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by<\/span> WashingtonsBlog<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n CNN reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n The Democratic National Committee \u201crebuffed\u201d a request from the FBI to examine its computer services after it was allegedly hacked by Russia during the 2016 election, a senior law enforcement official told CNN Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cThe FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,\u201d a senior law enforcement official told CNN. \u201cThis left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The FBI instead relied on the assessment from a third-party security company called CrowdStrike.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As first reported<\/a> by George Eliason, CrowdStrike\u2019s Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Dimitri Alperovitch \u2013 who wrote<\/a> the CrowdStrike reports allegedly linking Russia to the Democratic party emails published by Wikileaks \u2013 is a fellow at the Atlantic Council \u2026 an organization associated with Ukraine, and whose main<\/em> policy goal seems to stir up a confrontation with Russia. [1]<\/sup>.<\/p>\n The Nation writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n <\/span> <\/span><\/span>In late December, Crowdstrike released a largely debunked<\/a> report claiming that the same Russian malware that was used to hack the DNC has been used by Russian intelligence to target Ukrainian artillery positions. Crowdstrike\u2019s co-founder and chief technology officer, Dmitri Alperovitch<\/a>, told PBS, \u201cUkraine\u2019s artillery men were targeted by the same hackers\u2026that targeted DNC, but this time they were targeting cellphones [belonging to the Ukrainian artillery men] to try to understand their location so that the Russian artillery forces can actually target them in the open battle.\u201d Dmitri Alperovitch<\/a> is also a senior fellow<\/strong> at the Atlantic Council.<\/p>\n The connection between Alperovitch and the Atlantic Council has gone largely unremarked upon, but it is relevant given that the Atlantic Council\u2014which is funded in part<\/strong><\/a> by the US State Department, NATO<\/strong>, the governments of Latvia and Lithuania, the Ukrainian World Congress, and the Ukrainian oligarch Victor Pinchuk<\/strong>\u2014has been among the loudest voices calling for a new Cold War with Russia. As I pointed out in the pages of The Nation <\/i>in November, the Atlantic Council has spent the past several years producing some of the most virulent specimens of the new Cold War propaganda<\/strong>.<\/p>\n It would seem then that a healthy amount of skepticism toward a government report that relied, in part, on the findings of private-sector cyber security companies like Crowdstrike might be in order.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Atlantic Council is also funded by<\/a> the U.S. military and the largest defense contractors, including:<\/p>\n
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