The neocon-driven propaganda campaign to prevent president-elect Donald Trump from taking office took an unexpected turn on Thursday when CBS posted an article claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally authorized the alleged hacking of the DNC. According to the report:

“American intelligence officials say they are convinced that Russian hacking of our presidential election was approved by President Vladimir Putin. Sources confirm to CBS News they believe Putin was aware of attacks that began in July of last year. An official investigation is still going on. But this is the first time the hacking that plagued the Democratic National Committee until Election Day has been linked to Putin, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues. The hacks were so widespread and sustained over such a long period of time that U.S. Intelligence sources say it could not have been carried out without the knowledge of senior levels of the Kremlin. CBS News has learned that investigators believe the initial cyberattack involved thousands of malicious emails aimed at the U.S. government, military and political organizations.” (“Vladimir Putin likely gave go-ahead for U.S. cyberattack, intelligence officials say“, CBS News)

As is true with earlier reports on the same topic, CBS fails to provide the names of any of its “U.S. intelligence sources”, any corroborating evidence to support its allegations, or any proof that its speculative stitching together of isolated facts produce an accurate account of what actually took place. No where in the entire hysterical narrative, do the authors mention the fact that neither the DNC nor the Podesta emails were “hacked” by a hostile foreign power, but “leaked” from within the DNC itself or by agents operating at the NSA.

The most probable explanation for the alleged cyber intrusion is that the emails were given to WikiLeaks by a disgruntled employee operating in the Hillary campaign who was so sickened by the lies and corruption that he decided to blow the whistle. Is that so hard to believe?

Needless to say, this logical storyline doesn’t jibe with the CIA-MSM-Podesta version of events which requires a charge of foreign espionage to overturn the election and implement its treasonous plan for regime change in Washington.

According to the Daily Mail, Craig Murray, who is the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange,

“flew to Washington, D.C. for emails….He claims he had a clandestine hand-off … near American University with one of the email sources. Murray said the leakers’ motivation was ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the ’tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders’… Murray says: ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks’. ‘Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,’ Murray insists.” …. Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election. ‘I don’t understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn’t true,’ he said. ‘Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that.” (EXCLUSIVE: Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails“, Daily Mail)

As of Thursday, none of the major media have covered or investigated Murray’s claims which should be expected since it essentially proves that the MSM fairytale-version of events is pure bunkum. By the way, there’s an excellent article at Consortium News by 6 Intelligence agency veterans titled “US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims” that challenges the absurd ‘Russia hacking claim’ and attributes the cyber incident to leaking. Here’s a short blurb from the piece that helps to clarify a few important points:

“All signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the National Security Agency would know it – and know both sender and recipient. In short, since leaking requires physically removing data – on a thumb drive, for example … NSA is able to identify both the sender and recipient when hacking is involved….The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network… The various ways in which usually anonymous spokespeople for U.S. intelligence agencies are equivocating – saying things like “our best guess” or “our opinion” or “our estimate” etc. – shows that the emails alleged to have been “hacked” 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. 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 – 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.” (“US Intel Vets Dispute Russia Hacking Claims“, Consortium News)

Bottom line: Leaked not hacked. Thus, the MSM “Putin did it” version = Bullshit.

Here’s more on Murray’s eyewitness account of his contact with the whistleblower. This is from an exchange that took place on Tuesday in an interview between Murray and author David Swanson.

David Swanson– When you say you’ve met the leaker; was that of the DNC emails or the Podesta emails? Craig Murray– I cannot give too much detail on that…but I have met one of the people involved. …The person is American and not connected to Russia at all….(Julien Assange has confirmed that the leaker was not Russian) David Swanson– Your claim is not that the Russians would never hack into a computer, right? Your claim is that you know who did this and it isn’t Russia? Craig Murray– Right, I was involved in handling top secret material myself for over 20 years, and all the spy services spy on each other all the time. So the Russians could have done this, but they didn’t. I happen to know that they didn’t. In both the Podesta and the DNC emails came from sources that are not Russian, but were American inside sources. And that could be inside the organization itself or it could be American agencies that are monitoring people’s communications….Inside the DNC or inside the NSA. (“Talk Nation Radio: Craig Murray: Russia Didn’t Do It“)

So, the ‘hacking story’ has nothing to do with hacking and nothing to do with Russia. It’s just another attempt by establishment elites to distort the facts in order to subvert the democratic process and overturn the election results. Isn’t that what this is really all about, regime change in the USA?

You bet it is.

This charade has Hillary’s bloody fingerprints all over it.

MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at [email protected].