It’s called Vault 7, concerning the CIA hacking tools.  If you haven’t taken the time to read through it, you should.  I’m going to link, paste some of the content, and comment on an article at NRO today concerning this release, but before I do, you really need this reddit discussion thread as an antidote to the jingoistic silliness in the article.  There are other articles out there, but they pale in comparison to the stupidity of this one at NRO.

According to press reports, WikiLeaks today released thousands of highly classified CIA documents on methods the CIA allegedly is using to conduct cyber warfare. If these documents are legitimate, this illegal release will ruin cyber programs worth billions of dollars that the CIA was using to do battle with America’s enemies, especially terrorist groups.

The CIA officer who took the law into his or her hands to release this material justified this release by claiming this data “urgently need to be debated in public, including whether the CIA’s hacking capabilities exceed its mandated powers and the problem of public oversight of the agency.” The source also said he or she “wishes to initiate a public debate about the security, creation, use, proliferation and democratic control of cyberweapons.”

What nonsense. If the traitor truly believed this program violated U.S. law or endangered the privacy rights of America, there are numerous legal avenues he or she could have used, including the CIA inspector general and the House and Senate intelligence committees. CIA officers take an oath to protect classified national-security information. Such a massive illegal disclosure in violation of the CIA secrecy oath is not an act of courage or whistleblowing, it was “a Snowden” — an act of cowardice by a disgruntled individual who never should have been hired by the CIA.

The only nonsense is in this article.  I’ve copied and pasted enough now.  If you read any more, you’re head is liable to explode due to the overpressure from flow of stupidity.

So let’s rehearse what we do know, not what we can posture and preen about.  First of all, Edward Snowden told us about illegal surveillance being conducted on Americans.  Let’s note that again.  What the NSA was doing when Snowden made his revelations was illegal, and they’re still doing it.  There is absolutely no statutory basis for what they’re doing.

Next, Edward Snowden would be charged with crimes if he were to return to the U.S.  If he had taken this information to the Senate or House, it would have been pushed off to a committee, hidden, and nothing done about it, right after Snowden was arrested.  We know that for a fact because to this date, nothing whatsoever has been done about Snowden’s revelations.  The Senate and House are all compromised in “Brownstone operations” (and we’ll rehearse that in a moment).

What Wikileaks revealed today was that not only is the NSA doing it, but the CIA is doing it as well, and not only that, they’re possibly doing it better.  And no, this isn’t restricted to overseas targets or terrorists, it’s being used on literally anyone and everyone they want to target.  We also know that there is absolutely no statutory basis or justification for what the CIA is doing.  None.

Next, consider what the CIA is doing.  They are quite literally buying the vulnerabilities in U.S.-made software.  They are paying money to keep the vulnerabilities in software and hardware in order to exploit those weaknesses.  One more time so you get the point.  They are creating and buying zero-day exploits for systems and of course refraining from telling the manufacturers of those devices.  This is irresponsible and dangerous to the point of being criminal.  It isn’t negligent, it’s intentionally criminal.

This lends itself to fraud, abuse, extortion, potential convictions in a courtroom with the use of illegally obtained material, material that violates the Fourth Amendment to the constitution.  Here is something else.  Since some of the malware is stolen from Russia, no one can ever, ever again trust the CIA when they say something like “this malware or hacking attack has a known Russian [or any other country for that matter] signature.”  Never.  Not that I ever trusted the CIA anyway.

We would all love to live in a country in which we know with certainty that the men and women in responsible charge of the nation’s international security target only the known enemies of state, i.e., foreign enemies.  But that’s not reality, and only a fool or simpleton believes things like that.  We know that this lust for knowledge, this consuming drive for power, is emblematic of the fall in Genesis, where they wanted to be like God.  Statism is a wicked religion, and jingoism is its bread and butter.

So why would this writer, who wrote the same thing at Center For Security Policy, weigh in with such an article as this?  Why would he beclown himself in this way?  I can think of only two reasons.  The first is that he really doesn’t understand the nature of the deep state.

No, I’m not talking about the deep state in the way Bill Kristol talks about the deep state, with utter ignorance of the subject.  I mean the true nature of the deep state.  CIA, DynCorp (former SpecOps who handles the military operations of the CIA), the State Department, The Clinton Foundation, The Clinton Global Initiative, some FBI (e.g., Andrew McCabe and others), some generals (e.g., Petraeus), and other actors in the corporate world, have participated in nation-toppling in North Africa and the Middle East for the last ten or more years, going after oil, money, precious metals, weapons, human organs and human trafficking (read here child trafficking).

Their bread and butter for extortion is “Brownstone operations,” and their military bread and butter in North Africa has been coupling with the Muslim Brotherhood to overthrow countries and destabilize entire regions.  Of course, money from George Soros came in quite handy.  If this writer doesn’t know about George Webb on YouTube (who is being assisted by FBI by his own admission), the Reddit discussion threads, the Voat discussion threads, and if this writer doesn’t know about “FBIAnon” and “DHS Insider” who is assisting some of these citizen investigations, then the writer is incompetent and should be fired.

If he worked for the CIA all these years and yet doesn’t know about the current war within the IC, then he is a buffoon.  On the other hand, if he does know about all of this, and if he does understand that both the NSA and CIA are engaging in illegal surveillance against American citizens, and yet he supports these programs anyway, then he is a traitor.  The second possibility is darker than the first.

Either way, the MSM is chock full of articles and commentaries today on this subject, and amusingly none of the articles display any significant degree of indignation.  When Nixon’s men broke into Watergate, the whole nation was outraged (except for Lynyrd Skynyrd).  Today, everyone is being recorded, every text message is being sent to storage from one of a few main internet nodes, every phone call is being recorded, and every penny made is being cataloged by the U.S. government.  And no one is batting an eyelid.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs, a state that would have sickened our founders and caused rebellion at one tenth of what we’ve witnessed.  Our founding fathers would have already burned Washington, D.C. to the ground.  The war of independence was started over taxes and gun control.  The saddest part is that nothing is likely to happen as a result of the revelations today.  This too will pass, I predict, just like Snowden’s revelations.

John Jay has related thoughts.  WRSA also links a good video.

George posts four videos for Monday.  Go watch them all.  I’ll only embed the first one, but in it George bets everything that if Steve Feinberg makes his way into the Trump administration, the entire investigation of the CIA, DynCorp and Clinton Foundation of war-making, oil plays, and drug and human trafficking will come to an end.  Of course, this would be a sad state of affairs, and God would punish our country for it.  Not just the leaders, but the country … corporately.  All of us.

George begins to tie the bow on the present for the incoming government, which may or may not be in a position or have the moral courage to deal with the problem.  George also names names, including sitting Senators.  Listen carefully.

An interesting point comes up in the video that will make you think a bit.  George says that in his opinion, a DynCorps person will be at the bottom of the pile of bodies in every mass shooting in America you can remember, at least the recent ones.

Think about that for a moment.  And watch his video for the beginning stages of wrapping this all up.

Consider the ridiculous and obscene spectacle you’ve witnessed yesterday and today.  We all knew that the MSM was dead.  We knew that the CIA and FBI was involved in international drug trade, human trafficking, toppling of countries and weapons trafficking.

But the level of childishness we’ve witnessed is beyond belief.  The WSJ has a version that goes something like this.

A former British intelligence officer who is now a director of a private security-and-investigations firm has been identified as the author of the dossier of unverified allegations about President-elect Donald Trump’s activities and connections in Russia, people familiar with the matter say.

Christopher Steele, a director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd., prepared the dossier, the people said. The document alleges that the Kremlin colluded with Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and claims that Russian officials have compromising evidence of Mr. Trump’s behavior that could be used to blackmail him. Mr. Trump has dismissed the dossier’s contents as false and Russia has denied the claims.

Mr. Steele, 52 years old, is one of two directors of the firm, along with Christopher Burrows, 58.

Mr. Burrows, reached at his home outside London on Wednesday, said he wouldn’t “confirm or deny” that Orbis had produced the report. A neighbor of Mr. Steele’s said Mr. Steele said he would be away for a few days. In previous weeks Mr. Steele has declined repeated requests for interviews through an intermediary, who said the subject was “too hot.”

4Chan has a different version that can be read here and here.  Here is a summary.

On january 10, Buzzfeed posted a story under the byline of Ken Bensinger, Mark Schoofs and Miriam elder titled “these reports Allege Trump Has Deep Ties To Russia” and posted a link to a document alleging, among other things, that russia has been cultivating trump for 5+ years, that trump has been in constant contact with the kremlin for information on his opponents, and perhaps most inflammatory, that there are many recorded instances of blackmail of trump in sexual misconduct. A prominent claim is that trump rented the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel in moscow, where he knew that the Obamas had slept in; he them hired a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden shower’ (pissplay) on the bed and in the room. https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.jdyKR56pj#.skw2lK8Nd

https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984/Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.pdf

Noted #nevertrump voice Rick Wilson later commented on twitter, stating that the report “gave a new meaning to Wikileaks” (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818982395202379777) and that the report was the reason everybody was fighting so hard against the election of Trump. (https://twitter.com/TheRickWilson/status/818983514335047680)

The remarkable thing? It’s all fake. And not only fake; it’s a prank perpetuated by 4chan, on Rick Wilson himself. A post on 4chan on october 26 stated “mfw managed to convince CTR and certain (((journalists))) on Twitter there’ll be an October surprise on Trump this Friday” along with a picture of a smug face with a hash name. http://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/94704894/#94705224on november 1, a person without a picture but is assumed to be the same person posted “So they took what I told Rick Wilson and added a Russian spy angle to it. They still believe it. Guys, they’re truly fucking desperate – there’s no remaining Trump scandal that’s credible.” https://archive.4plebs.org/pol/thread/95568919/#95571329on january 10, moments after the story broke and began to gain traction on social media, a person with the same smug grin face, and the same hash title for the picture, stated “I didn’t think they’d take it so far.” http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/106514445#p106520376

This story has taken on something of a life of it’s own. Going through Rick Wilson’s twitter, you can find many different stories from the time that he had shown the story to a wide number of anti-trump news sources, trying to find a news organization that would actually publish the story. During that time period, he referred to it often as ‘the thing’, and often playing coy with followers on the content with the story with anybody who was not also a #Nevertrumper. Unconfirmed sources has people as high up as John McCain giving the story to FBI Director James Comey to attempt to verify the story. Given that Rick Wilson runs in Establishment circles, it is not an impossible scenario that long-serving senators are falling for what amounts to a 4chan troll trump supporter creating an ironic October Surprise out of wholecloth to punk a GOPe pundit who derogatorily referred to them as single men who masturbate to anime.

Either way, or perhaps with some combination of the two, 4Chan is trolling and gas lighting the GOPe and they fell for it, John McCain the hardest for handing such a thing to the CIA.

But the CIA looks like school boys.  They didn’t even verify the simplest of things, e.g., people named in the report.  Donald Trump is suspicious, as he should be, and proved today with his own little sting operation that there are leaks coming from the intelligence community.

Here is what Trump should do.  He should bust up the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind to be blown away like so much tares (Matthew 13).  They haven’t helped with anything at all in recent memory, not OIF or OEF, not Iran, not Egypt, not Benghazi, nothing.  They have stayed silent on #Pizzagate, and they continue to follow the seven-country plan George Webb has so thoroughly dissected.

They have been an impediment to peace and stability, and they are involved in the international drug trade and trafficking of weapons, oil, money and humans.  They can’t present a real piece of intelligence to the President-elect, what they tell him has to be assumed to be worthless or worse, lies designed to cause some sort of instability or to enrich some billionaire.

They can’t even talk to the President-elect without going to the press and gossiping about it.  I guess those homes in D.C. and Alexandria have become a little too comfy, those college tuition payments for their children a little too reliable, the demands on them a little too soft, and the moral expectations far too low.

Bust the entire organization up and rebuild it some other way, some other time, and some other place.  We don’t need them.

UPDATE:

It dawned on me that many of my current readers haven’t been with me for ten years, long ago when I was doing primarily military blogging.  “Sam Culper” makes a comment at WRSA that caused me to fill in the blanks a bit, and I thought I would paste it here.  Sam doesn’t like my prescription or my “demeaning” the entire organization because of some bad apples.  He responds to what I paste, and feel free to go over to WRSA and see what Sam posted.  But I figured that I owed my newer readers a rundown of the long history I have with the DIA/CIA.

Begin paste.

I was reviewing the book on JSOC by Sean Naylor (he sent it to me for a review), and those on the ground knew within two days exactly who conducted the assault on Benghazi. Down to the group and people who did it.

They beat me and my readers by only about a day. My military readers knew within hours that it was a pre-planned, well-coordinated assault with comms, known coordinates and the use of combined arms. Within a few more days we had outlined the QRF and other assets available for assistance. Again, the men on the ground beat us by a couple of days, and they were there, we were in the states with no direct access to intel.

I outlined the need for border security in Western Iraq (esp. in the al-Qa’im area) well before they ever began to perform interdiction ops or assist the local LEOs in that area. As it turned out, 80-100 foreign fighters were coming through that little town per month from Syria. The intel community was only a couple of years behind me.

As for Afghanistan, I called out General David Rodriguez for the idiot he was (I am not being emotional here – Rodriguez is an idiot). When he went on the record saying that the Taliban were on their heels and there wouldn’t be a spring offensive, I said that there would be a robust spring offensive and I outlined EXACTLY what the Taliban would do. I said in multiple posts that they would attack the Northern and Southern logistics lines, Khyber and Chaman. Sure enough, that’s EXACTLY what they did in the spring, and because we were sitting in comfy FOBs thinking we had won, we weren’t ready. I suggested sending the Marines to the Hindu Kush because of this, and where did they send them? Helmand. So in Helmand I watched what was happening in Now Zad, and one year before we actually boosted the presence in Now Zad Marines were being cut to pieces and had to have a high surgeon to Marine ratio there because we didn’t take it seriously. To this day Tim Lynch will tell you I was the only one covering Now Zad. Everyone else was in a fog, including the intel community.

I could go on, and on, and on, and on. These are merely quick examples off the top of my head. I know I was being read in *.mil network and *.gov domains and that I was being heard. I saw the visits. They just ignored me.

It’s one thing to believe that there are patriots left. It’s quite another to say that they are producing anything of value if it’s not being read or used. You might disagree with my conclusions or prescriptions, but I assure you I didn’t write it in an emotional fit. This has been ten years in the making.

End paste.

How would you like to see Trey Gowdy cross examine the actors in the drug, money, oil, weapons and child trafficking scandal?  I would actually pay good money to watch that.  A lot of it.  The Congress could sell tickets for a hefty sum of money, and use that to pay the federal marshals to go arrest the bad actors who are currently hidden from view. As for my take, I’ll wait and see. Perhaps George knows something I don’t about all of this. Chaffetz always seem to step right up to the river, but then refuses to get his feet wet. Fast and Furious is but one example.

I do want to address one thing.  You’re going to notice George triangulating on the question “Did Neil Brown and Eric Braverman know about the human trafficking part of these operations?”  He has mentioned that in the past several videos.

Now to be sure, the human trafficking part of this is obscene, awful, hideous and repugnant.  But let me be clear about this.  The Scriptural stipulations for the crimes of rape, kidnapping and murder are all the same: the death penalty.  It makes it no less obscene and criminal if Neil Brown and Eric Braverman knew only about the oil, wars, killings, drug running, and weapons trafficking but didn’t know about the human trafficking.

Men, women and children died as a result of their quest for power and money.  The guilty must be punished.  The American people will demand nothing less.  Oh, and by the way, as for that argument that George is sure will come that we, the CIA, only wanted to get the evidence and shut these rings down, that’s rather like finding your kid in the cookie jar only to hear him say that he was going to turn in his brother.  He’s really on your side.

That’s bullshit, of course.

A few days ago McClatchy published an exposé on an Iranian General they called the most powerful man in Iraq.  A short selection will be reproduced below.

One of the most powerful men in Iraq isn’t an Iraqi government official, a militia leader, a senior cleric or a top U.S. military commander or diplomat,

He’s an Iranian general, and at times he’s more influential than all of them.

Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani commands the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, an elite paramilitary and espionage organization whose mission is to expand Iran’s influence in the Middle East.

As Tehran’s point man on Iraq, he funnels military and financial support to various Iraqi factions, frustrating U.S. attempts to build a pro-Western democracy on the rubble of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship.

According to Iraqi and American officials, Suleimani has ensured the elections of pro-Iranian politicians, met frequently with senior Iraqi leaders and backed Shiite elements in the Iraqi security forces that are accused of torturing and killing minority Sunni Muslims.

“Whether we like him (Suleimani) or not, whether Americans like him or not, whether Iraqis like him or not, he is the focalpoint of Iranian policy in Iraq,” said a senior Iraqi official who asked not to be identified so he could speak freely. “The Quds Force have played it all, political, military, intelligence, economic. They are Iranian foreign policy in Iraq.”

McClatchy reported on March 30 that Suleimaniintervened to halt the fighting between mostly Shiite Iraqi security forces and radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia in the southern city of Basra. Iraqi officials now confirm that in addition to that meeting, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani personally met Suleimaniat a border crossing to make a direct appeal for help.

Iraqi and U.S. officials told McClatchy that Suleimani also has: [i] Slipped into Baghdad’s Green Zone, the heavily fortified seat of the U.S. occupation and the Iraqi government, in April 2006 to try to orchestrate the selection of a new Iraqi prime minister. Iraqi officials said that audacious visit was Suleimani’s only foray into the Green Zone; American officials said he may have been there more than once, [ii] Built powerful networks that gather intelligence on American and Iraqi military operations. Suleimani’s network includes every senior staffer in Iran’s embassy in Baghdad, beginning with the ambassador, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials, and [iii] Trained and directed Shiite Muslim militias and given them cash and arms, including mortars and rockets fired at the U.S. Embassy and explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, the sophisticated roadside bombs that have caused hundreds of U.S. and Iraqi casualties.

At Abu Muqawama, Dr. iRack read this report and said:

The story is part of the growing drum beat of Iran stories Dr. iRack has pointed to this week (see here and here). There is clearly a concerted effort underway by the Bush administration (which began during the April Petraeus/Crocker testimony and President Bush’s April 10th speech) to prime the media pump and ratchet up the perceived threat posed by Iran’s “malign” activities in Iraq.

To which The Captain’s Journal responds, rubbish.  We have had twenty five years of experience reading Knight-Ridder / McClatchy due to it being the exclusive supplier for our very own hometown newspaper.  It is unapologetically and unabashedly biased and leftist.  This has consistently been the case for well over a quarter of a century, which is the amount of time we have invested in this rag and pitiful excuse for news.

It might take on the trappings of erudition to critique the McClatchy report as part of the “growing drumbeat on Iran,” but erudite it isn’t.  If they thought that this report would even be perceived as shilling for the administration, they would have killed it even if sourced better than any story even done at McCatchy.  In fact, this might be only the second instance of actual reporting we have ever seen from McClatchy (the first being a good report on snipers in Ramadi).

Along with this same theme, NBC News’ Richard Engel had an interesting post today about the role of Iran in Iraq, sourcing his information to “senior U.S. military officials,” duplicated below.

Over a meal this weekend at a Green Zone chow hall (chicken salad and Baskin-Robbins pralines and cream ice cream, a KBR delight), I had a revealing conversation with two senior U.S. military officials.

“We’ve pretty much defeated al-Qaida here,” one of the military officers said. “If Iran stopped doing what it’s doing, things would dramatically change.”

“You think that would be it, a turning point? If Iran stopped backing militias, you think things would get much better?” I asked.

“No doubt. It would be dramatic,” replied the officer.

For many military commanders there is a feeling of euphoria that the U.S. troop “surge” and the top commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus managed to reduce violence, especially in Sunni areas.

The surge has become something sacred for the military in Iraq. It was a plan that worked. It has been entered into the annals of history – at least here – as a success, not to be questioned. The commanders I spoke to this weekend were angry Iran, they claim, is trying to ruin their surge.

The frustration is understandable. Sunni radicals have gone quiet, thanks in part to the “Sons of Iraq” program in which former insurgents (mostly Sunnis) are paid to fight al-Qaida. (Critics say the program is just arming the insurgents to fight another day).

Anbar province, once considered a lost region overrun by Sunni radicals, is now mostly calm. It is the Shiite areas, especially where Iran is strong, like in Basra and Sadr City, which are now in revolt.

U.S. military commanders deduce that if Iran stopped stoking the fires of conflict, both Sunnis and Shiites would stop fighting long enough for Iraq to blossom into the prosperous nation that U.S. officials promised and that the U.S. military needs to prevent failure in Iraq.

Perhaps they are correct. It would be logical to assume that if both sides stop fighting, there would be less bloodshed and more room for dialogue.

He goes on to wonder if this is the “flavor of the month” enemy in Iraq.  Contrary to this fear and Dr. iRack’s diminutive analysis of the McClatchy report, we vote that Iran is a powerful actor in Iraq – but then, we were saying this before it became popular.  Perhaps our warnings were prescient.

But the reader will not detect rumblings of war at The Captain’s Journal.  Rather, we will advocate as we always have, i.e., full engagement in the covert warfare in which Iran has engaged against the U.S. for twenty five years.  The U.S. is so powerful and resourced so well in this type of warfare, yet engages so poorly in it, that it can only be the fault of the CIA.

In this case, there is a solution for General Suleimani.  It is selective targeting, analogous to the same for Mughniyeh.  It will get their attention far more effectively than deployment of yet another carrier to the Persian gulf.