Chemical weapons in Syria: Whodunnit?

Well, John Kerry may have achieved his "Colin Powell at the UN" moment...

In some of the administration’s most strident language, Mr. Kerry accused the Syrian government of cynically seeking to cover up the use of the weapons, and he rejected its denial of responsibility for a “cowardly crime.”

But where's the evidence? We're going to need something very, very, very convincing, given the history of prevarications that have been used to gin up wars in our recent (and not so recent) past.

From Moon Over Alabama a few days ago...

Videos of the incident show many people, including children, with respiratory problems. But non of the first responders and medical personal in those videos wear any protection against chemical weapons.

Real chemical weapons, like Sarin, are persistent agents. They stick to the cloth of the victims and any contact with those victims would practically guarantee to kill the people who try to help them unless those people take serious precautions. Whatever happened in Syria today is therefore unlikely to be the consequence of military grade chemical weapons. Many other chemical agents, like insecticides based on organophospate or some industrial process chemicals, could induce the observed symptoms.

It would of course be totally irrational for the Syrian government to use chemical weapons just the moment that chemical weapon inspectors arrive in the country. But it makes a lot of sense for the insurgents and their foreign supporters to create such an incident, as the did previously, and to use it to renew their propaganda campaign against the Syrian government. It is therefore no surprise that the British government immediately jumped all over the case.

(Emphasis added.) It's more than a little odd that the Syrian government would resort to such a measure at this time, when the rebels seem desperate...

See this blogger for a vigorous (and rather foul-mouthed, even by my standards) argument that the "attack" video constitutes a fake. Obviously, there are real victims here, and they were hit by something terrible -- but what, exactly, hit them?

An apparently well-informed person named Dan Kaszeta has offered an interesting report (pdf) on the attack near Damascus. Although Kaszeta does not offer conclusions on the "whodunnit" question, he does believe that the chemical agent was not sarin or any other nerve agent.

In the videos, people are standing around both the dead and injured. Medical providers, both professional and obvious amateurs are handling injured people and their clothing, with no protective equipment. Many dead bodies are handled with no gloves. If some of the dead and injured were contaminated with even minute amounts of nerve agent, other people would be getting ill very quickly.

a. Some victims appear to have miosis (pinpointed pupils), but some of them are clearly having a bright light shined in their eyes. Some of the supposed examples are not pronounced. (I examined my own pupils in the mirror while shaving to form a basis of comparison.) Diagnosing miosis merely by watching videos is very troublesome and inaccurate. (Note to medics: Use the dimmest light you can and creep in from the side of the eye, avoiding shining the light into the pupil itself.)

b. In the event of nerve agent use, pinpoint pupils would be nearly ubiquitous among the affected population. The people with more serious symptoms would also have pinpoint pupils. Some of the people in the videos with serious symptoms appear to have miosis, while others do not. In fact, some pupils appear dilated. (This can be a sign of atropine administration.)

Various witness accounts I have seen in the media have reported the following phenomena, some of which are inconsistent with nerve agents. It should be noted that, at the time of writing, all of these circumstances should be considered strictly anecdotal.
a. Burning sensations
b. People appearing to be dead “coming back to life” after some hours
c. Odor of sulfur. (Sarin is odorless. All of the nerve agents are odorless except at concentrationsthat are quickly lethal.)
d. Odor of “cooking gas” (cooking gases are odorless, but artificial scents such as mercaptans are added to indicate leaks)
e. Odor of vinegar
f.Odor of rotting fish
g. Drowsiness
h. Itchiness
i. Reddening of eyes

Taken in toto, these symptoms don't match any chemical agent known to Kaszeta. Later in the paper, he speculates on the possible use of a Toxic Industrial Chemical.

And now we get to what I consider the most important indicator (so far) that we are being hornswoggled. In the following, the initials "FSA" refer to "Free Syrian Army"...

Reuter published the following report, which was repeated elsewhere:

“Not all of the missiles appeared to have carried chemical warheads, the FSA spokesman said, but those that did were suspected to have contained sarin, a Russian-made nerve agent called SC3 and liquid ammonia supplied by Iran.” 7

I view this as highly suspect. It is nonsensical to me. The following reasons make this statement seem very strange to me:

1. I have made numerous inquiries among experts I know and have conducted extensive research in the various books and documents at my disposal. I can find no reference to any substance Russian/Soviet or otherwise, known as SC3. My inquiries continue and I have reached out to some former Soviet-bloc countries for more information.

2. SC3 is a nonsensical designation for an allegedly Russian chemical compound. S and C are the same character in the Cyrillic alphabet used in Russian language. (I studied Russian language for 3 years in university and for a bit in graduate school as well.) Is this a transliteration error?

3. It is patently absurd to mix Sarin and liquid ammonia. Liquid ammonia reacts very quickly with Sarin due to its extreme pH. Liquid ammonia will inactivate Sarin within seconds or minutes depending on the concentration. Even someone with a basic knowledge of nerve agent chemistry ought to know that basic pH levels decontaminate Sarin. It seems perverse that someone would construct a device in this manner.

And it seems extremely telling that this "FSA" source felt obliged to get the Iranians into the story. As if Iran wants to get involved!

How on earth could anyone from the FSA know this stuff?

That unnecessary dig at Iran is the best evidence that we've entered Disinfo-land. Disinformation campaigns often injure their own credibility by taking things one step too far.

When I saw that Iran reference, my first reaction was straight out of Wrath of Kahn:  "LeDEEEEEEN!!!" And sure enough, our old friend has indeed been trying to link the planned regime change in Syria to the allegedly more pressing need for regime change in Iran. (As you will recall, Iran is Mikey's bete noir.) Here's the latest from Mikey's blog:

There are thousands of Iranian killers in the front lines, hailing from the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force and from Hezbollah, long the regime’s foreign legion. Iranian advisers tell Assad’s loyalists where and how to attack, and if the Syrians have indeed used chemical weapons, you can be sure the Iranians approved it, and were probably involved in the operations.

Do we really need to hear more? Sounds to me like that "FSA" statement quoted by Reuters was written in a certain office in Georgetown...

A word about the video/podcast embedded above: It comes from a source (the Corbett Report) that, under normal circumstances, I might not endorse. But in this instance, the information seems quite valid, and I strongly suggest that you give it a listen.

The interview brings up the possibility of a chlorine attack by the rebels. After some initial investigation, I've come to the tentative belief that the "chlorine theory" fits the symptoms listed above somewhat better than does the semi-official "sarin theory." But the matter still requires much further research.

Read More

Everything old is new again

Have you noticed the trend? All sorts of old spook news is being presented as if it were new spook news. The latest example is a Foreign Policy story hidden behind a pay wall. The headline (by way of Memeorandum) reads:

Exclusive: CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran — The U.S. knew Hussein was launching some of the worst chemical attacks in history — and still gave him a hand.

Isn't this rather familiar? Whole books have been written about American aid to Saddam Hussein during the 1980s. First and foremost would be The Spider's Web by Allan Friedman, along with Kenneth Timmerman's The Death Lobby. Joseph Trento's Prelude to Terror gets into this area.

A week or so ago, we were gifted with the breathtaking revelation that the CIA has admitted to its role in the coup against the Iranian leader Mosaddegh in 1953. My response: Cah-MON. Around the time of the Iranian revolution of 1979, there were, like, a zillion news stories which talked about the bad things the CIA did in that country.

We also have allegedly new news about a possible conspiracy in the death of Princess Di. (We'll get to that soon -- promise.) But does the new news do more than recapitulate the old news? Maybe the BBC can drag out Rupert Allason to reassure the public once again.

To judge from some of the internet commentary I've seen, many younger Americans were genuinely shocked to learn that the NSA and Britain's GCHQ trade information all the time, thereby bypassing laws against domestic spying. (Our spooks eavesdrop on British citizens and their spooks spy on ours. Then the spooks trade data upon request. It's all very civilized.) If memory serves, this arrangement was discussed in James Banford's The Puzzle Palace in 1983.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that the House Select Committee on Assassinations, flawed as it was, overturned the Warren Commission's "no conspiracy" verdict in the JFK case.

The most absurd example of this selective amnesia occurred in the later 1980s. I don't have the citation to hand, so you'll have to take my word for this. During the Iran-contra controversy, The New York Times published an article pooh-poohing then-current conspiracy theories. The piece included words to this effect: "Some people even say that the CIA tried to assassinate Fidel Castro." Snicker snicker; smirk smirk. "Oh those wacky conspiracy theorists! What will they think up next?"

Of course, the CIA did try to kill Castro. We've known all about those assassination attempts since the late 1960s, when the news broke in...(wait for it)...the New York Times.

A youthful citizenry which has more-or-less ceased to read non-fiction books is doomed live in a state of perpetual astonishment. I'm reminded of an old story which may or may not be true: Circa 1970, a writer was interviewing the famous model Twiggy, then in her 20s. For some reason, the interviewer mentioned the concentration camps. She had never heard of them. And she was floored to learn the details: "Six million? That's perfectly awful!"

Read More

Syria

I think Booman is turning against Obama based on this Syrian "inspection for chemical weapons" BS. If Booman has finally had it with the guy...well. That's like Ann Coulter finally admitting that McCarthy was a jerk.

Nevertheless, it seems that the navies of Britain and the US are going to launch some sort of attack. If and when this happens, the Great Liberal Hope -- the guy given a premature Nobel Peace Prize -- will have finally managed to Dubya-ize himself.

Read More

Spooks, war, financial skullduggery, Assange and Windows 8

Gotta move quickly...

That secret listening post. I thought that the preceding post -- which identifies the probable location of the secret base in the Middle East maintained by GCHQ (Britain's NSA) -- would get a lot of attention. Instead, this blog launched a lead balloon. Let's try again.

This follow-up story in The Telegraph recapitulates the first report in the Independent.

The Middle East listening station picks up messages and data travelling through the submarine cables in the region, which are then copied on to a computer system and examined.

The system was reportedly established while Labour was in Government, under a warrant signed by David Miliband, who was Foreign Secretary at the time.

I didn't notice Milibrand's name before. He became Foreign Secretary in 2007 and held the job until 2010. This small nugget of data fits in with my thesis that British spooks were responsible for the "cable cut" mystery of 2008.

Why do I harp on this? Back in 2008, some observers (including myself) wrote pieces warning that the cable cut "accidents" were too numerous and convenient to be accidental. But the public didn't listen to guys like me; the public preferred the reassurances of those mainstream writers who snickered at those wacky conspiracy theorists with their wacky ideas. "Undersea cables are accidentally severed all the time," we were told. Only a paranoid fool would suggest that spooks might resort to sabotage and trickery to scoop up data.

Well, here it is, five years later, and all signs indicate that I was right. So, like, neener.

Cass Sunstein. Obama has proposed an NSA review panel, and guess who he wants to be on it? Cass Sunstein.

If you've forgotten who he is, go here and here. In short: Sunstein was the genius who decided that the best way for the government to tamp down "conspiracy culture" would be to act conspiratorially. He wanted paid gummint shills to infiltrate conspiracy chat groups and toss water on the wildfires of lunacy.

Of course, a little common sense should reveal the big flaw in this plan: Inevitably, the existence of those shills would become known -- and after the Big Reveal, the looniest conspiratards would consider their beliefs to be confirmed. The wackos who think that Obama is a Muslim space vampire will redouble their efforts once they learn that the gummint has tried to censor the Muslim space vampire truthers.

A Harvard man, Cass is, and yet he couldn't figure that one out on his own. I can think of a word that rhymes with "Cass"...

Another reason to hate 8. The German government warns that Windows 8 contains a backdoor that says "Hey, hey, NSA -- come see what I'm doing today!"

The German government's documents allege that the group's core hardware element - a chip called the Trusted Platform Module (TPM), which appears in hardware built by Trusted Computing Group companies - interfaces directly with Windows 8 and enables Microsoft remote, unfettered access to any computer on which the operating system runs.

Apparently, Windows 7 (greatest OS ever!) is safe. Well, safer.

Also see here. 

Did you get the memo? I really should devote an entire post to this fine piece of investigative reporting by Greg Palast. If you think Larry Summers is bad now, wait until you read this...

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank.

The NSA vs. Kim Dotcom. You may know that Kim is a Finnish-born "internet entrepreneur" in New Zealand who made a ton of money from the Medaupload site, which was shut down because it provided free goodies. The NZ government, acting at the behest of the US, arrested Kim; the gummint also got his lists of "customers." His case is a cause celebre among those scoundrels who like to use the internet to get free goodies.

We now learn that the NSA helped catch Kim, using PRISM. (Also see here.)

This is a Rubicon-crossing moment. Even if you hate guys like Kim, you should be concerned to see the NSA's capabilities used against a private citizen. He is not a terrorist or the representative of a foreign power. Cops are using now PRISM to keep citizens in line.

Haven't I been warning you folks that this would happen?

Julian Assange. Now I don't know what to make of this guy. First, he croons a love-song to the Randroid wing of the GOP. Then, we learn about...this.

...the Wikileaks Party revealed a new attempt to appeal to the far Right. In official election tickets lodged with the Australian Electoral Commission, they have said they want the fascist Australia First Party, the pro-shooting-in-National-Parks Shooters and Fishers Party , and the “mens rights activist” Non-Custodial Parents Party to win a seat instead of the Australian Greens. In New South Wales, if you take the easy option and just tick the Wikileaks Party box in the Senate, and if they don’t win, your vote will go to those three right-wing parties before it goes to the Greens.

In other words, the Wikileaks Party in Oz favors fascists over lefties. This move led to the implosion of the Wikileaks party.

Just yesterday, Assange offered a statement euphoniously titled "Google and the NSA: Who’s holding the ‘shit-bag’ now?" He makes some very good points about the many ways in which Google has fallen away from it's original "Don't be evil" philosophy:

Google started out as part of Californian graduate student culture around San Francisco’s Bay Area. But as Google grew it encountered the big bad world. It encountered barriers to its expansion in the form of complex political networks and foreign regulations. So it started doing what big bad American companies do, from Coca Cola to Northrop Grumman. It started leaning heavily on the State Department for support, and by doing so it entered into the Washington DC system. A recently released statistic shows that Google now spends even more money than Lockheed Martin on paid lobbyists in Washington.

That Google was taking NSA money in exchange for handing over people’s data comes as no surprise. When Google encountered the big bad world, Google itself got big and bad.

Yeah, well...here's the thing, Julian: You can't assail Google for playing the Washington game and simultaneously root for the most conservative wing of the Republican party to take power. As for those fascist groups you pal around with in Oz: They may not be "big and bad" yet, but they are indeed bad, and God help us if they ever make it big.

Syria. Ah...hell. There's just too much going on, and I need to draw this post to a close. So I'll give you just the basics: Although we've been repeatedly told that Syrian use of chemical weaponry justifies American intervention, the American people aren't falling for this line, and history suggests that the rebels, not the government, are the ones using chemical weapons.The Syrian government has welcomed inspectors, indicating that Assad is not the one with something to hide.

The American people are being uncharacteristically wise in their hesitation to become involved. We don't need to get bogged down in another Iraq. Syrian dictator Assad is no angel -- quite the opposite, in fact -- but the Al Nusra front, which seeks his overthrow, will probably be worse.

Let the Syrians work this one out.

Read More

GC-Wiki and the location of that secret base in the Middle East

First, some housekeeping chores: After you read this piece, please check out the remarkable revelation in the preceding article about the death of Michael Hastings. The story below that introduces the important topic of "GC-Wiki," which is the topic of our current investigation. Since the piece you are about to read contains actual original research (woo hoo!) on an important topic, I hope that you, gentle reader, can help publicize this post.

Sadly, publishing this research means delaying two very interesting articles on Larry Summers and Princess Di. All of that material will appear soon. I hope. (Apologies to readers D and B, who helped me with those stories.)

Are we going to get to that original research now? Nope. First, a recap.

On the 22nd, the Independent published a piece about the NSA's ability to tap into undersea cables in the Middle East. The opening paragraphs suggested, but did not state, that the information came from NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden. Snowden responded angrily, claiming that he has never spoken to anyone from the Independent. Moreover, none of his stories have compromised operations in the Middle East.

(Nevertheless, many articles -- including this one from UPI -- have falsely claimed that Snowden was the source for the Independent's reportage.)

Those (few) who read deeply into the Independent's story learned that their writers got their information about undersea cables from a secret "spooks only" website called GC-Wiki. The "GC" is short for GCHQ, which is the British equivalent of the NSA. (The NSA and GCHQ have worked very closely together for many years.) The Independent then offered, en passant, a bombshell revelation: That Ed Snowden got a treasure trove of documents from GC-Wiki.

Information about the project was contained in 50,000 GCHQ documents that Mr Snowden downloaded during 2012. Many of them came from an internal Wikipedia-style information site called GC-Wiki. Unlike the public Wikipedia, GCHQ’s wiki was generally classified Top Secret or above.

I still don't understand how the Independent knew that about Snowden. But Snowden did not deny that claim; he simply denied working with the Independent.

The Independent story marked the very first mention of GC-Wiki anywhere in the "normal" online universe. Literally within minutes of the appearance of that story, a Wikipedia editor named Gareth Kegg put up a new entry devoted to GC-Wiki. (Thanks, B, for your help here.)

And yet it appears that certain journalists have known all about GC-Wiki for some time.

In an earlier stage of the Snowden controversy, I directed your attention to a little-noticed mystery. The Washington Post and the Guardian published what purported to be the same image from the same pdf report on the now-infamous NSA operation known as Prism. Thanks to the Independent, we now know that Snowden downloaded this material from GC-Wiki. (Apparently, the NYT is now going to have access to this same cache.)

But there was an odd discrepancy, first noted by Cryptome. The two images -- one published in the Washington Post, one published by the Guardian -- were not the same. And based on the Independent's revelations, the difference now seems crucial.

Let's take a close look at those images again -- and remember, these are supposed to be the same image:

I think you should have no problem spotting the difference. The WP image has been re-drawn to convey the impression that the NSA is tapping into cables solely within America's territorial waters. The Guardian image -- surely the original version, probably taken from GC-Wiki -- indicates that British and US spooks have tapped into cables all over the world.

We can play a subtler game of "spot the difference" if we take a closer look at the Independent story. 

One of the areas of concern in Whitehall is that details of the Middle East spying base which could identify its location could enter the public domain.

We are, in fact, going to identify the location of that secret base in this very post. Keep reading.

But first things first...

The data-gathering operation is part of a £1bn internet project still being assembled by GCHQ. It is part of the surveillance and monitoring system, code-named “Tempora”, whose wider aim is the global interception of digital communications, such as emails and text messages.

This is not the first mention of Tempora. As many of you already know, there was a flurry of Tempora stories toward the end of June. But these stories indicated that the Tempora project was restricted to the interception of cable traffic in and around the UK. See, for example, this piece and this article in the Atlantic. (Actually, the latter article indicates that cable interception is global, but does not specify the Middle East.)

I would also note that both President Obama and the New York Times have denounced Ed Snowden as a "hacker." Previously, I couldn't understand what Obama was talking about, since hacking played no role in any of the Guardian stories. However, now that we know that Snowden's documents came from GC-Wiki, we may surmise that he may not have had authorization to download them.

So why has everyone -- including Snowden! -- been so desperate to cover up the Middle East surveillance operation?

Hypocrisy plays a certain role here. Americans want the NSA to spy on that part of the world. We just don't want the NSA to read our emails.

But I suspect that a deeper reason has to do with the "cable cut" mystery of 2008, a once-hot controversy which everyone now seems to have forgotten.

I find it curious that the average person can read these words...

The station is able to tap into and extract data from the underwater fibre-optic cables passing through the region

...without asking how the NSA (or GCHQ) gained access to cables placed under the sea. Let's have another look at our "cable cut" post from 2008:

The "cable cut" mystery -- the strange destruction of undersea cables carrying internet traffic in the Middle East -- cannot be ignored. We now have a fifth incident.

Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.

These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

James Bond used to say that "three times is enemy action." What would he say about five incidents?

My instincts tell me that the purpose of inflicting this kind of damage would be to have the "right" people conduct the repair operations. The NSA may find it a whole lot easier to tap into the data stream once the patch job is complete.

Looks like my instincts may have been right. Of course, the repair crew may have come from GCHQ, not the NSA -- but the basic operation comes to the same thing.

There's another reason why everyone (including Snowden) has been so hesitant to talk about surveillance operations in the Middle East: The Israeli connection.

(Everyone is afraid to talk about the Israelis -- except, as we shall see, the French.)

The Independent says "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East..." yet refuses to identify the location. In fact, we are told that the British government is desperate to keep the location secret.

Naturally, my first suspicions ran toward Unit 8200, Israel's much-vaunted version of the NSA.

My research suggests that this secret "station" is located within the Urim SIGINT base run by Unit 8200. From Wikipedia:

Urim is located in the Negev desert approximately 30km from Beersheba, a couple of kilometres north of the kibbutz of Urim. Until articles were published about the base in 2010, it was not known to the outside world.

The directions given above are not quite correct. If you look up Urim, Israel, on Google Earth, you will easily find the "secret" base -- replete with an impressive array of Satellite dishes -- roughly 2 km east of the kibbutz.

The following comes from Wikipedia (with emphasis added by me):

Created decades ago to monitor Intelsat satellites that relay international telephone calls, Urim was expanded to cover maritime communications (Inmarsat), and kept being expanded to intercept the signal communications of ever more communications satellites. Duncan Campbell, an intelligence specialist speculated that Urim is "akin to the UK-USA pact's Echelon satellite interception ground stations."[1] The Echelon system was set up by the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand as a global network of signal interception stations.

The reference to "Inmarsat" probably refers to the International Mobile Satellite Organization. However, the hyperlink in the Wikipedia entry goes to another article on a private British satellite company, also called Inmarsat. (It's almost as though someone at Wikipedia wanted a guy like me to go down this very research trail.)

Here's more on Urim, via Le Monde. Unlike the Brits and the Americans, French journalists are perfectly willing to talk about Israel's secrets:

The base, hidden until now, has rows of satellite dishes that covertly intercept phone calls, emails and other communications from the Middle East, Europe, Africa and Asia. Its antennas monitor shipping and would have spied on the aid ships in the days before they were seized...

A large circle in the farmland shows the site of a direction-finding antenna (HF/DF) for monitoring shipping.

I've noted similar circles near secret facilities in the US (as seen via Google Earth). Now we know their purpose.

The Urim base targets many nations, friend and foe. A former analyst at Unit 8200, a military service conscript, said she worked full time translating intercepted calls and emails from English and French into Hebrew. It was “interesting” work, studying routine communications to find the nuggets. Her section listened mostly to “diplomatic traffic and other off-shore [international] signals”.

And now for the "Tah-dah!" moment...

The Urim base, said our sources, is the centre of a spying network that taps undersea cables (notably Mediterranean cables linking Israel to Europe via Sicily) and has covert listening posts in Israeli embassy buildings abroad.

Do you think that Urim hosts the super-secret GCHQ/NSA listening post mentioned in the Independent report? I do.

Read More

Hastings thought someone had tampered with his car

I didn't want to crowd out the preceding post so soon, because the topic is important and I even did a spot of original research on the GC-Wiki thing. So please go read the post below this one. And when you're done, read this L.A. Weekly article on Michael Hastings.

Turns out he told people he thought someone was tampering with his car. He even asked to borrow a friend's car because he did not trust his own. The helicopter thing may have been paranoia -- but on the other hand, do you recall the last act of Goodfellas?

The piece confirms earlier reports that he was working on an article about CIA Director John Brennan. Was that the story that got him killed?

I don't think so. As you may recall from a previous post, I found an intriguing clue: Just before the accident, he had sent messages to a guy named Ron Brynaert -- who was, and presumably still is, obsessed with the stranger aspects of the Wiener affair. The Breitbart-linked bloggers who went after Wiener also linked up with the underground war between spies and hackers. And...well, it gets complicated.

Now if you haven't done so already, go read the GC-Wiki thing. I'll have more to say about that soon. Something important, methinks.

Read More

The Game of Spooks

The Independent published a startling story revealing a secret British surveillance effort -- involving undersea fiber optic cables -- in the Middle East.

The Independent goes to great lengths to give the impression -- without actually stating -- that their story came from documents provided by Ed Snowden. Careless readers will presume that Snowden is now working with the Independent, not the Guardian.

But Snowden insists that he has never worked in any way with any journalists connected with the Independent. Furthermore, he says that he has been careful not to release this type of information.

The Snowden revelations have concentrated on the NSA's efforts to scoop up information from American citizens, sans warrant. He has not divulged anything about British or American efforts to learn what is going on the Middle East.

Obviously, many Americans are likely to support a whistlebower who reveals hidden truths about unconstitutional domestic surveillance. They are not likely to support someone who reveals sources and methods in the Middle East.

So someone in the UK is trying to make people think that Snowden has upped his game, when in fact he has not. Here is part of Snowden's response:

It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that the Guardian and Washington Post's disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others. The UK government should explain the reasoning behind this decision to disclose information that, were it released by a private citizen, they would argue is a criminal act.

Greenwald notes the suspicious timing:

and right as the UK government is trying to tell a court that there are serious dangers to the public safety from these documents, there suddenly appears exactly the type of disclosure the UK government wants but that has never happened before. That is why Snowden is making clear: despite the Independent's attempt to make it appears that it is so, he is not their source for that disclosure. Who, then, is?

Greenwald says that this is a tactic characteristic of the US government. But the Brits have also played this game, in exactly this way, many times.

One good US precedent does come to mind: Philip Agee, the CIA turncoat or whistleblower (take your pick). Back in the 1970s, CIA-friendly journalists mounted a massive disinformation campaign designed to convey the impression that Agee's revelations led to the death of a CIA station chief in Greece. The charge was not true, but the mud stuck.

Incidentally, previous Cannonfire posts have focused on the strange mysteries surrounding those undersea cables in the Middle East (the focus of the Independent's story). See here and here. Read those stories in conjunction with the Independent's latest; you tell me if it's all connected.

The GC-Wiki mystery. If you dig deeper into that Independent story, you'll find that their source of information is not really Ed Snowden but a site called GC-Wiki, a private "spooks only" wiki-type operation run by GCHQ, Britain's version of the NSA. If you hit the link in the previous sentence, you'll go to the "normal" Wikipedia's entry on GC-Wiki.

Here's what I find odd: That Wikipedia entry seems to be brand new -- the only citation goes to the above-mentioned Independent story. The entry appeared not days ago, but hours ago -- perhaps even minutes ago.

Thus, this very mysterious news story seems to be the first public mention of GC-Wiki anywhere in the world. At this writing, if you Google the term "GC-Wiki" in quotes, you will find no links other than the Wikipedia entry mentioned above. (There are links that go to a similarly-named but unconnected effort within the gaming community.) The Wikipedia entry says this:

The GC-Wiki was the source for many of the 50,000 documents downloaded by Edward Snowden which resulted in the 2013 mass surveillance disclosures

Okay. Let's think this through.

If Snowden got his documents from that "hidden" site -- and if the Independent got documents from that same site -- then how can the Independent's reporters try to leave readers with the impression that they were helped by Snowden?

Somehow -- and they won't say how -- the Independent's team of journalists got access (you might call it "independent access") to a site which is supposed to be available to intelligence personnel only.

I don't see how Snowden even figures into it.

I also don't see how the Independent would know that Snowden got documents from that site.

Read More