"Ambassador Murray Says that There Was No Russian Hacking": John Kiriakou

"Ambassador Murray Says that There Was No Russian Hacking": John Kiriakou

In the following talking to Pravda Report, former CIA agent John Kiriakou depicts the events, especially the meeting and the allegedly Russian espionage on US campaign heralded by US media without any evidence, never proved, on the contrary: all evidences have pointed out to an "inside job."

As US mainstream media criminalizes Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 9, 2016 at Trump Tower in New York, US President Donald Trump posted last July 17 a defense on Twitter of his son's meeting with the lawyer promising sensitive government information that could be damaging to then-presidential candidate by Democratic Party Hillary Clinton, by saying that it was simply politics as usual.

US media in general alleges that the meeting broke the American law which prohibits foreign nationals from contributing any "thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any [federal] election." US "presstitute" as Paul Craig Roberts is used to saying, also criminalizes the Kremlin for the meeting during US Presidential campaign, based on facts never proved, that Moscow hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC), one of the reasons that, according to US media portrait, Ms. Veselnitskaya wanted to meet Mr. Trump Jr. last year. However, according to its participants the subject at the meeting was only the Magnitsky Act.

In the following talking to Pravda Report, former CIA agent John Kiriakou depicts the events, especially the meeting and the allegedly Russian espionage on US campaign heralded by US media without any evidence, never proved, on the contrary: all evidences have pointed out to an "inside job."

As Kiriakou affirms that meeting with Russians is not a crime, he reminds US perjury law broken by Mr. Trump Jr., which says: "I swear or affirm that the above mentioned information is true and complete to the best of my knowledge under penalty of perjury." "Not reporting that meeting to the FBI on a Standard Form 86, which is necessary for a security clearance, is a crime," observes Kiriakou.

Kiriakou co-authored with Michael Ruby the book The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror, published in 2009, is the author of Doing Time Like A Spy: How the CIA Taught Me to Survive and Thrive in Prison, and was honored with the January 2016 Patriot Award by The Bill of Rights Defense Committee and Defending Dissent Foundation. Kiriakou spent two years in prison for blowing the whistle in 2007 about the Intelligence Agency torture program against prisoners.

Edu Montesanti: John Kiriakou, thank you so very much for the privilege of having your so important participation in one more publication. Your view, please, on Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, promising sensitive government information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton. Federal law prohibits foreign nationals from contributing any "thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any [federal] election." The statute also says no American shall "knowingly solicit, accept, or receive" any "contribution or donation" from a foreign national in connection with an election. Don't you think that a meeting itself is not a real donation, a concrete contribution - in this case, to then-candidate Donald Trump to the point of breaking the law? There has been observations in news outlets in Russia that every candidate all over the world and his/her electoral team meet foreigners, which is not a crime at all.

John Kiriakou: First, I think many Americans, especially in the media, have already taken sides on this issue. 

But I believe that the issue is not whether there was a meeting or not.  Of course, there was a meeting.  But meeting with Russians is not a crime.

Not reporting that meeting to the FBI on a Standard Form 86, which is necessary for a security clearance, is a crime.  Not registering with the Justice Department as a representative of a foreign government (Manafort and Flynn) is a crime. I mean the Standard Form 86, which every American applying for a federal security clearance fills out:  Trump Jr. did not disclose his contact with the Russians.  That's a crime. 

In the end, I believe that the criminal charges that will come out of this case will not be directly tied to Russian meddling or collusion.  They will be perjury, conspiracy, making a false statement, and failure to register as a foreign agent.

Stephen Duke, a Yale University law professor, told Vox in 11 July: "If receiving information that Hillary was being helped by the Russians is a crime, so, too, would be receiving information that the Russians were helping Trump in the election". To date there is no evidence of Russian espionage: The New York Times, who also strongly criminalizes the meeting, recognized this fact last week, saying that "In other words, informed of a secret Kremlin effort to use highly sensitive information about a former secretary of state (presumably obtained by espionage, for how else?) to manipulate an American election, Trump Jr. signaled, 'We're in!'." And even more: the so-called "very high level and sensitive information" has not come to light, and the DNC itself has repeatedly refused to hand over the hacked servers to the government for examination. What we really know so far is a meeting and even what was discussed there is not clear. Do you believe Russia committed any crime against US election and "democracy"?

I have seen no proof whatsoever that the Russians hacked the DNC servers.  If the US government has such proof, it must release it for there to be any case at all.

Mint Press  reported this last week: (...) Files and email stolen from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were copied to a USB drive by someone with physical access to a computer that had DNC server access. The analysis shows that the files, published as a .7z archive file, were transferred from the server at a speed of 23 MB/second, leading the investigator to conclude that it was "unlikely that this initial data transfer could have been done remotely over the Internet." The investigator also found that the copying of the files from the DNC servers took place either over a local high-speed network (LAN) or by someone who had physical access to the computer where the data was stored. (...) This makes it unlikely that Russian military intelligence remotely hacked the DNC servers from abroad." How important are these facts, and could them change the story heralded by the mainstream media, that the Kremlin really influenced US election and further investigations?

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, told The Guardian that he was the conduit between a DNC whistleblower and WikiLeaks.  Ambassador Murray says that there was no Russian hacking. 

A DNC staff member downloaded the information, gave it to Murray, and Murray passed it to WikiLeaks.

Edu Montesanti