Whistleblower Ties Clinton Campaign to Fake Russia Hack
A whistleblower report declassified last week suggests that Hillary Clinton's campaign efforts to manufacture evidence tying Donald Trump to alleged Russian hacking in 2016 were deeper than previously known – as were Obama administration efforts to conceal them.
The whistleblower report, which has been made available by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, reveals a former senior U.S. intelligence analyst who investigated alleged Russian attempts to breach state voting systems during the 2016 election suspected that the breaches may have been "related to activities" of computer contractors involved in the Alfa Bank hoax.
The Alfa Bank hoax was a well-publicized case where a Clinton campaign lawyer worked with federal computer contractors and the FBI to create suspicions that Russia was communicating with Donald Trump through a secret server shared by Alfa Bank of Russia and Trump Tower in Manhattan.
The whistleblower, who served as the deputy national intelligence officer for cyber issues in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2015 to 2020, told Special Counsel John Durham he stumbled upon "enigmatic" data while leading the investigation of alleged Russian cyber activity for the Intelligence Community Assessment on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
"It seemed only brief interaction was occurring – in some cases, no unauthorized access, or even attempted access, was detected on 'victim' systems,"
The suspicious activity initially was attributed to Russian actors, further analysis raised doubts. However, when he brought his findings to his boss, ODNI's national intelligence officer for cyber issues, he was ordered to stop investigating and not include his findings in the final ICA draft.
"After being directed to conduct analysis of Russian-attributed cyber activity for the ICA, I had been abruptly directed to abandon further investigation,"
The whistleblower's 2023 complaint also seems to contradict recent claims of Obama's director of national intelligence, James Clapper, and his CIA Director, John Brennan, who stated that the ICA was a neutral document prepared according to the highest standards whose conclusions were widely supported by the intelligence community.
"I was pressured to alter my views on the key judgment,"
The whistleblower said his boss "intentionally deceived and excluded me from things I was cleared for and had need to know" during the ICA's drafting. This included the fact that Clinton campaign opposition research – the now-debunked Steele dossier – was used as supporting evidence in the highly restricted, classified version of the ICA.
"I had been led to believe that Clapper viewed the 'Steele dossier' material as untrustworthy, and I had believed it played no role in the ICA,"
His boss told him there was other evidence that supported the key Trump-Russia judgment, which he was "not allowed to see," but "if you saw it, you would agree." Pressed to share the alleged additional evidence, his superior said, "You need to TRUST ME on this."
The whistleblower alleged his superior committed "potential malfeasance" during the crafting of the ICA, which was used as the foundation for several investigations of Trump and his advisers during his first term in office.
"However, I later began to consider it possible that some of the reporting might reflect Domain Name Service (DNS) record manipulation by parties other than Russian,”
After conducting further research, "I came to view some of the reported cyber activity as possibly related to activities of USPERSONS under federal investigation" by special prosecutor Durham, who was probing the Alfa Bank hoax.
Durham's final report makes no mention of the incident and does not even focus on the ICA. The whistleblower report is separate from the Durham report.
The whistleblower’s reference to U.S. individuals under investigation ostensibly refers to computer scientists led by tech executive and FBI informant Rodney Joffe, who collaborated with Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann to create documents and data files tying Trump to the Russian-based Alfa Bank in the summer of 2016.
Sussmann, in turn, gave the materials to a friend at the FBI to investigate. By September 2016, Sussmann had convinced the FBI to open an investigation into an alleged secret backchannel between Trump and Putin based on Domain Name Server records – that Durham suspected had been manipulated by the contractors.
DNS records are numeric addresses that computers, smartphones, and other devices use to communicate with websites and email servers. After Joffe and his contractors obtained DNS Internet data related to Trump Tower, emails cited by Durham reveal they created an "inference" of Russian contacts and even suggested "faking" DNS traffic to show communications that didn't actually exist.
According to an Aug. 20, 2016, email prosecutors uncovered, one contractor offered, "I could fill out a sales form on two websites, faking the other company's email address in each form, and cause them to appear to communicate with each other in DNS."
In his 2023 affidavit, the whistleblower revealed that Vinh Nguyen, who was then the national intelligence officer, had played a role in the attempts to link Trump with Russia.
Nguyen had received DNI's Exceptional Accomplishment Award the following year for his work on election security analysis. Before the 2016 election, Nguyen worked with Democratic National Committee cybersecurity contractor CrowdStrike to gather intelligence on the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC computer system.
Nguyen is also said to have overseen election security analysis for the 2018 mid-term elections and 2020 presidential election. He is now the top AI officer at the National Security Agency.