Former NSA agent and whistleblower Bill Binney went to RT to discuss Friday’s US government report on “Russian activities and intentions” in the 2016 presidential election.
Binney was clear in his interpretation of the ODNI report, that claims to make the connection between Wikileaks and Russian hacking, by stating that US intelligence agencies have “lost their professional discipline in producing intelligence.”
In the report, which once again provides zero evidence that the Russian state was behind the Wikileaks email leaks (which the US intelligence agencies call a “hack”), RT is strangely being accused (starting at the 3:40 mark) of wanting to expand their reach…
“RT leadership has candidly acknowledge its mission to expand its US audience.”
Binney points out that the desire for any media organization to want to expand its business is something any “capitalist” would hopefully want to do.
How dare RT want to reach more viewers. The media channel should strive to reach as few people as possible…according to US intelligence logic.
RT further responded to the ODNI claims…
We’ve gone through the 25-page report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), nearly half of which discusses RT’s effects on the 2016 presidential election “by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.”
RT began “openly supporting President-elect Trump’s candidacy” during the primaries, according to the ODNI. Meanwhile, RT’s coverage sought to “denigrate” Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and “harm her electability and potential presidency.”
There’s a lot of rehashing of old allegations, but the document doesn’t seem to include much in the way of specifics about our coverage.
Embarrassing as it sounds, top US spies apparently are also not aware of the Russian date format. The report cites a July 4 interview with RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan published in Kommersant, though the interview was actually published on April 7, 2012. Apparently, the authors were not aware that in Russia, dates are usually listed in DD.MM.YYYY format rather than MM.DD.YYYY. Did they skip their Russian classes?
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