When the Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan testified before congressional committees over the last few months he informed them that he presided over a vast web of telecommunication networks that monitored Americans doing business in Russia.

Some of these business people were inadvertently communicating with suspected Russian intelligence agents.

At some point Brennan would feel a “disturbance in the force” and notify the FBI to investigate the American citizens who created the disturbance.

A short list of companies doing business in Russia includes Boeing, Ford, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, McDonald's, General Motors, Johnson & Johnson, Cargill, Alcoa, General Electric and Morgan Stanley.

Evidently, no one from any of these organizations communicated with any Russian ambassadors, politicians, bankers, entrepreneurs, oligarchs, or other assorted Russian hangers on who even knew who Vladimir Putin was.

On the other hand, any associate of Donald Trump who ever dialed “Information” seeking the number of the Russian Chamber of Commerce finds themselves under investigation.

No less a journalist than Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh appears to be on Trump’s side on this issue, claiming that Trump is a victim of “disinformation” at the hands of a “Brennan operation.” Hersh goes on to claim the press has served as a shameful stenographer for Brennan to smear Trump.

Brennan apparently was auditioning for the CIA director job in a Clinton administration.

The investigation into the hack of Democratic National Committee’s system is also drawing some belated questions. A wide-ranging article in “The Nation” by Patrick Lawrence claims “there was no hack of the Democratic National Committee’s system on July 5 last year — not by the Russians, not by anyone else.”

Lawrence quotes an organization called Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). This group is made up of forensic investigators with technical, national security and geopolitical experience. Lawrence’s lengthy article covers all aspects of the so called hack, but two things he finds are telling.

First, a forensics investigator wrote, “that metadata was deliberately altered and documents were deliberately pasted into a Russianified Word document with Russian language settings and style headings.” And secondly, “On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds.”

This transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second could not have been accomplished without the use of a thumb drive and had to be downloaded at the computer.

It was a leak, not a hack.

Rube Render is the Curry County Republican chairman. Contact him at:

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