A classified briefing to lawmakers angered the resident, who complained that Democrats would “weaponize” the disclosure.
American
intelligence agencies concluded that Russia, on the orders of President
Vladimir V. Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.Credit...Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
WASHINGTON
— Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia
was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get resident Trump
re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to
Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use
it against him.
The day after the
Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, Mr. Trump berated Joseph Maguire, the
outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to
take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump cited the
presence in the briefing of Representative Adam B. Schiff, the
California Democrat who led the impeachment proceedings against him, as a
particular irritant.
During the
briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump’s allies
challenged the conclusions, arguing that he has been tough on Russia and
strengthened European security. Some intelligence officials viewed the
briefing as a tactical error, saying that had the official who delivered
the conclusion spoken less pointedly or left it out, they would have
avoided angering the Republicans.
That
intelligence official, Shelby Pierson, is an aide to Mr. Maguire who
has a reputation of delivering intelligence in somewhat blunt terms. The resident announced on Wednesday that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with
Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and long an aggressively
vocal Trump supporter.
Though
some current and former officials speculated that the briefing may have
played a role in the removal of Mr. Maguire, who had told people in
recent days that he believed he would remain in the job, two
administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell
had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new
roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr.
Maguire.
Spokeswomen for the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence and its election security office
declined to comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond
to requests for comment.
A Democratic
House intelligence committee official called the Feb. 13 briefing an
important update about “the integrity of our upcoming elections” and
said that members of both parties attended, including Representative
Devin Nunes of California, the top Republican on the committee.
Image
Joseph
Maguire, the acting director of national intelligence, is planning to
leave government, according to an American official.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Mr.
Trump has long accused the intelligence community’s assessment of
Russia’s 2016 interference as the work of a “deep-state” conspiracy
intent on undermining the validity of his election. Intelligence
officials feel burned by their experience after the last election, where
their work became subject of intense political debate and is now a
focus of a Justice Department investigation.
Part
of the resident’s anger over the intelligence briefing stemmed from
the administration’s reluctance to provide sensitive information to Mr.
Schiff. He has been a leading critic of Mr. Trump since 2016, doggedly
investigating Russian election interference and later leading the
impeachment inquiry into the resident’s dealings with Ukraine.
After
asking about the briefing that the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence and other agencies gave to the House, Mr. Trump complained
that Mr. Schiff would “weaponize” the intelligence about Russia’s
support for him, according to a person familiar with the briefing. And
he was angry that no one had told him sooner about the briefing, the
person said.
Mr. Trump has fixated on
Mr. Schiff since the impeachment saga began, pummeling him publicly with
insults and unfounded accusations of corruption. At one point in
October, Mr. Trump refused to invite lawmakers from the congressional
intelligence committees to a White House briefing on Syria because he
did not want Mr. Schiff there, according to three people briefed on the
matter.
Mr. Trump did not erupt at Mr.
Maguire, and instead just asked pointed questions, according to the
person. But the message was unmistakable: He was displeased by what took
place.
Ms. Pierson, officials said,
was delivering the conclusion of multiple intelligence agencies, not her
own opinion. The Washington Post first reported the Oval Office confrontation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Maguire.
The intelligence community issued an assessment in early 2017 that President Vladimir V. Putin personally ordered
an influence campaign in the previous year’s election and developed “a
clear preference for resident-elect Trump.” But Republicans have long
argued that Moscow’s campaign was designed to sow chaos, not aid Mr.
Trump specifically.
And some
Republicans have accused the intelligence agencies of opposing Mr.
Trump, but intelligence officials reject those allegations. They
fiercely guard their work as nonpartisan, saying it is the only way to
ensure its validity.
At
the House briefing, Representative Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican who
has been considered for the director’s post, was among the Republicans
who challenged the conclusion about Russia’s support for the resident.
Mr. Stewart insisted that Mr. Trump has aggressively confronted Moscow,
providing anti-tank weapons to Ukraine for its war against
Russian-backed separatists and strengthening the NATO alliance with new
resources, according to two people briefed on the meeting.
Mr.
Stewart declined to discuss the briefing but said that Moscow had no
reason to support Mr. Trump. He pointed to the resident’s work to
confront Iran, a Russian ally, and encourage European energy
independence from Moscow. “I’d challenge anyone to give me a real-world
argument where Putin would rather have resident Trump and not Bernie
Sanders,” the nominal Democratic primary front-runner, Mr. Stewart said
in an interview.
Mr.
Trump believes that Russian efforts to get him elected in 2016 have
cast doubts about the legitimacy of his campaign victory. Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Under
Mr. Putin, Russian intelligence has long sought broadly to sow chaos
among adversaries around the world. The United States and key allies on
Thursday accused Russian military intelligence, the group responsible
for much of the 2016 election interference in the United States, of a cyber-attack on neighboring Georgia that took out websites and television
broadcasts.
Though intelligence
officials have previously informed lawmakers that Russia’s interference
campaign was ongoing, last week’s briefing did contain what appeared to
be new information, including that Russia intends to interfere with the
ongoing Democratic primaries as well as the general election.
They
have made more creative use of Facebook and other social media. Rather
than impersonating Americans as they did in 2016, Russian operatives are
working to get Americans to repeat disinformation to get around social
media companies’ rules that prohibit “inauthentic speech.”
And
they are working from servers located in the United States, rather than
abroad, knowing that American intelligence agencies are prohibited from
operating inside the country. (The F.B.I. and the Department of
Homeland Security can, with aid from the intelligence agencies.)
Russian
hackers have also infiltrated Iran’s cyber-warfare unit, perhaps with
the intent of launching attacks that would look like they were coming
from Tehran, the National Security Agency has warned.
Some
officials believe that foreign powers, possibly including Russia, could
use ransomware attacks, like those that have debilitated some local
governments, to damage or interfere with voting systems or registration
databases.
Still, much of the Russian
aim is similar to its 2016 interference, officials said: Search for
issues that stir controversy in the United States and use various
methods to stoke division.
One of
Moscow’s main goals is undermining confidence in American election
systems, intelligence officials have told lawmakers, seeking to sow
doubts over close elections and recounts. Confronting those Russian
efforts is difficult, officials have said, because they want to maintain
American confidence in voting systems.
Both
Republicans and Democrats asked the intelligence agencies to hand over
the underlying material that prompted their conclusion that Russia again
is favoring Mr. Trump’s election.
How
soon the House committee might get that information is not clear. Since
the impeachment inquiry, tensions have risen between the Office of the
Director of National Intelligence and the committee. As officials
navigate the disputes, the intelligence agencies have slowed the amount
of material they provide to the House, officials said. The agencies are
required by law to regularly brief Congress on threats.
While
Republicans have long been critical of the Obama administration for not
doing enough to track and deter Russian interference in 2016, current
and former intelligence officials said the party is at risk of making a
similar mistake now. Mr. Trump has been reluctant to even hear about
election interference, and Republicans dislike discussing it publicly.
The
aftermath of last week’s briefing prompted some intelligence officials
to voice concerns that the White House will dismantle a key election
security effort by Dan Coats, the former director of national
intelligence: the establishment of an election interference czar. Ms. Pierson has held the post since last summer.
And
some current and former intelligence officials expressed fears that Mr.
Grenell may have been put in place explicitly to slow the pace of
information on election interference to Congress. The revelations about
Mr. Trump’s confrontation with Mr. Maguire raised new concerns about Mr.
Grenell’s appointment, said the Democratic House committee official,
who added that the upcoming election could be more vulnerable to foreign
interference.
Mr. Trump, former
officials have said, is typically uninterested in election interference
briefings, and Mr. Grenell might see it as unwise to emphasize such
intelligence with the resident.
“The
biggest concern I would have is if the intelligence community was not
forthcoming and not providing the analysis in the run-up to the next
election,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence official
now with the Center for New American Security. “It is really concerning
that this is happening in the run-up to an election.”
Mr.
Grenell’s unbridled loyalty is clearly important to Mr. Trump but may
not be ideally suited for an intelligence chief making difficult
decisions about what to brief to the resident and Congress, Ms.
Kendall-Taylor said.
“Trump is trying
to whitewash or rewrite the narrative about Russia’s involvement in the
election,” she said. “Grenell’s appointment suggests he is really
serious about that.”
The
acting deputy to Mr. Maguire, Andrew P. Hallman, will step down on
Friday, officials said, paving the way for Mr. Grenell to put in place
his own management team. Mr. Hallman was the intelligence office’s
principal executive, but since the resignation in August of the previous
deputy, Sue Gordon, he has been performing the duties of that post.
Mr. Maguire is planning to leave government, according to an American official.
Eric Schmitt and David E. Sanger contributed reporting.
Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT
Julian
E. Barnes is a national security reporter based in Washington, covering
the intelligence agencies. Before joining The Times in 2018, he wrote
about security matters for The Wall Street Journal. @julianbarnes•Facebook
Maggie
Haberman is a White House correspondent. She joined The Times in 2015
as a campaign correspondent and was part of a team that won a Pulitzer
Prize in 2018 for reporting on resident Trump’s advisers and their
connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
Nicholas
Fandos is a national reporter based in the Washington bureau. He has
covered Congress since 2017 and is part of a team of reporters who have
chronicled investigations by the Justice Department and Congress into residentt Trump and his administration. @npfandos
Assalamu Alaykum (Peace be with you)
First of all, I would like to thank my friend @dlevere for supporting me by promoting my game projects on his website gamehacking.org/ and now here.
Also I would like to thank my brazillian fellow, ROD Lima, for all his help with Unreal Scripting Programming. He is most known for his Resident Evil 2 Fan Remake in UDK Engine:
I would like also to thank my friends at UDK Engine Forums (https://forums.unrealengine.com/legacy-tools-unreal-engine-3-udk) for all their help and support.
As
you may know, recently I had to put offline my project UDK Ultimate
Engine (the custom build of UDK Engine with PS3 and Xbox360 Export
Support) for copyrights reasons (EPIC asked me to do this), however,
they were very kind with me and allowed me to keep using my custom
version of UDK to publish my games, I even signed with them an Unreal
Engine License Commercial Amendment, so now I am a Licensed Unreal
Engine Developer and I am ready to pursue my dream of life!
DISCLAIMER:
In this game, the player does not shoot Israeli civilians, women,
children, elderly, only soldiers. Also in this game there are NO images
of sexual content, illicit drugs, religious desecration, hate of speech
against any group, ethnicity or religion, anti-Semitist propaganda
against Jews, Nazi propaganda or boasting of any terrorist groups and /
or other unlawful acts. This game only contains the virtual
representation of the Palestinian Resistance Movement against the
Israeli Military Occupation, which is officially recognized by the
United Nations (UN). I even sent this project for Brazillian's
Government Justice Department, Age Rating Sector (kinda Brazillian ESRB)
for their approval and age rating. This project was approved, now I am
just waiting for the Age Rating Information of my game which will be
available very soon on their website
(http://portal.mj.gov.br/ClassificacaoIndicativa/jsps/ConsultarJogoForm.do)
I
am Brazillian, from Arab ascendance, my father is from Palestine, and
something I never revealed before, and one of the biggest reasons of me
creating this game, is that my father was a Fighter of the Palestine
Resistance Movement, he fought against Israel Army in the Lebanese Civil
War on the 70's, and from since I was a kid, I felt too much proud of
my father and the Palestine People in General, because of their Strenght
and Constant Resistance. So this game is kinda tribute to the Brave
People of Palestine and their Resistance against Military Occupation.
Fursan al-Aqsa - Knights of al-Aqsa Mosque
is a Third Person Action Game on which you play as Ahmad al-Ghazzawi, a
young Palestinian Student who was unjustly tortured and jailed by
Israeli Soldiers for 5 years, had all his family killed by an Israeli
Airstrike and now after getting out from the prison he seeks revenge
against those who wronged him, killed his family and stolen his
homeland.
This game is being developed during the course
of 4 years by one person (me, Nidal Nijm), in a custom version of UDK
Engine (Unreal Engine 3), using the best technology to tell a compelling
story through a game packed with non stop action, advanced 3D graphics
and modern gameplay mechanics, however keeping the soul of old school
shooters. You will play in missions accross ground, sea and sky, you
have many objectives to accomplish in each mission, epic bosses battles,
powerful guns, vehicles to drive, helicopters to take down, and much
more. Expect a LOT of Action and Adrenaline!!!
This game also is greatly inspired by Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid, Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Insurgency Sandstorm.
I
hope you enjoy this game and support me by purchasing it, Insha Allah
(God's Willing). I decided to release this game as episodes (missions),
each mission by a symbolic value just to cover my development costs, as
everyone knows that develop a game is not an easy task, it takes a lot
of time and efforts. It will be a very small value, however any copy
sold of this game is very important and will truly help me.
I hope until the end of this month (november) release a free demo of this game (for PC, PS3 and Xbox360),
so people can enjoy and feel what my game is about, enjoy the game play,
feel the action. I plan to make something similar to Metal Gear Solid
VR Missions (If you may remember), on which I will teach the player the
basis of the Gameplay, like training the player for the true battle that
will come on the final game. About the first episode (mission), I hope to release it until the end of December, beginning of January 2020.
Unreal turned 20 years old this month. The extraterrestrial first-person shooter spawned (and showcased) a game engine whose descendants still motor on today.
To commemorate all those screaming prisoners and innocent alien
creatures killed at the hands of jumpy players, Brendan Caldwell got in touch with a
handful of the original team and asked them to share their memories of
making the first Skaarj conflict.
This is how Unreal was made, from the
perspective of the programmers, designers, artists and musicians who
were there.
Special thanks to AgntLuck from the Discord channel. Today we learn how
we can use another software in combination with Cheat Engine to help us find codes
better, easier and more efficient than hunt and peck, trial and error.
The FBI on Friday issued a formal warning that a sophisticated Russia-linked hacking campaign is compromising hundreds of thousands of home network devices worldwide and it is advising owners to reboot these devices in an attempt to disrupt the malicious software.
The law enforcement agency said foreign cyber actors are targeting routers in small or home offices with a botnet — or a network of infected devices — known as VPNFilter.
Cybersecurity experts and officials say VPNFilter has infected an estimated 500,000 devices worldwide.
The FBI recommends any owner of small office and home office routers reboot the devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the potential identification of infected devices," the bureau's cyber division wrote in a public alert.
"Owners are advised to consider disabling remote management settings on devices and secure with strong passwords and encryption when enabled. Network devices should be upgraded to the latest available versions of firmware."
Earlier this week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the bureau was working to disrupt the malware, which officials have linked to the cyber espionage group known as APT 28 or Sofacy.
Experts at Cisco’s threat intelligence arm Talos on Wednesday first called attention to VPNFilter, warning that hackers are ramping up malware attacks against Ukraine, infecting thousands of devices ahead of an upcoming national holiday in the country.
"While this isn't definitive by any means, we have also observed VPNFilter, a potentially destructive malware, actively infecting Ukrainian hosts at an alarming rate, utilizing a command and control infrastructure dedicated to that country," Talos wrote in a blog post.
"Both the scale and the capability of this operation are concerning. Working with our partners, we estimate the number of infected devices to be at least 500,000 in at least 54 countries."
The firm warned that VPNFilter could wreak havoc in a number of ways, from stealing website credentials to causing widespread internet disruption.
"The malware has a destructive capability that can render an infected device unusable, which can be triggered on individual victim machines or en masse, and has the potential of cutting off Internet access for hundreds of thousands of victims worldwide."
Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle
on NSA surveillance of U.S. citizens, knows a thing or two about
spying. He’s now released an app, Haven, that makes it easier to defend
yourself against the most aggressive kinds.
Haven, now in public beta, turns any Android
smartphone into a sensitive security system. It’s primarily intended to
be installed on a secondary phone — say, last year’s model — which then
takes photos and records sound of any activity in a room where it’s
placed. Haven will then send alerts of any intrusion to a user’s primary
phone over encrypted channels.
A meeting arranged by Donald
Trump Jr. was held at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Russian lawyer who
has connections to the Kremlin.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
President Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., was promised damaging information about Hillary Clinton
before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during
the 2016 campaign, according to three advisers to the White House
briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.
The
meeting was also attended by his campaign chairman at the time, Paul J.
Manafort, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Mr. Manafort and Mr.
Kushner only recently disclosed the meeting, though not its content, in
confidential government documents described to The New York Times.
The Times reported the existence of the meeting on Saturday. But in subsequent interviews, the advisers and others revealed the motivation behind it.
The meeting — at Trump Tower on June 9, 2016, two weeks after Donald J. Trumpclinched the Republican nomination
— points to the central question in federal investigations of the
Kremlin’s meddling in the presidential election: whether the Trump
campaign colluded with the Russians. The accounts of the meeting
represent the first public indication that at least some in the campaign
were willing to accept Russian help.
And
while Trump has been dogged by revelations of undisclosed
meetings between his associates and the Russians, the episode at Trump
Tower is the first such confirmed private meeting involving members of
his inner circle during the campaign — as well as the first one known to
have included his eldest son. It came at an inflection point in the
campaign, when Donald Trump Jr., who served as an adviser and a
surrogate, was ascendant and Mr. Manafort was consolidating power.
It
is unclear whether the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, actually
produced the promised compromising information about Mrs. Clinton. But
the people interviewed by The Times about the meeting said the
expectation was that she would do so.
In
a statement on Sunday, Donald Trump Jr. said he had met with the
Russian lawyer at the request of an acquaintance. “After pleasantries
were exchanged,” he said, “the woman stated that she had information
that individuals connected to Russia were funding the Democratic
National Committee and supporting Ms. Clinton. Her statements were
vague, ambiguous and made no sense. No details or supporting information
was provided or even offered. It quickly became clear that she had no
meaningful information.”
He
said she then turned the conversation to adoption of Russian children
and the Magnitsky Act, an American law that blacklists suspected Russian
human rights abusers. The law so enraged President Vladimir V. Putin of
Russia that he retaliated by halting American adoptions of Russian
children.
“It
became clear to me that this was the true agenda all along and that the
claims of potentially helpful information were a pretext for the
meeting,” Mr. Trump said.
When
he was first asked about the meeting on Saturday, he said only that it
was primarily about adoptions and mentioned nothing about Mrs. Clinton.
President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, also attended the meeting last year at Trump Tower.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Mark
Corallo, a spokesman for the president’s lawyer, said on Sunday that
“Trump was not aware of and did not attend the meeting.”
Lawyers
and spokesmen for Mr. Kushner and Mr. Manafort did not immediately
respond to requests for comment. In his statement, Donald Trump Jr. said
he asked Mr. Manafort and Mr. Kushner to attend, but did not tell them
what the meeting was about.
American intelligence agencies have concluded
that Russian hackers and propagandists worked to tip the election
toward Donald J. Trump, in part by stealing and then providing to
WikiLeaks internal Democratic Party and Clinton campaign emails that
were embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton. WikiLeaks began releasing the
material on July 22.
A
special prosecutor and congressional committees are now investigating
the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russians. Mr. Trump has
disputed that, but the investigation has cast a shadow over his
administration.
Mr.
Trump has also equivocated on whether the Russians were solely
responsible for the hacking. On Sunday, two days after his first meeting
as president with Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump said in a Twitter post:
“I strongly pressed President Putin twice about Russian meddling in our
election. He vehemently denied it. I’ve already given my opinion.....”
He also tweeted that
they had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that
election hacking, & many other negative things, will be
guarded...””
On
Sunday morning on Fox News, the White House chief of staff, Reince
Priebus, described the Trump Tower meeting as a “big nothing burger.”
“Talking
about issues of foreign policy, issues related to our place in the
world, issues important to the American people is not unusual,” he said.
But
Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on
the House Intelligence Committee, one of the panels investigating
Russian election interference, said he wanted to question “everyone that
was at that meeting.”
“There’s
no reason for this Russian government advocate to be meeting with Paul
Manafort or with Mr. Kushner or the president’s son if it wasn’t about
the campaign and Russia policy,” Mr. Schiff said after the initial Times
report.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer invited to the Trump Tower meeting,
is best known for mounting a multipronged attack against the Magnitsky
Act.
The
adoption impasse is a frequently used talking point for opponents of
the act. Ms. Veselnitskaya’s campaign against the law has also included
attempts to discredit the man after whom it was named, Sergei L.
Magnitsky, a lawyer and auditor who died in 2009 in mysterious
circumstances in a Russian prison after exposing one of the biggest
corruption scandals during Mr. Putin’s rule.
Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul J. Manafort, at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland.Credit
Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Ms.
Veselnitskaya’s clients include state-owned businesses and a senior
government official’s son, whose company was under investigation in the
United States at the time of the meeting. Her activities and
associations had previously drawn the attention of the F.B.I., according
to a former senior law enforcement official.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya said in a statement on Saturday that “nothing at all
about the presidential campaign” was discussed. She recalled that after
about 10 minutes, either Mr. Kushner or Mr. Manafort walked out.
She
said she had “never acted on behalf of the Russian government” and
“never discussed any of these matters with any representative of the
Russian government.”
The
Trump Tower meeting was disclosed to government officials in recent
days, when Mr. Kushner, who is also a senior White House aide, filed a
revised version of a form required to obtain a security clearance.
The Times reported in April
that he had failed to disclose any foreign contacts, including meetings
with the Russian ambassador to the United States and the head of a
Russian state bank. Failure to report such contacts can result in a loss
of access to classified information and even, if information is
knowingly falsified or concealed, in imprisonment.
Mr.
Kushner’s advisers said at the time that the omissions were an error,
and that he had immediately notified the F.B.I. that he would be
revising the filing.
In
a statement on Saturday, Mr. Kushner’s lawyer, Jamie Gorelick, said:
“He has since submitted this information, including that during the
campaign and transition, he had over 100 calls or meetings with
representatives of more than 20 countries, most of which were during
transition. Mr. Kushner has submitted additional updates and included,
out of an abundance of caution, this meeting with a Russian person,
which he briefly attended at the request of his brother-in-law Donald
Trump Jr. As Mr. Kushner has consistently stated, he is eager to
cooperate and share what he knows.”
Mr.
Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the
meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional
investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to
people familiar with the events. Neither Mr. Manafort nor Mr. Kushner
was required to disclose the content of the meeting.
A spokesman for Mr. Manafort declined to comment.
Since
the president took office, Donald Trump Jr. and his brother Eric have
assumed day-to-day control of their father’s real estate empire. Because
he does not serve in the administration and does not have a security
clearance, Donald Trump Jr. was not required to disclose his foreign
contacts.
Federal and congressional investigators have not publicly
asked for any records that would require his disclosure of Russian
contacts.
Ms.
Veselnitskaya is a formidable operator with a history of pushing the
Kremlin’s agenda. Most notable is her campaign against the Magnitsky
Act, which provoked a Cold War-style, tit-for-tat dispute with the
Kremlin when President Barack Obama signed it into law in 2012.
Under
the law, about 44 Russian citizens have been put on a list that allows
the United States to seize their American assets and deny them visas.
The United States asserts that many of them are connected to the fraud
exposed by Mr. Magnitsky, who after being jailed for more than a year
was found dead in his cell. A Russian human rights panel found that he
had been assaulted. To critics of Mr. Putin, Mr. Magnitsky, in death,
became a symbol of corruption and brutality in the Russian state.
An
infuriated Mr. Putin has called the law an “outrageous act,” and, in
addition to banning American adoptions, he compiled what became known as
an “anti-Magnitsky” blacklist of United States citizens.
Among
those blacklisted was Preet Bharara, then the United States attorney in
Manhattan, who led notable convictions of Russian arms and drug
dealers. Mr. Bharara was abruptly fired in March, after previously being asked to stay on by President Trump.
One
of Ms. Veselnitskaya’s clients is Denis Katsyv, the Russian owner of
Prevezon Holdings, an investment company based in Cyprus. He is the son
of Petr Katsyv, the vice president of the state-owned Russian Railways
and a former deputy governor of the Moscow region. In a civil forfeiture
case prosecuted by Mr. Bharara’s office, the Justice Department alleged
that Prevezon had helped launder money linked to the $230 million
corruption scheme exposed by Mr. Magnitsky by putting it in New York
real estate and bank accounts. Prevezon recently settled the case for $6
million without admitting wrongdoing.
Ms. Veselnitskaya was also deeply involved in the making of a film that disputes the widely accepted version
of Mr. Magnitsky’s life and death. In the film and in her statement,
she said the true culprit of the fraud was William F. Browder, an
American-born financier who hired Mr. Magnitsky to investigate the fraud
after three of his investment funds companies in Russia were seized.
Mr. Browder called the film a state-sponsored smear campaign.
“She’s not just some private lawyer,” Mr. Browder said of Ms. Veselnitskaya. “She is a tool of the Russian government.”
John O. Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, testified in May
that he had been concerned last year by Russian government efforts to
contact and manipulate members of Mr. Trump’s campaign. “Russian
intelligence agencies do not hesitate at all to use private companies
and Russian persons who are unaffiliated with the Russian government to
support their objectives,” he said.
Among those now under investigation is Michael T. Flynn, who was forced to resign as
Mr. Trump’s national security adviser after it became known that he had
falsely denied speaking to the Russian ambassador about sanctions
imposed by the Obama administration over the election hacking.
Congress
later discovered that Mr. Flynn had been paid more than $65,000 by
companies linked to Russia, and that he had failed to disclose those
payments when he renewed his security clearance and underwent an
additional background check to join the White House staff.
In May, the president fired the F.B.I. director,
James B. Comey, who days later provided information about a meeting
with Mr. Trump at the White House. According to Mr. Comey, the president
asked him to end the bureau’s investigation into Mr. Flynn; Mr. Trump
has repeatedly denied making such a request. Robert S. Mueller III, a
former F.B.I. director, was then appointed as special counsel.
The
status of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not clear, but he has
assembled a veteran team of prosecutors and agents to dig into any
possible collusion.
Follow Jo Becker, Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman on Twitter.
Maggie Haberman, Sophia Kishkovsky and Eric Lipton contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary
handling restrictions arrived at the White House.
Sent by courier from
the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown
to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing
deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President
Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and
discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific
instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at
least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her
opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S.
election were increasingly apparent.
Hackers with ties to Russian
intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party
computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a
year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between
Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000
emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online
by WikiLeaks.
You’ll all be familiar with the PC, the ubiquitous x86-powered
workhorse of desktop and portable computing. All modern PC's are
descendants of the original from IBM, the model 5150 which made its
debut in August 1981. This 8088-CPU-driven machine was expensive and
arguably not as accomplished as its competitors, yet became an instant
commercial success.
The genesis of its principal operating system is famous in providing
the foundation of Microsoft’s huge success. They had bought Seattle
Computer Products’ 86-DOS, which they then fashioned into the first
release version of IBM’s PC-DOS. And for those interested in these early
PC operating systems there is a new insight to be found, in the form of
a pre-release version of PC-DOS 1.0 that has found its way into the hands of OS/2 Museum.
Sadly they don’t show us the diskette itself, but we are told it is
the single-sided 160K 5.25″ variety that would have been the standard on
these early PCs. We say “the standard” rather than “standard” because a
floppy drive was an optional extra on a 5150, the most basic model
would have used cassette tape as a storage medium.
The disk is bootable, and indeed we can all have a play with its contents due to the magic of emulation.
The dates on the files reveal a date of June 1981, so this is
definitely a pre-release version and several months older than the
previous oldest known PC-DOS version. They detail an array of
differences between this disk and the DOS we might recognize, perhaps
the most surprising of which is that even at this late stage it lacks
support for .EXE executables.
You will probably never choose to run this DOS version on your PC,
but it is an extremely interesting and important missing link between
surviving 86-DOS and PC-DOS versions. It also has the interesting
feature of being the oldest so-far-found operating system created
specifically for the PC.
