Regular letter writer Jack Kintslinger is absolutely right to assert that the allegation of the Russian government’s hijacking of the 2016 election is key to the entire Robert Mueller probe (“Mueller findings should not make anyone happy,” Apr. 26). All the other charges — collusion, obstruction of justice, etc. — are predicated on that. And in turn, the interference narrative is based on the crucial contention that Vladimir Putin and company hacked the DNC and Podesta emails, thus enabling Wikileaks to embarrass candidate Hillary Clinton with their publication.
But there’s just one little problem, a small structural defect in this enormous prosecutorial edifice. The foundation is made of particle board or plywood! The “great hack” of 2016 never happened. And since the author admonished those who differ with him to check their facts, I’d be happy to oblige.
Item: To this day, neither the FBI nor any other law enforcement agency has even asked to examine the DNC server that was allegedly hacked. Astoundingly, they have simply taken at face value the assessment of CrowdStrike, the firm hired by the DNC itself, and headed by a well-known bitterly anti-Putin Russian expatriate. How’s that for investigative thoroughness and impartiality?
Item: By far, the most serious forensic analysis of the “hack that wasn’t,” comes from the work of William Binney, former technical director of the NSA and now a leader of the veteran intelligence professionals for sanity. Mr. Binney clearly demonstrates that the recorded speed of the download of the cited e-mails to Wikileaks was almost double the maximum rate possible using even the most advanced technology via the internet, but well within the limits for a (far faster) direct transmission using a thumb drive or other storage device. Therefore, it had to be a leak, not a hack from Russia or anyplace else. Why was there zero effort by team Mueller to interview or consult with this man?
Item: The much-ballyhooed “unanimous consensus” of the seventeen U.S. Intelligence Services that bad Vlad and his minions were culpable, has been shown to be a multilevel fraud. It turns out that their document was written by representatives of just four — no, make that three — agencies, each one of whom was handpicked because of their known proclivities to write just what they did. Even then, the best they could manage was “high confidence” for two of the services and a mere “moderate confidence” for the third, in the soundness of their conclusions. As Mr. Binney has quipped, these phrases are bureaucratic doublespeak for “We have no hard evidence, but this is our best guess.” Yet the Mueller report rubber-stamped their judgment as revealed truth.
Item: Based on the near-reverential deference and adulation being lavished on Robert Mueller and the U.S. intelligence community generally by many of the “resist” crowd, one might think that these folks have had an unblemished record of competence and truthfulness as the core of their reputation. But aren’t these the same institutions that told us in December 1964 that North Vietnam had attacked American ships in the Gulf of Tonkin? That Saddam Hussein’s troops were killing helpless little tots in Kuwait by disconnecting baby incubators in 1990? Or that Iraq itself was one big arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of that nation? Robert Mueller was personally, actively involved in disseminating that latter deadly fraud. Exactly when did he and his “intel” cohorts ascend from that sordid activity to achieve sainthood status?
So, while I’m thoroughly at odds with the thrust of Mr. Kintslinger’s argument, I must thank him for at least putting the right issue in focus. Without the fable of the “great hack,” the whole Russian election-stealing conspiracy theory collapses. And how could candidate Trump collude with a Moscow-based plot that never existed? How could there be obstruction when there’s no underlying crime that requires cover-up at all? For once, I agree with Trump-hating Mr. Mueller underling Peter Strzok: “There’s no there, there.”
Put Mr. Binney in front of a Congressional hearing, let him kick out the very fragile prop supporting what remains of Russiagate, and watch the whole shebang come crashing down. Then we can investigate just what combination of powers, foreign and domestic, “colluded” to decapitate our nation politically with this malicious hoax.
Doug Mallouk, Baltimore