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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28005 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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seems like the news media, social media, Blinken, and the former intelligence officials mostly or entirely sincerely believed it had a good chance of being Russian disinformation

You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?

Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?

You believe this is more likely than the deep state and political actors working in unison to protect their preferred candidate from the truth?

When it comes to Blinken, there's a decent shot he might've known it was real and was trying to help cover it up, given he was an advisor to Biden's campaign. But I think there's also a decent shot he thought it had a high chance of being Russian disinformation or real information but a Russia-led operation. Now, could Hunter have told Joe who could tell Blinken that the laptop was real? Very possibly. I'm not going to say with high confidence that Blinken was entirely acting in good faith on the matter. But I think most of the other parties probably were.

Have any of the 'intelligence officials' retracted their letter?

For starters, here is the meat of the original letter:

It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the U.S. political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.

If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this.

There are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.

Such an operation would be consistent with Russian objectives, as outlined publicly and recently by the Intelligence Community, to create political chaos in the United States and to deepen political divisions here but also to undermine the candidacy of former Vice President Biden and thereby help the candidacy of President Trump. For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.

A “laptop op” fits the bill, as the publication of the emails is clearly designed to discredit Biden.

Such an operation would be consistent with some of the key methods Russia has used in its now multi-year operation to interfere in our democracy—the hacking (via cyber operations) and the dumping of accurate information or the distribution of inaccurate or misinformation.

So, to be clear, they carefully hedge the letter to say that it is very possible all of the emails are real. They say "information operation" rather than "disinformation operation", they say they do not know if the emails are genuine or not, they say they have no evidence of Russian involvement, and they refer to one of Russia's tactics being "the dumping of accurate information".

The rest of the letter states past alleged examples of passing of information from Russian intelligence officials to Giuliani and that

According to the Washington Post, citing four sources, “U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.”

This letter was somewhat irresponsible but not that irresponsible. Many of the intelligence officials who signed off on it probably didn't and don't even like Biden or Democrats. It turned out that Russia appeared to have no involvement in it and all the emails were real, but it wasn't ridiculous to assume they could've been involved.

From some quick research, it appears none of the intelligence officials have retracted their signature or said they regret signing it, as recently as a few months ago. Some have explicitly said they don't regret it.

Yes this is how the deep state / PMC lie.

They were careful to tell technically the truth while still creating the impression in the media that this was Russian disinformation. Providing cover for the various social networks to limit / censor the story. They certainly would have known the claimed provenance of the laptop as being abandoned by Hunter at a repair shop. I don't recall their letter rebutting this very directly. Maybe this just means Hunter is a Russian agent leaking his own emails and dick pics.

I'll admit I've very little generosity left for these people. They're the same sort to produce 'intelligence' about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or Russia blowing up their own pipeline, etc.

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