Contributors

Friday, June 02, 2017

Putin Admits Russians Hacked US Election

It looks like the investigation into Russian hacking of the US election is starting to uncover solid evidence. Vladimir Putin has basically admitted the hacking:
Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia suggested on Thursday that “patriotically minded” private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year that meddled in the United States presidential election.
Putin ultimately said similar things about patriotic Russians fighting in Crimea, after denying that there were any Russian troops there. But Russian troops were constantly fighting in Crimea, indiscriminately killing civilians -- including those from the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Great Britain:
A Dutch-led investigation has concluded that the powerful surface-to-air missile system used to shoot down a Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine two years ago, killing all 298 on board, was trucked in from Russia at the request of Russian-backed separatists and returned to Russia the same night.
And how does Trump respond to Putin's admission of hacking? The Donald is going to let the Russians reopen their den of spies:
The Trump administration is moving toward handing back to Russia two diplomatic compounds, near New York City and on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, that its officials were ejected from in late December as punishment for Moscow’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

President Barack Obama said Dec. 29 that the compounds were being “used by Russian personnel for intelligence-related purposes” and gave Russia 24 hours to vacate them. Separately, Obama expelled from the United States what he said were 35 Russian “intelligence operatives.”
This is particularly disturbing in light of this news:
In the throes of the 2016 campaign, the FBI found itself with an escalating problem: Russian diplomats, whose travel was supposed to be tracked by the State Department, were going missing. The diplomats, widely assumed to be intelligence operatives, would eventually turn up in odd places, often in middle-of-nowhere USA.

One was found on a beach, nowhere near where he was supposed to be. In one particularly bizarre case, relayed by a U.S. intelligence official, another turned up wandering around in the middle of the desert. Interestingly, both seemed to be lingering where underground fiber-optic cables tend to run.
Yes, it appears that the Russians are not satisfied with sabotaging our elections via the Internet, they appear to be planning to sabotage our Internet hardware infrastructure as well.

Trump keeps claiming that he's not colluding with the Russians. But every time Vladimir Putin says "bend over" Trump asks "how far?"

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