WASHINGTON (Reuters) - WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, are facing multiple investigations by U.S. authorities, including three congressional probes and a federal criminal inquiry, sources familiar with the investigations said.

The Senate and House of Representatives intelligence committees and leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee are probing the websites role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, according to the sources, who all requested anonymity, and public documents.

WikiLeaks published emails hacked from the Democratic Party and the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clintons 2016 presidential campaign chairman.

In a report issued in January, the CIA, the National Security Agency, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation said Russian intelligence did the hacking, and the GRU, Russias military intelligence agency, sent hacked data to WikiLeaks via intermediaries.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating who gave WikiLeaks the hacked Democratic National Committee data that WikiLeaks published in July 2016, which included more than 44,000 emails and 17,000 attachments, the sources said. So far, its inquiries are still at an early stage, the sources said.

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders have asked Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law, for emails related to WikiLeaks.

The House Intelligence Committee has questioned Roger Stone, a longtime friend of President Donald Trump and a veteran political operative who promoted WikiLeaks disclosures of the emails on Twitter.

After initially refusing to identify an intermediary he dealt with who was in contact with Assange, Stone later told the committee it was Randy Credico, a left-wing comedian.

The committee sent Credico a letter asking him to appear voluntarily. When he declined to do so, the panel sent him a subpoena requiring him to give a deposition.

Credicos lawyer, Martin Stoller, said on Wednesday that Credico was considering whether to invoke his First and Fifth Amendment rights under the U.S. Constitution to avoid answering questions.

It is unclear whether Credico could help investigators uncover where WikiLeaks got the hacked Democratic emails.

In emails to Reuters, Stone has dismissed the intelligence agencies conclusion about Russian hacking.

It is not known whether Robert Mueller, the Justice Department special counsel investigating possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, is investigating WikiLeaks.

A U.S. lawyer for Assange, Barry Pollack, said Muellers team had not contacted him.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Alexandria, Virginia, are conducting a criminal investigation into how WikiLeaks obtained thousands of classified U.S. government documents, including CIA materials and most recently ultra-secret technical materials describing American spy agency hacking tools. Law enforcement sources and Pollack said the probe began several years ago.

Assange has lived in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for several years after taking refuge there when Swedish authorities sought his extradition in a sexual molestation case.

(This story has been refiled to fix spelling of WikiLeaks in headline)

Reporting By Mark Hosenball; Editing by John Walcott and Jonathan Oatis

Read the original here:
WikiLeaks faces U.S. probes into its 2016 election role and ...

The release of the files started on 5 July 2012.[5] The database comprises 2,434,899 emails from 680 domains.[5][6] At least 400,000 files are in Arabic and 68,000 files in Russian.[7] Media organisations working with WikiLeaks on the release include the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, the Italian weekly L'espresso, the German public radio and television broadcaster Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR) of the ARD consortium, the French information website OWNI and the Spanish website Pblico.[8] The New York City based multinational news agency Associated Press (AP) was initially announced by WikiLeaks to be helping with the release. The claim was withdrawn by WikiLeaks and an AP spokesperson stated that AP was "reviewing the emails for possible coverage [and] did not have any advance agreement on how [it] might handle the material."[9] According to Al Akhbar's analysis, the Syria Files "illuminateoften in small waysthe nature of power within and the inner workings of certain political and economic elements in Syria".[10]Al Akhbar states its confidence that "the emails are authentic, that the senders and receivers are mainly who they say they are".[10]

A hacktivist group of the Anonymous collective claimed credit for obtaining the emails and providing them to WikiLeaks. Anonymous stated that it had "worked day and night" in order to access computer servers in Syria and that "the data available had been so massive that downloading it had taken several weeks." Anonymous gave the data to WikiLeaks because it judged WikiLeaks to be "supremely well equipped to handle a disclosure of this magnitude". Anonymous stated that as long as Bashar al-Assad remains in power, it will continue "to assist the courageous freedom fighters and activists in Syria".[11]

According to emails published by WikiLeaks on 5 July 2012,[12] the Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica increased its sale of mobile communications equipment to Syrian authorities during 2011, delivering 500 of these to the Damascus suburb Muadamia in May 2011,[1][13] after the Syrian Civil War had started, and sending engineers to Damascus in February 2012 to provide training in using the communications equipment in helicopter terminals,[14] while the conflict continued.[2]

In May 2011, the public relations firm Brown Lloyd James sent an email to Syrian authorities "on how to create the appearance it is pursuing reform while repressing the uprising", in Ynetnews' description of an email[15] published by WikiLeaks on 6 July.[3] Brown Lloyd James advised that "Refocusing the perception of outsiders and Syrians on reform will provide political cover to the generally sympathetic US Government, and will delegitimize critics at home and abroad. In our view, the President needs to communicate more often and with more finely-tuned messaging and the First Lady needs to get in the game. The absence of a public figure as popular, capable, and attuned to the hopes of the people as Her Excellency at such a critical moment is conspicuous. The key is to show strength and sympathy at once."[4][16] The company recommended a public relations campaign to "create a reform 'echo-chamber' by developing media coverage outside of Syria that points to the President's difficult task of wanting reform" so that the "coverage [would] rebound into Syria".[4][16] Brown Lloyd James also recommended "countering ... the daily torrent of criticism and lies" by "[a] 24-hour media monitoring and response system [that] should be in place with assets in UK and US markets; [monitoring] social media sites and [challenging and removing] false sites; and a steady, constantly updated messaging document that contains talking points geared to latest developments."[4][16]

Brown Lloyd James stated that the document was not paid for, was a "'last-ditch' effort 'to encourage a peaceful outcome rather than violence',[4] and that it was sent to Asma al-Assad, the wife of President Bashar al-Assad.[3]

On 8 July 2012, Al Akhbar presented an analysis of emails by President Bashar al-Assad and his wife Asma al-Assad. Al Akhbar listed the main topics of the al-Assad's Syria Files emails, and stated, "Viewed through the prism of the 'Syria Files', Syrias first couple appear to be occupied with their representative capacities, with ample time devoted to the state of the palatial gardens, renovations, the stationary needs of low-level employees, but also issues related to bolstering the couples image, be it via charitable efforts or through political favors. During the first year of the uprising covered by the emails in the cache, the official and unofficial correspondence of the First Couple and ministry of presidential affairs present only few references to the ongoing tumult.... But there is no real sense of tangible power on behalf of the First Couple present within the 'Syria Files.' What is revealed is only a faade, or perhaps fittingly, a brand calculated to cloak another system: the military-security machine, which remains as of yet tightly in control and far from prying eyes."[10]

Syria Files examined by Al Akhbar show that after businessman Rami Makhlouf publicly claimed to respond to protestors' demands by "repenting" from business, selling shares and investing his money and time in charity and development projects, he continued to invest in several banks during 2011 and 2012. In late January 2012, he bought about 15 times as much shares (by value) as he sold, buying S127,000,000 and selling S8,670,000 of shares, mostly in Qatar National BankSyria and Syria International Islamic Bank.[17][18]

View original post here:
Syria Files - Wikipedia

A 2016 email sent to candidate Donald Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier.

The email sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 noted that Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC and included a link and a decryption key, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post.

The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.

The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents.

The full email which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available. CNN later corrected its story to note the email had been sent Sept. 14.

The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powells inbox was available on DCLeaks.com. That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day.

Alan S. Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., described it as one of a ton of unsolicited emails like this on a variety of topics.

Futerfas said Erickson was unknown to Trump Jr. or the campaign. The message was one of thousands turned over to the House Intelligence Committee and others investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, emails that included spam and junk emails. Trump Jr. was asked about the email Wednesday, when he spent about seven hours behind closed doors answering questions from members of the committee.

The email was never read or responded to and the House Intelligence Committee knows this, Futerfas said. It is profoundly disappointing that members of the House Intelligence Committee would deliberately leak a document, with the misleading suggestion that the information was not public, when they know that there is not a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Trump Jr. read or responded to the email.

Futerfas said that he and Trump Jr. had been required to surrender their electronic devices during the interview for security reasons. He expressed anger that details of the session leaked out before it had even concluded. We are concerned that these actions, combined with the deliberate and misleading leak of a meaningless email, undermines the credibility of the serious work the House Intelligence Committee is supposedly undertaking, he said.

House Intelligence Committee officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The email came from a Yahoo email address. It is unclear whether the senders name is actually Michael Erickson. The author could not immediately be reached for comment.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said Donald Trump Jr. did not answer some questions during a closed hearing on Dec. 6. (The Washington Post)

In addition to Trump Jr., it was sent to a rarely used address for Donald Trump, as well as Trump Organization attorney Michael Cohen and a Gmail account that had sometimes been used by Hope Hicks, who is now the White House communications director. It also went to several other Trump Organization employees, with the subject line Trump: Another Wikileaks DNC Upload.

Karoun Demirjian, Ellen Nakashima and Alice Crites contributed to this report.

See the rest here:
Email pointed Trump campaign to WikiLeaks documents that were ...

When first published Friday morning, the story, written by senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju and politics reporter Jeremy Herb, said the email was sent to the Trumps on September 4, 2016. It was corrected to say that the email was actually sent on September 14, one day after WikiLeaks made the documents public.

"CNN's initial reporting of the date on an email sent to members of the Trump campaign about Wikileaks documents, which was confirmed by two sources to CNN, was incorrect," CNN said in a statement. "We have updated our story to include the correct date, and present the proper context for the timing of email."

In its updated story, CNN acknowledged, "The new information indicates that the communication is less significant than CNN initially reported."

A CNN spokesperson said there will not be disciplinary action in this case because the reporters followed CNN's editorial standards process, which requires review and approval of the use of anonymous sources. CNN says it does not believe that the sources intended to deceive the reporters.

Before the correction, the story -- which relied on multiple sources who described the email to CNN -- had been heavily promoted by the network. CNN devoted multiple segments to discussing it on air. It was also the lead story on its homepage for much of Friday morning and into the afternoon. During that time, CBS News also reported that it had matched CNN's initial reporting.

But at 1 p.m. ET, the story unraveled. The Washington Post obtained a copy of the email in question, which CNN did not have, and reported it was sent on the afternoon of September 14 -- 10 days after CNN had reported it was sent. The Wall Street Journal quickly matched The Post's reporting and The Daily Caller posted a copy of the email.

CNN corrected its story at 3:45 p.m. ET. A network spokesperson said that as soon as the network had reviewed its reporting and independently confirmed that the story was wrong, it moved to correct it. CBS News also corrected its story.

Both Raju and Herb declined to comment through a spokesperson.

The error prompted Donald Trump Jr. to attack CNN. In a series of tweets, he characterized the story as fake news and went after the credibility of the network. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, also attacked CNN and CBS News.

President Trump responded to the error at a rally Friday night by thanking CNN for apologizing for it, though the network hasn't done so.

Friday's correction is not the first high-profile error in recent memory for CNN. Earlier this year, the network retracted a story about former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci. Three journalists, including the executive editor in charge of the network's new investigative unit, resigned their positions after the publication of that story.

CNN's error also comes on the heels of a major correction from ABC News. Last Friday, ABC News' Brian Ross reported based on one source that Michael Flynn was prepared to testify that as a candidate Trump instructed him to make contact with Russians. That report, which ABC News has said was not fully vetted through its editorial standards process, was later corrected to say that Flynn was prepared to testify the instruction came while Trump was president-elect. ABC News has since suspended Ross for four weeks without pay.

CNNMoney (New York) First published December 8, 2017: 6:30 PM ET

Link:
CNN corrects story on email to Trumps about Wikileaks - Dec ...

Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park where she often likes to hike in Chappaqua, N.Y. Adrienne Grunwald for NPR hide caption

Hillary Rodham Clinton at the Glazier Arboretum Park where she often likes to hike in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Ten months after losing the 2016 presidential election, Hillary Clinton is out with a memoir, What Happened. Morning Edition host Rachel Martin talked to Clinton about her book, the election's outcome and how she's carried on. Here's the full transcript of their conversation. The audio on this page is an edited version of the interview that was broadcast on Morning Edition.

Rachel Martin: Hillary Clinton joins us now from her home in Chappaqua, New York. Secretary Clinton, thanks so much for being here.

Thank you so much, Rachel.

How's being home?

It's actually great. It is wonderful being home having time to putter around clean closets spend, you know, long days going for walks, seeing my grandchildren, taking friends out to dinner. So it's not where I wanted to be, but it is a great reminder of what more there is to do in life and what the future can be like.

I'd like to start our conversation about your new memoir by asking you to recount a particular event. This is a campaign event that you did in Mingo County, West Virginia, a town called Williamson. This is coal country, and you had met many voters there weren't happy with you. They were angry over comments that you had made around that time about wanting to "put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." So you knew this was going to be a tough appearance and you wrote in the book the following quote: "All I knew for certain was they were angry, they were loud and they hated my guts." Can you just describe what that day felt like to you and what it signified as you moved forward in your campaign?

Well, it was a particularly difficult, even painful day because I had made clear for years, starting back in my 2008 campaign, that I understood what was happening in the changing fortunes of coal, that were largely global market forces, but also a growing recognition of the challenges that climate change posed. And I had given a number of speeches. I had a very well-developed plan to invest money into the area, and then in the midst of explaining that I said a sentence which I would, you know, I regretfully say, was taken out of context, blown up, and really was a rallying cry for people and others who were running the campaign against me to come out and blow this up out of all proportion. Now my campaign said, really, there's no point going to West Virginia because Democrats haven't won it in years. It didn't matter whether you said something or not, a Democratic candidate was not going to win it. But I felt a personal responsibility to the people in that state who had been good to me in the past, and to my husband, and I also wanted to make clear that I was much more than one gaffe, and I had a very strong commitment to helping them, so off I went to Mingo County, and when I got out of the car, when I got to the health center that I was going to be visiting, there was a large, very vocal demonstration against me, and the people were yelling all kinds of insults and attacks. And in the crowd was a man named Blankenship, who had just been convicted in fact, was on his way to jail for the negligent deaths of a number of the coal miners that his company employed. So it was a fraught, really incredibly difficult time. I went inside and met with a group of people who were trying to do what I think we should be doing in communities like the ones I was visiting across our country, particularly in rural and small town America. They were trying to make things better. So this health center, which had been strongly supported with federal dollars, was providing better health care with a particular emphasis on the opioid crisis. We sat and talked through what more could be done. And one of the people who was there at the invitation of the health center was a laid-off coal mine employee, and I talked with him and his wife. He was really emotional about what it meant to lose that job. He talked about how hard it was to tell his children. They were getting by on his wife's income from her small business.

He was also angry at you for those comments that you made.

Well, he was. He was angry at me because of the comments, but his anger, his disappointment, his fear was much broader than that. And that's what I was trying to address, and to tell him, "Look, I'm sorry that what I said came across that way and that's not what I at all meant. In fact, I have a record of trying to help areas like this and I have a plan to do just that. But I understand." And we did talk about what it felt like for him, a very proud man, to be unemployed. And I never doubted the hurt and the anger that so many people were feeling around our country, not just in West Virginia, but I thought what my job was to do as a candidate for president was to tell people what I could do for them if they gave me the chance to serve and that's what I tried to do even that day.

And you decided to include that anecdote for a reason. I mean, what did it signify to you? Is that when you started to understand you were missing something important about the country, in that moment?

No, I understood that long before, Rachel, and in the book, what I tried to point out is, I understood there was anger and fear and people were really unhappy because of what had happened in the financial crash. I understood all of that, and I understood that my opponent had been, from the beginning of the primaries, fueling that anger, and providing scapegoats, and a kind of cynical nostalgia that was rooted in saying, basically, you know, all these other people whether it's African-Americans or Muslims or immigrants or women or whomever we're going to get it back to the way it was. And that's going to be my gift to you. I understood all of that. What I didn't and I say this in the book I didn't really do well is conveying how much I understood of that, conveying how I got the despair and the anger. I talked about it, I talked about it constantly. I talked about jobs. I talked about the despair of people in America, white Americans who were dying at an unbelievable rate because of suicide, opioid abuse, alcoholism, so much that really signifies that despair. I talked about it, but I didn't really convey the emotional resonance that would have maybe made it possible for somebody to say, "Yeah, you know, maybe that one sentence she said was taken out of context because look at what she's done and look at what she says she will do."

So you kept going to policy solutions and you're saying you should have given a more emotional response?

Well, I think a more emotional response, but honest. Not like we're going to bring back coal. Not like we're going to build a wall to keep Mexicans out. Not like that, but more of a connection emotionally first before saying, "I think I've got the best experience, I think I've got the best ideas that will actually make a difference in your life."

Your campaign advisers told you time and again that a significant portion of the American electorate didn't trust you. They polled on that particular question, and that word. Donald Trump used that he branded you as "Crooked Hillary." Bernie Sanders even picked up on that theme. Why didn't you tackle the trust issue head on?

Well, we thought we did. And I certainly tried to do that. It was somewhat disorienting, I will say, because I came out of the State Department with the highest approval ratings of anybody in national public life. I think 69 percent approval. When we started the campaign we had every reason to believe that we had a path forward that relied on how people felt about me and how they thought about my work over many years. But it's absolutely true that between the consistent pounding on me, first by Bernie Sanders, but more consistently by his supporters, and the theme that Trump stuck with, it really was hard to break out from under that. But as I say in the book, Rachel, despite all of that, I was on the path to winning and I felt great about the three debates. I thought we were on the right to, you know, move toward the end of the campaign. And then unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again. And so even though I won the popular vote, enough people in a few states, with respect to the electoral college, were just raising all these questions. And I saw that, we saw that, we scrambled hard those last 11 days to provide rebuttal and answers and came really close. But, you know, it was difficult.

You mentioned, and you spent time in the book talking about the forces you feel were working against you. You also say sexism was one of them, but you yourself, in the book, acknowledged that a good number of young women didn't vote for you, which is presumably not a sexist choice. They just weren't inspired by your message.

I think it's a lot more complicated than that. I did win the women's vote. I didn't win the vote of white women, but I got more white women votes than Barack Obama did. I think it's much more difficult to unpack all of this, and with respect specifically to young women, I do think that for a lot of young women, gender is just not the motivating force that maybe it will be in the future. But then it wasn't. The same way that being African-American was really motivating and exhilarating for black voters. But as I point out in the book and I think that chapter I wrote on being a woman in politics really will be of interest to a lot of women and men. I talk about a conversation I had with Sheryl Sandberg, who has really helped to put into perspective a lot of research that supports common experiences. And she said, look, the research is absolutely definitive. The more professionally successful a man is, the more likable he is; the more professionally successful a woman is, the less likable she is. And that when women are serving on behalf of someone else, as I was when I was Secretary of State, for example, they are seen favorably. But when they step into the arena and say, wait a minute I think I could do the job, I would like to have that opportunity, their favorabilities goes down. And Sheryl ended this really sobering conversation by saying that women will have no empathy for you, because they will be under tremendous pressure and I'm talking principally about white women they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for "the girl." And we saw a lot of that during the primaries from Sanders supporters, really quite vile attacks online against women who spoke out for me, as I say, one of my biggest support groups, Pantsuit Nation, literally had to become a private site because there was so much sexism directed their way.

So I knew going in that this would be a hurdle for me. But what happened to me with the Comey letter really threw it into stark relief, because I was making progress, as I point out in the book, I was ahead by 26 points in the Philadelphia suburbs, and that was predominantly led by women Republican and independent women, as well as Democratic women, who had seen me in those debates who were going to really give me the chance to serve. And then after the Comey letter, my momentum was stopped. My numbers dropped, and we were scrambling to try to put it back together, and we ran out of time.

Why would it have ever gotten to the point where something like the Comey letter could have shifted so many opinions? Why was it ever that tenuous? I mean, you say in the book, "American elections are about change, or they're about the future, or some combination thereof." And for many people you are about neither. Did your candidacy have an irreparable flaw from the beginning?

I don't think so. When you win the popular vote by three million votes, and when there were all of these outside forces coming at me right until the very end, I don't think you can say that we didn't have a strong campaign. I'm proud of the campaign we ran. We had an incredible organization. We had more people working on the ground in states like Wisconsin and Michigan.

But you could not put together the Obama coalition. You did lose five million people who voted for him who did not vote for you.

I would say two things about that. First, there were certainly people who voted for him who felt like, for whatever combination of reasons and there's some good research about this that, you know, they just weren't happy with where things were and they didn't know what they were going to do, and they did not vote for me. That's absolutely the case. But you have to also look at the suppression of voters. The principal objects of voter suppression were African-American voters and young voters. There was a very extensive analysis about what happened in North Carolina recently in The New York Times and there's been a lot written and much information collected about what happened in Wisconsin: 200,000 predominantly black voters being disenfranchised in the greater Milwaukee area. This was the first election, the first presidential election, where the Voting Rights Act that had been severely damaged by the Supreme Court decision in 2013, was fully in effect, and the Republicans wasted no time in doing everything they could to make it hard to vote.

But you won the African-American vote.

But not in the numbers that I needed. And that goes back to your question. If you look at the AP work that was done in Milwaukee, it's quite chilling. The 85 year old woman she no longer has a photo I.D. She doesn't drive. She comes to vote with her Medicare card, her utility bills, a lot of identification. She's turned away. The Navy veteran who moved from Chicago to Wisconsin, goes to vote, but he still has his Illinois driver's license even though he had registered in Wisconsin turned away. And I think that's an interesting comparison. The voter suppression in Wisconsin worked. Across the border into Illinois, where they had not done any of this suppression, where they in fact made it easier to vote with same-day voter registration, they were immune to the impact of suppression. And, of course, I won in Illinois, just like I won in neighboring Minnesota. But in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania in particular, as well as North Carolina, there was a concerted effort to suppress the vote. Now, I want to throw this into the future because, you know, the reason I wrote this book was not only to tell people what I believe happened, to explain the best I could, but also to point out some things that we have to as a country take seriously in order to avoid what happened ever happening in the future. And voter suppression is one of those things. Sexism and misogyny alive and well and working in our politics and our society. But then the Russian role that was played I think is something that everybody, I don't care what political party you are, must take seriously, because they are not going to stop. They were successful, and they're going to keep at everything they can to destabilize and undermine our democracy.

Could another Democrat have beaten Donald Trump?

Oh, I don't think it's useful to speculate, because I was the nominee. I mean, you can say that about George W. Bush and Al Gore and John Kerry...

Although you do spend more than 400 pages going back in time and thinking about what if's.

Oh, I do. But what ifs that I think are realistic to think about because, you know, what if I hadn't made the dumb mistake about e-mails? And it was a dumb mistake, but it was an even dumber scandal. What if the Russians hadn't been literally encouraged by Donald Trump to do even more to disrupt the election? What if the Supreme Court had not reversed the Voting Rights Act, which I was proud to vote for when I was in the Senate, and I still maintain the kind of protections to make sure that no American is disenfranchised?

What if Joe Biden had been the nominee?

Well, he wasn't. And, you know, he ran in '08, and he didn't run in this time. If he wants to run in the future, he can do that. But I think that, as I start off explaining what happened in the book, let's not forget the historical weight here. It's really difficult to succeed a president of your own party who has served two terms. That is a historical fact. So I think it would have been tough for Democrats. I think that the closeness of our election, the hyper partisan attitudes that people have would have made it hard. But I was very proud of the campaign I ran and I think I was on the way to winning. And that didn't happen in the end. And I don't want what happened to me to happen to anybody, Democrat or Republican, going forward.

Are you saying Donald Trump in some ways was unbeatable? Because it is so difficult to undercut the momentum, people seeking change, want to change parties after eight years. People didn't see you as the change candidate, they would have likely not seen any Democrat as the change candidate, and he had the upper hand.

Well, he dispatched about 16 Republican opponents who had been governors and senators and successful business people that showed that he was really plugged in to a certain part of the electorate. And he started his campaign with a vile attack on Mexicans, calling them rapists and criminals, and he never stopped, and he was rewarded. Time and time again he was rewarded, Rachel, by the press, which saw this reality TV show going on. It was just irresistible. You know, show the empty podium, let's really build it up. He calls for violence at his rallies, pays very little price for it, he insults every kind of person, just about, that we can imagine, and particularly with vicious comments about women, political as well as press figures. So he got away with it, because he did have a kind of attraction to people. He called it "not being politically correct" but in fact it was rude, it was, you know, discriminatory, it was bigoted, it was prejudiced, and yet it fed into part of the electorate that just wanted to have a primal scream. They didn't like what was going on. They wanted something different. They weren't interested in what you could actually do, because clearly Trump hasn't done very much that he said he would do. But they really responded to his racial and ethnic and sexist appeals.

Did you consider recalibrating your campaign, I mean especially as you watched him dispense with all these primary candidates?

We did. We did. And I really thought I was providing a contrast that would attract enough voters to win. And let me make two points about that. By all accounts I won every debate. I mean, even the after-action reviews were very positive. I thought that would really matter. And it was clear he didn't know what he was talking about, he had really nothing to say. He just kind of fumed and carried on. That would have been enough any other time. But it wasn't this time because my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians, and, you know, the emails once again in the news. But when we got ready for the general election, I had three different very smart groups work independently, and I asked them, "So what should be the theme of our general election?" and they each, amazingly, came up with the same slogan: "Stronger together." Because what they argued, and what I believed, was that America does better when we're working together, when we're helping each other, when we're aiming toward a future of opportunity where we have broad-based economic growth that includes everybody and, where, yes, we stand up for human rights and civil rights. So I was thrilled that all three of those individual groups of thinkers came up with that. In this climate where we were running against people who would say or do anything, and "Lock her up" was the chant of the year, it was hard to break through on that. But I and my campaign worked tirelessly to convey the message, to convey what was behind that message. And look, I say in the book, I think I would have been a really good president. I think I would have been a president that would have been working for all Americans, not just for those who voted for me. And that's what is missing right now, among many other things in this White House.

I want to ask you about something you write at the very beginning of this book. You talk about needing to learn lessons from the 2008 campaign to apply to the campaign in 2016. And you write this: that unlike in 2008, you were, "determined to run like an underdog and avoid any whiff of entitlement." So you were aware that that was kind of around you in 2008. But there is and was this whole wing of the Democratic Party, many of whom ended up supporting Bernie Sanders, who believe that that is exactly how you ran in 2016 as a person who, yes, had paid their dues, had done the work and had prepared, and that somehow you believed it was your turn to be president.

Well, I just totally reject that. As you probably would have expected me to say. I find this criticism from Sanders supporters to be so off base. He's not even a Democrat. That's not a slam on him. He says it himself. He didn't support Democrats. He's not supporting Democrats now. I know a lot of Democrats. I've been working on behalf of Democrats, to be elected, to be re-elected, for decades. And so yes, I was familiar to broad parts of the electorate, and I'm proud of that. And I did well across the country. I won by four million votes. That's a landslide. I won, really, by March and April. But he just kept going, and he and his followers' attacks on me kept getting more and more personal, despite him asking me not to attack him personally. And, you know, I really regret that. But now he's got a chance to prove that he's something other than a spoiler. And that is to help other Democrats. And I don't know if he will or not, but I'm hoping he will.

Did you underestimate the way that your familiarity with the American public could negatively impact your campaign?

Well, I thought it was pretty revolutionary that I was the first woman to have a realistic chance of becoming president. So I don't know how any woman who is not familiar to people, since we have so many hurdles to overcome, could have even been in that position that I found myself. So if I won, you know, I would have been seen as a genius, my campaign would have been as perfect. I understand all of that. But I'm not writing this book, I'm not talking to you about it because I'm somehow aggrieved. I don't feel that at all. I very much am still proud as I can be that I had the chance to run, that I got to be the nominee, but I am really worried about the country. I am worried about its direction. I'm worried about what I see as a mean-spirited agenda coming out of this White House. And my concerns as a former Secretary of State about what's going on around the world. So I have a platform. I won more votes than anybody in American history for president besides President Obama. And I'm going to keep talking and trying to raise the questions that I hope Americans will take seriously and that I hope the press will take seriously, because we've got a lot of choppy water ahead of us.

Although you say you still want a role in shaping the Democratic Party of the future, you're still going to talk about the issues you find to be important, but there are some Democrats out there saying they don't want you to do that. That writing this book is opening old wounds, re-litigating a past and it doesn't help move the party forward. Have you reconciled that, that people might not want you around as the party steps forward?

Well, they don't have to buy my book, and they can turn off the radio when they hear me talking. I'm not going anywhere. I have the experience, I have the insight, I have the scars that I think give me not only the right, but the responsibility to speak out. And 2018 is going to be incredibly momentous. We have a chance I won 24 congressional districts that have a Republican member of Congress sitting in them. And I think that gives us some idea that maybe, if we are really focused we have a chance to pick up seats, maybe take back the House. We've got to defend the Democratic senators. I have a lot of ideas about how best to do that. And a lot of people are already calling asking for my help and my support. I've started a new organization called Onward Together, which is, you know, funding and lifting up some of the grassroots groups that have started around the country. I'll be supporting candidates. So there will always be the naysayers. I understand that and most of them as you might notice are anonymous, but that's fine. But I'm responding to a very large outpouring of people who want to know what I have to say, who are excited that I'm not going to be, you know, slipping away into the background, but going to stay front and center, doing what I can to try to speak out on behalf of this country that I love, and just want to do everything I can to make sure it's strong going forward.

Hillary Clinton's new memoir is out today. It is called What Happened. Secretary Clinton, thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much, Rachel. Good to talk to you.

Go here to see the original:
Transcript: Hillary Clinton's Interview With Morning ...

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2016 is turning out to be a big year for uncovering deep truths that will reshape our world a year wherewhat could be the greatestopportunity to see through the corruption and deceit that plague the world of Western politics has presented itself.

Below is an image from Wikileaks twitter page. The well-known group headed by Julian Assange leaks classified material regarding corrupt activities of politicians, governments, corporations, banks, and more.

In the post, Wikileaks writes,Hillary Clinton took cash from, was the director of, company that did deals with ISIS.Below the description, documents revealing this connection were posted by Wikileaks.

Ofcourse, its not just Clinton involved in arming terrorist groups. This has been going on for years and the U.S. has been involved regardless of political side. Its important to note this is not about calling out one candidate or another, or one political party or another, but about using evidence available to educate people about whats happening.

You can find those documents here.

The documents reveal that French industrial giant Lafarge paid taxes to ISIS so they couldoperate their cement plant in Syria. They also revealed that Lafarge has been buying ISIS oil for a very long time.

What is so significant about this? Hillary Clinton has close ties to Lafarge. They donate regularlyto the Clinton foundation, and Hillary herself was the director of Lafarge in the 1980s.

This isanothergreat example of the ties between corporate employees and politicians. It lends to the very idea thatpresidency is owned. As Theodore Roosevelt said, they are selected, not elected.

In addition to Wikileaks, French media outletLE Monde revealed that Lafarge not only paid ISIS but also other armed groups in Syria as well, ostensibly to protect their business interests in Syria. But who knows what other motives the company had. Rarely do we see honest disclosure when it comes to such dealings.

As the Canary article points out, prior investigations by Zaman al-Wasl, an independent news outlet run by elements of the Syrian opposition, revealed that Lafarge had regularly bought oil from ISIS.

You can read more about Al-Wasls original investigationhere.

Terrorist are Made In America. These are the words of prominent author and Canadian economist Dr. Michel Chossudovsky, the University of Ottawas Emeritus Professor of Economics, who spokeat the International Conference on the New World Order.

He went on to emphasize that we are dealing with a criminal undertaking at a global level, and that there is a war being led by the United States and its allies. He stated that the global war on terrorism is fake . . . its based on fake premises and it tells us that somehow America and the Western world are going after a fictitious enemy, the Islamic State, when in fact the Islamic State is fully supported and financed by the Western military alliance and Americas allies in the Persian gulf.

Now think about Islamophobia and reflect on the actions of ISIS and what they represent. Do they have anything to do with Islam? This is a textbook example of religion being taken and used by this small group of elite, who hide behind the big banks and their corporations, to push an idea in order to drive fear into people in order to justify a fake war. Its called false flag terrorism.

Chossudovksy went on to state that they say Muslims are terrorists, but it just so happens that terrorists are Made in America. Theyre not the product of Muslim society, and that should be abundantly clear to everyone on this floor . . . the global war on terrorism is a fabrication, a big lie,and a crime against humanity. (source) (source)

The fact that groupslike Al Qaeda and ISIS are not independent organizations should be clear. They are sponsored by the West and time and time again weve had irrefutable evidence presentedthat proves this. Why do some people not believe this? Mainly because its not the mainstream narrative. Intense yet misguided patriotismalso preventspeople from seeing the truth.

Choissudovsky spoke of one great example in his talk:

They are sponsored, and they are sponsored by the United States and its allies. It is documented that prior to 2011,there was a process of recruitment of mujahideen to fight in Syria, and this was coordinated by NATO and the Turkish high command. This report is confirmed by Israeli news sources and unequivocally, we are dealing with a state-sponsorship of terrorism, the recruitment of mercenaries, the training and the financing of terrorism.(source)

Vladimir Putin, longtime president of Russia,has also stated a number of timesthat ISIS is being funded by the Western military alliance.

There are countless examples, not just in the form of documentation, but also statements from people who have been in positions to know about these things. When it comes to documents, these recent Wikileaks examples are not the only ones. Weve had the opportunity to see through this for a long time, as Former British foreign secretary Robin Cook has outlined explicitly:

The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, and any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an intensified entity representing the devil only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the United States. (source)

Related CE Article: Award Winning American Journalist Exposes The True Origins Of ISIS & The War On Terror

What canwe do about it? Globally we are still waking up to the fact that some terrorist attacks are completely planned and fabricated by the elite. This is done to justify the infiltration of other countries for ulterior motives, which seems to be for the goal of establishing a New World Order and literally taking over the world.

The more we become aware of this information, share it, and transcend the fear that comes with realizing were being lied to, the sooner we can start voicing our concerns and exposing those who need to be exposed. As we awaken to these truths we begin to changeglobal consciousness, making it more difficult for these actions to be passed by because people are more aware.

Once we see and identify the problem, we can then start implementing solutions.

Your life path number can tell you A LOT about you.

With the ancient science of Numerology you can find out accurate and revealing information just from your name and birth date.

Get your free numerology reading and learn more about how you can use numerology in your life to find out more about your path and journey. Get Your free reading.

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Wikileaks Exposes Hillary Clintons Ties To ISIS Supporters ...

The head of the CIA lumped WikiLeaks with al Qaeda and the Islamic State and said his agency is working toward reducing the enormous threat posed by each of them.

CIA Director Mike Pompeo placed the antisecrecy website in the same category as terrorist organizations while speaking Thursday at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies National Security Summit in D.C.

I talked about these non-state actors, and its not just Wikileaks. Indeed I may have overemphasized them they are an enormous threat, we are working to take down that threat to the United States as well, to reduce the threat from all of it, Mr. Pompeo said. But Hezbollah, [the Islamic State], al Qaeda, none of them sit at the U.N., these are all non-state actors, each of which has not only cyber capacity, but they look and feel like very good intelligence organizations.

All the tradecraft that you read about from the excellent work that the agencys done and that our state competitors have done for decades and decades, you now see it being adopted by these non-state agencies, Mr. Pompeo continued. They run assets; they run counterintelligence program; they lure dangles all the tradecraft that you read about from the excellent work that the agencys done and that our state competitors have done for decades and decades, you now see it being adopted by these non-state agencies.

WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange scoffed at the CIA chiefs remarks.

All serious news organizations develop and protect sources with the intent of publishing what they find, Mr. Assange told The Washington Times. To suggest that media organizations are intelligence agencies is as absurd as suggesting that CIA employees are journalists. This ridiculous claim has a transparently insidious purpose: to gain the legal authority to treat journalists and publishers as terrorists for simply doing their job, holding the CIA to account.

When reached for clarification, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd told The Washington Examiner that Mr. Pompeos remarks described the counterintelligence threats posed by WikiLeaks and other non-state hostile intelligence services including Hezbollah and ISIS and the need to counteract the counterintelligence efforts that these groups employ against the United States.

WikiLeaks launched in 2006 and has since published more than 10 million documents, by its own accounting, including classified Pentagon and State Department materials as well as a trove of CIA hacking tools released earlier this year.

The Justice Department began investigating WikiLeaks and its staff in 2010, and members of the Trump administration including Mr. Pompeo and Attorney General Jeff Sessions have endorsed escalating that probe and arresting Mr. Assange, an Australian citizen currently residing in London after receiving political asylum from Ecuador.

Mr. Assange took refuge inside Ecuadors London embassy in 2012 while wanted for questioning in Sweden regarding allegations of sexual assault. Swedish prosecutors dropped that probe this year, but Mr. Assange has refused to leave the embassy over fears hell be arrested by British authorities and subsequently extradited to the U.S. and charged in connection with WikiLeaks publishing state secrets.

See the rest here:
CIA 'working to take down' WikiLeaks threat, agency chief ...

WikiLeaks, a secret-sharing organization accused of playing a key role in Russianattempts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, has released documents that it claims offerdetails ofhow Moscow uses state surveillanceto spy on Internet and cellphone users.

The release, dubbed Spy Files Russia, appears to mark a shift for an organization that has long been accused of a reluctance to publish documents that could be embarrassing for the Russian state.

As Edward Snowden,a former National Security Agency contractor who now lives in Russia, put it in a tweet: Plot twist.

However, other experts are less impressed. I don't think it's a real expose, said Andrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist and co-author of theThe Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries. It actually adds a few details to the picture, [but] it's not that much.

The documents released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday appear to show how a St. Petersburg-based technology company called Peter-Servicehelped state entities gather detailed data on Russian cellphone users, part of a national system of online surveillance calledSystem for Operative Investigative Activities (SORM).

This system [SORM] has been known for some time, though the documents seem to provide additional technical specifications, said Ben Buchanan, apostdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center and author of the book The Cybersecurity Dilemma.

Buchanan added, however, that he was intrigued that WikiLeaks would release it at all. I'm curious if there is more to come, he said.

Although WikiLeaks has shared secrets from a variety of other governments, it has been accused of refusing to publish leaks on the Russian government. WikiLeaks also has been publicly critical of the Panama Papers a leak about offshore banking entities that is believed to haveembarrassedRussian President Vladimir Putin.

In interviews, WikiLeaks founderJulian Assange has suggested that because his organization lacks Russian speakers, whistleblowers prefer to leak to local media.

The latest leak is unlikely to dispel the impression that WikiLeaks turns a blind eye to Moscow's failings, said Andrew Weiss, a vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. It's very hard for WikiLeaks to somehow exonerate itself or remove the very clear pattern of cooperation with Russian authorities, Weiss said.

This looks like a classic attempt to change the subject, he added.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of the documents is whom they were leaked by a detail WikiLeaks generally refuses to discuss. Soldatov said that they may well have been leaked by someone who understood the lack of major revelations they contained.I would say it's coming from the company, sent by people who obviously understand it doesn't constitute a state secret, so it's safe, he said.

However, although the release wasn't a bombshell, it could still prove to be a positive force, some observers said. If it prompts people to talk about SORM, so be it, Soldatov said.

More on WorldViews

Putin saw the Panama Papers as a personal attack and may have wanted revenge, Russian authors say

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WikiLeaks releases files that appear to offer details of ...

Wikileaks has released a new cache of documents which it claims detail surveillance apparatus used by the Russian state to spy on Internet and mobile users. Its the first time the organization has leaked (what it claims is) material directly pertaining to the Russian state.

As ever, nothing is straightforward when it comes to Wikileaks. And founder Julian Assange continues to face charges that his radical transparency organization is a front for Kremlin agents (charges that stepped up after Wikileaks released a massive trove of hacked emails from the DNC last year at a key moment in the U.S. presidential election).

So its entirely possible Wikileaks/Assange is here trying to deflect from such charges by finally dumping something on Russia.

Safe to say the Twitter arguments are already breaking out (e.g. see this tweet comment thread).

And its not possible at this point to verify the veracity and/or value of the documents Wikileaks is releasing here.

Spy Files Russia

Writing a summary of the cache of mostly Russian-language documents, Wikileaks claims they show how a long-established Russian company which supplies software to telcos is also installing infrastructure, under state mandate, that enables Russian state agencies to tap into, search and spy on citizens digital activity suggesting a similar state-funded mass surveillance program to the one utilized by the U.S.s NSA or by GCHQ in the U.K. (both of which were detailed in the 2013 Snowden disclosures).

The documents which Wikileaks has published (there are just 34 base documents in this leak) relate to a St. Petersburg-based company, called Peter-Service, which it claims is a contractor for Russian state surveillance. The company was set up in 1992 to provide billing solutions before going on to become a major supplier of software to the mobile telecoms industry.

Wikileaks writes:

The technologies developed and deployed by PETER-SERVICE today go far beyond the classical billing process and extend into the realms of surveillance and control. Although compliance to the strict surveillance laws is mandatory in Russia, rather than being forced to comply PETER-SERVICE appears to be quite activelypursuing partnership and commercial opportunities with the state intelligence apparatus.

As a matter of fact PETER-SERVICE is uniquely placed as a surveillance partner due to the remarkable visibility their products provide into the data of Russian subscribers of mobile operators, which expose to PETER-SERVICE valuable metadata, including phone and message records, device identifiers (IMEI, MAC addresses), network identifiers (IP addresses), cell tower information and much more. This enriched and aggregated metadata is of course of interest to Russian authorities, whose access became a core component of the system architecture.

One of Wikileaks initially stated media partners for the release, the Italian newspaperLa Repubblica, (which has since been removed from the media partners list and replaced with a different Italian publications name so, er, working with Assange must surely be a lol a minute ) reports that the documents cover an extended timespan from 2007 to June 2015, and describes the contents as extremely technical.

It also has a few caveats, noting the documents do not mention Russias spy agency, the FSB, but rather speak only of state agencies, a formula it asserts certainly includes law enforcement, who use metadata for legal interception.

It also says the documents do not clarify what other state apparatus accesses those data through the solution of the St. Petersburg company.

Wikileaks says that under Russia law operators must maintain a Data Retention System (DRS), which can store data for up to three years. La Repubblica reports that Peter-Services DRS stores telephone traffic data and allowsRussian state agencies to query the database of all stored data in search of information which it specifies can include calls made by a certain telephone companys customer; payment systems used; the cell phone number to which a user is calling.

The manuals published by WikiLeaks contain the images of interfaces that allow you to search within these huge data fields, so access is simple and intuitive, it adds.

According to Wikileaks, Peter-Services DRS solution can handle500,000,000 connections per dayin one cluster. While the claimed average search time for subscriber related-records from a single day is ten seconds. State intelligence authorities use theProtocol 538adapter built into the DRStoaccess stored information, it adds.

Peter-Service has also apparently developed a tool called TDM (Traffic Data Mart) which allows the database to be queried to determine where users data traffic is stored in order to understand visited sites, forums, social media, as well as how much time is spent on a certain site and the electronic device used to access it.

Wikileaks describes TDM as a system that records and monitors IP traffic for all mobile devices registered with the operator,and says it maintains alist of categorized domain names which cover all areas of interest for the state. These categories include blacklisted sites, criminal sites, blogs, webmail, weapons, botnet, narcotics, betting, aggression, racism, terrorism and many more.

Based on the collected information the system allows the creation of reports forsubscriber devices(identified by IMEI/TAC, brand, model) for a specified time range: Top categories by volume, top sites by volume, top sites by time spent, protocol usage (browsing, mail, telephony, bittorrent) and traffic/time distribution, it adds.

Wikileaks points to a 2013 Peter-Serviceslideshow presentation(it says this also appears to be publicly available on the companys website), which it claims is targeted not at telco customers but at state entities such as Russias FSB and Interior Ministry (despite this document apparently being in the public domain) in which the company focuses on a new product, calledDPI*GRID; which it says is a hardware device for Deep Packet Inspection that takes the form of black boxes apparently able to handle 10Gb/s traffic per unit.

The national providers are aggregating Internet traffic in their infrastructure and are redirecting/duplicating the full stream toDPI*GRIDunits, writes Wikileaks. The units inspect and analyse traffic (the presentation does not describe that process in much detail); the resulting metadata and extracted information are collected in a database for further investigation. A similar, yet smaller solution called MDH/DRS is available for regional providers who send aggregated IP traffic via a 10Gb/s connection to MDH for processing.

Wikileaks also makes a point of noting that the presentation was written just a few months after Edward Snowden disclosed the NSA mass surveillance program and its cooperation with private U.S. IT-corporations such as Google and Facebook.

Drawing specifically on the NSA Prism program, the presentation offers law enforcement, intelligence and other interested parties, to join an alliance in order to establish equivalent data-mining operations in Russia, it adds sticking its boot firmly back into U.S. government mass surveillance programs.

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Wikileaks releases documents it claims detail Russia mass ...

All of this has made WikiLeaks an increasingly hated target of numerous government and economic elites around the world, including theU.S. Government.As TheNew York Times put it last week:"To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret." In 2008, theU.S. Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a secret report -- obtained and posted by WikiLeaks -- devoted to this website and detailing, in a section entitled"Is it Free Speech or Illegal Speech?", ways it would seek to destroy the organization.It discusses the possibility that, for some governments, not merely contributing to WikiLeaks, but "even accessing the website itself is a crime," and outlines its proposal for WikiLeaks' destruction as follows(click on images to enlarge):

As the Pentagon report put it: "the governments of China, Israel, North Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Zimbabwe"have all sought to block access to or otherwise impede the operations of WikiLeaks, and theU.S. Government now joins that illustrious list of transparency-loving countries in targeting them.

It's not difficult to understand why the Pentagon wants to destroy WikiLeaks. Here's how the Pentagon's report describes some of the disclosures for which they are responsible:

The Pentagon report also claims that WikiLeaks has disclosed documents that could expose U.S. military plans in Afghanistan and Iraq and endanger the military mission, though its discussion is purely hypothetical and no specifics are provided. Instead, the bulk of the Pentagon report focuses on documents which embarrass the U.S. Government: information which, as they put it, "could be manipulated to provide biased news reports or be used for conducting propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, perception management, or influence operations against the U.S. Army by a variety of domestic and foreign actors." In other words, the Pentagon is furious that this exposing of its secrets might enable others to engage in exactly the type of "perception management" which the aforementioned CIA Report proposes the U.S. do with regard to the citizenry of our allied countries.

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The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters - Salon.com