James Risen at The Intercept has a strange story to tell. Apparently Matthew Rosenberg at the New York Times was working on the same story. The Intercept story dropped first, and the Times hurried to catch up. I love to imagine the second-to-drop story, where the editor screams into the phone to the reporter to get moving.
Anyhow.
It’s a very complex story, and I don’t have an easy summary or analysis. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the Intercept story when I read it because it had no details. Someone said they could sell the stuff stolen from the NSA via Shadow Brokers to someone else in the CIA or maybe the NSA because the CIA wasn’t interested. Oh, and would you like some dirty tapes of Donald Trump? (Say that last in a thick eastern European, or even German, accent.)
The Times has more details and I think a slightly different story, although I will have to read both articles a couple more times to be sure.
My net, at the moment, is that somebody is playing somebody else. What would it mean to “sell back” the stuff stolen from the NSA? Pinky swear that nobody’s got copies?
The big question is who’s playing whom. Is the seller providing disinformation in the hope it will make its way to Mueller’s investigation and undermine it? Is this really the pee tape? A man who can’t quite be identified as Donald Trump talking to two women in a hotel room doesn’t measure up.
Both reporters seem to have talked to real people not from the White House, and the White House seems incapable of ginning up anything this complicated, so I think we can assume that somebody was trying to sell something.
Sorry I can’t supply anything but a thread to crowdsource our thoughts about this bizarre story. I comfort myself with the thought that in an alternative universe, President Hillary Clinton gave a speech at Bard College proposing Medicare for All as a possible model for the healthcare system. The students rioted because she failed to be appropriately intersectional in her choice of subject, and Paul Ryan pontificated about the destruction of the Republic by socialism.
Have at it. I’ll read the articles again and join in.
Baud
STOP TEASING ME!
debbie
I’d be suspicious.
Corner Stone
Brand leaving the DoJ to go to WalMart to, “protect her reputation” is fucking laughable.
Baud
@Corner Stone: To be fair, Walmart is a moral step up from the Trump administration.
Davebo
@Baud: Not to mention you can get a mansion in Bentonville for 200k.
TenguPhule
This does not preclude this from coming from someone else in the White House.
Remember, Maddow got suckered by part of Trump’s old tax return form by someone.
jl
” in an alternative universe, President Hillary Clinton gave a speech at Bard College proposing Medicare for All as a possible model for the healthcare system. The students rioted because she failed to be appropriately intersectional in her choice of subject, and Paul Ryan pontificated about the destruction of the Republic by socialism. ”
Nah. It would be the pants suit. Something bad about the pants suit. Or she showed up in a dress when everyone expected a pants suite.
rk
Even if the pee pee tape comes out I think Trump supporters will say “fake tape” and that’ll be the end of it, especially if it’s not very clear. At this point I’m convinced Trump could rape a woman in times square and not lose any supporters.
jl
I’m moderation is pants suit a bad word now?
Edit: I typo’d an ‘e’ on the end.
clay
Trump has denied the release of the Democratic response to the Nunes memo. Just like a guilty person would.
Gin & Tonic
I like Risen, but for a long piece, that article has an awful lot of “I don’t really know” in it.
jl
@clay: So much sketchiness from the WH, I think a waste of time trying to figure out why Brand decided to leave.
clay
@TenguPhule: I don’t know how ‘suckered’ she was when on that very show she said “There’s a very good chance that this was leaked by Donald Trump himself.”
Cheryl Rofer
@jl: Released
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
this looks like yellow journalism.
————-
rim shot!
Adam L Silverman
@Baud: Again: there is no pee tape.
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: Those rollbacks are very tempting. She probably stopped on her way home.
Gin & Tonic
@jl: No, but “socialism” is forbidden again, and it was in the block you quoted.
Corner Stone
@Adam L Silverman: Just shows she has no way to assess value.
JPL
@Baud: There’s no audio and the video is unclear, but there is a tape.
JPL
Would Walmart offer Rachel Brand a cushy job to protect Trump? I’m curious why the job offer was made now.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I kind of took it all as somebody, or several somebodies, taunting and/or (more and) trying to run a scam on curious Americans, whether low-level spies or Cody Shearer types, with the active encouragement of the Russians. I wonder if somewhere in Moscow somebody is saying, “Bullshit, you did not get $100,00 from the CIA… No shit?… Well, I’ll be fucked… Well half of that is mine, you know….” Chaos, confusion, muddied waters.
I’d never heard of Cody Shearer, doesn’t seem to be much on him, but he looks like a hanger-on via Sidney Blumenthal, the scary monster under Trey Gowdy’s bed
Adam L Silverman
I’ve read the NY Times article. My take away is that the US government personnel involved where trying to make the buy in order to get a handle, and proper accounting, of the cyber tools that were stolen from the NSA. Here is the relevant bit (emphasis mine):
Everything else was likely a combination of provitskaya and dezinformatsya – provocation and disinformation materials. Some of the information and materials were likely accurate, some likely altered, some likely made up out of whole cloth. The intention being to ratfuck the US counterintelligence folks.
Cheryl Rofer
Okay, this is the meat of the Intercept article.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JPL: they actually gave their employees some money to put lipstick on the tax cut pig
Adam L Silverman
@Corner Stone: I don’t shop there unless I’m stuck somewhere with no other choice.
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, trying to get an accounting of what was stolen makes more sense than “buying it back.” Also trying to get a handle on who the Shadow Brokers are/were.
Cheryl Rofer
I like whomever planned this.
Cheryl Rofer
Cue Twitter aficionados to start searching for those twelve.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Yep. The rest was active measures dangle material.
Cheryl Rofer
Sorry, y’all.
No Drought No More
It’s past time for Las Vegas to make book on the time-and-date of the year when the first congressional democrat will denounce Trump as a willing stooge of Russia. I cannot understand anyone’s reticence at this point to arrive at just that conclusion, and proceed to goddamn him publicly for it.
R.O.T. = RUSSIA OWNS TRUMP, and very likely a huge swathe of the republican party. It’s equally as obvious congressional republicans are, in turn, Trump’s willing dupes in covering up his treason because too many of them are up to their necks in criminal wrongdoing, too.
Cheryl Rofer
Cheryl Rofer
This is pretty responsible of the Times, for a change. They’re providing context for what seems to have been happening, although they also acknowledge that in a year we may find out all these guys were on the up-and-up.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hey! that sounds familiar!
Cheryl Rofer
Kayla Rudbek
@Cheryl Rofer: CMOT Dibbler was involved in this?
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: @Cheryl Rofer: Provocation and disinformation active measures.
Cheryl Rofer
Okay – here’s a little more detailed analysis of the two stories.
Their overall shape is the same – the US intelligence community was working through intermediaries in Europe to try to track down the Shadow Brokers hack. Along the way, they were offered something that might be Trump kompromat. Being as suspicious as the acute crew at Balloon Juice, they figured it highly likely that the “kompromat” was intended to cause trouble and turned it down. Someone may have gotten away with what is probably a lot of money for them, but maybe a couple of months’ accounting for a professional at one of the agencies.
The big difference between the two is that Risen attributes the turndown of the information to concern about annoying Trump, while Rosenberg attributes it to competent counterintelligence practice. I’ll go with the second, although I’ll bet there were conversations along the lines of “Wouldn’t you love to see the Trump tweets coming out of this?”
Cheryl Rofer
@Adam L Silverman: Yep. And it’s good to see the Times implicitly labeling them as such.
Adam L Silverman
@Cheryl Rofer: Apparently some people at the Grey Lady are learning.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
@JPL: GREAT point.
Judging from her wiki page, she’s only worked 4 to 6 years as a DC lawyer. The rest as national security functionary at DOJ. And now, with such limited private experience, with such narrow field of practice, she lands a job with the biggest retailer in the country.
Not sure if it adds up.
Corner Stone
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Depends on who’s buying and what they are trying to buy.
Doug R
If it’s coming out at the Intercept, it’s because Russia wants it out there.
Anne Laurie
@JPL: I think it’s more like…
Take a high-paying Fortune-50-company position, where she can rake in a mint, and slide laterally to an equally cushy job after a year or so if necessary? Or stay and be “Deputy #2” in Jeff Session’s revanchist army, as the forces of justice & karma are marshalling?
Remember, any woman who rises that high has to be pretty good at 11-dimensional chess…
Ken
@Cheryl Rofer:
Thank you. I think. “Suspicious” is one of those adjectives that cuts both ways.
Corner Stone
Personally, I have no interest in venerating Rachel Brand. She’s a true wingnut through and through. Good riddance.
Anne Laurie
@Kayla Rudbek:
I’ve long suspected Trump is the black sheep other Dibbler family members prefer not to talk about. It’s not his venality, but what self-respecting Cut-Me-Own-Throat vendor would want to be identified with a four-time bankrupt and blowhard like Lord Smallgloves?
Ruckus
@Baud:
One mouse step, maybe, but no more.
Amaranthine RBG
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Meh … it’s a political position with a legal title
low-tech cyclist
Hey wait, Cheryl! Don’t’cha know that if it’s The Intercept, it’s a pile of slanted crap dressed up as reporting?
At least, that’s what a good chunk of the commenters here keep telling me – telling me to disregard what sure looks like thorough and detailed reporting just because it’s from Glenn Greenwald’s shop. So get with the program!
/s
North_O_49
@Adam L Silverman: Maybe not, Risen noted Fusion GPS/Steele were hired by Republs first with the Dems taking it over.Rosenberg only mentioned the Dems paying for it.