The 'Putin Directed The Leaks' Story Is Less Than It Appears

he NBC report intimates that our spies and intelligence officials know Putin’s innermost thoughts on matters of great importance, such as his preferences on the next US President. If so, NBC’s sources know more than Russian officials, pundits, oppositionists, and media about what Putin, isolated in in his Moscow suburban palace, is up to. Few officials seem to know how the Putin kleptocracy works. Is it a one-man show or is it run by a Kremlin Politburo?

As to linking Putin to a specific nefarious act, efforts by western intelligence and investigative press to link Putin to murders of renegade reporters, ex KGB turncoats, and notable political figures (Boris Nemtsov) have failed, but somehow NBC informants have been able to find almost “inconvertible evidence” of Putin’s personal involvement in the US election. His personal involvement may have been simply to sit back and enjoy the show.

As I have written on numerous occasions, the WikiLeaks disclosures have been a godsend for Putin to “show corruption in American politics,” as the NBC “bombshell” now claims. After surviving a much-criticized parliamentary election, the Kremlin media could regale the Russian public with US press accounts of a rigged election, conspiracies against the peoples’ candidate, Bernie Sanders, the riches of Soros, Goldman Sachs, and the Saudi princes determining the outcome, and the Clintons growing rich from their political connections. Putin could now ask: Who gives these Clintons the right to criticize me? What more was sweet revenge against Hillary Clinton could Putin ask for?

go to Forbes.com

Hillary Clinton's Corrupt Dealings Have Given Putin A Massive Propaganda Victory

Putin’s propagandists are waiting for the election results, as are American voters, to tell them whether Americans are turned off by Washington DC, Inc. or will follow Clinton’s misdirection – the oldest trick in the magician’s bag. In any case, Putin is the winner no matter who wins the US election. The next time the West wants to reprimand him for his repressive electoral tricks, he’ll simply remind his critics of the DNC Wikileaks. If critics complain about the enrichment of his inner circle, he only need rehash the antics of the Clinton Foundation. If we complain about his state-run media, Putin need only talk about the cozy relationship between the mainstream media and the Democratic Party. Vladimir Putin will be a satisfied man next Tuesday.

go to Forbes.com

Why Historians Must Use Wikileaks To Write The History of the 2016 Election

Wikileaks is playing a prominent, if under reported, role, in the 2016 American presidential election. Few understand the importance of Wikileaks in the eventual writing of the history of presidential politics.

go to Forbes.com

Wikileaks Fails To Deliver An October Surprise As Hillary Says To Worry About Putin's Meddling

The massive email cache that Hillary ordered destroyed almost a year ago remains one of the last great mysteries of her email scandal. These very documents may be in the possession of foreign powers, and may contain harmful, embarrassing, or incriminating materials that have thepotential to alter the outcome of the 2016 election or her conduct as US President. My analysis suggests that emails concerning the Clinton Foundation were automatically classified as “personal.” “Inner sanctum” emails exchanged among clintonmail.com users were likely classified as “personal” as well. Both categories would have been destroyed when the 33,000 personal emails were wiped clean. There is no evidence that any of them have been recovered by forensic means.


go to Forbes.com

A Putin October Surprise Would Be Hillary's Fault

If WikiLeaks releases incriminating documents from Hillary’s scrubbed “private” cache, there exists no legitimate “true” document for comparison. Hillary could not prove the leaked document never existed or was altered, unless she squirreled away in some safe place copies of her “private” cache. If so, she could not use them without exposing an unforgivable lie. Hillary’s deleting of the thousands of self-declared “private” emails  may have  given a hostile foreign power the wherewithal to determine the outcome of a presidential election. Hillary has no one to blame but herself. Will the chickens come home to roost in late October?



go to forbes.com

DNC Data Dump Gives Putin A 'Two-For-One' Win

Hillary’s campaign has made a point that Putin wants her opponent elected. Putin knows what he would have with a weakened and tainted Clinton. He does not have the same knowledge of Trump. He may see something of himself in Trump as someone who does not shirk from a fight and hates to lose. Could Putin be thinking of changing horses?

go to Forbes.com

Putin, Russian Democracy and Wikileaks

It will take years for the United States to restore its image as a trustworthy diplomatic partner. U. S. diplomacy has suffered a severe set back and its national security has been damaged by the Wikileak dumps of classified documents.

The Wikileaks revelations on Russia provide a rare candid view of the Russian leadership, the state of Russian democracy, and the prevalence of corruption and thuggery at the highest levels of government. In this regard, the Wikileaks documents confirm what outside experts have suspected. It is perversely comforting to know that U.S. diplomats understand the reality of Russian politics irregardless of the optimistic tone of the “reset” of relations with Russia at the beginning of the Obama administration.

These leaks clearly show that the Russian government is corrupt to the core and that the corruption starts at the top. U.S. diplomats understand that Putin, despite his nominal number two position, still calls the shots and that Russia is run by incorrigible ex-KGB officers, whose mindset is that the U.S. is the enemy. Our diplomats also understand that Russian democracy is dead and will continue to be moribund for the foreseeable future.

These leaks also show the sensitivity of Putin to charges that he is personally corrupt. Attempts to investigate Putin’s personal wealth have likely resulted in assassinations of investigative reporters, and it seems that Putin’s most violent reaction to the published leaks relate to internal discussions of his personal wealth.

The secret dispatches from our diplomats in Russia paint a bleak but realistic view of the state of affairs in Russia.