50+ Intel Agents in Washington Want You to Forget They Lied about the Hunter Biden Laptop

October 20, 2020

These people who signed the statement actually knew at the time that the laptop was NOT a fake. Yet they had this letter put out through the media just before the 2020 election for President.

They have obviously compromised what little integrity they (if ever) had. Here are their names--following is a copy of their letter. If any of these people still work in Washington, they should be demoted to the lowest level of work. Shameful...

You might remember James Clapper, DNI, the lead signatory, who lied to Congress about spying by the NSA on Americans! "I forgot"....he said.

Wikipedia had the following to say:

"On October 19, 2020, a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials, who had served in the Trump administration and those of the three previous presidents, released an open letter stating that the release of the alleged emails "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation", adding:

We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump's personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement—just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.^[18][71][72]

"That night, Natasha Bertrand of Politico wrote a story about the letter, with the headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." The rest of the story, however, was less definitive, with a subheading saying the former officials "signed a letter casting doubt on the provenance of a New York Post story," and noting in the story body that the letter said the information in the Post story "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation." In a February 2023 analysis, Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler wrote "that headline likely shaped perceptions of the letter that continue to this day." Former director of national intelligence James Clapper, who signed the letter, told Kessler, "There was message distortion. All we were doing was raising a yellow flag that this could be Russian disinformation. Politico deliberately distorted what we said. It was clear in paragraph five" of the letter. Politico stood by their report in a statement to Kessler."

Integrity-less Signers of the misleading letter about the Hunter Biden laptop:

Jim Clapper
Former Director of National Intelligence
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Former Director of the National Geospatal Intelligence Agency
Former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

Mike Hayden
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director, National Security Agency
Former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence

Leon Panetta
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Secretary of Defense

John Brennan
Former Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former White House Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor
Former Director, Terrorism Threat Integration Center
Former Analyst and Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Thomas Finger
Former Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis
Former Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research, Department of State
Former Chair, National Intelligence Council

Rick Ledgett
Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency
John McLaughlin
Former Actng Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director, Slavic and Eurasian Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency

Michael Morell
Former Actng Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency

Mike Vickers
Former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Former Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Doug Wise
Former Deputy Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
Former Senior CIA Operations Officer

Nick Rasmussen
Former Director, National Counterterrorism Center

Russ Travers
Former Acting Director, National Counterterrorism Center
Former Deputy Director, National Counterterrorism Center
Former Analyst of the Soviet Union and Russia, Defense Intelligence Agency

Andy Liepman
Former Deputy Director, National Counterterrorism Center
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

John Moseman
Former Chief of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Congressional Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Minority Staff Director, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

Larry Pfeiffer
Former Chief of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director, White House Situation Room

Jeremy Bash
Former Chief of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Chief of Staff, Department of Defense
Former Chief Counsel, House Permanent Select CommiSee on Intelligence

Rodney Snyder
Former Chief of Staff, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Intelligence Programs, National Security Council
Chief of Station, Central Intelligence Agency

Glenn Gerstell
Former General Counsel, National Security Agency

David B. Buckley
Former Inspector General, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Democratc Staff Director, House Permanent Select CommiSee on Intelligence
Former Counterespionage Case Officer, United States Air Force

Nada Bakos
Former Analyst and Targetng Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Patty Brandmaier
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Associate Director for Military Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director of Congressional Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency

James B. Bruce
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, National Intelligence CouncilConsiderable work related to Russia

David Cariens
Former Intelligence Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency
50+ Years Working in the Intelligence Community

Janice Cariens
Former Operational Support Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Paul Kolbe
Former Senior Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Chief, Central Eurasia Division, Central Intelligence Agency

Peter Corsell
Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency

Brett Davis
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Director of the Special Actvites Center for Expeditionary Operations, CIA

Roger Zane George
Former National Intelligence Officer

Steven L. Hall
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Chief of Russian Operations, Central Intelligence Agency

Kent Harrington
Former National Intelligence Officer for East Asia, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of Public Affairs, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Chief of Station, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency

Don Hepburn
Former Senior National Security Executve
 

Timothy D. Kilbourn
Former Dean, Sherman Kent School of Intelligence Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former PDB Briefer to President George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency

Ron Marks
Former Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Twice former staff of the Republican Majority LeaderJonna Hiestand Mendez
Technical Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Emile Nakhleh
Former Director of the Politcal Islam Strategic Analysis Program, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Senior Intelligence Analyst, Central Intelligence Agency

Gerald A. O’Shea
Senior Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Served four tours as Chief of Station, Central Intelligence Agency

David Priess
Former Analyst and Manager, Central Intelligence Agency
Former PDB Briefer, Central Intelligence Agency

Pam Purcilly
Former Deputy Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Director of the Office of Russian and European Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former PDB Briefer to President George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency

Marc Polymeropoulos
Former Senior Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Actng Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia, Central Intelligence Agency

Chris Savos
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Officer

Nick Shapiro
Former Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Advisor to the Director, Central Intelligence Agency

John Sipher
Former Senior Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Deputy Chief of Russian Operations, Central Intelligence Agency

Stephen Slick
Former Senior Director for Intelligence Programs, National Security Council
Former Senior Operations Office, Central Intelligence Agency

Cynthia Strand
Former Deputy Assistant Director for Global Issues, Central Intelligence Agency

Greg Tarbell
Former Deputy Executve Director, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Analyst of the Soviet Union and Russia, Central Intelligence Agency

David Terry
Former Chairman of the National Intelligence Collection Board
Former Chief of the PDB, Central Intelligence Agency
Former PDB Briefer to Vice President Dick Cheney, Central Intelligence Agency

Greg Treverton
Former Chair, National Intelligence Council

John Tullius
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

David A. Vanell
Former Senior Operations Officer, Central Intelligence Agency

Winston Wiley
Former Director of Analysis, Central Intelligence Agency
Former Chief, Counterterrorism Center, Central Intelligence Agency

Kristin Wood
Former Senior Intelligence Officer, Central Intelligence Agency
Former PDB Briefer, Central Intelligence Agency

In addition, nine additional former IC officers who cannot be named publicly also support the
arguments in this letter

 

------

And the letter itself: 

 

 

 

and 50 others...above

 

Cancer in Your Family? You Need to Watch This

CANCER/EVOLUTION

Click on Image to see Trailer

CANCEREVOLUTION Trailer from  Vimeo.

CANCEREVOLUTION-movie.com

The January 6 Insurrection Hoax

What really took place on January 6. No deaths by intruder violence. No insurrection.

by Roger Kimball

Notwithstanding all the hysterical rhetoric surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, two critical things stand out. The first is that what happened was much more hoax than insurrection. In fact, in my judgment, it wasn’t an insurrection at all.

An “insurrection,” as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority. Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that “got out of hand.”...

...Read the full article at imprimus.hillsdale.edu

How Is Joe Doing So Far?

 Andy Kessler wrote an interesting Opinion piece in the Wall St. Journal last Monday entitled "How to Be an Anticapitalist". He finds some significant parallels between an anticapitalist and the current USA President.

Citing a few:

1. Pay people not to work. According to a recent Morning Consult poll, 1.8 million workers have turned down jobs, due in part to the extra $300/week the federal government is offering to states.
   
   
2. Shut down pipelines that lower the cost of fuel, which creates a rise in almost all consumer goods prices, as crude jumps to over $73/bbl. It was $56/bbl when Joe took office in January. Meanwhile let your foreign government finish its gas pipeline, causing European countries to be more dependent on Russia, while leaving Ukraine holding the bag (due to its loss of gas transit revenues). A blue state governor joined in with the shutdown of a nuclear power plant in New York state, while New York city residents have been asked to cut back on energy use during a summer heat wave.
    
3.  Slow down business capital formation by raising the top tax rate on capital gains. President Biden has asked for an increase from 24% to 43%. That should work if passed, especially if you could call it "infrastructure", and use reconciliation to pass it so no Republican members of Congress need participate.
   
   
4. Waive Covid vaccine patents so big pharma won't have the incentive to create a vaccine for the next pandemic that (allegedly) comes from Wuhan. That could slow down the economy just like the current pandemic did.
   
   Then pile on some extras:  limit speech, open the borders, mess up healthcare, defund the police, don't enforce crime (have you seen San Francisco lately? Absurd!), and have your Treasury Secretary make like OPEC and get the G-20 together to come up with a minimum international tax. Wow--whose side is she on? 

Sad part--this will impact low-income families most, robbing them of what could have been a better life. With socialism we will all be equal, heck Cuba, Venezuela are both excellent examples of everyone being equal. Sadly, to get there most people got their standard of living LOWERED.

My Epson XP-960 Attempts to Die

 A member of my family owns an Epson XP-960. It is used most every day to print photos. It's been in the family about 18 months. Suddenly a couple of weeks ago it stopped working. When one turned on the printer it displayed a message indicating that "service was required".  The scanner was still operable (I controlled it from the computer)  but the printer would not print.

This article is not an explanation of how to correct the problem but merely to point out that you can "save" this printer--you don't have to take it to an Epson Service Center or buy another because of this error. And to provide a recommendation for the site I needed to get it all to work.

The Epson XP-960 has a "waste information counter" or WIC. Every time you print, this counter is incremented, until one day you've reached 100% of your number, in which case, with little warning, it causes the printer to stop. It is designed to prevent overfilling the waste ink pads inside the printer.

You can easily access these waste pads--they're in a plastic container held in by two screws, located on the bottom of the printer--just flip it over and it is obvious where the container is located. The main problem is that a user has no ability to reset the WIC. I also do NOT recommend trying to empty the saturated ink pads--it just doesn't work.

So to get the printer working, one needs a program that can reset the WIC, and around the same time, find a way to replace those waste ink pads.

Every place I looked online in the U.S., the ink pads were out of stock. This is not a small issue, I surmised. I found a site in the U.K. octoink.co.uk. I took a chance and bought a WIC reset ID (about $11), and ordered a set of ink waste pads to replace the current ones.

 The WIC program (and the unique ID) came immediately after ordering. I did get it working without incident (Windows 8.1 PC) within the next hour or so. Then it was a matter of waiting for the waste ink pads to arrive. They sent two sets--it included the plastic container box (you do need to keep the screws from the old one). It took six days for my order, I selected "economy air" or something similar. That part was around $33. In retrospect, I think you can easily get by taking the cheapest shipping option. 

In the end it was well worth it. I get to use the same printer, same drivers, and a product I am comfortable with.

The old print container and waste ink pads

Having Trouble with Excel (Office 2013) on Windows 8.1? KB2976978

I've learned (I thought) from past experience to be wary about system updates for Windows. Everything is tagged  'Important' it seems.  Here's what I have today for example:

21 'Important Updates'--and here they are:

Starting off, I don't have any Microsoft Office 2007 on this computer. That eliminates all the Office 2007 stuff--shouldn't be on the list, obviously.

Next up are these Windows 8.1 Updates. I had previously 'installed' some updates on a prior time, and many of them failed, except ONE-----> KB2976978

That little gem said successful. About three days later my Office 2013 (specifically Excel) didn't open properly. First time it was a bunch of vertical lines where the info should be, the next time it was blank in the info area. Scared to death something had corrupted my Excel files. Stopped right there. Went through the 'repair' stuff in the programs page. No luck--came back with some kind of 'error' note. Luckily I still had my Office 2013 Program ID so after some contortions with logging on with Microsoft etc. I was able to reload Office. One hour+ lost to history, but I thought all was fine.

Three days later the SAME THING HAPPENED! I had created a store point after the first break, so restored that. Nope, still broken. Last thing I wanted to do was do all that download stuff again. I remembered then that little ol' KB2976978 was the only thing to update in my last go-round, so I went in and 'uninstalled' the update. Of course you know what happened.

Excel worked just fine again. Talk about avoiding a bullet.

Curiosity led me to check out - just what was this update supposed to do anyway? (Besides breaking Excel).  Well here's what the support page says:

"This update performs diagnostics on the Windows systems that participate in the Windows Customer Experience Improvement Program. The diagnostics evaluate the compatibility status of the Windows ecosystem, and help Microsoft to ensure application and device compatibility for all updates to Windows. There is no GWX or upgrade functionality contained in this update."

Wow, who else feels more confident now about Microsoft products? (Don't all raise your hand at the same time)...

DO NOT Transfer Delta SkyMiles (with rare exceptions)

1/25/2020
If you've been around as long as I have, you probably have some Frequent Flyer miles that have been hanging around for some time. Realizing that these miles (many earned in the 1990's and 2000's) have become worth less and less over time. At many on-line frequent flyer blogs they are in fact referred to as "SkyPesos", probably not a favorable term. A recent experience reconfirmed that.


In the 1990's (as I remember them) you could only use your miles for someone else if they were a relative. I don't recall if miles were transferred or just what the mechanism was. There is a transfer mechanism today for SkyMiles, but it costs so much to use that it essentially makes the miles valueless! 

In my example, I was looking to transfer some miles to a relative so they could visit me in the next month or so--a round trip from Seattle to Austin. First up, I checked to see what the miles would amount to for a First Class ticket--here's what I found:

Mileage chart for Week of Feb 19-26

So the MINIMUM miles for anytime that week would be 62,000 miles + $11.20. That seemed like a lot of miles, so I checked the airfare. Here's what I found:

While the amount ($734.80) wasn't cheap, I had seen fares on this route ranging from $500 to $1100, depending on time of year, etc. Using miles instead of $$$ for this trip would value the miles at 1.17¢/mile. Not worth much at all!

But it turns out that transferring miles to another person costs money--a lot of money. Here were the latest "rules" for transferring miles:

 Under the "Transaction Terms", we find that the cost to transfer 62,000 miles is $661.20. Here is how that breaks down.

But I could buy a ticket (and earn about 4,000 miles!) for only another $73.60.  This example shows you what Delta thinks of you!

The only time it might seem reasonable to transfer miles is if the transferee is 5,000 or fewer miles short in their account. But otherwise--NEVER TRANSFER MILES WITH THIS SCHEME!

So far the only mechanism I've seen to get around this is for the original holder of the miles to buy the ticket for the user. There are no additional mileage charges in that case. I've seen questions about having the credit card used available at check-in but I'm not sure on the details for that.

Here's a link that might be helpful.  Good luck.