PRESS RELEASE
VIPS Expose of Russian Hacking Lie Supported by UN Professional Scott Ritter
July 31, 2017 (EIRNS)—Former United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq, Scott Ritter, has stepped forward to support the main conclusions of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) July 24 Memorandum to President Trump, and warn of the dangers of letting the Russia hacking fraud stand.
Writing in Truthdig on July 27, Ritter says,
"I agree with the argument of the July 24 VIPS memorandum that takes issue with the Jan. 6, 2017, Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russian meddling. This NIA evaluation assessed ‘with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to release U.S. victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks.’ The assessments contained within the Russia ICA, which lies at the very heart of the ongoing controversy surrounding accusations of collusion by people affiliated with the Trump presidential campaign and Russia, is demonstrably wrong. The VIPS memorandum to President Trump is a valuable contribution to a larger discussion of the intelligence community’s erroneous assessment that is, otherwise, lacking.
"The implications of the conclusions reached in the VIPS memorandum (if not the actual technical analysis it relied on) are staggering: The DNC [Democratic National Committee] ‘hack’ was actually a cyber-theft perpetrated by an insider with direct access to the DNC server, who then deliberately doctored documents to make them look as if they had been accessed by a Russian-speaking actor prior to releasing them to the public. This is not the narrative being pushed by the U.S. intelligence, Congress and the mainstream media. Moreover, if true, the conclusions reached by VIPS point to a broader conspiracy within the United States to undermine the credibility of an admittedly unpopular, yet legitimately elected president, that borders on sedition.
"No one has linked the theft of the DNC documents to Guccifer 2.0....
"Which brings up perhaps the most curious aspect of this entire case: The DNC servers at the center of this controversy were never turned over to the FBI for forensic investigation. Instead, the FBI had to rely upon copies of the DNC server data provided by CrowdStrike. The fact that it was CrowdStrike, and not the FBI, that made the GRU attribution call based upon the investigation of the alleged cyber-penetration of the DNC server is disturbing. As shown here, there is good reason to doubt the viability of the CrowdStrike analysis. That the FBI, followed by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. intelligence community, and the mainstream media, has parroted this questionable assertion as fact is shocking.
"The Guccifer 2.0 story is at the center of the ongoing controversy swirling around the Trump White House concerning allegations of collusion with Russia regarding meddling in the 2016 presidential election."
Ritter concludes,
"The stakes could not be higher. The American people would do well to demand a proper investigation into what actually transpired at the DNC in the spring of 2016. To date there has been no examination worthy of the name regarding the facts that underpin the accusations at the center of the American argument against Russia—that the GRU hacked the DNC server and used Guccifer 2.0 as a conduit for the release of stolen documents in a manner designed to influence the American presidential election. The VIPS memorandum of July 24, 2017, questions the veracity of these claims. I believe these doubts are well founded."
