Ha'aretz
Misstatements, exaggerations, false analogies, misleading generalizations, etc.

Ha'aretz, one of Israel's independent daily newspapers, offers news coverage of domestic and international affairs. It has a journalistic staff of about 330 reporters, writers and editors, and a daily circulation of  75,000.

JUNE 28, 2017
Haaretz (Again) Corrects Inflated Rafah Casualty Figure

JUNE 12, 2017
Hebrew Haaretz Says What English Won't: Islamic Jihad Man Was Target of Fatal Strike

JUNE 4, 2017
These Are Your Journalists, Haaretz

MAY 24, 2017
Haaretz's Three-Part Western Wall Error

MAY 14, 2017
In English, Haaretz Upgrades Hamas' New Document to New 'Charter'

MARCH 26, 2017
Basil Al-Araj, Terror Activist or Young Intellectual? Haaretz's Changing Story

MARCH 19, 2017
Who Is Most Targeted in America? Muslims or Jews? Haaretz Corrects

JANUARY 25, 2017
Haaretz Corrects: Bedouin Driver Killing of Cop Not Just A 'Police Claim'

JANUARY 11, 2017
Twice Lost, Then Found, in Haaretz Translation: Hamas Exploitation of Gaza Cancer Patients

DECEMBER 14, 2016
AFP, Haaretz Amend Reference to Syrian, Palestinian Flag

NOVEMBER 7, 2016
Amiram Goldblum's Numbers Don't Add Up

NOVEMBER 1, 2016
After Palestinian Attack, Haaretz Fixes 'Lost in Translation'

NOVEMBER 1, 2016
Sayed Kashua's Revisionism: 1948 and 2016

SEPTEMBER 27, 2016
Gideon Levy Underscores Dubious Claims by Father of Terrorist

SEPTEMBER 20, 2016
Flailing Haaretz Lashes Out At CAMERA

AUGUST 12, 2016
Israel's Globes Covers Haaretz's Translation Problems

JULY 10, 2016
Haaretz Omits Critical Information on New Police Regulations

JULY 6, 2016
Bogus Page-One Haaretz Headline: 'Donors Halt Funds' to Ben-Gurion University (Updated)

JUNE 23, 2016
Israel Recycles Water, Amira Hass Recycles False Water Charges

JUNE 19, 2016
Haaretz's Amira Hass Sweeps Away the Facts

MAY 2, 2016
Under Fire for Bias, Haaretz Editor Aluf Benn Lashes Out, Errs on Facts

APRIL 18, 2016
Distorted Haaretz English Translations On Israeli Public Agenda

MARCH 30, 2016
Haaretz Again Corrects on Mohammed Al Dura

MARCH 9, 2016
Haaretz Corrects Latest Skewed Translation

FEBRUARY 28, 2016
Haaretz Corrects Erroneous Headline on U.S. Conviction of Rasmieh Odeh

FEBRUARY 16, 2016
Haaretz Corrects Misinformation on Knesset Session About Biased Media Coverage

JANUARY 27, 2016
Haaretz Covers Up For Palestinian Prisoner Mohammed al-Qiq

JANUARY 27, 2016
Accusing Others of Dishonest Language, Beinart Distorts an Ambassador's Words

JANUARY 25, 2016
Haaretz Legal Follies

JANUARY 3, 2016
Haaretz's Bogus Book 'Ban'

DECEMBER 27, 2015
Haaretz Corrects Mistranslation About Eritrean's Death

DECEMBER 15, 2015
Haaretz: Incitement to Kidnap Soldiers is "Political Activism"

NOVEMBER 18, 2015
Haaretz Corrects: Bill Doesn't Call For Jailing 12-Year-Olds

NOVEMBER 17, 2015
Jewish Agency's Yigal Palmor Slams Media Accounts of Aleppo 'Rescue'

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015
Incitement over Temple Mount Leads to Palestinian Violence, Again

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015
Haaretz Retracts Conspiracy Theory About Syrian Patients in Israel

AUGUST 24, 2015
Did Avi Dichter Call For Separate Roads for Jews, Arabs? Haaretz Corrects

AUGUST 5, 2015
Haaretz's Gideon Levy Chooses a Classical Antisemitic Trope

JULY 16, 2015
Malakhi Moshe Rosenfeld Is Latest Victim of Haaretz Translators

JULY 14, 2015
CAMERA Prompts Haaretz Correction of Inflated Palestinian Casualties Figure

JULY 13, 2015
In Haaretz's English Edition, Many More Palestinians Were Killed

MAY 3, 2015
Gideon Levy's Swimming Pool Falsehood Resurfaces

APRIL 27, 2015
AP, Haaretz Run Temple Mount Correction. Ynet, Israel Hayom Don't

APRIL 14, 2015
Haaretz's Gideon Levy Spreads His Anti-Israel Poison Abroad

MARCH 8, 2015
Mughayyir Mosque 'Arson' Story Flares Up Again

FEBRUARY 25, 2015
Haaretz Corrects Headlines on Unruly Israir Passengers

JANUARY 27, 2015
Kobi Niv Dubs All Israelis Racist, Misses Praise for Lassana Bathily

JANUARY 12, 2015
In Hebrew, Haaretz Clarifies Regarding Rafah Casualties

JANUARY 5, 2015
Party Time: Fatah's Founding Myth

JANUARY 4, 2015
Haaretz Corrects "Lost in Translation" on Mosque Fire

DECEMBER 16, 2014
Backdraft: Some Media Outlets Backtrack on Mosque 'Arson'

NOVEMBER 25, 2014
Zvi Bar'el, Meet Israel's Founding Document

OCTOBER 26, 2014
Haaretz Partially Corrects Article on "Settler Attacks" on Al Aqsa

JUNE 22, 2014
Haaretz Corrects: Sde Avraham Not a 'Settlement'

JUNE 9, 2014
Haaretz, Al Jazeera Go Racist

MAY 20, 2014
Haaretz Corrects: Palestinian Grove Wasn't 'Torched'

MAY 19, 2014
Haaretz Advocacy Journalism and Lag B'Omer Bonfires

MAY 13, 2014
Economist's Nicolas Pelham Deceives About Christians

MAY 11, 2014
CAMERA Prompts Haaretz Correction on Netanyahu Quote

MAY 5, 2014
Haaretz Bungles Headlines on Netanyahu's Nation-State Remarks

APRIL 28, 2014
CAMERA Prompts Haaretz Correction on West Bank Barrier

APRIL 23, 2014
In Ha'aretz, Western Wall Errors, and a Correction

APRIL 9, 2014
Ha'aretz Pulls Tendentious, Plagiarized FIFA Story

APRIL 8, 2014
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Western Wall

MARCH 12, 2014
Ha'aretz Corrects Jewish State Error

MARCH 3, 2014
Just the Facts: Stripping Down Ha'aretz Coverage on Airport Search

FEBRUARY 26, 2014
Ha'aretz Veers Off Course on Israel Ports Story

FEBRUARY 20, 2014
Ha'aretz Corrects: Black Students Enrolled in Herzilya Center

FEBRUARY 15, 2014
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz Publish False Water Charges

FEBRUARY 11, 2014
UPDATED: False Charge of 'Palestinian Kids in Cages' Lives On in Australian Documentary

JANUARY 5, 2014
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Corrections on Ethiopians' Contraception

JANUARY 1, 2014
At End of 2013, Ha'aretz Drops Ball on Depo-Provera Story

DECEMBER 25, 2013
Ha'aretz Headline: Where Disputed Arab Claims Come True

DECEMBER 24, 2013
The Samer Issawi Test

DECEMBER 22, 2013
Bogus Bus Boycott

DECEMBER 10, 2013
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Mandela Visit

DECEMBER 9, 2013
Meet the Ramahis, Family of 'Peace'

DECEMBER 5, 2013
Presspectiva Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on EU Plan

OCTOBER 29, 2013
Ha'aretz on Prisoners: A Correction, and An Error

OCTOBER 24, 2013
Rihanna, Ha'aretz and Palestine

OCTOBER 20, 2013
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Gaza Imports

OCTOBER 1, 2013
Journalists Trip Over Gaza-Bound Construction Materials

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013
After Iranian Twitter Posts, Excitement Overcomes Nuance

JULY 1, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects: Netanyahu, Kerry Met in Jerusalem, Not Tel Aviv

JULY 1, 2013
Ha'aretz's Laor in Denial on Prisoner Releases

JUNE 16, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects: Rape Victim Was Israeli, Not Palestinian

JUNE 11, 2013
Ha'aretz Manipulates Child Casualty Figures

MAY 22, 2013
13-Year Controversy Over Al Dura Incident Continues

MAY 16, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects: No Jewish Prayer on Temple Mount

MAY 12, 2013
Ha'aretz in English: Jews Can Pray on the Temple Mount

MAY 12, 2013
Ha'aretz, But Not AFP, Publishes Correction On Israeli Stone-Throwers

MAY 7, 2013
AFP Misidentifies Israeli Stone-Throwers as Palestinian

APRIL 24, 2013
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Prisoner Samer Issawi

APRIL 7, 2013
Weekend Roundup of Ha'aretz Errors

APRIL 5, 2013
CAMERA Elicits Ha'aretz Clarification on Settlements

APRIL 4, 2013
CAMERA Prompts Corrections on Gideon Levy Column

APRIL 2, 2013
Injured Toddler, Soldiers Lost in Ha'aretz Translation

MARCH 19, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects: Palestine Not Full-Fledged U.N. Member

MARCH 12, 2013
Updated: Ha'aretz Upgrades 'Palestine' to Full U.N. Member

MARCH 10, 2013
Ha'aretz Headline Errs on Australian Report About Zygier

MARCH 7, 2013
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Ethiopian Birth Control Story

MARCH 3, 2013
Updated: Weekend Roundup of Ha'aretz, Lost in Translation

FEBRUARY 27, 2013
Updated: CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Palestinian Prisoners

FEBRUARY 21, 2013
Collective Punishment of Ha'aretz Readers

FEBRUARY 19, 2013
Updated: Neglected Facts About Hunger-Striking Samer Issawi

FEBRUARY 7, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects E-1, Gaza Errors

FEBRUARY 3, 2013
Israeli Outlets Foment Demonization With Sloppy Journalism

FEBRUARY 3, 2013
Whose Land? Ha'aretz Distorts Eli Land's Status

JANUARY 27, 2013
Ha'aretz Corrects: Gazan's Death Was Disputed

JANUARY 20, 2013
Guardian Corrects: Israel Didn't Violate Injunction. Why won't Ha'aretz?

JANUARY 16, 2013
Updated: Killed (by Israel) in Translation: Ha'aretz's 'Tailor-Made' English Content

JANUARY 15, 2013
Ha'aretz's 'Tailor-Made' English Content Wrong Again

JANUARY 9, 2013
In Exclusive Interview, Former Ha'aretz Editor Traces Paper's Decline

DECEMBER 29, 2012
CAMERA Top Ten MidEast Media Mangles of 2012

DECEMBER 18, 2012
Another Front-Page Gaffe at Ha'aretz

NOVEMBER 29, 2012
Ha'aretz Corrects Article Wrongly Blaming Israel for Boy's Death

NOVEMBER 28, 2012
Ha'aretz Lost in Translation: Whitewashing a Stabbing

NOVEMBER 4, 2012
Former Ha'aretz Editor Marmari Speaks Out on 'Apartheid' Poll Scandal

OCTOBER 29, 2012
In Today's 'Apology,' Gideon Levy Just Doesn't Get It

OCTOBER 28, 2012
Will Inquiry Follow Ha'aretz 'Apartheid' Clarification?

OCTOBER 25, 2012
Ha'aretz's Apartheid Campaign Against Israel

OCTOBER 23, 2012
Minority Report: Akiva Eldar Responds

OCTOBER 17, 2012
With Akiva Eldar, the Facts Are a Minority

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012
Attack on Christian Housing Project in Jerusalem Ignored

SEPTEMBER 4, 2012
At Ha'aretz, English Translation Takes a Beating

JULY 16, 2012
Ha'aretz Allegation of War Crime Unfounded

JUNE 29, 2012
Presspectiva Editor-in-Chief Published in Ha'aretz

JUNE 20, 2012
Ha'aretz Rocket Remix

MAY 30, 2012
Haaretz, Lost in Translation

MAY 20, 2012
UPDATED: Ha'aretz's Conflicting 'Nakba' Headlines: Clashes or Quiet?

MAY 20, 2012
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on 'Nakba Day' Clash

MAY 13, 2012
Ha'aretz Corrects 'Nakba Law' Lost in Translation

MAY 9, 2012
Updated: The Samouni Case in Ha'aretz: Picture of Contradictions

MAY 1, 2012
Amira Hass and the Activists of Nabi Saleh

MARCH 26, 2012
Ha'aretz 'Lost in Translation' Corrected

JANUARY 1, 2012
Ha'aretz and the Christmas Siege That Wasn't

JANUARY 1, 2012
Ha'aretz's Sefi Rachlevsky Fabricates Rabbinic Ruling

DECEMBER 12, 2011
Amira Hass' Water Woes

OCTOBER 9, 2011
Presspectiva Prompts Correction on Ha'aretz Op-Ed About Anatot Violence

OCTOBER 2, 2011
Akiva Eldar, Who Is Lying?

SEPTEMBER 25, 2011
Updated: English Ha'aretz Covers Up Palestinian Violence

SEPTEMBER 19, 2011
Media Ignore Ha'aretz Report on Israeli Flexibility

AUGUST 26, 2011
Ha'aretz Corrects Articles Blaming IDF Fire for Egyptian Fatalities

AUGUST 5, 2011
Would-Be Flotilla Participant Poses as Jew in Ha'aretz

JULY 17, 2011
Ha'aretz Corrects: Palestinian 'Civilian' Fatality Was Actually Hamas

JULY 10, 2011
CAMERA/Presspectiva Rebuts Yael Sternhell in Ha'aretz

JULY 3, 2011
Gideon Levy's Distorted Discourse

JUNE 29, 2011
Amira Hass Spouts Vitriol on the CBC

JUNE 23, 2011
Gideon Levy Adrift in His Alternate Reality

MAY 17, 2011
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction on Al Dura

MARCH 31, 2011
Israeli Ambassador Slams Gideon Levy

MARCH 14, 2011
Ha'aretz Buries Fogel Funeral

JANUARY 18, 2011
Ha'aretz Gets Little Right on 'Little Kotel'

JANUARY 17, 2011
CAMERA Prompts Ha'aretz Correction: Palestinians in Silwan Building Illegally

DECEMBER 15, 2010
Presspectiva Editor Yishai Goldflam Criticizes Ha'aretz's Yossi Sarid

NOVEMBER 30, 2010
Israel's English-Language Media, AFP, Selectively Report on Israeli Poll

NOVEMBER 9, 2010
Ha'aretz Corrects Headline on Hamas Casualties

NOVEMBER 1, 2010
Colleague Takes Gideon Levy to Task

SEPTEMBER 28, 2010
Ha'aretz, Margaret Atwood, Fabricate Allegation of Child Deaths

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010
New Year, New Precedent: Ha'aretz Corrects

AUGUST 29, 2010
Ha'aretz Repeats 'Jewish-Only Apartheid Roads' Canard

AUGUST 23, 2010
How to Distort the News, In Hebrew

JULY 28, 2010
Haaretz: Amira Hass' Ideological Agenda Trumps Journalistic Integrity

MAY 17, 2010
Report on Palestinian Incitement? Ha'aretz Has More Pressing Concerns

MAY 12, 2010
Update/Correction: Akiva Eldar, Mearsheimer's Righteous Jewish Source for Misinformation

APRIL 21, 2010
Journalists Buy Falsehoods on Gaza Shipments

MARCH 25, 2010
Ha'aretz Invents Dershowitz Drama

MARCH 23, 2010
Akiva Eldar Clueless in Jerusalem

MARCH 10, 2010
Ha'aretz Flubs the Facts on Arabs in the Knesset

FEBRUARY 1, 2010
Cloud of Questions Over Ha'aretz's White Phosphorous Story

NOVEMBER 24, 2009
Ha'aretz's Ode to an 'Apartheid Road'

OCTOBER 21, 2009
Amira Hass, the Samouni Family, and the Pursuit of Truth

OCTOBER 2, 2009
Ha'aretz's Gideon Levy: Israel Should be Thankful for Goldstone Report

MAY 19, 2009
Ha'aretz Senseless on Gaza

MARCH 27, 2009
Charges of IDF "Wanton Killing" Crumble

FEBRUARY 4, 2009
The McGirk Affair: Claims of Cold-Blooded Executions Not Credible

JANUARY 20, 2009
Ha'aretz's Levy Fuels Anti-Israel Distortions -- In Croatia

DECEMBER 31, 2008
Pulse on Gaza's Medical Situation

DECEMBER 22, 2008
Ha'aretz Radical Mainstreamed in LAT

NOVEMBER 17, 2008
Hass, Back From Leave, Still Out to Lunch

NOVEMBER 4, 2008
Ha'aretz Tales on Building Permits Grow Taller

OCTOBER 6, 2008
Levy Blinded in Days of Awe

MAY 7, 2008
Ha'aretz Columnist Sacrifices Truth to Show IDF "Wrongdoing"

MAY 4, 2008
UPDATED: 'Last Refuge,' Latest Falsehood

APRIL 18, 2008
CAMERA Translates Letter from Israeli Author Slamming Ha'aretz

FEBRUARY 17, 2008
Ha'aretz Prints Hamas Op-Ed Full of Falsehoods

DECEMBER 26, 2007
Ha'aretz Editor Urges U.S. to "Rape" Israel

JUNE 18, 2007
Farewell to the Minister of Disinformation, Mustafa Barghouti

JANUARY 29, 2007
UPDATED: Al Dura Reprise

NOVEMBER 27, 2006
False Claim by Abbas Goes Unchallenged

SEPTEMBER 25, 2006
Ha'aretz's 'Quiet' Myth

SEPTEMBER 21, 2006
Gideon Levy's Hot Air on Prisoner Releases

AUGUST 20, 2006
Yitzhak Laor Pushes Land Lies in Ha'aretz

JULY 26, 2006
NPR and IHT Corrected. Will Ha'aretz?

JULY 5, 2006
Ha'aretz Again Fails to Correct Error

MARCH 9, 2006
Ha'aretz's Eldar Wrong on Gaza Hothouses

FEBRUARY 6, 2006
Ha'aretz's Hass Scolds Hamas' Haniyeh

NOVEMBER 30, 2005
UPDATED: Ha'aretz Indifferent to Journalistic Norms

OCTOBER 20, 2005
BACKGROUNDER on Professor Ilan Pappé: When Ideology Trumps Scholarship

JULY 12, 2005
UPDATED: AP Corrects: Blair Didn't Link Israel, Bombings

JUNE 30, 2005
No Excuse for Ha'aretz Gaza Population Error

APRIL 19, 2005
Updated: The "Contiguity" Double Standard

APRIL 18, 2005
‘Honor Killing’ or Robbery?

APRIL 4, 2005
Ha'aretz Inaccurately Reports on Garbage Dump

MARCH 21, 2005
BBC and Ha'aretz Journalist Whitewash Palestinian Incitement

MARCH 13, 2005
Ha'aretz Gives Hanan Ashrawi a Makeover

FEBRUARY 28, 2005
Ha'aretz Keeps 'Quiet'

FEBRUARY 18, 2005
BBC Admits to Mistakes, Apologizes

FEBRUARY 6, 2005
Ha’aretz Refuses to Correct Prominent Front Page Error

FEBRUARY 1, 2005
Ha'aretz Feature Explores Media Monitoring

JANUARY 31, 2005
Ha'aretz Prints CAMERA Letter, But No Correction

NOVEMBER 27, 2004
CAMERA Column: Fast and Loose with Facts at Ha'aretz

AUGUST 6, 2001
Ha’aretz Fuels Anti-Israel Bias

EPA sends a man to prison for protecting town from flooding 

6-28-17

By Bryan Fischer

Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"

President Trump's administration is moving forward to implement an executive order that revokes the Obama policy on waters of the United States. The EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are proposing a rule to rescind the Clean Water Rule regulation established by President Obama.

The Obama-era policy gives the federal government authority over a staggering 60% of the water bodies in the United States, including small streams, private ponds, intermittent streams, and even "wetlands" on private property created by seasonal rain.

The president intends to return to a policy consistent with the original Clean Water Act of 1972 and grant authority only to federal authorities over actual navigable waters that affect interstate commerce. Montana senator Steve Daines put it this way: "Out-of-state D.C. bureaucrats shouldn't impose regulations that hurt Montana farmers, ranchers and landowners."

The story below is just one among many that illustrates the importance of getting the boot of the federal government off the necks of ordinary Americans.

–

Note: I wrote this column in 2008 when I served as the director of the Idaho Values Alliance. I worked with Sen. Mike Crapo's office to get a pardon request into President Bush's hands before he left office in January, 2009, but unfortunately the pardon request was not acted upon.

My latest information is that Lynn Moses served his full stretch and was eventually released to a halfway house before returning to his hometown. His eyesight was affected during his incarceration because of the lack of medical attention he received while in federal custody.

Here is the column as it originally read. You might want to duct tape your head before you read this.

–

August 5, 2008

Lynn Moses is scheduled to be locked up in federal prison on August 6. His crime? Protecting the city of Driggs from flooding.

When Mr. Moses began to develop a subdivision along Teton Creek in 1980, Teton County required him to implement an engineer's plan to modify the Teton Creek stream bed to prevent the flooding of subdivision property, caused by the buildup of gravel bars and downed trees, during high water flows in the spring.

In fact, the county would not allow him even to record the plat for the subdivision until the modification work had been done, and only allowed the development after requiring the homeowner's association to maintain the flood control channel year after year.

Teton Creek used to be a flowing stream, but irrigation diversion over 100 years ago dewatered the Creek and left the stream bed dry for all but two months a year at the most. Water only fills the stream bed when irrigators have more water than they can use. (Note: this means there is no "aquatic environment" here, nor any "wetland.")

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers were invited to a planning meeting with the county and Mr. Moses in 1980, but they soon left the meeting after informing county officials that they had "classified the stream as intermittent and therefore outside their jurisdiction."

So working on plans developed by an engineer and approved – in fact, required – by the county, Mr. Moses got to work and cleared the channel of gravel bars and downed cottonwood trees to ensure that the channel would serve as a flood control structure.

For years he has walked the entire length of the creek to evaluate conditions and then remove gravel bars, sand, logs and debris as necessary to keep the channel clear and satisfy the subdivision's obligation to the county.

When Driggs flooded in the spring of 1981 – due to a clogged culvert under a county road – the county approached the Corps a second time, asking for funding and help to replace the culvert with a bridge to prevent future flooding. Once again, the Corps said, Nope, not our problem, not our fault, not our responsibility to fix, we don't have jurisdiction.

Why? Because, they repeated again, Teton Creek is an intermittent stream and we have no jurisdiction unless there is water in the stream bed at least three months out of the year. Thus twice the federal government pointedly and definitively washed its hands of the whole thing.

Since 1982, all Mr. Moses has done is to provide the necessary maintenance to ensure that the stream bed does not get clogged with gravel, sediment, fallen trees, and other debris so that the stream bed can continue to siphon flood water away from homes and the city of Driggs.

He did his work when the stream bed was dry, of course, and never put anything into the stream bed, only took "pollutants" (sedimentation, sand, gravel, etc.) out.

Tellingly, in 1984, when the Forest Service needed to build a road, they came to this same stretch of Teton Creek and – without any kind of permit – contracted with Mr. Moses to excavate between 5,000 and 6,000 cubic yards of gravel from the bed, all of which was inspected by government officials.

Every four or five years, when new staff would replace the old, and a generation would arise "who knew not Joseph," Mr. Moses would receive a letter from the Corps of Engineers, insisting that he needed to get a permit from them for his maintenance work. He'd write them back, informing him that, according to the Corps itself, they had no jurisdiction over intermittent streams. That would be that.

He'd hear nothing for another four to five years, after which another staff rotation led to another letter from the Corps and to a similar reply from Mr. Moses. And so it went for over 20 years.

An aggressive Corps staffer tried to convince the U.S. Attorney to prosecute Mr. Moses in 1995, and the U.S. Attorney told him to take a hike since the Corps had no jurisdictional authority to initiate legal action.

According to former state legislator Lee Gagner, the Corps "discussed his process many times with him, but could not show where they had jurisdiction on the seasonal, intermittent stream." Gagner adds, "[T]o this day they do not have written rules indicating this to be true."

As far as Gagner knows, the Corps never completed what is called a "Jurisdictional Determination" that their own rules even gave them any authority over this particular intermittent stream. (Jurisdiction is determined on a case-by-case basis with intermittent streams.)

At this point, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), emboldened by newly granted bureaucratic authority, jumped in and went right after Mr. Moses, indicting and prosecuting him for violating the Clean Water Act in the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 for doing nothing more than the routine maintenance on the channel he had been doing for 20 years, under requirements imposed by local government.

Presiding federal judge Lynn Winmill, who has a well-deserved reputation for judicial activism, refused to allow Teton County commissioners to testify to the original agreement, nor would he allow the aggressive Corps staffer to testify about the refusal of the U.S. Attorney to prosecute in the mid-90s.

Before the jury was dismissed to enter into deliberations at the conclusion of his trial, Judge Lynn Winmill instructed the jury, believe it or not, to disregard every bit of information from 1980 to 2002, including the Corps' denial of jurisdiction and the mandate from local government for Mr. Moses to maintain the flood channel.

Instructed by this notoriously activist judge to ignore facts, reason and legal history, the jury returned with a guilty verdict, finding Mr. Moses guilty of "discharging" "pollutants" into one of the "waters of the United States."

His conviction ignores the fact that no evidence was ever presented in court that Mr. Moses "discharged" anything into the stream bed at all. He only removed sand and gravel bars that were already there and which he was contractually obligated to remove. He was extracting material from the channel, not discharging material into it.

No evidence was presented in court by the EPA that there was any water at all in the stream bed during those years for Mr. Moses to "discharge" anything into. The EPA claims that "fallback" – material from the bank falling back into the stream bed – represents a "discharge," but it offers no objective criteria for deciding how much "fallback" it takes to cross the magic threshold, meaning the EPA used sheer speculation to assert a violation.

Worse, Mr. Moses was convicted of "pollut(ing) a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout," despite the fact that there have been no fish in this stream bed for more than 150 years. Mr. Gagner, who has lived near the flood channel for 18 years, says he has never seen fish in this stream bed. And it's not even possible for the stream bed to serve as a spawning ground since it only has water two months out of every year in the first place.

Although the director of the EPA in Idaho, Jim Wernitz, asserts that Mr. Moses had damaged "wetlands" associated with the stream, there are no wetlands there! The very word requires that land be, well, wet, but the stream bed is bone dry for at least 10 months out of every year. Wernitz is apparently ignorant of the fact that the Government had previously stipulated that there are no wetlands surrounding the storm channel, nor any "aquatic environment" that could be damaged.

In the plurality opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2006 Rapanos case, Justice Scalia wrote that the Clean Water Act in fact gives the federal government jurisdiction only over "relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water," and explicitly added, "[T]he 'waters of the United States' does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall."

Embarrassingly for Judge Winmill, this ruling was handed down on the very day Mr. Moses was originally sentenced to prison. Eight months later, the Corps of Engineers revised its own rules in a way that makes it abundantly clear that the federal government has no jurisdiction over an intermittent stream like Teton Creek.

No matter. With other notoriously activist federal judges in the 9th Circuit refusing to overturn lower court convictions on appeal, Mr. Moses has been forced to spend almost $400,000 of his own money in a losing effort to defend himself for protecting the city of Driggs from catastrophic flooding.

Mr. Moses' wife died unexpectedly of a heart attack a year and a half ago. Friends tell me the stress of their 25-year battle with the federal government and the stress of the guilty verdict contributed to her early death. Mr. Moses, when I spoke with him this morning, agrees that this is a likely possibility.

The death of his wife has left Mr. Moses to raise his 17-year-old daughter by himself, a daughter who will have to fend for herself once her sole surviving parent is tossed behind bars – in another state no less – for the next 18 months.

His daughter, just now entering her senior year in high school, will be deprived of his comfort and counsel right when she needs it the most. Mr. Moses will miss his daughter's companionship, and miss the joy of her 18th birthday party, her senior prom and her graduation ceremony.

Virtually everything is wrong with this story. It's an egregious violation of the constitutional limitations on federal power, as federal bureaucrats simply dismissed the fact that Mr. Moses was required by local authorities to do exactly what he was doing.

Bureaucratic government agencies, aided and abetted by activist judges, acted as petty tyrants and incarcerated a man not for doing evil but for doing good. A fine man has been chewed up by the grinding maw of a mindless and inhumane federal government, and will spend the next year and a half of his life behind bars, not for endangering the families in his community, but for protecting them.

His attorney calls the whole thing "a travesty," which is just about the mildest thing that can be said about this unconscionable miscarriage of justice.

As Elaine Jones said in a letter published by the Idaho Press-Tribune, "A good, honorable widower is leaving his daughter to others to raise, and is going to prison for following the rules, obeying the law and helping his friends stay safe from flooding."

As George Washington is reputed to have said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master." Lynn Moses will tell you that the government's fire can not just singe you but burn you to a crisp.

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

© Bryan Fischer

Many in the military and intelligence communities are concerned that this Russian meddling which took place entirely under the Obama administration is another “wag the dog” operation.

Many in the military and intelligence communities are concerned that this Russian meddling which took place entirely under the Obama administration is another “wag the dog” operation. The Russians are an extreme danger to the infrastructure integrity of the United States.

Congress, the Department of Justice and our intelligence agencies should investigate the dissent concerning the “Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee.”   To the best of my knowledge, no independent qualified US intelligence source has been permitted to examine the Democratic National Committee files, computer network etc. James Comey  never issued a subpoena to examine those files.   Since this is crucial evidence on which VP Biden publicly threatened a cyber war [which we can’t win] with Russia, it  is highly unusual that such key evidence would not be immediately seized and held intact  for definitive analysis. 

Even a trivial examination of the many links usually found on the Internet explains the current level of sophistication and frequency of such hacking which then shows that any statement that it can be done by a teenager sitting in a little bedroom is very accurate in terms of the sophistication required. The software used  by the hackers was several generations older than that currently used by the Russian intelligence operations and is widely used in hacking operations.

Concerning Gen. Flynn, remember that Jill Stein was also at the same table with Putin. If anybody undercut the election of Hillary Clinton it was Jill Stein. Why isn’t anybody talking about her possible relations with Putin to undermine US elections?

Particular concern to many of us is the vulnerability of our information, communication, transportation, energy, and other grids to interference by Russia, China, Iran, and even North Korea. Such interruption could destroy US  civilization as we know it. Yet the Obama administration looked the other way. The Trump administration is not doing any better.

[See: Congressional Testimony: Efforts to stop Iran’s terror-financing were systematically undermined by the Obama Administration

By Charles Lipson, ZIP DIALOGUE]

Why? To get a nuclear deal, says an insider from the Obama Administration

The testimony is stunning and deeply disturbing.

Efforts to stop terror financing not only involved Iran but also its partners, Syria and Venezuela.

US government efforts to investigate and roll up these networks were all quashed in pursuit of a nuclear deal.

The investigative units themselves were actually disbanded, lest they trouble Iran and make the nuclear deal more difficult to achieve. That, at least, is the testimony of someone who saw it first-hand.

David Asher, an adviser to Gen. John Allen at Defense and State, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that the Obama administration “systematically disbanded” law enforcement investigative units across the federal government focused on disrupting Iranian, Syrian, and Venezuelan terrorism financing networks out of concern the work could cause friction with Iranian officials and scuttle the nuclear deal with Iran, according to a former U.S. official who spent decades dismantling terrorist financial networks. –Washington Free Beacon

Why did the Obama Administration roll up the units stopping terror financing?

Asher’s answer: The administration feared the efforts to investigate and disrupt terror-financing would be an obstacle to reaching an Iranian Nuclear Deal.

Senior leadership, presiding, directing, and overseeing various sections [of these agencies] and portions of the U.S. intelligence community systematically disbanded any internal or external stakeholder action that threatened to derail the administration’s policy agenda focused on Iran,” [Asher] testified.

He detailed extensive collaboration among the Iranians, Syrians, and Venezuelans and said there was enough evidence to take down the terror-financing networks.

What was taken down instead were the anti-terror units in the US government.

A CYBERATTACK ‘THE WORLD ISN’T READY FOR’

By NICOLE PERLROTH NEW YORK TIMES June 22, 2017

POSTING NOTIFICATION:  These materials  have not been evaluated.. Golan Ben-Oni  has both personal and professional credibility. Thus, his urgent warnings about a major impending cyber threat should receive immediate and thorough examination by the US intelligence community.

NEWARK — There have been times over the last two months when Golan Ben-Oni has felt like a voice in the wilderness.

On April 29, someone hit his employer, IDT Corporation, with two cyberweapons that had been stolen from the National Security Agency. Mr. Ben-Oni, the global chief information officer at IDT, was able to fend them off, but the attack left him distraught.

In 22 years of dealing with hackers of every sort, he had never seen anything like it. Who was behind it? How did they evade all of his defenses? How many others had been attacked but did not know it?

Since then, Mr. Ben-Oni has been sounding alarm bells, calling anyone who will listen at the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the New Jersey attorney general’s office and the top cybersecurity companies in the country to warn them about an attack that may still be invisibly striking victims undetected around the world.

And he is determined to track down whoever did it.

“I don’t pursue every attacker, just the ones that piss me off,” Mr. Ben-Oni told me recently over lentils in his office, which was strewn with empty Red Bull cans. “This pissed me off and, more importantly, it pissed my wife off, which is the real litmus test.”

Two weeks after IDT was hit, the cyberattack known as WannaCry ravaged computers at hospitals in England, universities in China, rail systems in Germany, even auto plants in Japan. No doubt it was destructive. But what Mr. Ben-Oni had witnessed was much worse, and with all eyes on the WannaCry destruction, few seemed to be paying attention to the attack on IDT’s systems — and most likely others around the world.

The strike on IDT, a conglomerate with headquarters in a nondescript gray building here with views of the Manhattan skyline 15 miles away, was similar to WannaCry in one way: Hackers locked up IDT data and demanded a ransom to unlock it.

But the ransom demand was just a smoke screen for a far more invasive attack that stole employee credentials. With those credentials in hand, hackers could have run free through the company’s computer network, taking confidential information or destroying machines.

Worse, the assault, which has never been reported before, was not spotted by some of the nation’s leading cybersecurity products, the top security engineers at its biggest tech companies, government intelligence analysts or the F.B.I., which remains consumed with the WannaCry attack.

Were it not for a digital black box that recorded everything on IDT’s network, along with Mr. Ben-Oni’s tenacity, the attack might have gone unnoticed.

Scans for the two hacking tools used against IDT indicate that the company is not alone. In fact, tens of thousands of computer systems all over the world have been “backdoored” by the same N.S.A. weapons. Mr. Ben-Oni and other security researchers worry that many of those other infected computers are connected to transportation networks, hospitals, water treatment plants and other utilities.

An attack on those systems, they warn, could put lives at risk. And Mr. Ben-Oni, fortified with adrenaline, Red Bull and the house beats of Deadmau5, the Canadian record producer, said he would not stop until the attacks had been shut down and those responsible were behind bars.

“The world is burning about WannaCry, but this is a nuclear bomb compared to WannaCry,” Mr. Ben-Oni said. “This is different. It’s a lot worse. It steals credentials. You can’t catch it, and it’s happening right under our noses.”

And, he added, “The world isn’t ready for this.”

Targeting the Nerve Center

Mr. Ben-Oni, 43, a Hasidic Jew, is a slight man with smiling eyes, a thick beard and a hacker’s penchant for mischief. He grew up in the hills of Berkeley, Calif., the son of Israeli immigrants.

Even as a toddler, Mr. Ben-Oni’s mother said, he was not interested in toys. She had to take him to the local junkyard to scour for typewriters that he would eventually dismantle on the living room floor. As a teenager, he aspired to become a rabbi but spent most of his free time hacking computers at the University of California, Berkeley, where his exploits once accidentally took down Belgium’s entire phone system for 15 minutes.

To his parents’ horror, he dropped out of college to pursue his love of hacking full time, starting a security company to help the city of Berkeley and two nearby communities, Alameda and Novato, set up secure computer networks.

He had a knack for the technical work, but not the marketing, and found it difficult to get new clients. So at age 19, he crossed the country and took a job at IDT, back when the company was a low-profile long-distance service provider.

As IDT started acquiring and spinning off an eclectic list of ventures, Mr. Ben-Oni found himself responsible for securing shale oil projects in Mongolia and the Golan Heights, a “Star Trek” comic books company, a project to cure cancer, a yeshiva university that trains underprivileged students in cybersecurity, and a small mobile company that Verizon recently acquired for $3.1 billion.

Which is to say he has encountered hundreds of thousands of hackers of every stripe, motivation and skill level. He eventually started a security business, IOSecurity, under IDT, to share some of the technical tools he had developed to keep IDT’s many businesses secure. By Mr. Ben-Oni’s estimate, IDT experiences hundreds of attacks a day on its businesses, but perhaps only four each year give him pause.

Nothing compared to the attack that struck in April. Like the WannaCry attack in May, the assault on IDT relied on cyberweapons developed by the N.S.A. that were leaked online in April by a mysterious group of hackers calling themselves the Shadow Brokers — alternately believed to be Russia-backed cybercriminals, an N.S.A. mole, or both.

The WannaCry attack — which the N.S.A. and security researchers have tied to North Korea — employed one N.S.A. cyberweapon; the IDT assault used two.

Both WannaCry and the IDT attack used a hacking tool the agency had code-named EternalBlue. The tool took advantage of unpatched Microsoft servers to automatically spread malware from one server to another, so that within 24 hours North Korea’s hackers had spread their ransomware to more than 200,000 servers around the globe.

The attack on IDT went a step further with another stolen N.S.A. cyberweapon, called DoublePulsar. The N.S.A. used DoublePulsar to penetrate computer systems without tripping security alarms. It allowed N.S.A. spies to inject their tools into the nerve center of a target’s computer system, called the kernel, which manages communications between a computer’s hardware and its software.

In the pecking order of a computer system, the kernel is at the very top, allowing anyone with secret access to it to take full control of a machine. It is also a dangerous blind spot for most security software, allowing attackers to do what they want and go unnoticed. In IDT’s case, attackers used DoublePulsar to steal an IDT contractor’s credentials. Then they deployed ransomware in what appears to be a cover for their real motive: broader access to IDT’s businesses.

The N.S.A. campus in Fort Meade, Md. Tens of thousands of computer systems, some of which could be connected to public utilities, have been “backdoored” using the agency’s stolen cyberweapons.

Patrick Semansky / Associated Press

Mr. Ben-Oni learned of the attack only when a contractor, working from home, switched on her computer to find that all her data had been encrypted and that attackers were demanding a ransom to unlock it. He might have assumed that this was a simple case of ransomware.

But the attack struck Mr. Ben-Oni as unique. For one thing, it was timed perfectly to the Sabbath. Attackers entered IDT’s network at 6 p.m. on Saturday on the dot, two and a half hours before the Sabbath would end and when most of IDT’s employees — 40 percent of whom identify as Orthodox Jews — would be off the clock. For another, the attackers compromised the contractor’s computer through her home modem — strange.

The black box of sorts, a network recording device made by the Israeli security company Secdo, shows that the ransomware was installed after the attackers had made off with the contractor’s credentials. And they managed to bypass every major security detection mechanism along the way. Finally, before they left, they encrypted her computer with ransomware, demanding $130 to unlock it, to cover up the more invasive attack on her computer.

Mr. Ben-Oni estimates that he has spoken to 107 security experts and researchers about the attack, including the chief executives of nearly every major security company and the heads of threat intelligence at Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

With the exception of Amazon, which found that some of its customers’ computers had been scanned by the same computer that hit IDT, no one had seen any trace of the attack before Mr. Ben-Oni notified them. The New York Times confirmed Mr. Ben-Oni’s account via written summaries provided by Palo Alto Networks, Intel’s McAfee and other security firms he used and asked to investigate the attack.

“I started to get the sense that we were the canary,” he said. “But we recorded it.”

Since IDT was hit, Mr. Ben-Oni has contacted everyone in his Rolodex to warn them of an attack that could still be worming its way, undetected, through victims’ systems.

“Time is burning,” Mr. Ben-Oni said. “Understand, this is really a war — with offense on one side, and institutions, organizations and schools on the other, defending against an unknown adversary.”

‘No One Is Running Point’

Since the Shadow Brokers leaked dozens of coveted attack tools in April, hospitals, schools, cities, police departments and companies around the world have largely been left to fend for themselves against weapons developed by the world’s most sophisticated attacker: the N.S.A.

A month earlier, Microsoft had issued a software patch to defend against the N.S.A. hacking tools — suggesting that the agency tipped the company off to what was coming. Microsoft regularly credits those who point out vulnerabilities in its products, but in this case the company made no mention of the tipster. Later, when the WannaCry attack hit hundreds of thousands of Microsoft customers, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, slammed the government in a blog post for hoarding and stockpiling security vulnerabilities.

For his part, Mr. Ben-Oni said he had rolled out Microsoft’s patches as soon as they became available, but attackers still managed to get in through the IDT contractor’s home modem.

Six years ago, Mr. Ben-Oni had a chance meeting with an N.S.A. employee at a conference and asked him how to defend against modern-day cyberthreats. The N.S.A. employee advised him to “run three of everything”: three firewalls, three antivirus solutions, three intrusion detection systems. And so he did.

But in this case, modern-day detection systems created by Cylance, McAfee and Microsoft and patching systems by Tanium did not catch the attack on IDT. Nor did any of the 128 publicly available threat intelligence feeds that IDT subscribes to. Even the 10 threat intelligence feeds that his organization spends a half-million dollars on annually for urgent information failed to report it. He has since threatened to return their products.

“Our industry likes to work on known problems,” Mr. Ben-Oni said. “This is an unknown problem. We’re not ready for this.”

No one he has spoken to knows whether they have been hit, but just this month, restaurants across the United States reported being hit with similar attacks that were undetected by antivirus systems. There are now YouTube videos showing criminals how to attack systems using the very same N.S.A. tools used against IDT, and Metasploit, an automated hacking tool, now allows anyone to carry out these attacks with the click of a button.

Worse still, Mr. Ben-Oni said, “No one is running point on this.”

Last month, he personally briefed the F.B.I. analyst in charge of investigating the WannaCry attack. He was told that the agency had been specifically tasked with WannaCry, and that even though the attack on his company was more invasive and sophisticated, it was still technically something else, and therefore the F.B.I. could not take on his case.

The F.B.I. did not respond to requests for comment.

So Mr. Ben-Oni has largely pursued the case himself. His team at IDT was able to trace part of the attack to a personal Android phone in Russia and has been feeding its findings to Europol, the European law enforcement agency based in The Hague.

The chances that IDT was the only victim of this attack are slim. Sean Dillon, a senior analyst at RiskSense, a New Mexico security company, was among the first security researchers to scan the internet for the N.S.A.’s DoublePulsar tool. He found tens of thousands of host computers are infected with the tool, which attackers can use at will.

“Once DoublePulsar is on the machine, there’s nothing stopping anyone else from coming along and using the back door,” Mr. Dillon said.

More distressing, Mr. Dillon tested all the major antivirus products against the DoublePulsar infection and a demoralizing 99 percent failed to detect it.

“We’ve seen the same computers infected with DoublePulsar for two months and there is no telling how much malware is on those systems,” Mr. Dillon said. “Right now we have no idea what’s gotten into these organizations.”

In the worst case, Mr. Dillon said, attackers could use those back doors to unleash destructive malware into critical infrastructure, tying up rail systems, shutting down hospitals or even paralyzing electrical utilities.

Could that attack be coming? The Shadow Brokers resurfaced last month, promising a fresh load of N.S.A. attack tools, even offering to supply them for monthly paying subscribers — like a wine-of-the-month club for cyberweapon enthusiasts.

In a hint that the industry is taking the group’s threats seriously, Microsoft issued a new set of patches to defend against such attacks. The company noted in an ominously worded message that the patches were critical, citing an “elevated risk for destructive cyberattacks.”

Mr. Ben-Oni is convinced that IDT is not the only victim, and that these tools can and will be used to do far worse.

“I look at this as a life-or-death situation,” he said. “Today it’s us, but tomorrow it might be someone else.”

1.      IT IS ESSENTIAL FOR   US  NATIONAL SECURITY AND  FOR AMERICAN NATIONAL UNITY THAT ROBERT MUELLER [OR SOMEONE OF HIGHER AUTHORITY] BEGIN THEIR  INVESTIGATION WITH A THOROUGH EXAMINATION OF SQUARE ONE

A.     History documents  that  several false assumptions/accusations  led the US into major wars. 

.1.  The USSMaine was  sent to protect U.S. interests during the Cuban revolt against Spain, she exploded suddenly, without warning, and sank quickly, killing nearly three quarters of her crew.  Popular opinion in the U.S., fanned by inflammatory articles printed in the "yellow press" by William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, blamed Spain. The phrase, "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!", became a rallying cry for action, which came with the Spanish–American War later that year.

 George W. Melville, a chief engineer in the Navy, proposed that a  likely cause for the sinking was from a magazine explosion within the vessel. The Navy's leading ordnance expert, Philip R. Alger, took this theory further by suggesting that the magazines were ignited by a spontaneous fire in a coal bunker.The coal used in Maine was bituminous coal, which is known for releasing firedamp, a gas that is prone to spontaneous explosions. There is stronger evidence that the explosion of Maine was caused by an internal coal fire which ignited the magazines. This was a likely cause of the explosion, rather than the initial accusation of a Spanish mine.

2. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 7, 1964) gave broad congressional approval for expansion of the Vietnam War.On August 2, shortly after a clandestine raid on the North Vietnamese coast by South Vietnamese gunboats, the U.S. destroyer Maddox (conducting electronic espionage nearby) was fired on by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Two days later, in the same area, the Maddox and another destroyer reported that they were again under attack. Although these reports now appear to have been mistaken, Johnson proceeded quickly to authorize retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam. The next day he gathered congressional leaders and accused the North Vietnamese of “open aggression on the high seas.” He then submitted to the Senate a resolution that authorized him to take “all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.” The resolution was quickly approved by Congress;  Later, when more information about the Tonkin incident became available, many concluded that Johnson and his advisers had misled Congress into supporting the expansion of the war.

3.The false certainty of the US intelligence community that  Saddam Hussein  actually possessed nuclear weapons 

B.      Public  records document  that the Obama administration  orchestrated false information to create  public acceptance for several major administration programs. 

  1. Obamacare. To pass Obamacare, the political consultant/architect was Jonathan Gruber,the Obamacare Architect: “Yeah, We Lied to The "Stupid" American People to Get It Passed”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G790p0LcgbI&ab_channel=AmericanCommitment

 2.  Iran deal.  Ben Rhodes’ Iran Deal ( “wag the dog”) echo chamber operation) which was  explicitly intended to mislead the US public in order to sell this administration’s desired  Iran agreement [ The aspiring novelist who became Obama’s foreign-policy guru  by David Samuels  New York Times May 5, 2016]

 Below, is an excerpt from the New York Times which reproduces in Ben Rhodes’ own words Rhodes’s  campaign to sell the Iran 

"We created an echo chamber,’ he admitted, when I asked him to explain the onslaught of freshly minted experts cheerleading for the deal. ‘They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say.”

3.Susan Rice and  the CIA-State Department-White House scenario that it was a anti-Muslim video that triggered the assault on our diplomatic station in Benghazi. 

4. Intelligence analysts   complained that their  output is being distorted by the political echelon [50 Spies Say ISIS Intelligence Was Cooked 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/09/exclusive-50-spies-say-isis-intelligence-was-cooked.html]; 

C.   President Obama and  VP Biden threatened Russia with cyber warfare [at a place and it is time of our choosing] thus giving Putin an excellent opportunity to blame the United States for any systems failure [there are many that occur] in Russia. Further, this subject to the United States to the possibility of a cyber war which we can not win.

 Obama , announcing the U.S. response:

“We will continue to take a variety of actions at a time and place of our choosing, some of which will not be publicized,” he said in a statement released by the White House. 

( Note that VP Biden threatened Russia with cyber warfare -at a place and it is time of our choosing- thus giving Putin an excellent opportunity to blame the United States for any systems failure [there are many that occur] in Russia. Further, this subjects the United States to the possibility of a cyber war which we can not win.)

He was referring, in part, to a cyber operation that was designed to be detected by Moscow but not cause significant damage, officials said. The operation, which entailed implanting computer code in sensitive computer systems that Russia was bound to find, served only as a reminder to Moscow of the United States’ cyber reach.

 OBAMA ALSO SIGNED THE SECRET FINDING, OFFICIALS SAID, AUTHORIZING A NEW COVERT PROGRAM INVOLVING THE NSA, CIA AND U.S. CYBER COMMAND.

The cyber operation is still in its early stages and involves deploying “implants” in Russian networks deemed “important to the adversary and that would cause them pain and discomfort if they were disrupted,” a former U.S. official said.

The implants were developed by the NSA and designed so that they could be triggered remotely as part of retaliatory cyber-strike in the face of Russian aggression, whether an attack on a power grid or interference in a future presidential race.

Officials familiar with the measures said that there was concern among some in the administration that the damage caused by the implants could be difficult to contain.

As a result, the administration requested a legal review, which concluded that the devices could be controlled well enough that their deployment would be considered “proportional” in varying scenarios of Russian provocation, a requirement under international law.

The operation was described as long-term, taking months to position the implants and requiring maintenance thereafter. 

UNDER THE RULES OF COVERT ACTION, OBAMA’S SIGNATURE WAS ALL THAT WAS NECESSARY TO SET THE OPERATION IN MOTION.

U.S. INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DO NOT NEED FURTHER APPROVAL FROM TRUMP, AND OFFICIALS SAID THAT HE WOULD HAVE TO ISSUE A COUNTERMANDING ORDER TO STOP IT. 

Thus, it is essential for   US  national security and  for American national unity that Robert Mueller [or someone of higher authority]  begin their investigation with a thorough examination of square one 

2.     How to begin at square one in the investigation

The story  that is being sold  to the American public  is  that there is  100% agreement by all the   US  Intelligence agencies that the Russians penetrated the computer systems of the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta in an attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump. [For example see:OBAMA’S SECRET STRUGGLE TO PUNISH RUSSIA FOR PUTIN’S ELECTION ASSAULT Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashimaand ,Adam Entous 

\WASHINGTON POST   June 23, 2017]

The "intelligence assumptions" cascade with the further  assumption being  announced that the Russians would not conduct such an operation without the explicit knowledge and the explicit direct approval of Vladimir Putin. Or that we have definitive evidence either from a  3rd country source or from our own penetration into Putin's inner circle that he personally ordered the operation.

If Russia, China, Iran, North Korea an Islamic power, or a criminal element  really wanted to disrupt the election in the United States they have the capability to easily do so. This would be by means of a coordinated,  attack on a series of computers, not an isolated intrusion into a single computer system.

This story is politically convenient but it does not comply with the capabilities of the Russians and with the political and technical savvy of the dark web  Internet community operations.

First, they would infiltrate the hundreds of computers operated by the local Democratic and/or Republican organizations. Quantitatively this is a relatively small number compared to past viral and other attacks. This is relatively simple technically given the low level of security protection, the large number of people with access, and the large number of incoming and outgoing emails and other transactions

 Then they would incapacitate the donor lists which would prevent refurbishing the financial coffers during the last phases of the campaign. They would incapacitate the precinct walking lists which would forestall the ground games which are essential to most campaigns. They would incapacitate the directories which would prevent communication with the volunteers, with the potential voters , with  potential donors and with all of the other local and national organizations of their party which would prevent coordination, etc.. This “ hacking “ operation could be accomplished by destroying the files or by  encoding them for ransom. Recent attacks that have been reported in the media have been of much greater magnitude and sophistication.

What is agreed upon is that these  intrusions were  very sloppy and that the tools used (which had been developed by Russian hackers ) were from a generation or two earlier than those currently used by Russian organizations affiliated with Russian intelligence and that these older tools  are widely distributed and  have been widely used in the hacking community. [ Thus, the observation that this hacking could have been conducted by a reasonably competent 14-year-old sitting in the basement of his parents house is certainly a worthy contender as to whom exactly was the culprit.]

Many technical experts  do not agree with the CrowdStrike  [ Democratic Party contractor ] assessment or with the Obama administration’s claims that the DNC/DCCC hacks were  clearly committed by Russian state actors. A great  deal of  the  criticism  is aimed at the FBI/DHS Joint Analysis Report (JAR) “Grizzly Steppe” that was released at the end of December.

The JAR cited as  “specific indicators of compromise” IP addresses and a PHP malware sample. But what does this really prove?

 Wordfence, a WordPress security company specializing in analyzing PHP malware, examined these indicators and didn’t find any hard evidence of Russian involvement. Instead, Wordfence found the attack software was  an out-of-date, web-shell hacking tool. The newest version is more sophisticated. Its website claims it was written in the Ukraine.

Mark Maunder, Wordfence’s CEO, concluded that since the attacks were made “several versions behind the most current version of P.A.S , one might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources.”

 Errata Security CEO Rob Graham pointed out in a blog post that while P.A.S is popular among Russia/Ukraine hackers. it is “used by hundreds if not thousands of hackers, mostly associated with Russia, but also throughout the rest of the world.” In short, just because the attackers used P.A.S., that’s not enough evidence to blame it on the Russian government.

Independent cybersecurity experts, such as Jeffrey Carr, have cited numerous errors that the media and CrowdStrike have made in discussing the hacking in what Carr refers to as a “runaway train” of misinformation.

Those aspects of the Democratic Party and John Podesta information systems that were relevant to this intrusion should have been secured by the US government. It is inexplicable why James Comey failed to  subpoena and safeguard these materials.  it is reported that the Democratic Party refused  to allow  the US government  to have independent access to these materials.

Robert Muller should immediately subpoena and safeguard all the  computer files and systems of the Democratic National Committee and of John Podesta that are relevant to this hacking operation.

So all we have to go on is the “assessment “by contractors to the Democratic Party that two groups of Russian hackers (which they claim are affiliated with different Russian intelligence agencies)  operating individually did the hackng.

Normally, hackers would seek items such as "opposition research files"; "donor lists" etc. After a quick look at the routine files for such organizations they would cease their operation out of boredom. If the Russians did hack these files they would have to know in advance that they would find very valuable pay dirt such as the evidence uncovered of double dealing, deceit, deception etc.

We do know that Wikileaks  published these files .Julian Assange has publicly stated that he did not get them from a government source.  Julian Assange, in an interview with Sean Hannity  December 15, 2016 stated  that "no state actor was involved.”Hannity  then plays the statement by national security director James Clapper which supports this view. [James Clapper's statement begins approximately at the 2.3 minute point]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R-D1fvMtbk&pbjreload=10&ab_channel=TracyD.   An excellent  review of the entire actual situation is:  MILITARY INTELLIGENCE  Monday, November 7, 2016 WHAT IS PUTIN’s REAL GAME

http://ltgjcmilopsg3.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-is-putins-real-game.html

Robert Muller  should offer Julian Assange whatever immunity and /or other protections that would obtain his full and complete testimony as to his sources of information. [If he is unwilling to name specific individuals, he should be willing, under oath, to clear other individuals and/or other organizations.]

WHAT? YOU MEAN THEY DON'T CARE ABOUT DEMOCRAT INVESTIGATIONS...AGAIN?

By Rabbi Dov Fischer 6-23-17

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/06/what_you_mean_they_dont_care_about_democrat_investigations__again.html

What?  Karen Handel beat that Democrat in the race for Sixth Congressional District in Georgia ?

How could that be?  How could that posssibly be?  Five straight Republican Congressional wins in races against Democrats?

Didn’t the voters in Georgia know that Chuck Schumer believes that Donald Trump colluded with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 Presidential election against Hillary Clinton?

Looks like no one really cares.  And looks like Americans see through the nonsense and the enormous waste of our taxes and national resources.

Didn’t the voters know that Michael Flynn was forced to resign months ago because he had not been square with Vice President Mike Pence when asked whether he had spoken with Russian government representatives before President Trump took office?

Didn’t the voters benefit from $50 million spent, much from outside the District, to educate them that The Resistance is ready?

Didn’t the voters know that Congress has been holding hearings to find out whether anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians?

Didn’t the voters know that Attorney General Jeff Sessions felt he had to recuse himself from investigating collusion charges because there were other charges floating that he himself had spoken to a Russian ambassador in the United States?

Haven’t the voters seen Attorney General Sessions being grilled on television by Democratic Party United States Senators?

Looks like no one really cares.  And looks like Americans see through the nonsense and the enormous waste of out taxes and national resources.

Didn’t the voters know that James Comey now is a favorite of Democrats, as the former FBI Director testified with all sorts of innuendoes against President Trump and his supporters?

Don’t the voters know that there now is a Special Prosecutor, Robert Mueller, looking into all sorts of things concerning the Trump White House, or whatever?

Didn’t the voters know that Kellyanne Conway once jokingly told the public from the White House that she endorses Ivanka Trump clothing products?

Didn’t the voters know that President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has done business with Russians?

Don’t the voters know that the Trump White House regularly is lampooned by “Saturday Night Live” and Stephen Colbert?

Looks like no one really cares.  And looks like Americans see through the nonsense and the enormous waste of out taxes and national resources.

From the day that we elected President Donald Trump over a self-obsessed, power-driven, and lying former First Lady and miserably incompetent former Secretary of State who shattered our national foreign footprint rather than any glass ceilings, whose contributions to American leadership included a failed healthcare program that she fatally convinced her husband to promote until its doom, and later a failed series of foreign policy disasters that she helped convince the empty-suit who beat her for the Presidency in 2008 to pursue until others encountered doom, the media and the Democrats have not given Donald Trump a day of fairness.  Not a day, not a single 24-hour period, to simply pursue his vision for a greater America.

Despite that nearly unprecedented attack and five months of their anti-Trump vitriol and investigations and rumors and leaks and even hints of impeachment, this president has continued to lead.  In only five months, he has straightened out the United States Supreme Court by naming one of the finest jurists of our generation, someone so impeccable that Democrats could not dent Neil Gorsuch’s armor even as Republicans marveled at his fidelity to the Constitution and to the Framers’ vision, to fill out the Court.  And the president has begun proceeding to name judges to the 129 other open federal judicial seats that can straighten out the federal district courts that conduct trials and the federal appellate courts that ultimately settle most of America’s laws.

Notwithstanding a five-month war of hate against a fundamemntally good man, with a fundamentally good heart and a vision to make this country great again, to repair the extraordinary damage to America’s foreign and world leadership posture, while fixing all that ails us at home, the president has moved, as quickly as his opponents could be sidestepped, to fulfill one important campaign promise after another.  He has approved the Keystone XL pipeline.  He has issued executive orders reversing a universe of Obama regulations that had handcuffed the American economy, suffocated business, and stifled the American labor force.  He has begun liberating America’s own natural sources of energy from decades of Democrat regulation that gave the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Venezuelans and so many other hostile countries that are not our friends and that mean us no good – and that do not care a whit about the environment, nor impose any meaningful environmental oversight on oil and gas extraction in  their countries – and he has opened new doors for the development and extraction and production of American energy, American oil, American natural gas, American clean coal.

He has opened bidding by inviting submissions for building a wall on our Southern border with Mexico, and his mere strength of presence has resulted in an unprecedented reduction in illegal crossings into our country from across that border.  No wall – just a real president, with a real Attorney General, and a real Justice Department and a real Homeland Security team ready to enforce the laws already on America’s books – and illegal immigration has dropped like an Acme anvil in a Warner Brothers cartoon.  Real ICE raids that finally have given law enforcement confidence and belief that the people whom they round up actually will be deported, not just set free in exchange for a blatantly false promise to appear months later at a court hearing that everyone would know would never happen.

Under brutal non-stop attack from Schumer and Pelosi and their shills at CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the entire left-wing apparatus – an attack so brutal that it has extended to the worst calumny and defamation, lies and libel and slander that go just to the limits of “New York Times malice,” even to portrayals of suggested assassination in New York theatrical productions – this President has forged new relationships overseas.  Our real friends – nations like England and Japan and and Israel – no longer are the pinatas for an Obama-Clinton-Kerry foreign policy.  Other friends – nations like Germany and France – have had to get used to a new playing field where, although the friendship and allegiances remain as strong as ever, now they and their cohorts have to pay their fair share of the bills, put up their fair share of the blood and sweat, and understand that they no longer have a kneeling, prostrating, apologizing “rock star” to tickle but a real American president to deal with.  So maybe President Trump is not as popular with the Europeans as Obama was.  Maybe they do not like when he asks them to pay the bills they have contracted to pay, and maybe they do not like when he tells them that he will not march America down Obama’s ridiculous and nonsensical dance to tie the hands of American power and industry to some blindsided environmental agreements.  So our president is not as popular with the Europeans as was Obama.  And America is not as popular.  Well, we voters are not Europeans, and he is popular with us.

But when the Russians over whom those Democrats now obsess – but whom Obama always considered irrelevant as he and his Hillary Re-set gave Vladimir Putin the Crimea, part of Ukraine, and a new foothold in the Middle East – threaten European sovereignty, to whom will those Angela Merkels and Emmanuel Macrons silently give thanks and beg for protection?  They will give thanks that Trump is in the White House leading the Western alliance and the resolve of freedom, rather than an Obama who responded to the rise of ISIS by joking that they merely were a junior varsity and to the terrorist massacres in Paris by sending John Kerry and James Taylor abroad to ride bicycles and sing “You’ve Got a Friend.”

The voters in Georgia knew that their prior President went to Castro’s Cuba, where he danced the salsa in front of a cutthroat while others were being murdered in Europe.  A president who genuflected and bent the head and knee for Arab oil sheiks.  A president who led from behind in Benghazi, even as American heroes and patriots died and Hillary thereafter lied to their families and the American people while secretly admitting to her daughter that our finest had been murdered by Arab Islamists on a 9-11 attack and not by a YouTube video that almost no one saw.

Those Georgia voters knew that, for the past five months, they instead have had a president who is reversing Obama’s Cuba policies at breathtaking speed, restoring America’s commitment to freedom and human rights in the Western hemisphere.  A President who has traveled to Saudi Arabia, met with Arab world leaders, and proved that America can have strategic alliances even with countries that do not share our values, but on our terms.  We set the terms for such alliances.  We – not they – make clear where we will compromise for our strategic purposes and where we will not bend.  Unlike Obama, who began his presidency by traveling to Cairo and begging the Arab world for forgiveness – and who was repaid for his sycophancy with eight years of ISIS and Benghazi and a complete breakdown of all that our armed forces finally had achieved during the Surge in Iraq – this President went to the Arab world, challenging them to join us in fighting Arab Islamic terror, making no apologies nor excuses for maintaining a deep friendship with Israel as an ally of truly shared values – and still emerged with standing ovations and respect.  Because people overseas respect American strength, and they longed for it after eight years of a pretender who was in way over his head, though he crooned with Jay-Z and always was cheered on by an adoring and adulating media who experienceds thrills in their legs and brain freezes as he tore down so much of what made us great.

The Democrats spent an unholy fortune in Georgia these past several months, seeking to wrest that House seat from the Republicans, just as they have tried in Kansas and Montana and South Carolina.  The political obituaries for President Trump already had been written for the night that Democrat Jon Ossoff had beaten the Republican, ready for publication as soon as that Bernie Sanders leftist would win the House seat that had been in GOP hands.  If ever the Devil went down to Georgia, it was during the parade of American leftist media camping out to tell a story of the demise of the Trump Presidency, the end of the Republican Congress, the return of the Weak.  Maxine Waters surely had the Bills of Impeachment ready, perhaps delayed only because still working on spelling the harder words like “Bill” and “of.”  Nancy Pelosi surely was being prepared with extra Vitamin B12 to get on the rostrum and try to generate five or ten minutes of quasi-coherence, describing the great new Democrat wave.

But, instead, the Republican won.  Again.  After five months of the media telling us that Americans are tired of Trump, regret Trump, care all about James Comey and investigating Attorney-General Sessions and investigating Jared Kushner and investigating Mike Flynn and investigating Donald Trump, it turns out that American voters do not care a whit about all that Washington Insider nonsense.

Americans want jobs.  Americans want a federal judiciary that represents our values.  Americans want European initiatives to remain in Europe, and we want them to pay their promised bills, just as each of us does every day in our own lives.  Americans want clean oil and gas and coal that comes from our shores, that employs our citizens, and that keeps those assets at home, instead of importing foreign energy and paying tyrants for the privilege to send them our money in return for their truly dirty resources.  We want lower taxes, an end to Obamacare, an America where we can keep our doctors once again and pay only for the health coverage options we want.  We do not want to pay for Sandra Fluke’s condoms until she pays for our acetaminophen and ibuprofen and Band-aids.  We do not want to fund Planned Parenthood’s abortions, only their family planning and social counseling.  We want criminals who are not rightly in America to be thrown out of this country.  We want no part of international trade agreements that worry about every other country but our own, nor any part of environmental accords that choke off our industries while allowing China and India and the rest of the world to pollute without compunction.  We do not mind working with China, and delaying calling them on currency manipulation and trade violations, if they truly come through tit-for-tat in managing that maniac in North Korea.  And if they fail us, there is time to call them on currency manipulation and to change the rules of international trade to be fair again.  We are done with free trade agreements that do not protect our workers and Trans-Pacific deals that sell out our interests to curry favor with those who do not care about our interests.

In short, no one who previously has supported President Trump really cares about all the nonsense that consumes the Washington Beltway.  We see through the nonsense and the enormous waste of our taxes and national resources, with one bogus investigation after another.  We just want the Congress – and particularly the Republicans whom we elected to work with President Trump –  to do what we sent them there to do: lower taxes, repeal and replace Obamacare, get the Southern border under control, reverse the Obama era regulations, liberate American energy, maintain a strong world footprint fostering strength and power without sending our boys into new military adventures that we have no business wasting our resources over.  Get the government working for us, start rebuilding the American infrastructure that Democrats and Republicans have allowed to decay while wasting decades building bridges to nowhere and conducting endless investigations over things we do not care about.

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