Seymour Hersh Cracks ‘RussiaGate’ as CIA-Planted Lie — Revenge Against Trump
by Eric Zuesse
During the later portion of a phone-call, by the world’s greatest investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, Hersh has now presented “a narrative [from his investigation] of how that whole fucking thing began,” including who actually is behind the ‘RussiaGate’ lies, and of why they are spreading these lies.
In a youtube video upload-dated August 1st, he reveals from his inside FBI and Washington DC Police Department sources — now, long before the Justice Department’s Special Counsel Robert Mueller will be presenting his official ‘findings’ to the nation — that the charges that Russia had anything to do with the leaks from the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign to Wikileaks, that those charges spread by the press, were a CIA-planted lie, and that what Wikileaks had gotten was only leaks (including at least from the murdered DNC-staffer Seth Rich), and were not from any outsider (including ’the Russians’), but that Rich didn’t get killed for that, but was instead shot in the back during a brutal robbery, which occurred in the high-crime DC neighborhood where he lived. Here is the video, and here is the transcript of it:
The kid gets — I don’t think he was murdered [because of this] I don’t think he was murdered because of what he knew, the kid was a nice boy, 27, he was not an ITS person, he learned stuff, he was a data-programmer, but he learned stuff, and so he was living on one street, somewhere, he was living in a very rough neighborhood, and in the exact area where he lived, there had been about, I am sure you know, there had been about 8 or 9 or 10, violent robberies, most of them with somebody brandishing a gun, and I am sure you know, his [the kid’s] hands were marked up, the cops concluded [HERSH SAW THE POLICE REPORT] he fought off the people, he tried to run, and they shot him twice in the back with a 22, small-caliber, and then the kid that did it ran, he got scared.
So, the cops do this, here’s what nobody knows, what I am telling you, now maybe you do know something about it: When you have a death like that, DC cops, as you’re [dealing now with a person who is] dead, you generally don’t zip and go, yep I know, what’s the motive, what’s going on, you have to get to the kid’s apartment and see what you can find. If he’s dead, you don’t need a warrant, but most cops get a warrant because they don’t know if the guy has a roommate, so they get a warrant, I’m just telling you, there is such a thing. They go in and can’t do much with his computer, [to find the] password, the cops don’t know much about it, so the cops have a cyber unit in DC, and they’re more sophisticated, they come in and look at it.
The idea is maybe he has had a series of exchanges with somebody who said ‘I am going to kill you motherfucker’ over a girl, and they can’t get in, the cyber guys are a little better, but they can’t make sense of it, so they call the FBI cyber unit. The DC unit, the Russian[-monitoring] and field office is a hot-shit unit. The guy running the Washington field office, he’s like a three-star at an army-base, he’s ready [mumble], you know what I mean, he’s going to do a top job. There’s a cyber unit there that’s excellent. What you get in a warrant, the public information you get in a warrant doesn’t include the affidavits underlying why you are going in, what the reason was. That’s almost never available, I can tell you that — the thesis of a warrant as a public document 99% of the time.
So they call in the feds, the feds get through, and here’s what they find [HERSH SAW THE FBI REPORT]. This is according to the FBI report. What they find is, first of all you have to know some basic facts, one of the basic facts is there is no DNC or protected email that exists beyond May 22nd, the last email from either one of those groups. So, what the report says, is:
(2:50) – At some time in late spring, which we’re talking about in June 21st, I don’t know, just late spring early summer, he makes contact with Wikileaks, that’s in his computer, and he makes contact. Now, I have to be careful because I met Julian [Assange] in Europe ten twelve years [ago], I stay the fuck away from people like that. He has invited me and when I am in London, I always get a message, ‘come see me at the Ecuadorean’ [Embassy], and I am fucking not going there. I have enough trouble without getting photographed. He’s under total surveillance by everybody.
They found, what he had done, he [Seth Rich] had submitted a series of documents, emails from DNC — and, by the way, all this shit about the DNC, you know, was it a ‘hack’ or wasn’t it a ‘hack’ — whatever happened, it was the Democrats themselves wrote this shit, you know what I mean? All I know is that, he offered a sample, he sends a sample, you know, I am sure dozens of emails, and said ‘I want money’. Later Wikileaks did get the password [SETH RICH DID SELL WIKILEAKS ACCESS INTO HIS COMPUTER.] He had a drop-box, a [password-]protected drop-box, which isn’t hard to do.
I mean you don’t have to be a whiz at IT [information technology], he was not a dumb kid. They got access to the drop-box. This is all from the FBI report. He also let people know with whom he was dealing, I don’t know how he dealt, I’ll tell you all about Wikileaks in a second, with Wikileaks the mechanism, but according to the FBI report, he shared his box with a couple of friends, so ‘If anything happens to me, it’s not going to solve your problem’, okay? I don’t know what that means.
But, anyway, Wikileaks got access. And, before he was killed, I can tell you right now, [Obama’s CIA Director John] Brennan’s an asshole. I’ve known all these people for years, Clapper is sort of a better guy but no rocket-scientist, the NSA guys are fuckin’ morons, and the trouble with all those guys is, the only way they’ll get hired by SAIC, is if they’ll deliver some [government] contracts, it’s the only reason they stayed in. With Trump, they’re gone, they’re going to live on their pension, they’re not going to make it [to great wealth]. I’ve gotta to tell you, guys in that job, they don’t want to live on their pension. They want to be on [corporate] boards like their [mumble] thousand bucks [cut].
I have somebody on the inside, you know I’ve been around a long time, somebody who will go and read a file for me, who, this person is unbelievably accurate and careful, he’s a very high-level guy, he’ll do a favor, you’re just going to have to trust me, I have what they call in my business, long-form journalism, I have a narrative, of how that whole fucking thing began.
(5:50) – It’s a Brennan operation. It was an American disinformation, and the fucking President, at one point when they even started telling the press — they were back[ground]-briefing the press, the head of the NSA was going and telling the press, the fucking cocksucker Rogers, telling the press that we [they] even know who in the Russian military intelligence service leaked it. All bullshit. They were telling. I worked at the New York Times those fucking years, they’re smart guys, but they’re totally beholden on [to] sources. If the President or the head of the CIA tells them something, they actually believe it. I retired at the Times at the end of the Vietnam War 1972, because they were just locked-in. So that’s what the Times is, these guys run the fuckin’ Times, and Trump’s not wrong, I wish he would calm down, get a better press secretary, you know, not be so — Trump’s not wrong to think they all fucking lied about him.
UPDATE:
The media-coverage of this matter is focusing on allegations that Seth Rich was murdered in order to silence him. All such media-coverage ignores much of what Hersh said on the phone (where Hersh makes clear that Rich was, indeed, murdered in a regular robbery), and therefore should be viewed as an example of what the Washington Post and others in the mainstream press call ‘fake news’, but which actually applies to themselves, on both the left and right, above all.
The purpose of those distorting ‘news’ stories might be a desire, on the part of both the Democratic Party aristocrats and the Republican Party aristocrats, to distract the public’s attention away from the far deeper understanding that drives the “narrative” that Hersh, in that clip, is describing: rot by the U.S. aristocracy, which controls both of America’s political Parties, to deceive the American public. The objective is to protect the aristocracy. That’s not publishable; it is American samizdat. Corruption rules America. The public do not. This fact is what Hersh is describing in the above account.
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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The correct question isn’t whether Russia hacked or didn’t interfere in the election, but whether the working class should CARE. After all, we’re being asked to care that the US has been subjected to precisely what it has subjected dozens of other countries to for decades. Protestations that “we need to make Russia pay”, EVEN IF RUSSIA DID DO what it is accused of doing, are straight chauvinist trash because they implicitly trivialize the litany of examples of the US doing this all over the world.
In 2013 a dam burst in Poland, inferior construction, mafia ties in the building construction world, whole valley flooded, many people drowned in the water, TV media called it later “watergate”!? what did they mean by that??? 🙁
The Guardian’s journalistic standards have hit rock bottom and are permanently bouncing along there. It’s shocking how truly awful its gotten since in since it meekly accepted being publically castrated by the security services during the Snowden leaks episode. The levels of duplicity and manipulation are actually getting worse as the domestic and international situation deteriorates and conflict becomes increasingly likely. Today, the Guardian looks like occupied territory, occupied by the UK state apparatus, just like the BBC, where any semblance of independence or criticism or opposition has been neutered. The sight of liberal lefties paving the way towards war is truly disgusting. Like here.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/whats-worse-than-war-with-north-korea-china
It’s not just the Guardian. It’s the entire British Press and Media, from the The Times to the BBC, to the Guardian and The Independent. What they publish is such blatant propaganda and lies its very difficult to even believe they think they can print this stuff and think they are fooling anyone. Until it occurs to you that the vast majority of people who read this stuff are incapable of thinking for themselves and actually believe it because it comes from a supposed trusted source. We used to mock Pravda when I was young. What we are witnessing today is the silent death of democracy and the rule of law. The state of the British and American media landscape is a reflection of this. Truth is no longer of any consequence. Trump is destroyed because he is supposedly misogynist. That’s his crime. We have conceded far too much power to women in the West and this is why everything men strove to discover and invent will be sacrificed on the alter of PCism and muliculturalism.
Very enlightening article, once I got by the very bad language..Why does everyone feel they have to assault the reader with four letter words? Can’t they express themselves decently?
Those were Hersh’s words in a phone conversation that he apparently thought was not being recorded. If anyone should know better, it is Seymour Hersh.
“If anyone should know better, it is Seymour Hersh.”
Did Hersh know he was being recorded? He hasn’t put any case notes on a computer since 2002-03: seems pretty security savvy to me? Leak and deny? This story has ramifications that go all the way to the top of the DNC: and we all know who’s sitting on top of that tree?
Just thinking out loud…
Being angry, can make you swear. It is a topic worthy of anger. Love and respect.
Eric has something to prove. But I’m not interested in Eric or his indispensable wisdom. I wonder whether he has read my blog post about him: “Comments on Eric Zuesse’s Christ’s Vetriloquists: The Event that Created Christianity” (http://tinyurl.com/y87enhqw)
Seth Rich was photographed drinking with the Awan guy, an IT expert who worked for/with Democrat party high up Debbie Wasserman Schultz, on the night of the murder. More recently Awan was arrested at the airport trying to do a runner back to Pakistan, having defrauded/blackmailed millions from the Democrats.
Hersh publishes a part truth, and by its incompleteness, distracts from the larger truth. This is what he has done going back to his My Lai story which focused on a single village, whereas My Lai style operations were in fact standard operating procedure. He did the same with the Osama bin Laden assassination and the Syria sarin gas story.
In order to maintain his deep-state sources, Hersh sometimes has to act a gate-keeper (Rich) or sow disinfo (bin Laden). He’s Caity Johnstone’s piece on latest equivocation: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/seymour-hersh-owes-the-world-an-explanation-for-his-seth-rich-comments-f9b2756123d3
Agreed. I follow Johnstone too.
Hersh is a journalist and gets his information first-hand or from contacts he has cultivated. He relays this information to the public. Unlike an op-ed writer or someone putting together a summary he focuses on specific events.
Providing overviews and details that can easily be found elsewhere just to satisfy the whims of a few permanently disgruntled armchair critics is not his job.
OT (but very relevant) – A disturbing trend practiced by the MSM and much of the brainwashed liberal “left” has worked its way into the alt-media sphere. It is the tendency to rubbish and sneer at journalists and opinion writers who do not always say exactly what one wants to hear. If someone disagree with three points out of ten, say, they will moan and complain to no end even if they are in agreement with the other seven points. Some people are so far down the rabbit hole they see the hands of the CIA/Mossad/MI6 manipulating every writer whose words do not 100% match their personal views.
This is disturbingly similar to the MSM and establishment punditry smearing those whose thinking deviates from conventional wisdom as “Russian stooges” or “Assadists”. It is also very similar to SJW “call out culture” with involves shouting down people who dare challenge the party line, and publicly shaming them as “racists” or “misogynists”. This psyop inspired nonsense replaces debate and the exchange of ideas with a demand for unquestioning obedience and conformity.
Are these practices really something critics and opponents of the establishment want to emulate? There is a reason HRC’s handlers, the DNC and the bought and paid for MSM endorse and encourage this kind of destructive behaviour. And it’s not because they are concerned with truth or overflowing with empathy and compassion.
Closely related to this is the hunt for “spooks” and “traitors” amongst the ranks. Once you think you “know” a journalist or commentator is a “CIA agent” or a “limited hangout” you see start seeng them everywhere. It’s a great way to cultivate paranoia and dysfunction.
It has been verified that the CIA etc. do post BS in Internet forums and run disinformation spreading sock-puppet bot armies. However, there is not much end users can do about this. Spending energy denouncing people you “feel” certain are disinfo agents is a massive waste of time and plays into the hands of the enemy. If you really think someone is a disinfo troll or a bot just ignore or block them/it and move on.
Divide and rule – it is one of the oldest tactics around. The one thing TPTB fear most is a united front allied against them. And you can bet they are working hard to keep their opponents (us) isolated and distracted and fighting amongst ourselves.
Don’t fall into their traps! At some point the fight will move from the Internet into the street. That’s when the skill of identifying traitors and spooks will really become important. An opposition that is crippled by suspicion and paranoia before the real fight even begins is going to have a very hard time here. Add a demand for strict ideological purity on top of that and it disintegrates into chaos.
For a real life example witness the idiot Syrian “rebels” doing the pro-government coalition a massive favour by blowing each other to pieces in Idlib and Jobar. Meanwhile the SAA, Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and various Shi’ite and Sunni militias remain united, despite their differences, and focused on destroying their common enemy.
/lecture
“Hersh is a journalist and gets his information first-hand or from contacts he has cultivated. He relays this information to the public. Unlike an op-ed writer or someone putting together a summary he focuses on specific events.”
@Eric: What you say is true, but your lecture completely misses the point, and ends up destroying your own thesis. People now cannot trust ANY source in the disinformation warfare that is the modern internet: they MUST question everything – and develop their own critical thinking and truth cognitive capability. If that means questioning Sy: then they MUST question Sy. You are falling for the oldest disinfo trick in the book – that his Pulitzer credentials and ‘deepthroat’ sources are beyond reproach. They are not. He has lied plenty in the past (have you read the “Dark Side of Camelot”???) He’s lying now.
Before you come at me on your big white charger: read my comment below and follow the link. Despite the headline for this post; and despite the fact that Eric Zeusse has written it up as some major scoop: Seymour Hersh DID NOT put this out. It was LEAKED. And Hersh DENIES it, and that he has any INSIDE INFORMATION at all. Yet it is clearly him on the LEAKED audio: so he is demonstrably LYING. Why?
You can do your own research as to of whom, and why he might be scared off: but here is my take. If he tells the truth – he’ll be ‘Arkancided’ (commit suicide by shooting himself twice in the head); or he’ll be the next one caught in a ‘botched robbery’; or found with his head beaten in on a Florida beach? In this case, Sy Hersh is covering for Sy Hersh. 😉
The biggest tell that he is LYING here, are his comments about Julian Assange. Read them carefully: then verify this for yourself – Hersh and Gavin McFadyen shared a stage in 2016 – and he was praising Julian then. Why would he distance himself now???
(Are not even a little intrigued???)
I’ve led you to the rabbit hole: it’s up to you if you enter. Or you could stay outside and be an unwitting disinfo agent yourself. There is only one thing TPTB fear – TRUTH. Are you going to dig deeper? Or are you going to get back on your high horse and stop others questioning??? If you can’t make up your own mind: at least let others be free to question: without your (uninformed) gatekeeping.
/lecture
Hersh admits it’s his voice: but won’t be drawn on whether the tape has been doctored or comment further.
http://www.shoah.org.uk/2017/08/09/a-new-twist-in-seth-rich-murder-case/
Given this is being leveraged toward nuclear war: this has to be the biggest cover-up in history. Apart from Seth, the DNC gave full access to their computers to the Awan brothers – then blamed the Russians, ffs. If Hersh has any integrity left, now would be a good time to display it.
“(where Hersh makes clear that Rich was, indeed, murdered in a regular robbery)”
Where he was shot twice in the back; nothing was taken; police walked him passed his ‘neighbour’; he was in no pain and didn’t even know he was shot. Nothing suspicious. Sounds pretty regular to me.
Much as I trust Hersh’s work, I do not know what to make of this tape. The whole Seth Rich thing is a quagmire of intrigue, loose ends and very convenient coincidences that amount to a pile of questions with (to date) no answers.
The liberal elite that since the end of the Cold War has convinced itself neoliberal global capitalism – with the United States of America at its helm – is the world’s one and only legitimate ideology refuses to accept that this was always a mad Blofeldian delusion with no basis in reality. Even Francis Fukuyama, who wrote The End of History, was clued in enough to realize he was wrong and has said so publicly.
If the present insanity is any indication, things are going to get worse, much worse. Arranging the murder of a person they consider a liability is perfectly acceptable to the panicking establishment elites if they think it will help prolong their global domination project. I am not saying that is definitely what happened but if decimating and destroying entire nations doesn’t faze them, taking the life of a “nobody” like Seth Rich is about as “traumatic” as ordering a servant to take out the trash.
The myth of America as the exceptional and indispensable nation with a divine right to rule the world is positively Third Reichian. It’s not hyperbole or “anti-American” to say this. How many countries has the US invaded, destroyed and “influenced” since its inception? How many people has it murdered around the world in the name of profit? Even the pretentiously grandiose names of its state institutions and departments, and the imperial seals that go with them, are modelled after the Roman Empire.
The rest of the Western nations are willing collaborators and share some of the guilt. And so are we (the people) if we limit our “resistance” to rhetoric and passive outrage.
The monumental implications of what is currently underway have yet to be grasped by the masses. I still find it surreal and unreal myself. But it is not a dream…it is real and serious as an axe murderer chopping down the door. When climate change, which aleady affects the global south much more than people realize, ramps up and becomes impossible for Northerners to ignore…watch out.
It would not shock me at all if the liberal elites and ther conservative brethren take a page from ISIS or evangelical baptists and reinvent themselves as an apocalypse cult who would rather destroy themselves and the world than accept the end of America’s status as global dictator. I mean can you imagine the United States giving up its empire peacefully like the Russians did or even the British? Not a chance. They see geopolitics as a zero sum game.
What about Israel, Britain and even Iran which have interfered in United States elections?
https://rehmat1.com/2017/01/24/when-uk-and-iran-interfered-in-us-elections/
Whoever downvoted this comment almost certainly did not bother reading it.
The only voting I’d allow on my website is the kind where bloggers like and you can immediately see who they are and check on them. I almost removed that, but then figured that even when someone – for whatever reason – hitches a ride on my blog post in order to redirect people to their scammy business, at least others can figure that out. I can’t be down voted. And bloggers who are sincere can still give my post a thumbs up.
A BIG player in this psyops are the actions of one Bill Browder, who has passed on many a lie about the non-existent Trump-Putin collusion. Browder was/is a Russian oligarch who helped loot Russia after the USSR imploded–with other oligarchs–of hundreds of billions and was stopped cold by Putin, which PO Browder to no end, since he thought he was on a mission from G-d to loot Russia.
Watch what happens when a process server tries to serve a subpoena on Browder in NYC:
https://youtu.be/ryVavTF6hR0
The Guardian is calling any connection between Seth Rich and the DNC leaks a “false and malicious story” and a “ruthless exploitation of his death for political purposes by the hard right”, the latter apparently including Julian Assange.
No mention in the article of Seymour Hersh with all his Pulitzer credentials. Instead, because Fox News dared touch upon the link between Seth Rich and the DNC leaks, we get a convoluted guilt-by-association smear with an unrelated case of phone-hacking by Murdoch’s News of the World.
The Guardian must know the article is on shaky grounds because it is walled-off from BTL scrutiny.
the source knows he is making himslef a target yet wants to get the Wikileaks/Rich connection out there which he sees is hIs duty SO WHAT DOES HE DO ……he talks down the murder and goes straight past the fact that the computer was sent to the FBIs password-breaking unit ,standard procedure in all street robberies ey Eric where as luck and chance and serendipidity would have it the link is uncovered …….
Seths murder had nothing to do with “pour encourager les autres”
The all knowing oracle. The Guardian’s take on the Seth Rich murder.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/aug/07/seth-rich-trump-white-house-fox-news
Reblogged this on Floating-voter.
Why is this not on CNN,BBC etc etc in say a documentary + news? Just confirms to the public how crooked MSM has become & why they no longer have the total power over the sheep they once had…..
The Seth Rich story has been YUUUGE in America: and spun like candy floss by both pro and anti-Trump factions. It boils down to claims (similar to Hersh’s) made by Rod Wheeler; and counter-claims by Seth’s brother Aaron – who says he has Seth’s computer – and the FBI haven’t seen it. Which funnily enough, is the CNN line (protecting Killary!) You might want to note that Hersh denied this phone call (above) as “gossip” before the audio was leaked; and now denies he has any inside knowledge – so Hersh hasn’t been exactly straight as a source. Or he is being threatened.
For the record: I think Seth was undoubtedly the Wikileaks source and was murdered because of it: which is kind of at odds with Hersh too.
Reblogged this on leruscino.
Sounds like he’s doing a job on the planned murder with ‘inside knowledge’ . Someone else will no doubt ‘disprove’ the Wikileaks link.
Seth Conrad Rich, 27, the Jewish Democratic National Committee staffer was murdered on July 10, 2016 in Washington DC. The local police called it a case of robbery, but Seth Rich father Joel Rich debunked the claim by saying: “Killer (s) took nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, phone, and watch.”
Last week, the murder story took an interesting turn when Wikileaks posted a $20,000 award for information leading to conviction of Seth Rich’s killer (s). WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in an interview on Netherlands TV claimed that Seth Rich was Wikileaks’ informant.
“Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often very significant risks. As a 27 year-old, works for the DNC, was shot in the back, murdered just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington,” Julian Assange said.
https://rehmat1.com/2016/08/14/was-seth-rich-a-victim-of-hillarys-campaign/