John Chuckman
EXPANSION OF COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MATT KWONG IN CBC NEWS
“Why this key line from Roger Stone's indictment could shine a bright light on Trump
“The charges stem from Stone's connection to WikiLeaks, the organization that released stolen Democratic emails taken by Russian hackers to meddle in the 2016 presidential election."
I would be the last person to defend Trump in any matter, but I very much object to the last part of that statement.
A number of true technical experts, independent experts, have said that the e-mails were not hacked, they were leaked by an insider who downloaded them.
Julian Assange has also strongly said the same thing, only vaguely hinting who the leaker might have been.
Assange is a principled man, and a fundamental policy of Wikileaks is never to reveal sources, so he has not.
But American authorities will not even talk to or about Assange and have him effectively illegally imprisoned, so he becomes a mighty convenient hook on which to hang unproved “Russian hacking” charges.
When you assume the unproved statement about "Russian hackers," it only helps keep Washington's current mania about Russians going, a pretty dangerous game, given the number of thermonuclear warheads between the two countries.
It also, whether intended to do so or not, serves the purposes of America’s imperial establishment in its aggressive new drive to dominate everywhere. In that drive, Russia is regarded almost as ancient Carthage was by Rome. Again, a dangerous game.
I always bow to facts, so if someone could prove a Russian hack, I'd accept it, but no one, absolutely no one, has done so. We just keep getting the assumption repeated over and over in the press, the very kind of thing which generates so much suspicion and hostility towards the press and its motives today.
By the way, even were it proved to have been a hack, there still is no issue of national security. The papers were not state papers. They contained no national security revelations. They contained no top secrets. They were the papers of a political organization, one, as it happens, up to its own unscrupulous and undemocratic activities. So, getting those papers was little different than what top-notch investigative reporters do when they secure a cache of photocopies of confidential private or corporate papers on which to report about wrong-doing. I regard that as a very important distinction.
Of course, the key candidate for the leak is the late Seth Rich, who worked for the Democratic Party, and that possibility opens dark new avenues in the whole ugly mess of Washington.
