WikiLeaks's CIA dump a likely Russian move to make Trump’s charges appear credible: Experts

WikiLeaks’s press release, for example, has pointed to the CIA’s “Umbrage” group which, according to WikiLeaks, is tasked with collecting of hacking tools used by the intelligence agencies of other countries, “including the Russian Federation.”

These hacking tools allow the CIA to conduct its false-flag operations by hacking any network it wants, but use hacking methods and tools which point to another country.

“With Umbrage and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the ‘fingerprints’ of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from,” WikiLeaks said.

James Lewis, senior vice-president at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and an expert on cybersecurity, told the Guardian that the motive behind the leak could be to underpin the false-flag narrative advanced by the Trump camp.

“This might be one explanation for the leaks – it’s data to build a case that the Russian interference and connections are a secret ‘deep state’ plot, as the false flag bits in WikiLeaks ‘shows’,” Lewis said, putting “Vault 7” in the context of the trial of strength between the president and intelligence agencies.

“Mr. Trump, who last year angrily dismissed the conclusion of intelligence officials that the Russians interfered in the presidential election to boost his candidacy, has now asked both his staff and a congressional committee investigating Moscow’s influence on the election to turn up evidence that Mr. Obama led an effort to spy on him,” he said.

WikiLeaks was founded in 2010 with the lofty goal of advancing openness and transparency, but since the beginning its aim appears to have been to weaken the United States and undermine U.S. ability to defend itself. In the last two years, WikiLeaks has turned itself more openly into the publishing arm of Russia’s intelligence agencies, adopting Russia’s strategic goal: not only weaken the United States, but more broadly undermine U.S. democratic system and help elect illiberal politicians who question the U.S. pluralistic, liberal traditions.

During the months preceding the November presidential election, WikiLeaks focused on releasing e-mails and internal memos stolen by the FSB and GRU from the DNC and the Clinton campaign. It now appears that WikiLeaks’s decision which e-mails to publish, in what sequence, and on what day – decisions which aimed to inflict maximum damage in Clinton offer maximum help for Trump — may have been informed by the advice of at least one individual involved in the Trump campaign, Roger Stone (Stone wrote on Saturday night that he had a “perfectly legal back channel” to WikiLeaks’s founder, Julian Assange. Stone then deleted the message).

The FSB, GRU, and WikiLeaks focused exclusively on Hillary Clinton’s camp, and the materials the Russian intelligence agencies had stolen from the Clinton campaign were released at critical moments in the campaign (it was following the early October dump of nearly 2,000 e-mails hacked from the Hillary Clinton campaign, that Trump told voters: “I love WikiLeaks!”)

In early January, the CIA, National Security Agency (NSA), and FBI issued a statement saying that “Moscow most likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity. Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.”

WikiLeaks has never published any material that could be seen as damaging to Russia.

“There is a lot of circumstantial evidence of the links between Assange and Russia,” Susan Hennessey, a former NSA lawyer now at the Brookings Institution, told the Guardian. “It’s certainly not a coincidence that Russian military intelligence selected WikiLeaks as a distribution platform for its Democrats hack.”

“WikiLeaks’ involvement creates a reason for suspicion. It has committed itself to putting out material that is harmful to Western interests, but has assiduously avoided releasing material that could be perceived as damaging to Russian interests.”