2017.06 Exposure and arrest of a confidential source

Story asserted Russian intelligence hacked American voter registration/polling company, was false, and got leakers arrested.

Story asserted that Russian intelligence had hacked American voter registration/polling company. Not only was the story false (they had been thwarted), it was used to back the Fake Russian Collusion Narrative (which was also false), and it got the people leaking the documents to the Intercept arrested.

ℹ️ Info

~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2019-02-24

The Intercept published a story that asserted Russian intelligence successfully hacked an American voter registration/polling company, and had used that information to phish state election officials, based on NSA documents they had.

The Intercept reporter (Matthew Cole) had shared these documents with another government contractor, seeking to validate them... but the documents had microdots (a digital footprint), which outted their source.

One hour after publication, Reality Winner (NSA employee) was arrested by the FBI and charged with Espionage. Two other convicted NSA sources (in other cases), claimed that Cole's actions had lead to their arrests as well.

Oh, and the documents showed that the Russians had tried and largely failed to hack the institution, and was irrelevant to the Trump-Russia collusion claims: so was really just a nothing-burger.

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Fake News
While the term goes back 100 years, the history is summed up well by Sharyl Attkisson.

The Intercept
The Intercept was a left leaning brainchild of Glenn Greenwald, then he left and they went further left.

Russiagate
The FBI used Hillary's lie about Russian Collusion, to illegally tap, distract and harass Trump, with media complicity.

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Tags: FakeNews Intercept Russian Collusion