Crooked cardboard patriot Weerawansa remanded..! Has allotted official vehicles even to cook at home -Rs. 91.6 million loss to country..! full report..

(Lanka-e-News -11.Jan.2017, 5.45PM) Notorious racist  and accomplished crook Wimal Weerawansa the unqualified nitwit having  barely passed   Grade 9  , and who when somersaulting from the JVP (M.P. then)  did not have even a bicycle to claim as his own, but after becoming a minister under the nefarious decade of the corrupt crooked Rajapakses , transformed into a  multi millionaire through colossal misappropriation of public funds was arrested last noon (10) . He was later remanded until the 24 th after he was produced in court . The public who are aware of how much damage he has done to them and the country through his colossal rackets while parading as a great  patriot , and were therefore  anxiously awaiting  this moment , at last went home heaving a sigh of relief following  his  incarceration .

It is noteworthy , Weerawansa was remanded today  not over his passport  fraud or forging the birth certificate ; not over his fraud of allocating government houses  at low prices to his relatives when he was the minister of housing ; not over his becoming a multi millionaire and owner of a multi million rupees worth mansion out of illicit earnings while having no proper income  ; not in connection with the mysterious death of a youth within his house due to excess Viagra intake in the night for reasons best known to Weerawansa’s wife ;  not for making false and malicious statements to incite racial hatred, but  rather ,he was remanded today over  abuse  of massive public funds in a sum of Rs.91, 635, 591.00  ! by allotting state assets fraudulently  to henchmen and relatives of his when he was the minister of housing and construction. 

It is  the chairman of State engineering Corporation , Michael Emil Joachim who lodged the complaint with the FCID against Weerawansa.

The FCID filed action in court through a B report  B/ 3088/ 2016 based on charges of criminal misappropriation of state funds ; breach of trust ;committing fraud, as well as  aiding and abetting in those crimes under sections 100, 102, 113, 388 , 389 and 400 under the Penal code  ,as well as under the money laundering Act. 

The Fort magistrate Lanka Jayaratne after examining  the submissions made by the FCID remanded Wimal Weerawansa and former human resource manager Samantha Priyantha of State Engineering Corporation , residing at Tangalle  until the 24 th.

Weerawansa the notorious crook and cardboard patriot  who committed grave criminal offences including transferring State assets to henchmen and relatives while treating those like his own dowry property and ancestral property , however did not stop his vacuous   bragging even after all these exposures of his egregious crimes, to pose like a great hero  before the cameras of the  unscrupulous  media  groups! 

There had been fraudulent allotment of 5  vehicles to relatives; 10 vehicles to henchmen; 22 vehicles to outsiders who were supposedly attached  to the ministry , but in fact having no eligibility at all  to hold those posts. 

Weerawansa’s family mebers criminal misuse of State  vehicles ..

1.Vehicle No. GO 4894 given to the youngest son Vimukthi Weerawansa youngest son of  Weerawansa’s elder sister Sumanawathi Weerawansa.
2.Vehicle Nos. GK 5073, KD 4049, KB 7053, KW 6956 , GK 5073 and  KP 4802 to the elder son Lalith Pushpakumara  of Weerawansa’s elder sister Sumanawathi Weerawansa .
3.Vehicle Nos. KB 6038, HQ 4974, GR 5774, KI 4648  and KA 7440 to Bombuwala Disawage Ananda Asoka Kumara , husband of Tanuja Nishanthi who is the elder sister of Weerawansa’s wife .
4.Vehicle No.  GY 4635 to Palleguru Gamage Ananda Priyadharshana,  husband of Nilani Werawansa who is the younger sister of Weerawansa.
5. Vehicle No. JN 8058 to Nilani Weerawansa the younger sister of Weerawansa.
 
Ridhma Vimukthi Weerawansa , Lalith Pushpa Kumara, V.W. Ananda Asoka, P.P Ananda Priyadharshana who misused the vehicles  had functioned  as project officer Ocean View Co. , management assistant at Weerawansa ‘s ministry , chief security officer at Ports Authority, management assistant at State Engineering corporation cum  stores administrator respectively.

These four individuals have used these vehicles while they are not entitled to  vis a vis  their positions. The most dismaying and deplorable part  of these rackets was  , Nilani Weerawansa the younger sister of Weerawansa has never ever held a government job . She has only been in the kitchen and cooking at home .Even to such an individual Weerawansa  allocated   a State  vehicle wasting  people’s funds ruthlessly and recklessly .

Hereunder is the list of State vehicles Weerawansa who was a pauper before joining with Mahinda Rajapakse the Alibaba ( chieftain of the crooks) , gifted to his henchmen with gay abandon.. 

HK 8877 and KT 2884 to Lal Kularatne
JN 5767 , KK3081  , 64-3225, HA 2189 and KA 4685 to Piyasiri Wijenayakae
KO 5871 to K,D.U Jayasena
KM 0882 to D.V.A. Jayawardena
54 -5678 to L.C. Kumara
KT 6089 to Viraj Sanjeewa
KA 8125 and 32-9390 to     Nuwan Indika
HR 7619 and HN 4098 to V.S. Wijesiri alias Dampala
GI 0001 to Chanaka
GF0887 to Nissanka 

The list of vehicles allotted  to outsiders who were given posts in Weerawansa’s ministry but not entitled to vehicles is hereunder .Among them are Sinhala Ravaya leader Ittekande Saddatissa the monk  , and Lankadeepa newspaper  writer Prassanna Sanjeewa Tennekoon.

1.Vehicle Nos. KQ 0976, KA 9447, KP3768, KD 0158 and KQ 9762 to A.N.S Mendis public relations and trade union secretary
2.JO 5953 and JE 6557 to U.D. Sanjeewa Perera – media secretary /advisor
3.PC 6171 , 252-4908, PC 8430, PF 1277, EA 0260, PE 3626, KD 1494, EA 0004 and PF 3770  to Sisira Herath , chief security personnel (I.P.)
4.65-5231, KI 3053, HR 0800, and KG 2376 to B.M.J.T. Mendis , management assistant
5.KB 4427 , JC 2440, KB 8657, JO 5953, and CAB 9727 to J,H.R. Nayanananda , co ordinating secretary
6.310-2751, HC 2349 , JW 3549,KU 9867 , and 300-2590 to Alagiya Hewage Suresh Indika , Development assistant .
7.PC 2896 and PC 9097 to B.G. Indika Prasad , Accounts assistant
8.JR 5354 and 300-5690 to Ishika Nadee Perera , staff officer
9.HC 2048 and HI 2658 to Dr. Achala Upendra Jayatileke , advisor
10. GJ 7117, KO6514, JS 9725, HN2194, PD 2563 and CAC 3327 to Ittekande Saddatissa Thera (Sihala Ravaya) – member of monitoring board
11.KK 8941 to Lanka deepa media personnel , Prasanna Sanjeewa Tennekoon  media co ordinator , ministry 
12.KE 0231 , KR 7730, KA 8125, and KS 7735 to Dushmantha Abeysinghe Parliamentary secretary
13.JR 5774, KT 9085, KI 1610, KS 0097 and KQ 7961 to Sampath Thilakaratne ,clerk/ co ordinating secretary , workplace.
14.250-4713 and JY  0359 to Prasad Manju, ministry media secretary .
15.JZ 2669 to Ranjith Edirisinghe management trainee/ coordinating secretary
16.HM 6920 to K.L.M. Samaratunge , group manager
17.KA 6932 , GJ 4501 and JN 9942 to Ranjith Gamini Wickremesinghe, coordinating secretary  .

In order to save face and to hide his disgrace, Weerawansa the culprit gave the foolish and flimsy  answer that he only issued instructions , but it is the duty of the officers to act according to the law, and that the two children of his sister Sumanawathi volunteered to work for  him  with a view to assist in  his affairs. He also told, husband of his wife ‘s elder sister , and husband of his younger sister were staff members  in the ministry but he was not aware vehicles were allotted to them . His younger sister was assisting him but vehicle being allotted to her was not known to him. These were the stupid irresponsible  answers given by this grade 8 (dis)qualified moron of a minister who held a most responsible ministerial portfolio in Sri Lanka , to justify his multifarious criminal activities .

Many reports were produced in court on several occasions against this infamous  crook and cardboard patriot Weerawansa . The final B report shall be revealed later .

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by     (2017-01-11 12:40:44)

Do not harm to the forest lands in Hambantota – Nature Lovers

Jan 11, 2017

Activists of nature loving demand government to safeguard the forest lands in Hambantota.

“Forest is a home for innocent animals. If the government clean and give it to the China what will happen to animals?” said Chameera Perera, Co-convener of Left Centre.

“President has advised that prior to agreement with China about 15000 acres, it should consult the Attorney General and need approval from the Ministers of Cabinet and finally should get the consent from Parliament..”

He added, “As the Environment Minster president has taken a decision on the issue of 15,000 acres of lands in Hambantota. Prime Minister not ready to follow the president’s advice and he follows his own way to give forest lands to China.”

“Countrymen did not give a power to Ranil Wickramasinghe to take his own decision,” said Perera at a press conference held at CSR in Colombo on Jan. 10, 2017.

He pointed out that former President Mahinda Rajapakse is responsible for Chinese intervention to Sri Lanka.

“Without concern the future of the country he gave our lands to China.”

Chamara Nakalandala, convener of Parapuraka Balaya said that instead of returning faming lands to farmers in Panama government is going to give forest lands to China.

“It is a serious matter. We should have a dialogue on this land issue”
- Lawrence Ferdinando - Colombo.

Kandy Hospital ward closed after death of three patients



January 11, 2017

The death of three patients within a span of 48 hours has forced the closure of the 65th Ward at the Kandy General Hospital, an official said today.

 It has been uncovered that these deaths were caused by a virus which had rapidly spread in the ward, Director of the hospital Dr Saman Ratnayake told Ada Derana.  

‘Sil’ clothes distributed on Mahinda’s instructions – Watinapaha Thero

January 10, 2017

The programme to distgribute ‘Sil’ clothes was carried out on instructions from former President Mahinda Rajapaksa said Ven. Watinapaha Somananda Thero answering cross examination in the case being heard in Colombo High Court in connection with wrongfully spending Rs. 600 million from Telecommunication Regulation Commission funds to distribute ‘Sil’ clothes during presidential election.

Ven. Watinapaha Somananda Thero further said on a decision and instructions from former President Mahinda Rajapaksa the programme was carried out by President’s Secretary Lalith Weeratunga and former Director General of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission Anusha Palpita and others accused in the case.

He, who was a coordinating secretary for Buddhist affairs, too acted to carry out the programme on instructions of the accused said Ven. Watinapaja Somananda Thero.

Lanka deepa headline news is an absolute lie ! No decision taken by SLFP ministers for continuance of executive presidency !!.

(Lanka-e-News -09.Jan.2017, 11.30PM) The headline news in the Lankadeepa daily newspaper on the 9 th that at the weekly meeting of the SLFP ministers last Tuesday it was unanimously decided that the executive presidency shall be continued , and Maithripala Sirisena shall field as the presidential candidate at the next presidential elections 2020 , is an absolute lie according to what was revealed  to Lanka e news by an  SLFP and UPFA leadership  minister.

When answering questions posed by us he replied , during the discussions on that day ,nothing was discussed in regard to executive presidency . Besides the SLFP and its leader Maithripala Sirisena are not taking  the stance that the executive presidency shall be continued. Miathripala Sirisena received the mandate to abolish the executive presidency , and to formulate  a new constitution , the minister pinpointed.

The focus at that meeting was on  groups being created within the party by claiming oneself as  the future leader , and therefore that should be stopped. That is , the discussion centered on the bogus announcements made that ‘Gotabaya is contesting as president in the future’, ‘the future leader is Gotabaya ‘ , and publicizing the name of such an individual who is not even holding an official position in the SLFP party,  with the motive to  dupe  the party and the public. It was decided those moves shall be halted. It was also pointed out and confirmed  at the discussion , it is the announcement made by Maithripala Sirisena already that he will not contest the next presidential elections which has triggered this  bogus and mischief creating publicity .

The minister also clarified , one of the ministers however stated , if the president declares  he would contest again if the presidential election is  held as before without a constitutional amendment , this publicity will stop. The discussion therefore only revolved around these issues , and no decision was taken on the lines of what was  published by the newspaper , the minister pinpointed.

By publishing such a newspaper canard on the  day marking  the second anniversary of the president’s investiture , it was the aim and objective of the mendacious newspaper to create misgivings in the minds of  the public and to provoke public resentment against  the president, the minister asserted.

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by     (2017-01-10 00:03:18)

Gaza's Lack of Electricity, a Problem With No End in Sight

Electricity is turned on for 4 hours and then cut off for 20 hours every day.

Families face the difficulties of minimal electricity.-Photo: facebook.com/GWEWWG

Jan-11-2017

(GAZA STRIP) - The Gazan people are suffering from many obstacles. For instance, industry is limited, in fact there is next to nothing, and trade depends only on the tunnels.

Unemployment has reached its highest level in history. Another obstacle is electricity which is only available for about four hours each day.

In general, it is difficult to describe the challenges in life that affect the people in Gaza.

The electricity problem as one can imagine, affects every aspect of a Gazan’s life. This daily problem impacts houses, hospitals, water, schools, clinics, sanitation facilities and people including doctors, engineers, teachers, workers, craftsmen and housewives.

These dynamics increase psychological pressure on human beings of all ages. Hope remains because anything is possible but the lack of electricity creates serious problems.

People cannot adapt when there is no life to live... like the child if he does not have milk will die, and in brief, that is Gaza.

At night, while the electricity is cut off, it is so dark you cannot see your hand in front of your face. It is like a cemetery full of graves. People live, see, talk, and listen like the blind and deaf, always under the shadow of darkness.

If you are walking down the street alone and you faint, no one will find you until the morning because the streets are like the bare deserts, blacker than the black of night, and no one can see who is walking.

It is a serious problem for students, whether they are in kindergarten, grade school or university. They cannot study without electricity, while it is so dark at night. Most students have homework and research to do. Without electricity, they cannot achieve their daily tasks.

Sometimes they try to study by candle light but unfortunately, these candles have killed dozens of Gaza children.

Children sometimes forget to blow the flames out, catching their beds or mats on fire, and tragically burn down the whole house.

Sometimes these fires kill one or more member of the family. This has happened in Gaza many times. I witnessed such a story one time where three children passed away in a fire that began with a burning candle. They were sitting in their beds and the candle was lit.

Their older sister was preparing food for them. After she had finished preparing the food she came back to be with her brothers and her sister. She saw the conflagration, as it burned the innocent bodies of her siblings.

She tried to rescue them, but in the end she also died in the fire when she entered the room to rescue the children.

The schedule of the electricity means it is turned on for 4 hours and then cut off for 20 hours every day.

Sometimes the electricity is even turned off during the 4 hours it should be on. This causes great stress, and brings curses to be on everyone’s tongues.

You know, people who own a market or a shop have to turn on the power from generators, which have a nice calming sound, like romantic music... far away from the dust it causes and the noise which is like an airplane drone. At the same time, you cannot sleep either from the background sound of generators and from the darkness.

I think having electricity only 4 hours a day would not even be enough time for a child to play computer games in most countries, so what about us??

_________________________________________

Shadi M. Salem lives in Gaza, a strip of Palestinian land that is surrounded by Israel, Egypt to the south, and the Mediterranean Sea. He attended Beit Lahia Secondary School and later studied English at the Islamic University of Gaza.

Shadi believes it is imperative that the world understand the difficulty facing people in Gaza and all of Palestine. He says his primary role is supporting the independence of his country, Palestine.

Hamas 'hacked Israeli soldiers' phones in honey trap scam'

Army claims Hamas operatives flirted with soldiers and convinced them to download a 'simple app' to fish for information

A still of the Hamas twitter page (MEE)

Wednesday 11 January 2017

Using photos of young women and Hebrew slang, the Palestinian militant group Hamas chatted up dozens of Israeli soldiers online, gaining control of their phone cameras and microphones, the military said on Wednesday.

An officer, who briefed reporters on the alleged scam, said the group that runs the Gaza Strip uncovered no major military secrets in the intelligence-gathering operation.

Hamas spokesmen did not immediately respond to requests by Reuters for comment.

Mainly using Facebook, Hamas used fake online identities and photos of young women, apparently found on the Internet, to lure soldiers in, the officer said.

"Just a second, I'll send you a photo, my dear," one "woman" wrote.

"OK. Ha-ha," the soldier replied, before a photo of a blonde woman in a swimsuit popped up.

The "woman" then suggested they both download "a simple app that lets us have a video chat", according to an example of an exchange provided by the officer.

The officer said most of the soldiers were low-ranking and that Hamas was mostly interested in gathering information about Israeli army manoeuvres, forces and weaponry in the Gaza area.

The military discovered the hacking when soldiers began reporting other suspicious online activity on social networks and uncovered dozens of fake identities used by the group to target the soldiers, the officer said.

In 2001, a 16-year-old Israeli was lured to the occupied West Bank, where he was shot dead by Palestinian gunmen, after entering into an online relationship with a Palestinian woman who posed as an American tourist.

The IDF blog offered advice for its soldiers following the revelations:

"Turning off the GPS on your phone when it’s not in use can make yourself harder to track, and only clicking links from people you trust can help, too," read the blog.

"If anything looks fishy – like an email with an uncharacteristic subject line and an attachment you’re not expecting to receive – don’t download or click it. Don’t accept friend requests on social media from people you haven’t met, and don’t download any apps from sources you’re unfamiliar with."

Obama’s farewell speech: Obama’s version of “American Democracy”

The outgoing President warned against racism, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment after he leaves office.

( January 11, 2017, Chicago, Sri Lanka Guardian) Barack Obama gave his farewell speech last night in his home town of Chicago – and warned of a threat to democracy under Donald Trump.

The crowd roared with chants of “four more years” as he took the stage.The tearful President thanked his wife, Michelle Obama – as well as Vice President Joe Biden and countless staff and supporters

But he used his final address to deliver a single message.He said American democracy is only possible because of the promise of inclusiveness and diversity.He said he was committed to a smooth transfer of power with the incoming Donald Trump administration – but the single mention of the President elect’s name raised boos from the audience.

Mr Obama told the crowd if they were unhappy with their elected representatives, they should get involved and run for office themselves.

Here’s Barack Obama’s farewell speech in full

Obama s farewell speech.docx by Thavam Ratna on Scribd

Stealing Elections Is All in the Game

BY STEPHEN M. WALT-JANUARY 10, 2017

Ever since Donald Trump won the presidency last November, perhaps no issue has consumed America’s political class more than the question of whether Russia interfered in the U.S. election. The White House, the FBI, and the rest of the intelligence community says it did, although the government has still not provided the public with the concrete evidence on which that conclusion is based. With the legitimacy of his election on the line, Trump has gone from dismissing the allegations entirely (and denigrating the intelligence community) to saying any possible Russian activities had no effect on the outcome. After all, he tweeted, the Russians didn’t hack any voting machines, so anything else they may have done is irrelevant.

Lost in the furor over what Moscow did or did not do, and what effects it did or did not have, is the broader question of what this incident says about Russian intentions and aims. Just how unusual was it for great powers to interfere in a democracy’s electoral processes, and just how outraged should Americans be by the alleged activities?

Distinguished historian Marc Trachtenberg, professor emeritus at UCLA, thinks all this outrage is naive, and evidence of a clear double standard. In the following guest column, he provides some historical perspective that might temper our collective outrage just a bit. His point is not that Americans should be complacent or unconcerned by these activities, but rather that we should be neither surprised by them nor quick to see them as evidence of newfound Russian hostility. Instead, he suggests, this interference is a type of behavior that the United States helped establish; indeed, meddling in other countries’ politics has been an American specialty for a long time.

One might even go a step further: This sort of thing is just “business as usual” in the competitive world of international politics: It’s not like states didn’t interfere in one another’s internal politics in ancient Greece, in the Renaissance, or in the first half of the 20th century. If so, then the real lesson is to fix our own system so that such interventions won’t matter, instead of focusing solely on what Putin did or not do.
A Double Standard?

By Marc Trachtenberg

The American political class has been working itself into a lather over the hacking of a number of email accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party, evidently by Russian intelligence, and the subsequent leaking of information from those emails during the recent presidential election campaign. Those leaks, it is said, hurt Hillary Clinton and might well have cost her the election.

The prevailing view is that what the Russians did was intolerable — that what we had here was an outrageous intrusion by a foreign power into our internal democratic political process. You don’t hear much nowadays about transparency and the “public’s right to know.” What is emphasized instead is the threat to American democracy posed by those Russian actions. What nerve the Russians had even trying to hack into the private communications of American political leaders! What nerve they had trying to influence our presidential election!

But isn’t there a bit of a double standard at work here? The complainers certainly know that the U.S. government eavesdrops, as a matter of course, on the private communications of many people around the world. The National Security Agency, whose job it is to do this kind of eavesdropping, has a budget of about $10 billion, and, according to an article that came out in the Washington Post a few years ago, intercepts and stores “1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications” every day.

The NSA has scored some extraordinary successes over the years. At one point during the Cold War, a recently declassified history of the NSA tells us, a U.S. intercept operation operating out of the American Embassy in Moscow “was collecting and exploiting the private car phone communications of Politburo leaders.” As Bob Woodward noted in 1987, “elite CIA and National Security Agency teams,” called “Special Collection Elements,” could “perform espionage miracles, delivering verbatim transcripts from high-level foreign-government meetings in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, and phone conversations between key politicians.” And the U.S. government was not just spying on enemies and terrorists. It was, and presumably still is, very interested in what the leaders of friendly countries are saying to one another. In 1973, for example, Arthur Burns, then chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, noted in his diary that the U.S. government apparently knew “everything that goes on at German cabinet meetings.”

Should we be outraged by any of this? This sort of spying, when we do it, is widely accepted. I doubt whether there is a single member of the U.S. national security establishment who would like to go back to the days when “gentlemen did not read each other’s mail.” But if we’re going to eavesdrop on other countries, we shouldn’t be too surprised — let alone indignant — when other countries do it to us.

In the present case, however, it is not just the hacking that people object to. It is the fact that this information was used to influence our election. But here, too, a certain double standard is at work. Since 1945, America has intervened in the internal political affairs of other countries as a matter of course. Our basic attitude has been that free elections are great — as long as they don’t produce outcomes the U.S. government doesn’t like. Many of these episodes — Indochina, Congo, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and so on — are quite well-known. Other cases — like Guyana, where the Kennedy administration put heavy pressure on the British to prevent Cheddi Jagan from coming to power through the democratic process — are less familiar. The practice was more common during the Cold War than people realize.

Indeed, the United States felt free to intervene, sometimes massively, in the internal political affairs of our democratic allies. To be sure, most people are vaguely aware of the fact that such interventions were common in the late 1940s. To cite but one example: The U.S. ambassador in Paris, according to his diary, told the French prime minister in 1947, “no Communists in gov. or else.” But even after the situation in Western Europe had stabilized, direct intervention was by no means out of the question if the stakes were high enough. The Eisenhower administration, for example, made it clear to the German people how it wanted them to vote in their 1953 elections; That intervention, according to German political scientists who studied this issue closely, resulted in a landslide victory for the conservative Konrad Adenauer government. A decade later, however, after the Americans had soured on Adenauer, the U.S. government played a leading role in driving him from power — an extraordinary episode that, even today, few people on either side of the Atlantic know much about.

None of this should be dismissed as ancient history. The habits that were formed during the Cold War period remain very much intact.The U.S. government still feels it has the right to influence the outcomes of elections in other countries. Everyone remembers how President Barack Obama warned the British, just before the Brexit vote, that if they chose to leave the European Union, they would be “in the back of the queue” when it came to making trade deals with the United States. Perhaps Obama was just warning British voters about the inevitable consequences and not making an explicit (if subdued) threat; but in either case he was actively trying to influence the outcome of the referendum itself.

But the less well-known case of America’s involvement in Ukrainian politics is far more revealing. In 2014, Victoria Nuland, a high State Department official, was taped, presumably by Russian intelligence, talking with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt. The tape of that intercepted phone conversation was soon posted on YouTube. It was clear that Nuland and Pyatt had strong feelings about who should be running things in Ukraine. It was also clear that the United States (to use Pyatt’s term) had a “scenario” for bringing about the political changes that were to its liking. As the Washington Post put it, they spoke “like political strategists, or perhaps like party bosses in a smoky backroom. Using shorthand and nicknames, they game out what they would like to see opposition figures do and say, and discuss how best to influence some opposition decision-making.” None of this was considered out of bounds, and the Nuland affair did not even get much attention at the time. Nuland was certainly not fired from her job. The finger was instead pointed at the Russians for having had the audacity to listen in on and then leak that phone conversation in the first place.

The assumption is that while we have the right to intervene in the internal political affairs of all kinds of countries around the world, it is outrageous if any of them try to do the same thing to us. We have the right to eavesdrop on the private communications of the leaders of foreign countries, but it is outrageous that they should try to hack into the email accounts of American leaders and their associates. America is the “indispensable nation,” and the rules that apply to other countries simply do not apply to us. Those are the unspoken assumptions, and it’s not hard to imagine how foreigners react to the sort of behavior they lead to. Does the word “arrogant” come to mind here?

My own feeling is that a double standard of this sort is morally repulsive and politically counterproductive. I don’t think we should arrogate to ourselves rights that we would not grant to others. But what that means is that, given the way we behave, we should not get too upset if other countries behave the same way. If we approach the recent email hacking affair with those thoughts in mind, we should be able to take what the Russians did in stride. It was in line with the way the world works — a world that is in large part of our own making.

Photo credit: PATRICK LUX/Getty Images

Explainer: what is in the Trump-Russia dossier John McCain passed to the FBI?

The dossier includes lurid details from Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow and claims an ‘extensive conspiracy’ between his team and the Kremlin – is it true?

• John McCain passes dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts to FBI
• 
• Donald Trump at Trump Tower in New York on 9 January 2017. Photograph: Timothy A Clary/AFP/Getty Images
• 
  
• Luke Harding-Wednesday 11 January 2017

The big picture

What does the dossier which John McCain passed to FBI chief James Comey say?

It says Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least five years”. Moscow’s aim is “to encourage splits and divisions in the western alliance” and to upend the “ideals-based international order” set up after the second world war. Putin’s preference, according to the report, is for a return to the “Great Power” politics of the 19th century, where big states pursue their own interests.

The dossier says that Trump was offered “various sweetener business deals” by the Kremlin, but turned them down. The Kremlin also supplied Trump with “a regular flow of intelligence”, including on the Democrats and other political rivals.

Russian spies put together compromising dossiers on both Clinton and Trump, the dossier says. The Clinton one was innocuous and mostly included bugged conversations.

The Trump material, by contrast, was explosive. It includes lurid details from Trump’s visit in 2013 Moscow for the Miss Universe beauty pageant. According to the dossier, Trump stayed in the Ritz Carlton hotel, in the same suite used by Barack Obama. It says Russia’s FSB spy agency obtained compromising sexual material – kompromat – from the hotel suite. “FSB has compromised TRUMP through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him,” it says.

Is it true?

No one could quibble with the report’s section on geopolitics. It’s undoubtedly true that Putin has sought to weaken western institutions and the transatlantic alliance, plus the EU. Over the past 16 years he has sought to re-establish Russia as an indispensable global player, and to challenge what Moscow sees as unfair US hegemony.

The sex claims about Trump are ultimately unknowable and what happened inside the Ritz Carlton is a matter of speculation. Trump dismissed the report in its entirety at his press conference on Wednesday as “fake news”.

 Trump attacks media and intelligence community in first press conference as President-elect

“It’s phoney stuff. It didn’t happen,” he said. He also suggested that he was well aware that spying can go on in hotels, including in Russia. “I’m extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. In those rooms you have cameras in the strangest places. You can’t see them and you won’t know,” he said.

The FSB, does specialise in covertly recording high-profile targets, and it would certainly have been interested in Trump. But this doesn’t mean it has a tape. Until Putin leaves office – or falls out with Trump – we are unlikely to find out either way, if ever.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, denied on Wednesday that Russia collects compromising material. This is untrue. In 1999, Russian TV showed footage of Russia’s prosecutor general, Yuri Skaratov, in bed with two young women. Skaratov had fallen out with Russian’s then president, Boris Yeltsin. The head of the FSB at the time told a press conference that the recording of the orgy was genuine. His name? Vladimir Putin.

The sources

What does the dossier say?

The dossier quotes from a large number of anonymous sources. It cites “a former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin”, “a senior Russian foreign ministry figure” and “a senior Russian financial official”. The report claims to have sources from inside the president-elect’s inner circle. We get code letters, but no names. For example, source G is described as “a senior Kremlin official”.

Is it true?

The sourcing is one of the weakest aspects of the Trump dossier. Information inside Russia’s government and its spy agencies is tightly controlled. Putin’s own decision-making circle is extremely small. For example, his decision in 2011 to seek a third term as president was a closely guarded secret. If the report’s author is to be believed, he or she enjoys extraordinary access to figures at the very top of the Kremlin. 

This is possible, but unlikely. Cables leaked in 2010 from the US embassy in Moscow revealed that American diplomats struggled to find good sources in Moscow. Russia’s capital is a place where rumour, educated speculation, and planted rumour swirl and where even cabinet ministers don’t have the full picture.

The secret meetings

What does the dossier say?

It claims Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was the point-man for surreptitious meetings with the Russian leadership. It alleges that in late August or early September 2016 Cohen flew to Prague, where he met Russian officials at the offices of Rossotrudinichestvo, a Russian government cultural organisation.

Additionally, the dossier alleges that Trump’s foreign policy aide Carter Page visited Moscow in July 2016, where on 7 or 8 July he held a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, head of the Russian state oil company Rosneft and Putin’s de facto deputy. The report says that Sechin said that future energy deals depended on a Trump administration’s willingness to lift sanctions, imposed by the Obama administration in 2014 after Putin annexed Crimea.

The dossier claims that Page also met Igor Devyekin, a senior official from the presidential administration, who indicated that the Russians had kompromat on Clinton and Trump, and allegedly added that Trump “should bear this in mind”.

Is it true?

Cohen says he has never been to the Czech Republic. He says that he and his son were watching a baseball game in the US on 29 August, a date suggested for the secret rendezvous. Reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post have been to Prague. Thus far, they haven’t been able to verify the story. Czech intelligence officials probably won’t confirm it – if it ever happened – and will be reluctant to antagonise the new US administration.

Page’s visit to Moscow did take place. Who precisely he met there is unclear, though Page has denied seeing Sechin, and has described allegations that he met Russian officials as “complete garbage”. An American oil industry consultant, Page has trenchantly opposed US sanctions on Russia. Trump was asked at his press conference if his team had had any contacts with Russian officials. He didn’t give an answer.

The hacking

What does the dossier say?

It claims there is an “extensive conspiracy” between Trump’s campaign team and the Kremlin. The plot was sanctioned at the “highest level” and involved Russian diplomatic staff based in the US. It adds that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails and released them to WikiLeaks for reasons of “plausible deniability”. The dossier says information went in both directions: Trump’s team used moles within the DNC as well as hackers in the US and Russia. The report claims that the Trump campaign fed back to Moscow details on Russian oligarchs living in the US and their families.

Is it true?

Some of the detail is questionable. But the report’s broad conclusion – that Russia was behind the hack of Democratic emails – corresponds with what US intelligence agencies believe. The CIA and FBI have both said publicly that the Kremlin covertly interfered in the US election in order to damage Clinton and help Trump. Obama agrees, and late last month expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the US, all of them intelligence officers. The move was taken in response to what Obama said was a cyber-attack by Moscow. He promised further steps, and sanctioned Russia’s military and civilian spy agencies, the GRU and FSB. On Wednesday Trump said Putin was guilty of hacking. Trump said: “He shouldn’t be doing it.” But he suggested the hacking would stop once he became president.

The errors

What does the dossier say?

It refers several times to the “Alpha-Group” of companies. This a basic and inexplicable error. The prominent consortium headed by the oligarch Mikhail Fridman is the Alfa Group. Fridman also runs Russia’s biggest private bank, Alfa Bank.

Is it true?

The spelling blunder dents the report’s credibility. Anyone with genuine intelligence about Fridman and company would get Alfa right. We don’t know if the report’s author has ever lived in Moscow, or speaks Russian. The use of “Alpha” suggests the author hasn’t been to Russia recently, and/or that his or her knowledge of the country is second-hand.

The deal on Ukraine

What does the dossier say?

It says that in return for hacking the Democrats, Trump agreed not to mention Russia’s covert invasion of Ukraine. The issued would be “sidelined”. Instead, Trump would focus on US/Nato defence commitments in the Baltics and eastern Europe. The aim: “to deflect attention away from Ukraine, a priority for PUTIN who needed to cauterise the subject”.

Is it true?

Trump said his administration might recognise Russian ownership of Crimea. He suggested that the US should not automatically honour its Nato commitment to defend the alliance’s members, including the Baltic states. He also urged the Kremlin to hack Clinton’s emails. In August, Republican party officials deleted a draft platform calling on the US to give weapons to the Ukraine’s government, which is fighting Kremlin-backed rebels.

Trump acknowledges Russian involvement in meddling in U.S. elections

Speaking at his first news conference since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump said he hopes to get along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said Putin’s support is "an asset." (The Washington Post)

By David Nakamura and Abby Phillip January 11 at 1:20 PM


President-elect Donald Trump acknowledged for the first time Wednesday that he believes Russian operatives hacked the Democratic Party during the election, but he continued to dispute intelligence reports that Moscow acted to help him win.

“I think it was Russia,” Trump said at a news conference in New York when asked who was responsible for the public leaks of Democratic emails during the campaign.

But Trump emphasized that he believes Russia also would have released damaging information about him had they obtained such information. He angrily denounced news reports that U.S. officials had obtained an unsubstantiated dossier of potentially compromising personal information Russia has allegedly gathered about him, citing denials from the Kremlin that it has any such intelligence.

U.S. officials reportedly included a two-page summary of the dossier in classified briefings of Russia’s meddling in the election to President Obama and, separately, to Trump last week. Trump and his aides, including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, called the leaks of the information a smear campaign that aimed to damage Trump politically.

“It’s a disgrace that that information would be let out,” Trump said. “I saw the information; I read the information outside that meeting. It’s all fake news — phony stuff. It didn’t happen.”


The Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman explains the questions around the unconfirmed claims Russia has compromising information on Trump. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

The Post’s Rosalind S. Helderman explains the questions around the unconfirmed claims Russia has compromising information on Trump. (Bastien Inzaurralde/The Washington Post)

Trump also addressed questions about his relationship with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, with whom he has expressed a desire to improve bilateral relations.

“If Putin likes Donald Trump, guess what folks, that’s an asset not a liability,” Trump said. “I don’t know if I’ll get along with Vladi­mir Putin . . . but even if I don’t does anyone in this room think Hillary Clinton would be tougher on Putin than me? Give me a break.”

Trump made his remarks in his first news conference as president-elect, ending a period of 167 days since he has fielded questions from the full media contingent. Past winners of the presidency have traditionally faced the media much earlier.

An estimated 250 journalists were crowded into the lobby of Trump Tower, where Trump aides had set up 10 American flags in front of a blue curtain.

During the news conference, Trump announced that he has tapped David Shulkin, a physician who is serving in the Obama administration as Veterans Affairs undersecretary, to lead VA. And he detailed plans to shift his business assets into a trust managed by his sons and give up management of his private company, a step that will help the business executive move closer to resolving potential conflicts of interest.

He also again resisted the idea that he should release his tax returns, saying “the only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters” and suggesting the public does not care about the issue.

Earlier in the day, Trump had charged via Twitter that his “crooked opponents” are trying to undermine his electoral victory. He accused the intelligence community of leaking the information to get in “one last shot at me,” saying, “Are we living in Nazi Germany?”

[Intelligence chiefs briefed Trump and Obama on unconfirmed claims Russia has compromising information on president-elect]

At the news conference, Pence and Sean Spicer, who has been tapped to be White House press secretary in Trump’s administration, also denounced news organizations for their reports on the unsubstantiated dossier.

Trump and his aides took particular aim at CNN, which broke the story that intelligence officials had included it in their briefings, and BuzzFeed News, which published a copy of the dossier in full. Trump refused to allow a CNN reporter to ask a question.

“You are fake news,” Trump said to the reporter, Jim Acosta, who had shouted out in an attempt to be called upon.

The president-elect called BuzzFeed “a failing pile of garbage.”

“It’s a disgrace what took place, and I think they ought to apologize to start with,” he said.

U.S. officials said that intelligence agencies have not corroborated the allegations contained in the dossier but believed the sources involved in the reporting were credible enough to warrant inclusion of their claims in the highly classified report on Russian interference in the presidential campaign.

Earlier Wednesday, a spokesman for Putin called the allegations that Russia has collected compromising information about Trump an “absolute fantasy.”

Soon after, Trump tweeted: “Russia just said the unverified report paid for by political opponents is ‘A COMPLETE AND TOTAL FABRICATION, UTTER NONSENSE.’ Very unfair!”

Speaking Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump adviser Reince Priebus called the BuzzFeed report “phony baloney garbage.” He denied that Trump had engaged in compromising behavior in Russia and that Trump aide Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague to meet with Russian officials. Both allegations were contained in the document published by BuzzFeed.

“There was no craziness in Russia. There was no meeting in Prague,” Priebus said. “It is not an intelligence document. Cohen has never been in Prague. And all of this stuff isn’t even fit to print in the New York Times.”

In an interview Tuesday night with NBC News, Obama said that he had not seen the reports and declined to comment on classified information.

[Two cities, two dramas and one day of tests for Donald Trump]

On immigration, Trump insisted he will build a wall — not a fence — along the southern U.S. border with Mexico, reiterating that Mexico will “reimburse” the United States for the cost after it is initially funded by taxpayers. Republican leaders in Congress have been working with Pence and other Trump aides to develop legislation to start the process, which is projected to cost billions of dollars.

“Mexico, through some form . . . will reimburse us,” Trump said. “That will happen. Whether it’s a tax or whether it’s a payment.”

“What’s the difference” if the payment is a reimbursement, Trump added. “I want to get the wall started. I don’t want to wait a year and a half until I make my deal with Mexico.”

Wrapping up the news conference, Trump pointed to a work table piled with a massive stack of folders bursting with papers that was set up next to the lectern.

The documents related to his business holdings, Trump said, and they represented some of the assets he would turn over to his sons Donald Jr. and Eric to oversee under the new arrangement in which he will not be involved in management decisions.

“I hope at the end of eight years I’ll come back and say, ‘Oh, you did a good job,’ ” Trump said, before falling back on a catchphrase he made famous on his television show, “The Apprentice.”

“Otherwise,” he added, “if they do a bad job, I’ll say, ‘You’re fired.’ ”

Drew Harwell, Jena McGregor and John Wagner contributed to this report.