RUSSIA 🇷🇺 Thread: Wikileaks=FSB front, UKRAINE?, SNOWED LIED; NATO Aggression; Trump = Putins B!tch
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@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
Putin played himself:
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
Surveillance photos 'show Russian intelligence officers plotting Montenegro coup'
Surveillance photos 'show Russian intelligence officers plotting Montenegro coup'
GRU officer Eduard Shishmakov (1) meeting Aleksandar Sindjelic (2) ahead of the foiled coup attempt
- Ben Farmer, defence correspondent
29 AUGUST 2017 • 12:01AM
These are the covert surveillance photographs said to offer key proof Russian intelligence officers plotted a violent coup that would have ended in the assassination of a European leader.
The pictures obtained by European intelligence agencies allegedly show two officers of Russia’s GRU military spy service visiting the Balkans and overseeing the man they hired to orchestrate the bloody overthrow of Montenegro’s government.
Eduard Shishmakov and Vladimir Popov are to stand trial next month with 13 others for their part in an election day plot to attack Montenegro’s parliament and kill Milo Djukanovic, the pro-Western leader.
Eduard Shishamkov (1) and Vladimir Popov (2), both GRU military intelligence officers, are accused of orchestrating the plot
The photographs are believed to have been taken in a Belgrade park around the time of the foiled coup and are a key part of evidence prosecutors say links the plot to Russian “state bodies”.
The Kremlin has strongly denied any involvement and two pro-Russian opposition leaders among the defendants claim the plot is fake and confected to discredit them.
However British and US officials believe the conspiracy had high-level backing from Russia and was one of the most audacious examples of the Kremlin’s attempts to undermine European democracies.
The plot was only foiled when a conspirator turned himself in days before Serb nationalists disguised as police were to fire on election day protesters outside Parliament, kill Mr Djukanovic and plunge the country into turmoil.
You are not guilty if you fail. You are guilty if you fail and get caughtDr Igor Sutyagin
Shishmakov and Popov, who are being tried in their absence, are said to have begun plotting several months earlier, traveling to neighbouring Serbia to search for a suitable organiser on the ground.
Shishmakov had in 2014 been expelled from his post as Russian Deputy Military Attaché in Poland after the Poles caught him spying, according to the charges against him.
He travelled to the Balkans on a genuine passport made out under the alias Shirokov, which prosecutors claim could only have been issued with official Russian authority.
Another of the alleged plotters, Nemanja Ristic (pictured first from left), was photographed in December with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, (second from right) CREDIT: AP
The Russian pair are alleged to have appointed Aleksandar Sindjelic, a veteran anti-Western activist who had in the past boasted to associates of his ties with the Russian defence ministry.
After the plot was wound up, Sindjelic turned prosecution witness and his testimony will be a key part of the trial.
Surveillance pictures show Shishmakov and Popov together in a park and also Shishmakov talking to Sindjelic.
European intelligence agencies are understood to have helped the Montenegrins amass a wealth of evidence for what is the biggest trial the tiny Balkan nation has ever seen.
Shishmakov and Popov gave Sindjelic large sums for weapons and equipment and he was also given a lie detector test to check he was not a Western intelligence agent, it is claimed.
A lengthy indictment against the plotters alleges the network was given sophisticated encrypted phones set up from Moscow, while at least one money transfer to the conspirators was made from the same street as GRU headquarters in the Russian capital.
Dr Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military expert at the Royal United Services Institute, said the GRU was adept at recruiting and organising groups of insurgents and paramilitaries.
The military intelligence service has become emboldened after running successful operations in eastern Ukraine, but the exposure of GRU officers in Montenegro would have embarrassed it in Moscow, he said.
He said: “It’s embarrassing for everybody. You are not guilty if you fail. You are guilty if you fail and get caught.”
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
The War Zone
13 mins ·
The Kremlin's arrangement with the Syrian Kurds only adds more complexity for U.S. troops trying keep the focus on ISIS.
Russian Armor Rolls Into Kurdish Town As US and Turkish-Backed Forces Skirmish
THEDRIVE.COM
13 mins ·
The Kremlin's arrangement with the Syrian Kurds only adds more complexity for U.S. troops trying keep the focus on ISIS.
Russian Armor Rolls Into Kurdish Town As US and Turkish-Backed Forces Skirmish
THEDRIVE.COM
The Cold War and America’s Delusion of Victory
Odd Arne Westad
AUG. 28, 2017
President George H. W. Bush, left, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in 1991. Rick Wilking/Reuters
The Cold War as a system of states ended on a cold and gray December day in Moscow in 1991, when Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Soviet Union out of existence. Communism itself, in its Marxist-Leninist form, had ceased to exist as a practical ideal for how to organize society.
“If I had to do it over again, I would not even be a Communist,” Bulgaria’s deposed Communist leader, Todor Zhivkov, had said the year before. “And if Lenin were alive today, he would say the same thing. I must now admit that we started from the wrong basis, from the wrong premise. The foundation of socialism was wrong. I believe that at its very conception the idea of socialism was stillborn.”
But the Cold War as an ideological struggle disappeared only in part, despite Communism’s implosion. On the American side, not so much changed on that day. The Cold War was over, and the United States had won it. But most Americans still believed that they could only be safe if the world looked more like their own country and if the world’s governments abided by the will of the United States.
Ideas and assumptions that had built up over generations persisted, despite the disappearance of the Soviet threat. Instead of a more limited and achievable American foreign policy, most policy makers from both parties believed that the United States could then, at minimal cost or risk, act on its own imperatives.
America’s post-Cold War triumphalism came in two versions. First was the Clinton version, which promoted a prosperity agenda of market values on a global scale. Its lack of purpose in international affairs was striking, but its domestic political instincts were probably right: Americans were tired of foreign entanglements and wanted to enjoy “the peace dividend.”
As a result, the 1990s was a lost opportunity for international cooperation, particularly to combat disease, poverty and inequality. The most glaring examples of these omissions were former Cold War battlefields like Afghanistan, Congo and Nicaragua, where the United States could not have cared less about what happened — once the Cold War was over.
The second was the Bush version. Where President Bill Clinton emphasized prosperity, President George W. Bush emphasized predominance. In between, of course, stood Sept. 11. It is possible that the Bush version would never have come into being had it not been for the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington carried out by Islamist fanatics (a renegade faction, in fact, of an American Cold War alliance).
The Cold War experience clearly conditioned the United States response to these atrocities. Instead of targeted military strikes and global police cooperation, which would have been the most sensible reaction, the Bush administration chose this moment of unchallenged global hegemony to lash out and occupy Afghanistan and Iraq. These actions had no meaning in a strategic sense, creating 21st-century colonies under the rule of a Great Power with no appetite for colonial rule.
But the United States did not act out of strategic purpose. It acted because its people were understandably angry and fearful. And it acted because it could. The Bush version was directed by foreign policy advisers who thought of the world predominantly in Cold War terms; they stressed power projection, territorial control and regime change.
The post-Cold War era was therefore not an aberration but a continuity and confirmation of an absolute historical purpose for the United States. Gradually, however, over the course of the generation that has passed since the Cold War, the United States has become less and less able to afford global predominance.
As America entered a new century, its main aim should have been to bring other nations into the fold of international norms and the rule of law, especially as its own power diminishes. Instead, the United States did what declining superpowers often do: engage in futile, needless wars far from its borders, in which short-term security is mistaken for long-term strategic goals. The consequence is an America less prepared than it could have been to deal with the big challenges of the future: the rise of China and India, the transfer of economic power from West to East, and systemic challenges like climate change and disease epidemics.
If the United States won the Cold War but failed to capitalize on it, then the Soviet Union, or rather Russia, lost it, and lost it big. The collapse left Russians feeling déclassé and usurped. One day they had been the elite nation in a superpower union of republics. The next, they had neither purpose nor position. Materially, things were bad, too. Old people did not get their pensions. Some starved to death. Malnutrition and alcoholism shortened the average life span for a Russian man from nearly 65 in 1987 to less than 58 in 1994.
If many Russians felt robbed of a future, they were not wrong. Russia’s future was indeed stolen — by the privatization of Russian industry and of its natural resources. As the socialist state with its moribund economy was dismantled, a new oligarchy emerged from party institutions, planning bureaus and centers of science and technology and assumed ownership of Russia’s riches. Often, the new owners stripped these assets and closed down production. In a state in which unemployment had, officially at least, been nonexistent, the rate of joblessness rose through the 1990s to peak at 13 percent. All this happened while the West applauded Boris Yeltsin’s economic reforms.
In retrospect, the economic transition to capitalism was a catastrophe for most Russians. It is also clear that the West should have dealt with post-Cold War Russia better than it did. Both the West and Russia would have been considerably more secure today if the chance for Russia to join the European Union, and possibly even NATO, had at least been kept open in the 1990s.
Instead, their exclusion has given Russians the sense of being outcasts and victims — which, in turn, has given credence to embittered jingoists like President Vladimir Putin, who see all the disasters that have befallen the country over the past generation as an American plot to reduce and isolate it. Mr. Putin’s authoritarianism and bellicosity have been sustained by genuine popular support.
The shocks of the 1990s have given way to an uninhibited cynicism among Russians, which not only encompasses a deep distrust of their fellow citizens but also sees conspiracies against themselves everywhere, often contrary to fact and reason. Over half of all Russians now believe Leonid Brezhnev was their best leader in the 20th century, followed by Lenin and Stalin. Gorbachev is at the bottom of the list.
For others around the world, the end of the Cold War undoubtedly came as a relief. China is often seen as a major beneficiary of the Cold War. This is not entirely true, of course. For decades, the country was under a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship that was out of tune with its needs. A result, during the Maoist era, was some of the most terrible crimes of the Cold War, in which millions died. But during the 1970s and ’80s, Deng Xiaoping’s China benefited hugely from its de facto alliance with the United States, both in security and development.
In the multipolar world now establishing itself, the United States and China have emerged as the strongest powers. Their competition for influence in Asia will define the outlook for the world. China, like Russia, is well integrated into the capitalist world system, and many of the interests of these two countries’ leaders are linked to further integration.
Russia and China, unlike the Soviet Union, are not likely to seek isolation or global confrontation. They will attempt to nibble away at American interests and dominate their regions. But neither China nor Russia is willing or able to mount a global ideological challenge backed by military power. Rivalries may lead to conflicts, or even local wars, but not of the systemic Cold War kind.
The ease with which many former Marxists have adapted themselves to post-Cold War market economics raises the question of whether this had been an avoidable conflict in the first place. With hindsight, the outcome was not worth the sacrifice — not in Angola, not in Vietnam, Nicaragua or Russia, for that matter. But was it avoidable back in the 1940s, when the Cold War went from an ideological conflict to a permanent military confrontation?
While post-World War II clashes and rivalries were certainly unavoidable — Stalin’s policies alone were enough to produce those — it is hard to argue that a global Cold War that was to last for almost 50 years and threaten the obliteration of the world could not have been avoided. There were points along the way when leaders could have held back, especially on military rivalry and the arms race. But the ideological conflict at the root of the tension made such sensible thinking very difficult to achieve.
People of good will on both sides believed that they were representing an idea whose very existence was threatened. It led them to take otherwise avoidable risks with their own lives and the lives of others.
The Cold War affected everyone in the world because of the threat of nuclear destruction it implied. In this sense, nobody was safe from the Cold War. The greatest victory of Gorbachev’s generation was that nuclear war was avoided. Historically, most Great Power rivalries end in a cataclysm. The Cold War did not, but on a couple of occasions, we were much closer to nuclear devastation than any but a few realized.
Why were leaders willing to take such unconscionable risks with the fate of the earth? Why did so many people believe in ideologies that they, at other times, would have realized could not possibly hold all the solutions they were looking for? My answer is that the Cold War world, like the world today, had a lot of obvious ills. As injustice and oppression became more visible in the 20th century through mass communications, people — especially young people — felt the need to remedy these ills. Cold War ideologies offered immediate solutions to complex problems.
What did not change with the end of the Cold War were the conflicts between the haves and the have-nots in international affairs. In some parts of the world today, such conflicts have become more intense because of the upsurge of religious and ethnic movements, which threaten to destroy whole communities. Unrestrained by Cold War universalisms, which at least pretended that all people could enter their promised paradise, these groups are manifestly exclusionist or racist, their supporters convinced that great injustices have been done to them in the past, which somehow justify their present outrages.
Often people, especially young people, need to be part of something bigger than themselves or even their families, some immense idea to devote one’s life to. The Cold War shows what can happen when such notions get perverted for the sake of power, influence and control.
That does not mean that these very human urges are in themselves worthless. But it is a warning that we should consider carefully the risks we are willing to take to achieve our ideals, in order not to replicate the terrible toll that the 20th century took in its quest for perfection.
U.S. to Block Potential Russian Move Into American Energy
Trump administration worries that Russia’s Rosneft could acquire oil refineries owned by Venezuela’s Citgo
Ian TalleyUpdated Aug. 31, 2017 11:39 a.m. ET
Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro, left, greeted Igor Sechin, president of the Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft, as the president of Petróleos de Venezuela, Eulogio del Pino, looks on during a meeting in Caracas last year. Photo: miraflores press / handout/European Pressphoto Agency
By
Ian Talley
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration is ready to block a Russian state-owned oil giant from gaining control of critical U.S. energy assets owned by Moscow’s ally in Venezuela, senior American officials say, a move that could feed tensions between the old Cold War foes.
Petróleos de Venezuela SA offered PAO Rosneft nearly half of its Citgo Petroleum Corp. unit’s shares as collateral for $1.5 billion in loans the Russian firm made in 2016 to help prop up cash-starved PdVSA and its owner, the Venezuelan government.
Some U.S. lawmakers, worried the sanctioned Russian oil company could gain a controlling interest in a company that represents roughly 5% of U.S. crude-oil refining capacity, urged the Trump administration to use powers granted under national security laws to prevent the deal from happening.
Rosneft, seeing the potential for its Citgo deal going sour in the U.S., has tried to line up new collateral for its loans, say two people familiar with the matter. Besides arranging interests in major oil-producing operations in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro’s government has also promised future crude deliveries as collateral and interest payments, the two people said.
Representatives from the Russian Embassy in Washington, Citgo, Rosneft and PdVSA didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Russia, a major oil and natural gas producer, has long used its heft in global energy markets to leverage its foreign policy goals. The Kremlin’s continued support of Mr. Maduro’s government, which the U.S. declared a dictatorship and targeted with escalating sanctions, gives Russian President Vladimir Putin another channel to assert itself abroad and challenge U.S. power in Latin America.
Washington’s plan to stymie Rosneft’s claim is a sign the two powers are becoming further entrenched in their geopolitical struggle for influence around the globe.
Russia’s continued financing of Caracas is helping to keep the Maduro government on life support as the country’s economic and political crisis deepens, Venezuela’s debts build and its access to U.S. capital markets is constricted.
Amid mounting tensions between Moscow and Washington over a host of issues, the U.S. lawmakers were worried the Kremlin would gain ownership of critical American energy infrastructure if PdVSA defaulted and Rosneft claimed the Citgo collateral.
The latest round of U.S. sanctions against Venezuela targeting the country’s debt have raised default risks. PdVSA has about $60 billion in outstanding debt. Citgo’s chief assets are three major U.S. refineries, two on the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana and one outside of Chicago—with the capacity to refine 750,000 barrels of crude a day. It also has 48 petroleum storage terminals from Texas to Maine and has ownership in nine pipelines.
But senior U.S. officials say Rosneft, a company blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury for Russia’s role in destabilizing Ukraine, wouldn’t be allowed to take over Citgo.
“Should Rosneft assume a majority stake, that could trigger a number of legal implications for Citgo in terms of their status,” one senior administration official said. “Moreover, that would constitute a change in foreign ownership of Citgo, and we would look at that accordingly.”
A second senior U.S. official said Treasury “will ensure that the national security of the U.S. is protected and if it gets to that, I’m sure a very thorough review will be conducted by that panel,” referring to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. The CFIUS panel has broad powers to stop foreign investments based on potential threats to the country’s security.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, whose department plays a pivotal role on the multiagency panel, has already promised lawmakers that CFIUS would investigate the deal.
Should Russia be “foolish enough to go down that path,” a third senior administration official said, Treasury also has powers under its existing sanctions regime against Russia that could also stymie Rosneft’s Citgo deal.
The potential for the U.S. to block Rosneft from collecting on its Citgo collateral has prompted Moscow to try to find other sources of collateral for its loans to Caracas. On Tuesday, PdVSA said Eulogio Del Pino, Venezuela’s new minister of petroleum and former PdVSA president, explored with Russian Ambassador Vladimir Zemskiy new “co-investment plans” with “several Russian enterprises.”
Even if Rosneft sought to collect the Citgo shares or their auctioned value under a default, Russia’s oil giant would have to join a queue of other potential creditors. Many U.S. firms, including ConocoPhillips, are trying to lay claim to Citgo assets as compensation in legal battles with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company for the nationalization of their assets under the nation’s deceased President Hugo Chávez. Legal analysts say Rosneft would normally have legal recourse through U.S. courts as a creditor, but its designation as a sanctioned entity would be a major complication for the firm.
Russia’s involvement with Venezuela comes with financial risks of funding a country on the verge of sovereign default. Moscow also faces the potential for more U.S. punitive actions: Russia’s latest deals could put the Kremlin and its energy firms further afoul of U.S. sanctions.
“If they decided to sink in the billions of billions of dollars it would take in Venezuela, that would be a financial decision for them to take and for them to live with the consequences,” the second senior U.S. official said.
Write to Ian Talley at ian.talley@wsj.com
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
What Was Edward Snowden Doing in India?
What Was Edward Snowden Doing in India?
January 13, 2014
Nearly three years before he revealed himself as the source of leaked documents about NSA surveillance, Edward Snowden traveled to New Delhi, India. There, he spent six days taking courses in computer hacking and programming at a local professional school, according to school officials and people familiar with Snowden’s trip. Working with a private instructor, Snowden, who was then a contractor for the spy agency, took a course in "ethical hacking," where he learned advanced techniques for breaking into computer systems and exploiting flaws in software. The class’s ostensible purpose is to train students to protect computers and their contents from thieves and spies. But in order to do that, they learn how to break into computers and steal information. Snowden also inquired about methods to reverse-engineer the world’s most popular kits for committing widespread online crime.
Snowden didn’t disclose his India trip to investigators when renewing his top-secret security clearance the following year. It was that clearance, NSA officials say, that gave Snowden access to the 1.7 million classified files he later stole from the agency’s computer networks and databases. U.S. intelligence officials have faulted the company that conducted Snowden’s background check for not more thoroughly questioning him about overseas travel and what foreign nationals he may have met with, which is standard procedure for detecting whether someone is spying for a foreign power. They have characterized the background check as flawed and incomplete.
But Foreign Policy has learned that Snowden’s trip to India should not have been a mystery to the U.S. government or intelligence agencies. Snowden was in the country in his capacity as an NSA contractor "to assist as a technical expert" at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified. Snowden also told his computer instructor that he worked for the NSA and that he was in the city "on business," said Rohit Aggarwal, the CEO and founder of the school, Koenig Solutions. Government employees and contractors are not required to disclose foreign trips of an official nature, and may even be instructed not to, in order to avoid compromising intelligence operations and programs, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.
Snowden’s time in India has been covered in the Indian press but has received little attention in the United States. The travels offer a rare glimpse into his activities in the years before he became arguably the most famous leaker of classified secrets in American history.
Precisely what work Snowden did at the embassy in New Delhi is unclear. At the time, he worked as a technology specialist for Dell Inc. at an NSA facility in Japan. U.S. intelligence personnel are often stationed in American embassies, so it’s conceivable that Snowden could have been working on surveillance equipment in New Delhi. Among the documents that Snowden disclosed were those describing a program called Stateroom, which gathers electronic communications using equipment based in U.S. embassies around the world. Other documents Snowden released showed that the NSA may have spied on the Indian embassy in Washington and on the country’s mission to the United Nations.
Calls and emails to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi were not returned. Spokespersons for the NSA, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment for this article.
According to officials at the Koenig school, Snowden flew to India from Japan, arriving on Sept. 2, 2010, and staying for one night at New Delhi’s Hyatt Regency hotel. A Koenig representative picked him up at the hotel on Sept. 3 and then drove Snowden to a lodging facility provided by the school. He stayed there until Sept. 9 while he took classes, and then returned for one more night at the Hyatt before leaving India on Sept. 11, the school said. (Indian news publications, citing official travel and immigration documents, also show that Snowden was in the country during this period.)
Snowden’s instructor said he made no secret about his work for the NSA.Snowden’s instructor said he made no secret about his work for the NSA. While he didn’t describe the specific purpose of his visit, he did say he wanted to squeeze in some computer coursework while he was in town. The U.S. embassy is only six miles from the Koenig school. Snowden paid the $2,000 tuition and lodging fee himself, using a personal credit card, Aggarwal said.
Snowden’s instructor described him as quiet and diligent. He didn’t take many breaks. And he already had a high-level of knowledge about computer science, hacking, and programming.
Had background investigators inquired about Snowden’s travels, they likely would have asked if he’d had any contact with foreign nationals while he was abroad. All security clearance holders are required to disclose significant contact with foreigners. But any instructors and students Snowden met probably wouldn’t have risen to that level, a former intelligence official said. A Koenig spokesman said the school could only vouch for Snowden’s whereabouts while he was taking courses during the day. "Other than our people and students we would have no idea whom he met," said the spokesman, Somit Biswas.
In addition to the ethical hacking course, Snowden took a class in the Java computer programming language. Snowden said the course "would help him in ‘organizing a team who does’ work on Java" at Dell, a Koenig spokesperson said, citing a questionnaire that Snowden was required to fill out before he came to the school.
"His stated goal for coming to train at Koenig … was ‘getting knowledge and evaluating Koenig’s training program for my company. Certification might be nice, but it is not necessary,’" Biswas said. "He had also stated that his employers had approved Koenig as a training provider and that he would also be writing a review of the training experience which would help his company to evaluate Koenig as a future training partner and might be mutually beneficial to both."
David Frink, a spokesperson for Dell, declined to comment. "We have not discussed Mr. Snowden’s role with Dell and don’t plan to," he said. The Wall Street Journalreported last year that Snowden’s "work supervisor" informed investigators performing his background check that he had gone to India, but that they failed to clarify the purpose of the trip, resulting in a report that "did not present a comprehensive picture of Mr. Snowden," according to an intelligence documents.
Biswas said Snowden also inquired about courses in the analysis and reverse engineering of malicious computer code, such as the the ZeuS, Fragus, and SpyEye crimeware kits. That was a curious request, and potentially at odds with his interest in ethical hacking. Understanding malware is important for defending against it. But these are not ordinary malware. ZeuS is the world’s premier toolbox for custom-building online crime campaigns. It has been used to infect millions of computers around the world. All three programs have been used by criminals to commandeer individuals’ computers and to steal financial information. SpyEye allows criminals to create fake bank web pages, in order to trick people into entering their login and password, which the criminal then steals and uses to enter, and empty, their accounts. Last year, Microsoft filed a civil complaint alleging that clusters of computers infected with ZeuS have been used to steal more than $100 million.
It’s not clear why Snowden wanted to know about reverse engineering financial crime malware, but his resume indicates he may have been working on cyber security-related projects while a contractor with Dell. Koenig told Snowden that it didn’t offer courses along the lines he was interested in, but that it was considering adding them to its curriculum.
Snowden abruptly ended his coursework before completing a final portion of his training, Aggarwal said, in computer hacking forensics and an administrator course in the Linux operating system. "He was supposed to come back one morning, but he didn’t. He sent an email saying, please cancel the rest of my courses. I have a medical condition and need to go back to Japan for medical advice," according to Aggarwal. Snowden spent the night of September 10 at the Hyatt Regency, and then left India the next day, he said.
Snowden completed the ethical hacking course and the course in Java programming, Aggarwal said. A source who is familiar with Snowden’s professional resume, which was current as of 2013, said it lists his certification in ethical hacking as well as computer network defense. The only reference to even remotely anything like Java, this person said, appears in relation to Snowden’s work for a website company called Clockwork Chihuahua. There, Snowden said he edited JavaScript (which is loosely related to, but is not the same as Java). Snowden also claimed to have Japanese language skills and to be "comfortable working in austere environments," according to his resume.
U.S. officials have said that Snowden began downloading secret NSA files while he was working for Dell, in April 2012. He went to work for another NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, the following year. Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he took the job in order to access classified NSA documents.
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," Snowden said. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago." Snowden worked for the company only a few months, at a facility in Hawaii. There, he took more documents before ultimately fleeing to Hong Kong. He is currently living in Russia, where the government has granted him temporary asylum.
A computer security training professional in the United States said it’s not unusual for Americans to take courses abroad, particularly in India, where the tuition is a fraction of what it can cost in the United States. But the expert criticized the teaching of so-called "ethical hacking."
"
They can call it ‘ethical,’ it’s still hacking.They can call it ‘ethical,’ it’s still hacking. You’re teaching someone how to break into a system," the expert said.
Aggarwal, the Koening CEO, said it’s not unusual to find U.S. intelligence employees taking courses at his school, and that between 50 and 100 American military service personnel take courses there each year, as well as at a location in Dubai. A Defense Department spokesman could not confirm that military personnel have taken courses at the school, or that it’s been approved by the Pentagon as a training facility. But personnel responsible for protecting the department’s computer systems are required to obtain commercial certificaitons, including in ethical hacking.
@DonKnock @The Black Panther @SJUGrad13 @88m3 @Cali_livin @Menelik II @Hogan in the Wolfpac @wire28 @Atlrocafella @Ss4gogeta0 @smitty22 @Reality @fact @Hood Critic @ExodusNirvana @Call Me James @Blessed Is the Man @THE MACHINE @OneManGang @duckbutta @TheDarceKnight @dtownreppin214 @Ed MOTHERfukkING G
What Was Edward Snowden Doing in India?
January 13, 2014
Nearly three years before he revealed himself as the source of leaked documents about NSA surveillance, Edward Snowden traveled to New Delhi, India. There, he spent six days taking courses in computer hacking and programming at a local professional school, according to school officials and people familiar with Snowden’s trip. Working with a private instructor, Snowden, who was then a contractor for the spy agency, took a course in "ethical hacking," where he learned advanced techniques for breaking into computer systems and exploiting flaws in software. The class’s ostensible purpose is to train students to protect computers and their contents from thieves and spies. But in order to do that, they learn how to break into computers and steal information. Snowden also inquired about methods to reverse-engineer the world’s most popular kits for committing widespread online crime.
Snowden didn’t disclose his India trip to investigators when renewing his top-secret security clearance the following year. It was that clearance, NSA officials say, that gave Snowden access to the 1.7 million classified files he later stole from the agency’s computer networks and databases. U.S. intelligence officials have faulted the company that conducted Snowden’s background check for not more thoroughly questioning him about overseas travel and what foreign nationals he may have met with, which is standard procedure for detecting whether someone is spying for a foreign power. They have characterized the background check as flawed and incomplete.
But Foreign Policy has learned that Snowden’s trip to India should not have been a mystery to the U.S. government or intelligence agencies. Snowden was in the country in his capacity as an NSA contractor "to assist as a technical expert" at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation who asked not to be identified. Snowden also told his computer instructor that he worked for the NSA and that he was in the city "on business," said Rohit Aggarwal, the CEO and founder of the school, Koenig Solutions. Government employees and contractors are not required to disclose foreign trips of an official nature, and may even be instructed not to, in order to avoid compromising intelligence operations and programs, according to two former U.S. intelligence officials.
Snowden’s time in India has been covered in the Indian press but has received little attention in the United States. The travels offer a rare glimpse into his activities in the years before he became arguably the most famous leaker of classified secrets in American history.
Precisely what work Snowden did at the embassy in New Delhi is unclear. At the time, he worked as a technology specialist for Dell Inc. at an NSA facility in Japan. U.S. intelligence personnel are often stationed in American embassies, so it’s conceivable that Snowden could have been working on surveillance equipment in New Delhi. Among the documents that Snowden disclosed were those describing a program called Stateroom, which gathers electronic communications using equipment based in U.S. embassies around the world. Other documents Snowden released showed that the NSA may have spied on the Indian embassy in Washington and on the country’s mission to the United Nations.
Calls and emails to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi were not returned. Spokespersons for the NSA, the CIA, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence all declined to comment for this article.
According to officials at the Koenig school, Snowden flew to India from Japan, arriving on Sept. 2, 2010, and staying for one night at New Delhi’s Hyatt Regency hotel. A Koenig representative picked him up at the hotel on Sept. 3 and then drove Snowden to a lodging facility provided by the school. He stayed there until Sept. 9 while he took classes, and then returned for one more night at the Hyatt before leaving India on Sept. 11, the school said. (Indian news publications, citing official travel and immigration documents, also show that Snowden was in the country during this period.)
Snowden’s instructor said he made no secret about his work for the NSA.Snowden’s instructor said he made no secret about his work for the NSA. While he didn’t describe the specific purpose of his visit, he did say he wanted to squeeze in some computer coursework while he was in town. The U.S. embassy is only six miles from the Koenig school. Snowden paid the $2,000 tuition and lodging fee himself, using a personal credit card, Aggarwal said.
Snowden’s instructor described him as quiet and diligent. He didn’t take many breaks. And he already had a high-level of knowledge about computer science, hacking, and programming.
Had background investigators inquired about Snowden’s travels, they likely would have asked if he’d had any contact with foreign nationals while he was abroad. All security clearance holders are required to disclose significant contact with foreigners. But any instructors and students Snowden met probably wouldn’t have risen to that level, a former intelligence official said. A Koenig spokesman said the school could only vouch for Snowden’s whereabouts while he was taking courses during the day. "Other than our people and students we would have no idea whom he met," said the spokesman, Somit Biswas.
In addition to the ethical hacking course, Snowden took a class in the Java computer programming language. Snowden said the course "would help him in ‘organizing a team who does’ work on Java" at Dell, a Koenig spokesperson said, citing a questionnaire that Snowden was required to fill out before he came to the school.
"His stated goal for coming to train at Koenig … was ‘getting knowledge and evaluating Koenig’s training program for my company. Certification might be nice, but it is not necessary,’" Biswas said. "He had also stated that his employers had approved Koenig as a training provider and that he would also be writing a review of the training experience which would help his company to evaluate Koenig as a future training partner and might be mutually beneficial to both."
David Frink, a spokesperson for Dell, declined to comment. "We have not discussed Mr. Snowden’s role with Dell and don’t plan to," he said. The Wall Street Journalreported last year that Snowden’s "work supervisor" informed investigators performing his background check that he had gone to India, but that they failed to clarify the purpose of the trip, resulting in a report that "did not present a comprehensive picture of Mr. Snowden," according to an intelligence documents.
Biswas said Snowden also inquired about courses in the analysis and reverse engineering of malicious computer code, such as the the ZeuS, Fragus, and SpyEye crimeware kits. That was a curious request, and potentially at odds with his interest in ethical hacking. Understanding malware is important for defending against it. But these are not ordinary malware. ZeuS is the world’s premier toolbox for custom-building online crime campaigns. It has been used to infect millions of computers around the world. All three programs have been used by criminals to commandeer individuals’ computers and to steal financial information. SpyEye allows criminals to create fake bank web pages, in order to trick people into entering their login and password, which the criminal then steals and uses to enter, and empty, their accounts. Last year, Microsoft filed a civil complaint alleging that clusters of computers infected with ZeuS have been used to steal more than $100 million.
It’s not clear why Snowden wanted to know about reverse engineering financial crime malware, but his resume indicates he may have been working on cyber security-related projects while a contractor with Dell. Koenig told Snowden that it didn’t offer courses along the lines he was interested in, but that it was considering adding them to its curriculum.
Snowden abruptly ended his coursework before completing a final portion of his training, Aggarwal said, in computer hacking forensics and an administrator course in the Linux operating system. "He was supposed to come back one morning, but he didn’t. He sent an email saying, please cancel the rest of my courses. I have a medical condition and need to go back to Japan for medical advice," according to Aggarwal. Snowden spent the night of September 10 at the Hyatt Regency, and then left India the next day, he said.
Snowden completed the ethical hacking course and the course in Java programming, Aggarwal said. A source who is familiar with Snowden’s professional resume, which was current as of 2013, said it lists his certification in ethical hacking as well as computer network defense. The only reference to even remotely anything like Java, this person said, appears in relation to Snowden’s work for a website company called Clockwork Chihuahua. There, Snowden said he edited JavaScript (which is loosely related to, but is not the same as Java). Snowden also claimed to have Japanese language skills and to be "comfortable working in austere environments," according to his resume.
U.S. officials have said that Snowden began downloading secret NSA files while he was working for Dell, in April 2012. He went to work for another NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, the following year. Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he took the job in order to access classified NSA documents.
"My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked," Snowden said. "That is why I accepted that position about three months ago." Snowden worked for the company only a few months, at a facility in Hawaii. There, he took more documents before ultimately fleeing to Hong Kong. He is currently living in Russia, where the government has granted him temporary asylum.
A computer security training professional in the United States said it’s not unusual for Americans to take courses abroad, particularly in India, where the tuition is a fraction of what it can cost in the United States. But the expert criticized the teaching of so-called "ethical hacking."
"
They can call it ‘ethical,’ it’s still hacking.They can call it ‘ethical,’ it’s still hacking. You’re teaching someone how to break into a system," the expert said.
Aggarwal, the Koening CEO, said it’s not unusual to find U.S. intelligence employees taking courses at his school, and that between 50 and 100 American military service personnel take courses there each year, as well as at a location in Dubai. A Defense Department spokesman could not confirm that military personnel have taken courses at the school, or that it’s been approved by the Pentagon as a training facility. But personnel responsible for protecting the department’s computer systems are required to obtain commercial certificaitons, including in ethical hacking.
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Putin’s Hand Can Clearly Be Seen In the Chaos of a Destabilized West
By Andrei A. Kovalev On 9/3/17 at 2:10 AM
What role is Russia playing in the difficulties the United States, Europe, and other countries are experiencing?
Does the Kremlin reject the existing world order and aspire to a new division of the world?
Did Moscow's political kitchen deliberately help to concoct the loathsome dish of domestic and international terrorism, the tsunami of refugees, and political destabilization in many countries?
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There can be no simple and straightforward answers, but serious consideration of recent Russian history leads to distressing conclusions.
When the totalitarian USSR collapsed there was cause for hope. The germs of a multi-party, parliamentary system and free enterprise appeared, political and religious freedoms were guaranteed, censorship vanished, and the mass media were liberated. Soviet citizens were free to travel, and punitive psychiatry ended.
And then–recoil. In 1993 President Yeltsin dealt a crushing blow to the parliamentary system, killing several hundred people in the process. Russia practiced genocide against its own people in Chechnya. Political assassinations and the murder of journalists commenced.
The economic situation was no better. Even prior to the attempted coup by communist hardliners against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the KGB began transferring huge amounts of “party funds” to “trusted persons.,” thereby founding the fortunes of the first of Russia's nouveaux riches. The most infamous cases followed in the mid-1990s.
The coup is said to have failed miserably. Not so. By then the USSR was falling apart. Key positions in the executive and legislative branches had already been seized by officials and agents of the special services, often working “under cover.” The same thing happened in the world of business.
Gorbachev in power ended the Cold War. Yet after the dissolution of the USSR, Russia began a gradual return to Cold War policies. Under the pretext of defending Russian compatriots abroad, the Kremlin interfered in the domestic politics of neighboring Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Moldova. It was suspected of involvement in the attempted assassination of Georgia's president Eduard Shevardnadze.
Meanwhile, Russia pursued an anti-Western policy of supporting the murderous Slobodan Milosevic in former Yugoslavia. Among the later results of these trends, under Putin, were a dismembered Georgia, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and prolonged Russian aggression in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Why were a number of terrorist acts in the West, such as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013, performed by visitors or emigrants from the former Soviet Union?
Did the emigrants, the brothers Tsarnaev, of Chechen nationality, responsible for the Boston attack, act on their own initiative? It seems most unlikely.
Russia must accept a share of responsibility for the Syrian civil war, the flood of refugees into Europe, the rightward drift of several European countries, the rising influence of ultra-right politicians, attempts to weaken the EU, and the U.K.'s Brexit decision.
What is going on between Russia and Donald Trump?
Is the president of the United States linked more closely to the Kremlin than any Western political figure should be?
That these questions command serious and prolonged attention in the United States puts Russia in a very poor light.
Why didn't democracy take root in Russia? Why under Putin has the overwhelming majority of the population joyously welcomed the rebirth of authoritarianism, in a different flavor, of extreme corruption and misappropriation of state funds and natural resources?
The ultimate answer is that it is extremely dangerous when the secret police, with their nationalistic mentality, seize power in an enormous nuclear state, and when a former hunter of dissidents becomes president. Dangerous not only for Russia, but for the whole world.
When it became clear that Russia interfered in the internal affairs of the United States, in the presidential election, increasing numbers of Americans were persuaded of this truth.
Unfortunately, Russia has entered a path that leads nowhere. Power is unlimited; legislation is repressive; there has long been no real opposition. There is no coherent opposition program. The slogans “Russia without Putin,” and “Russia will be free,” are just words.
Putin cynically and regularly proclaims a struggle against the corruption that he himself sponsors.
What would Russia be without Putin? Putin himself is nothing. He is merely a facade concealing the special services and the oligarchs. They can easily replace him with another representative of the secret services.
Was Russia free under Dmitri Medvedev, president in 2008-2012? Of course not. He was a puppet of these very same forces.
Sometimes I am reproached for attributing to the Kremlin too much influence in the world. My response is that the Putin regime is so convinced of its own impunity that it indulges in actions that even communist leaders during the Cold War refrained from attempting.
Russia is at a dead end. It is vital that it not drag the rest of the world down the path it has taken.
It is our responsibility to make sure that does not happen.
Andrei A.Kovalev served as a diplomat and official in the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev (1985-91) and then in similar capacities under presidents Yeltsin and Putin (1991-2007). He is author of Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin (Potomac Books, University of Nebraska Press, 2017).
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More proof that Snowden is a lying bytch
More evidence Snowden is a traitor: