Some Speculation on the Russia - WikiLeaks "connection"

The last two posts have been about public statements by people involved in the DNC hacks/leaking and disbursements of information and questions which remain to be be investigated.


One Link: Russia to WikiLeaks

In this post I merely want to look at one specific link and what it may mean. I was listening to CIA Director Pompeo (a Harvard-educated lawyer, formerly House Representative from Kansas) being interviewed today (on C-SPAN) and he specifically said that the Intelligence Community (IC) had declared in January that Russian intelligence (FSB or GRU) had passed information gained by hacking the DNC to WikiLeaks which published it and hinted of it to Roger Stone.

That is in contradiction to what Julian Assange of WikiLeaks has said, that Russia never gave them anything and their source was a DNC leaker.

It also contradicts what Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, has said about getting the information from someone (a leaker who had legal access to the information, not a hacker) at the DNC. It also implies that if Murray did not get information from a leaker, that Roger Stone could not have gotten it that way either.


What Might Have Happened

Instead, it would mean that after the Russians gave Wikileaks/Assange the information which they gained illegally, that Craig Murray (or someone) disseminated foreknowledge of its publication to Roger Stone, and that it was a lie that it had come from a DNC leaker rather than from a Russian hacker. Whether it was presented to Stone as from a leaker or a hacker is hard to determine.

I don't know if Stone would have cared about the source, so long as the information he received was accurate enough to burnish his reputation and help the Trump campaign and the Republican party. Stone is a highly partisan person (in his own words).


Other Ramifications

It would also mean Craig Murray could no longer be trusted in any national security capacity for the U.S. or the U.K. He has sometime in the past lost the U.K. government trust and his ambassadorship, so that may not change anything.

It would also mean that if there was a DNC leaker, that they may have given information to the FBI, but not to Murray, WikiLeaks, or anyone else. The mere existence of a leaker however, would have had to come to the attention of someone at WikiLeaks, so they could use them in their story to Stone (or other persons). How that may have happened is hard to say. It seems improbable.

If there never was a DNC leaker, then it means Putin and/or Julian Assange wanted the Democrats to to distrust one another.

It would mean Putin had a direct hand in the effort to use WikiLeaks as a way to distribute information meant to damage the Clinton campaign and/or to help the Trump campaign.

It might mean Roger Stone was not disturbed to use information gathered by Russians to help his cause.


What Really Happened

A more likely description of events is that there never was a DNC leaker, that all the information came via the Russian hackers, that the FBI came to know of the hacking because the IC knew about Russian activities going back to late 2015 or early 2016. It was the FBI which told the DNC they had been hacked.


If this is true, it simplifies the picture substantially: one source of information -- the DNC, one hacker -- Russia's GRU or FSB, one distributor -- WikiLeaks.com, and individual(s) who received a heads-up about upcoming leaks -- Roger Stone being the one we know.

That's a much more straight-line arrangement and as easy to believe, if not easier. It does leave our any reasoning for why Seth Rich was killed. Maybe he was just mugged badly. Maybe someone wanted to stop him from leaking. Maybe we will never know.


A Simpler Picture of What Happened

Here is how I envision the information flow:

DNC --> Russian hackers --> WikiLeaks/WikiLeaks.com --> hints to Roger Stone

To get to this isn't very hard. It is very simple and only the idea/lie that Craig Murray (or the 'journalist' Roger Stone indicated) got the information directly from a DNC leaker has to be shown to be incorrect. Can that be done?