to explain regarding his own ties to the Kremlin, but so does Hillary. If the truth doesn’t come out before Election Day, it means that Moscow may have blackmail power over the possible first female president of the United States.
Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org