Executive director of the Council for the National Interest and former CIA officer Phil Giraldi returns to the show to discuss his latest article for The American Conservative, “Hack or Leak: Who Really Stole the DNC Files?” While there isn’t conclusive evidence for any of the potential explanations for how the information got from the DNC computer to WikiLeaks, Giraldi explains that no one seems to be particularly interested in investigating who was responsible. Did the Russians hack the DNC? Giraldi believes that the U.S. has no chain of evidence leading them to the conclusion that Russia is responsible. However, Giraldi cautions that, even if the information was leaked rather than hacked, it wouldn’t remove Russia as a suspect. What about the Seth Rich theory? Giraldi believes Rich is at the top of a short list of potential leakers, but that there’s still plenty of unscrutinized evidence. Giraldi then discusses the upcoming Ron Paul Institute’s Peace and Prosperity Conference where he will be speaking on September 9th. Finally, Giraldi touches on his article for The Unz Review, “Israel’s Chorus Sings Again” about U.S.-Israeli relations and the outrage against Rex Tillerson and H.R. McMaster’s relatively cool approach to Israel.

Phil Giraldi is the executive director of the Council for the National Interest a former CIA case officer and Army intelligence officer. He has been a contributing editor at The American Conservative for nine years and writes regularly for Antiwar.com.

Oh, and buy Scott’s new book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan!

Discussed on the show:

• “The FBI Never Asked For Access To Hacked Computer Servers” (BuzzFeed News)
• “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” (Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
• “U.S. Spy Report Blames Putin for Hacks, But Doesn’t Back It Up” (The Daily Beast)
• “WikiLeaks: CIA hacking group ‘UMBRAGE’ stockpiled techniques from other hackers” (USA Today)
• Iron Felix
• “12/13/16 Craig Murray: DNC, Podesta emails leaked by Americans, not hacked by Russia” (The Scott Horton Show)
• Mossad
• Stuxnet
• “Leaked Seymour Hersh Audio: FBI File Proves Seth Rich Was Wikileaks Source” (YouTube)
• “‘Lack of hope’ drives Palestinians to carry out terrorist attacks, State Department says” (Mondweiss.com)

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