Le Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/em> (VIPS), un groupement hautement qualifi\u00e9 d’anciens officiers du renseignement US dont nous avons plusieurs fois publi\u00e9 les interventions sous forme de \u00ab\u00a0m\u00e9morandum\u00a0\u00bb communique cette fois son m\u00e9morandum sur la th\u00e8se de la manipulation des \u00e9lections USA-2016 par la Russie ; pour nous, il s’agit, au vu des sp\u00e9cialistes qui la composent et de leur attitude de neutralit\u00e9 politique, de la source ouverte non politis\u00e9e la plus fiable sur cette affaire. Le VIPS rejette cat\u00e9goriquement la th\u00e8se d’une manipulation russe en montrant qu’il n’y a pas eu d\u00e9tournement de mat\u00e9riels informatiques (hacking<\/em>), mais \u00ab\u00a0fuites\u00a0\u00bb (leaking<\/em>) \u00e0 partir d’une source disposant du mat\u00e9riel du Democratic National Commission<\/em> (DNC), soit de la part d’une source au DNC lui-m\u00eame, soit de la part d’une source \u00e0 la NSA ou d’une source ayant acc\u00e8s au mat\u00e9riel de la NSA qui est la seule organisation US pouvant collecter et stocker le mat\u00e9riel du DNC (comme tout mat\u00e9riel de cette sorte). Ce m\u00e9mo, publi\u00e9 par ConsortiumNews<\/em> le 12 d\u00e9cembre<\/a>, est sign\u00e9, au nom du VIPS, par les membres suivants du VIPS qui ont travaill\u00e9 sur cette question :<\/p>\n<\/p>\n William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Mike Gravel, former Adjutant, top secret control officer, Communications Intelligence Service; special agent of the Counter Intelligence Corps and former United States Senator<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Larry Johnson, former CIA Intelligence Officer & former State Department Counter-Terrorism Official<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry\/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East, CIA (ret.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA (ret.)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n MEMORANDUM<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A New York Times<\/em> report on Monday alluding to \u00ab\u00a0overwhelming circumstantial evidence\u00a0\u00bb leading the CIA to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin \u00ab\u00a0deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump\u00a0\u00bb is, sadly, evidence-free. This is no surprise, because harder evidence of a technical nature points to an inside leak, not hacking – by Russians or anyone else.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Monday’s Washington Post<\/em> reports that Sen. James Lankford, R-Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has joined other senators in calling for a bipartisan investigation of suspected cyber-intrusion by Russia. Reading our short memo could save the Senate from endemic partisanship, expense and unnecessary delay.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In what follows, we draw on decades of senior-level experience – with emphasis on cyber-intelligence and security – to cut through uninformed, largely partisan fog. Far from hiding behind anonymity, we are proud to speak out with the hope of gaining an audience appropriate to what we merit – given our long labors in government and other areas of technology. And corny though it may sound these days, our ethos as intelligence professionals remains, simply, to tell it like it is – without fear or favor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n We have gone through the various claims about hacking. For us, it is child’s play to dismiss them. The email disclosures in question are the result of a leak, not a hack. Here’s the difference between leaking and hacking:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Leak:<\/em> When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Hack:<\/em> When someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example – the only way such data can be copied and removed, with no electronic trace of what has left the server, is via a physical storage device.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Again, NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved. Thanks largely to the material released by Edward Snowden, we can provide a full picture of NSA’s extensive domestic data-collection network including Upstream programs like Fairview<\/a>, Stormbrew<\/a> and Blarney<\/a>. These include at least 30 companies in the U.S. operating the fiber networks that carry the Public Switched Telephone Network as well as the World Wide Web. This gives NSA unparalleled access to data flowing within the U.S. and data going out to the rest of the world, as well as data transiting the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n In other words, any data that is passed from the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) – or any other server in the U.S. – is collected by the NSA. These data transfers carry destination addresses in what are called packets, which enable the transfer to be traced and followed through the network.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Packets: Emails being passed across the World Wide Web are broken down into smaller segments called packets. These packets are passed into the network to be delivered to a recipient. This means the packets need to be reassembled at the receiving end.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n To accomplish this, all the packets that form a message are assigned an identifying number that enables the receiving end to collect them for reassembly. Moreover, each packet carries the originator and ultimate receiver Internet protocol number (either IPV4 or IPV6) that enables the network to route data.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n When email packets leave the U.S., the other \u00ab\u00a0Five Eyes\u00a0\u00bb countries (the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the seven or eight additional countries participating with the U.S. in bulk-collection of everything on the planet would also have a record of where those email packets went after leaving the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n These collection resources are extensive [see attached NSA slides 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>];<\/strong> they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like \u00ab\u00a0our best guess\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our opinion\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our estimate\u00a0\u00bb etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider<\/em> – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n As for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Le VIPS r\u00e9fute la th\u00e8se \u00ab\u00a0USA-2016 manipul\u00e9e par les Russes\u00a0\u00bb Le Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), un groupement hautement qualifi\u00e9 d’anciens officiers du renseignement US dont nous avons plusieurs fois publi\u00e9 les interventions sous forme de \u00ab\u00a0m\u00e9morandum\u00a0\u00bb communique cette fois son m\u00e9morandum sur la th\u00e8se de la manipulation des \u00e9lections USA-2016 par la Russie… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3104,934,12591,12589,2866,12590,1132,3871,2730,2639,12538],"class_list":["post-76975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-cia","tag-clinton","tag-dnc","tag-hacking","tag-johnson","tag-leaking","tag-mcgovern","tag-nsa","tag-russie","tag-trump","tag-usa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}dedefensa.org<\/em><\/h4>\n<\/p>\n
Allegations of Hacking Election Are Baseless<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
Awesome Technical Capabilities<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n
![Fairview<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/fairview.jpg\"){kind=link}
![Stormbrew<\/a> and](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/stormbrew-01.jpg\"){kind=link}
![Blarney<\/a>. These include at least 30 companies in the U.S. operating the fiber networks that carry the Public Switched Telephone Network as well as the World Wide Web. This gives NSA unparalleled access to data flowing within the U.S. and data going out to the rest of the world, as well as data transiting the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nIn other words, any data that is passed from the servers of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC) – or any other server in the U.S. – is collected by the NSA. These data transfers carry destination addresses in what are called packets, which enable the transfer to be traced and followed through the network.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nPackets: Emails being passed across the World Wide Web are broken down into smaller segments called packets. These packets are passed into the network to be delivered to a recipient. This means the packets need to be reassembled at the receiving end.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nTo accomplish this, all the packets that form a message are assigned an identifying number that enables the receiving end to collect them for reassembly. Moreover, each packet carries the originator and ultimate receiver Internet protocol number (either IPV4 or IPV6) that enables the network to route data.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nWhen email packets leave the U.S., the other \u00ab\u00a0Five Eyes\u00a0\u00bb countries (the U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and the seven or eight additional countries participating with the U.S. in bulk-collection of everything on the planet would also have a record of where those email packets went after leaving the U.S.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThese collection resources are extensive [see attached NSA slides 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>, 4<\/a>, 5<\/a>];<\/strong> they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like \u00ab\u00a0our best guess\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our opinion\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our estimate\u00a0\u00bb etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider<\/em> – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAs for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Le VIPS r\u00e9fute la th\u00e8se \u00ab\u00a0USA-2016 manipul\u00e9e par les Russes\u00a0\u00bb Le Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), un groupement hautement qualifi\u00e9 d’anciens officiers du renseignement US dont nous avons plusieurs fois publi\u00e9 les interventions sous forme de \u00ab\u00a0m\u00e9morandum\u00a0\u00bb communique cette fois son m\u00e9morandum sur la th\u00e8se de la manipulation des \u00e9lections USA-2016 par la Russie… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3104,934,12591,12589,2866,12590,1132,3871,2730,2639,12538],"class_list":["post-76975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-cia","tag-clinton","tag-dnc","tag-hacking","tag-johnson","tag-leaking","tag-mcgovern","tag-nsa","tag-russie","tag-trump","tag-usa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Blarney.gif\"){kind=link}
![1<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Picture1.jpg\"){kind=link}
![2<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Picture2.jpg\"){kind=link}
![3<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Picture3.jpg\"){kind=link}
![4<\/a>,](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Picture4.png\"){kind=link}
![5<\/a>];<\/strong> they include hundreds of trace route programs that trace the path of packets going across the network and tens of thousands of hardware and software implants in switches and servers that manage the network. Any emails being extracted from one server going to another would be, at least in part, recognizable and traceable by all these resources.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like \u00ab\u00a0our best guess\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our opinion\u00a0\u00bb or \u00ab\u00a0our estimate\u00a0\u00bb etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been \u00ab\u00a0hacked\u00a0\u00bb cannot be traced across the network. Given NSA’s extensive trace capability, we conclude that DNC and HRC servers alleged to have been hacked were, in fact, not hacked.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nThe evidence that should be there is absent; otherwise, it would surely be brought forward, since this could be done without any danger to sources and methods. Thus, we conclude that the emails were leaked by an insider<\/em> – as was the case with Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning. Such an insider could be anyone in a government department or agency with access to NSA databases, or perhaps someone within the DNC.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nAs for the comments to the media as to what the CIA believes, the reality is that CIA is almost totally dependent on NSA for ground truth in the communications arena. Thus, it remains something of a mystery why the media is being fed strange stories about hacking that have no basis in fact. In sum, given what we know of NSA’s existing capabilities, it beggars belief that NSA would be unable to identify anyone – Russian or not – attempting to interfere in a U.S. election by hacking.<\/p>\n<\/p>\nVeteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Le VIPS r\u00e9fute la th\u00e8se \u00ab\u00a0USA-2016 manipul\u00e9e par les Russes\u00a0\u00bb Le Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), un groupement hautement qualifi\u00e9 d’anciens officiers du renseignement US dont nous avons plusieurs fois publi\u00e9 les interventions sous forme de \u00ab\u00a0m\u00e9morandum\u00a0\u00bb communique cette fois son m\u00e9morandum sur la th\u00e8se de la manipulation des \u00e9lections USA-2016 par la Russie… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3104,934,12591,12589,2866,12590,1132,3871,2730,2639,12538],"class_list":["post-76975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ouverture-libre","tag-cia","tag-clinton","tag-dnc","tag-hacking","tag-johnson","tag-leaking","tag-mcgovern","tag-nsa","tag-russie","tag-trump","tag-usa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Picture5.jpg\"){kind=link}