‘Cloak and dagger’ military-intelligence outfit at center of US digital vaccine passport push

Described as “the most important organization you’ve never heard of,” MITRE rakes in massive security state contracts to pioneer invasive spy tech. Now it’s at the heart of a campaign to implement digital vaccine passports.

While vaccine passports have been marketed as a boon to public health, promising safety, privacy, and convenience for those who have been vaccinated against Covid-19, the pivotal role a shadowy military-intelligence organization is playing in the push to implement the system in digital form has raised serious civil liberties concerns.

Known as MITRE, the organization is a non-profit corporation led almost entirely by military-intelligence professionals and sustained by sizable contracts with the Department of Defense, FBI, and national security sector.

The effort “to expand QR code vaccine passports beyond states like California and New York” now revolves around a public-private partnership known as the Vaccine Credential Initiative (VCI). And the VCI has reserved an instrumental role in its coalition for MITRE.

Described by Forbes as a “cloak and dagger [research and development] shop” that is “the most important organization you’ve never heard of,” MITRE has developed some of the most invasive surveillance technology in use by US spy agencies today. Among its most novel products is a system built for the FBI which captures individuals’ fingerprints from images posted on social media sites.

MITRE’s own COVID-19 umbrella coalition includes In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Palantir, a scandal-stained private spying firm.

Keep reading

The “17 Intelligence Community Agencies” Canard on Russian Interference

CANARD–a false or unfounded report or story; especially :  a fabricated report. That’s how Merriam Dictionary defines the term and it certainly seems to be a dandy word to describe the claim that Russia interfered in the 2016 Presidential election and that the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies agree.

As John Durham’s investigation of the origins of Russia gate continues to chug along, I thought it would be helpful to revisit the huge canard–i.e., that Russia tried to tip the 2016 election to Trump.

I nominate Hillary Clinton as The Queen of the Canard. We now know, thanks to John Durham’s indictment of Hillary’s lawyer, Michael Sussmann, that Hillary and her campaign adopted and implemented a political smear in the summer of 2016 to portray Donald Trump as a proxy of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. This lie did not stop with the election of Trump in November 2016. In May 2017, during an interview by Walt Mossberg at the CODE conference, Hillary still was eager to feed the lie that Russia ensured Donald Trump’s victory and  cited “17” U.S. intelligence agencies as her evidence:

Hillary: Now, the question is, where and how did the Russians get into this? And I think it’s a very important question. So, I assume that a lot of people here may have — and if you haven’t, I hope you will — read the declassified report by the Intelligence community that came out in early January.

TRENDING: EXCLUSIVE: Coomer Deposition Released! Verifies Antifa Facebook Posts, Extreme Left Bias

Mossberg: This is 17 agencies 

Hillary: Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get. They concluded with high confidence that the Russians ran an extensive information war campaign against my campaign, to influence voters in the election. They did it through paid advertising we think, they did it through false news sites, they did it through these thousand agents, they did it through machine learning, which you know, kept spewing out this stuff over and over again. The algorithms that they developed. So that was the conclusion. And I think it’s fair to ask, how did that actually influence the campaign? And how did they know what messages to deliver?

Hillary was knowingly liying, but she could feign fconfusion about this supposed fact given by pointing to the joint statement issued 7 October 2016 by the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of Homeland Security:

The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

But this was a lie. It was not a legitimate judgement of the U.S. intelligence community and did not reflect the views of 17 separate U.S. intelligence agencies. Why?

Keep reading

(READ: UNCLASSIFIED summary) Intel assessment on Covid-19 origins

As widely expected, the Intelligence Community (IC) assessment of Covid-19 origins fails to conclusively answer much of anything.

On some points in the assessment, such as whether Covid-19 was genetically engineered, there is broad disagreement with scientists who say the evidence shows man’s intervention.

The assessment also gives China the benefit of the doubt, guessing that Covid-19 was not developed by the Communist Chinese as part of a weapons program and that the Communist Chinese had no advance knowledge of the disaster.

Sources say that early in the pandemic, government scientists who examined the genetics of the virus concluded Covid-19 was genetically engineered, but they were not authorized to announce those findings.

Meantime, questions about whether it originated in the Wuhan, China biolab; whose scientists had received funding and partnered with Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and other components of the National Institutes of Health (NIH); were falsely termed “debunked conspiracy theories” and censored on social media and on the Internet. When President Trump raised the possibility, the media falsely claimed the idea had been debunked.

A World Health Organization (WHO) team sent to investigate in China included a controversial scientist with a conflict of interest. Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance was also part of the U.S.-Chinese partnerships on coronavirus research and “gain-of-function” studies funded by U.S. tax money and approved by Fauci.

The WHO team initially concluded the virus did not come from the Wuhan lab. But amid growing controversy, WHO officials and others expressed the need to look further.

As more scientists spoke out to validate the “lab origin” belief, it was widely acknowledged that it had been a mistake to say the idea was disproven or debunked.

After Joe Biden took office, he asked for an assessment from the Intelligence Community, which has been known for markedly wrong intelligence assessments on important issues in recent years.

Keep reading

The Propaganda Multiplier

It is one of the most important aspects of our media system, and yet hardly known to the public: most of the international news coverage in Western media is provided by only three global news agencies based in New York, London and Paris.

The key role played by these agencies means Western media often report on the same topics, even using the same wording. In addition, governments, military and intelligence services use these global news agencies as multipliers to spread their messages around the world.

A study of the Syria war coverage by nine leading European newspapers clearly illustrates these issues: 78% of all articles were based in whole or in part on agency reports, yet 0% on investigative research. Moreover, 82% of all opinion pieces and interviews were in favor of a US and NATO intervention, while propaganda was attributed exclusively to the opposite side.

Keep reading

Hunter Biden’s Russian Prostitute Videos Indict Both His Father And U.S. Intelligence Agencies

A Russian woman, a drug dealer, and two of his compatriots may have stolen a laptop from Hunter Biden in 2018, Hunter told a prostitute in another sex video, leaving the president’s son concerned he may be blackmailed because of his father’s political position.

While the salacious video of Hunter Biden released earlier this week exposes more details about the troubling lifestyle of the president’s son, it reveals much more about a corrupt and complicit media, a corrupt and incompetent intelligence community, and a corrupt and compromised Joe Biden.

Keep reading

Twitter Announces ‘Collaboration’ With AP, Reuters To ‘Identify And Elevate Credible Information,’ Despite Ties To US Intelligence

On August 2, Twitter announced a new “collaboration” with Associated Press and Reuters to “identify and elevate credible information,” despite Reuters’ connections to the US Intelligence Community.

Twitter has announced that they will be collaborating with AP and Reuters to “identify and elevate credible information,” according to a post on August 2. “We are committed to making sure that when people come to Twitter to see what’s happening, they are able to easily find reliable information. Twitter will be able to expand the scale and increase the speed of our efforts to provide timely, authoritative context across the wide range of global topics and conversations that happen on Twitter every day,” the statement reads.

“When large or rapidly growing conversations happen on Twitter that may be noteworthy, controversial, sensitive, or may contain potentially misleading information, Twitter’s Curation team sources and elevates relevant context from reliable sources,” the statement continues. In response to the announcement, one Twitter user pointed out that the Senior Director of Reuters, Dawn Scalici, who served 33 years in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), is tasked with “advancing Thomson Reuters’ ability to meet the disparate needs of the U.S. Government.”

Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Ms. Scalici served 33 years with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In her last federal assignment, she served as the National Intelligence Manager for the Western Hemisphere within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). In this role, she was responsible for overseeing national intelligence for an area of responsibility spanning from the Arctic to the tip of South America, including the US Homeland.

“Twitter is becoming the propaganda arm of the of US State Dept,” tweeted one user.

Keep reading

Jeffrey Epstein Made ‘Fortune Out Of Arms, Drugs, Diamonds,’ ‘Moved In Intelligence Circles’: Report

Child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein claimed he made a fortune trafficking weapons and drugs, and former associates claim he worked with intelligence agencies around the world, according to a new report.

Vicky Ward, a journalist who was one of the first to cover Epstein nearly two decades ago, wrote in a new piece at Rolling Stone that Steven Hoffenberg, a former Epstein associate she visited in prison in 2002, said Epstein operated in intelligence circles around the world.

Hoffenberg, who was in prison for a Ponzi scheme, said he was conned by Epstein, who took millions from him and then cooperated with federal prosecutors in providing information against Hoffenberg.

Hoffenberg “claimed that Epstein moved in intelligence circles,” Ward wrote, adding Epstein became enraged when she asked him about Hoffenberg. Ward said Epstein threatened her personally if she wrote about his relationship with Hoffenberg, whom Epstein claimed not to know. Ward said Epstein’s reaction was similar to how he responded to questions about his relationships with young girls.

Hoffenberg told Ward that Epstein learned how to move money off-shore and that he was mentored by a British arms dealer, Douglas Leese, who died a decade ago.

Keep reading