“Russia, Russia, Russia” Looks More Like the Awans Helping Debbie Rig Democratic Primaries (While in Bear Costumes) HootHootBerns Follow Jul 29, 2017 · Unlisted

(Credit: Reddit user LoneStarMike59)

Let us begin with this report:

Here’s an interesting detail:

From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) — the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.”

So let’s look at what that “Guccifer 2.0” character purportedly had access to.

“The hacker who claims to have breached the Democratic National Committee’s computers is now taking credit for hacking confidential files from a related campaign group.

Guccifer 2.0 alleged on Friday that he also attacked the servers of the Democractic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).”

Hmm. Wasn’t there someone recently arrested who happened to have access to the DNC and DCCC?

“Imran and his family members, all of whom worked as IT professionals for members of Congress, were banned from the House network Feb. 2, 2017, by the House Sergeant at Arms, but Wasserman Schultz has declined to fire him and circumvented the ban by having him “advise” her office.

WikiLeaks emails show that although Imran was employed by her taxpayer-funded House office, the Florida Democrat’s world — and iPad — mixed DNC, House and campaign business, and that Imran was on call for, and on a first-name basis with, top DNC staff.”

Oh, that’s odd. And for someone with the kind of access the Awans had? It would only be too simple for them to feign Russian “fingerprints” to throw the scent off themselves and their boss, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Another note from the original report:

“July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.

It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion — a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a “Russian hack.” This was all performed in the East Coast time zone.”

In other words: the data was doctored to appear as though Russia was behind its collection.

Even more troubling: how many other of these reported “Russian” attempts might have actually been someone like the Awans?

For example: claims that “Russia” was able to target voter rolls in up to 39 states.

“Last summer, a contractor working part-time at Illinois’s state board of elections noticed data leaving the network, evidence that cyber intruders had tried deleting or altering voter data.”

“Russia” also got into something even more useful:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-democrats-reconstruct-idUSKCN10E09H

“The Clinton campaign has confirmed that a DNC-linked system the campaign used to analyze voter data was compromised.

Yahoo News reported last week that the FBI had warned the Clinton campaign that it was the target of a hack in March, just before the DNC discovered it had been hacked. ”

The “DNC-linked” system to analyze voter data? NGP-VAN’s VoteBuilder.

“So what exactly is NGP VAN? With the voter file, a campaign can access a registered voter’s past voting history, their address and contact information.”

“As the sole distributor of the DNC’s voter file, the company’s database is a powerful and valuable tool for Democratic campaigns. With the voter file, a campaign can access a registered voter’s past voting history, their address and contact information.”

“As a campaign contacts voters, they will carefully record responses in their own NGP VAN account. Knowing whether a voter is likely to vote and supports your candidate will make your operation run more smoothly and efficiently on election day. And having all of that data carefully compiled in an online database can make or break a voter turnout operation.

Over the course of a campaign, volunteers and staff will personally talk to voters and ask whether or not they are supporting a candidate. Voter preferences are often assessed on a 1–5 scale, a 1 being extremely likely to vote for your candidate on election day, and a 5 meaning they are voting for someone else. These responses are recorded by campaigns in the NGP VAN database. In the weeks leading up to, and on election day, a campaign will reconnect with all of their “ones” to make sure they are going to vote, know where their polling place is etc. NGP VAN has many tools in which a campaign can sort, view and track data. For instance, a campaign can narrow down a list of every “two,” or likely voter for their candidate, in Manchester, N.H., print a list with their phone numbers or addresses, and have volunteers call those people or knock on their door to try to convince them to become “ones.” This data is extremely valuable to the campaign, and is the heart of their field operation.”

Access to NGP-VAN would allow “Russia” to identify who to target — with a certain amount of precision — who they might prefer not be on the voter rolls. And “Russia” also happened to be able to get into the voter rolls.

Why is this important?

During the primaries, and amid an array of other “irregularities”, complaints cropped up over and over again of would-be-voters, especially for Bernie, finding they’d been removed from the rolls or had their information changed without their knowledge.

At the time, many were quick to presume these voter roll purges and changes were simply one-offs, flukes, and “lazy Bernie Bros” not properly getting their registration in order.

Might “Russia” — or, possibly, the Awan brothers, posing as “Russia” — have lent a hand in affecting these voter rolls?

Further, with the Awans having had extensive access to potentially damaging private emails of multiple Democrats, one might well also ask if they had a helping hand in “encouraging” them to support Hillary Clinton — the candidate their boss, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, happened to unfairly favor in the primaries.

— —

If this was the case, it might also explain the next set of details.

Supposedly, “Russia” was in the DNC network since 2015.

The FBI, in September of 2015, tried to reach out to the DNC to make them aware of said hack, but it took several MONTHS for them to finally start to realize the FBI’s attempts to contact them were not hoaxes.

“Internal memos additionally show the DNC had the means to install advanced protection systems, but only “had a standard email spam-filtering service, intended to block phishing attacks and malware created to resemble legitimate email.” “

Had the means to install advanced protections, but settled for…a spam filter?

And yet, the DNC had NO PROBLEM in stopping THIS data breach in a hurry — and in a quite heavy-handed manner!

But even as that breach is easily stopped, it takes the DNC until April (7 months after FBI first notifies them) to finally realize there’s a problem.

“Chief executive Amy Dacey got a call from her operations chief saying that their information technology team had noticed some unusual network activity. “It’s never a call any executive wants to get, but the IT team knew something was awry,” ­Dacey said. And they knew it was serious enough that they wanted experts to investigate.” “Within 24 hours, CrowdStrike had installed software on the DNC’s computers so that it could analyze data that could indicate who had gained access, when and how.”

So at this point, they’ve hired “experts”, but only seem to be “analyzing” data on a compromised production network, rather than containing the breach.

It still takes them until June (when the primaries were over, funny enough) for them to finally, actually STOP and kick out the hackers and their data flow.

“One group, which CrowdStrike had dubbed Cozy Bear, had gained access last summer and was monitoring the DNC’s email and chat communications, Alperovitch said.

The other, which the firm had named Fancy Bear, broke into the network in late April and targeted the opposition research files. It was this breach that set off the alarm. The hackers stole two files, Henry said. And they had access to the computers of the entire research staff — an average of about several dozen on any given day.”

Only the second breach? Interesting.

But even more interesting is the DNC’s convenient refusal to let the FBI access their servers, instead leaving the FBI to “agree” to take CrowdStrike’s word for it.

“The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.

The bureau made “multiple requests at different levels,” according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a “highly respected private company” would get access and share what it found with investigators.”

“CrowdStrike, the private security firm in question, has published extensive forensic analysis backing up its assessment that the threat groups that infiltrated the DNC were associated with Russian intelligence.”

The DNC also rejected help from DHS.

“Former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Wednesday the Democratic National Committee “did not feel it needed” the assistance of the Department of Homeland Security following last year’s election hack, which U.S. officials have since attributed to Russia.”

The DNC seem to have something to hide. And seeing as how all of this happened under DWS’s watch, I’m even less surprised. But if I claimed to be hacked by Russian intelligence while I had terribly — and conveniently — lax security on my networks, and couldn’t even kick out the attackers until the primaries happened to be ending, I might not want too much scrutiny, either.

Now, let’s take another look at that “interesting remark” from the VIPS report I started with:

“From the information available, we conclude that the same inside-DNC, copy/leak process was used at two different times, by two different entities, for two distinctly different purposes:

-(1) an inside leak to WikiLeaks before Julian Assange announced on June 12, 2016, that he had DNC documents and planned to publish them (which he did on July 22) — the presumed objective being to expose strong DNC bias toward the Clinton candidacy; and

-(2) a separate leak on July 5, 2016, to pre-emptively taint anything WikiLeaks might later publish by “showing” it came from a “Russian hack.””

A second leaker, it seems, was actually involved in those oh-so-troubling Wikileaks emails. Another insider?

“But Murray insisted that the DNC and Podesta emails published by Wikileaks did not come from the Russians, and were given to the whistleblowing group by Americans who had authorized access to the information.

‘Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,’ Murray said. ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.’

He said the leakers were motivated by ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.’”

Well it would be a real shame if this was a response by an insider or insiders to, say, someone like the Awans helping Debbie rig the primaries!

Wonder if Seth Rich might have been one of those insiders? Well, we don’t have strong evidence of that, yet, but as the Voter Expansion Data Director at the DNC, it’s likely that the voter roll issues would have, at the very least, crossed his radar.

Going back to the Awans, though. I wonder who Imran’s attorney is?

“Chris Gowen, a founding partner at Gowen, Rhoades, Winograd and Silva, apparently did a little bit of everything for the Clintons over the course of multiple years including working in the Clinton White House, helping President Bill Clinton write his book, “My Life”, and serving on Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign.”

Sure that’s just another funny coincidence!

One final, fun thing with the Awans.

Supposedly, among other things, the Awans may have ties to the Pakistani ISI.

“The security breach of congressional data may have actually benefitted terrorists indirectly. According to a former CIA source close to Townhall columnist Fred Fleitz, whom has held national security jobs for 25 years with the CIA, DIA, Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff, the Awan brothers may have ties to the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI.”

If true, perhaps a “foreign power” “meddled” in our election, after all — just not Russia, and with the help of DWS and the DNC!

— —

TLDR version of my long spool of tinfoil (or just plain story time!):

The Awan brothers (Pakistani natives who may have ties to the ISI), working for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, aided her in rigging the Democratic primaries — potentially (but not exclusively) to include attacking voter rolls to remove Bernie supporters (identified via NGP-VAN), “encouraging” and possibly blackmailing Democrats into supporting Hillary (with or without some of the data they collected), and attacking a conveniently security-lax DNC and DCCC network overall. Some to all of this activity was performed while “posing” as Russian hackers and leaving clumsy fingerprints “Russian intelligence” would seem pretty sloppy to leave behind. The DNC/DCCC, under guidance, orders, or sheer neglect, permitted the Awans (or someone like them) to operate with near impunity and in lax security conditions until March, when the DNC “discovered” a problem and realized the FBI really had been calling them about a hack for months. They call in CrowdStrike, but the “hackers” are not booted from the network until the primaries are (virtually) over in June.

At some point, they discover there is a “good guy” leaker or leakers — insiders they didn’t quite expect. And so they choose to preempt the emails they know Wikileaks will release by deepening their imaginary story that they were hacked by “Russia”. They have their imaginary friend, Guccifer 2.0 (potentially aided by the Awans or others) take credit and add further fake fingerprints, releasing troubling documents over the rest of the election and further providing evidence for their own narrative that “Russia is trying to meddle in the election” — as well as to throw shade on Wikileaks releases, including those proving DWS’s involvement in rigging the primaries.

Further, they reject help from the FBI and DHS — potentially, because they don’t wish for them to discover criminal negligence and wrongdoing on part of the DNC and its leadership — including DWS. Worse, they may have potentially permitted agents of a foreign power to “influence” a presidential election — something they accuse Trump and Russia of to this day.