In this  Herald Instant Classic © interview, we talk with Andrew Auernheimer (aka weev) about his white supremacist politics, his work for the Daily Stormer website, the Kek/Trump political agenda, and his involvement in the pepe the frog meme-storming of Hilary Clinton’s campaign.

Pepe and Hillary have words

For readers that have not followed the recent dust-up between the Clinton campaign and the alt-right some background may be in order. Hillary Clinton recently gave a speech about the alt-right, in which she remarked that half of Trump’s supporters belonged in “basket of deplorables.” Shortly thereafter, the Clinton campaign posted an article on its website, in which it made reference to Pepe the frog, insisting that the green frog was not innocent, but antisemitic, and her campaign called out the Trump campaign for using the Pepe meme. This was echoed by Rachel Maddow, but a number of media outlets subsequently mocked the Clinton campaign for this claim, including the New York Post, which ridiculed her on its website, saying “In 2016, a presidential candidate declared war on a cartoon frog.” However, as devoted Herald readers know, in the Hall of Mirrors ™, things are not always as they seem.

In this story, weev gives Uri the inside scoop on all the pepemancy and explains how pepe was converted from a harmless meme into a plague of frogs for the Clinton campaign. According to weev, the operation was largely driven by the crew at the Daily Stormer, and the goal was to troll the Clinton campaign into saying something ridiculous.

We took thousands of kids, trained them in basic graphics, got them bullying journalists with custom Pepes. There was this one girl that would constantly get Pepes raping her dismembered corpse every day. Basically we explicitly targeted journalists and Hillary campaign staffers relentlessly. We drove these people insane, a plague of frogs was upon them for a year, and suddenly they are screaming in public about a cartoon frog, and looking like fucking morons.

In this interview, weev takes us into that op, and expands a bit on the pro-Kek, pro-Trump, alt-right politics driving the operation. As we will see, while Pepe himself may be harmless, the political agenda behind his weaponization is less so.

Urizenus: Hello weev, the last I heard, you were on the lam in former Yugoslavia or maybe Beruit or possibly the Ukraine. Where are you these days if I may ask?

weev:  Kharkov

Urizenus:  What is Kharkov?

weev:  It is the capital of the Kharkov oblast, in east Ukraine

Urizenus:  Ah, do you like it there?

weev:  Yeah.  A steak in the city's best steakhouse, as good as Ruth's Chris or Mortons, is $5

Urizenus:  So how would you describe your current projects/activities… if there is an umbrella description?

weev:  Reestablishing global white supremacy.

Urizenus:  Why did you choose that particular project?

weev:  Because blacks have supremacy in Lagos and Asians in Shanghai and whites are uniquely being deprived of their homelands in a global plot to exterminate them from the Earth.  The former president of France Sarkozy is on video stating that miscegenation is mandatory and that if people don't do it coercive state force would be used to make sure it happens. Then he imported a horde of murderous rapists.

Urizenus:  Let me step back a bit. When did it become your actual project?  How old were you?

weev:  Dunno, young. 14, 15

Urizenus:  Did your recent experience in prison reinforce these beliefs?

weev:  No I was a dedicated public white nationalist far before I went to prison. I didn't need prison to see the obvious truth that whites are uniquely deprived of their lands in a scheme to end European style liberties forever.

Urizenus:  “Deprived of their lands”... It seems like white Europeans have more land than they started with at the moment.

weev:  What are you talking about?

Urizenus:  Well, the western hemisphere comes to mind.

weev:  America has a nigger president and is controlled by Jews. So is all of Western Europe. Your assertion that whites have more is laughable. It's utterly absurd on its face. Whites used to be 25% of the world. Now we're 8% and only 2% of that is fertile white women.

Urizenus:  well, you know, having grown up in the great plains it seemed like we were doing better than the native Americans.

weev:  Native Americans are Asiatic and there are knives of French flint that predate their arrival to the north American continent as well as plenty of legends of the light skinned people those savages murdered when they arrived – moon-eyed people, cloud people, etc. Regardless, "native" Americans have a higher standard of living than they would ever have been capable of without us so they can eat a big pile of shit with the rest of the nonwhite animals, we reclaimed our continent and they better be happy with our generosity.

Urizenus:  “we reclaimed our continent.” ok, so then you admit that white people possess the entire North American continent

weev:   No. Jews do. Whites DID possess it at one point. We have been dispossessed of our lands by sociopathic criminals incapable of maintaining or creating the civilization we built and it's time for those fucking kikes to be taught a lesson and we're just about there; the pogrom is on full schedule and I cannot fucking wait to see the brains of their infants stomped out onto the pavement.  Gonna be so fun to rape their daughters and kill their sons in front of them.

Urizenus:  so... when people say you are just trolling with the racism and anti-semitism you say...what?

weev:  I am just trolling

Urizenus:  What does that mean

weev:  What is trolling?  Trolling goes to the heart of what it is to be European.  There were older words for it… flyting, senna, polemic.  Do you know what flyting and senna are?

Urizenus:  I think a lot of people *used* to think you didn't believe what you were saying.  You were just doing it to get a rise out of people.

weev:  I am doing it to get a rise out of people.  That is the whole point of flyting and senna and polemic

Urizenus:  *just* is the operative word.  Meaning you didn't believe it.  The question is, do you believe what you are saying?

weev: Do I believe that whites are being subject to genocide?

Urizenus:  Yes.

weev:  Do I believe that Jews and blacks kidnapped me from my home and tortured me? 

Urizenus:  Yes.

weev:  These aren't beliefs.  These are facts.  If you deny these things, you are a liar.

Urizenus:  “kidnapped you from your home”.  Are you talking about being arrested?

weev:  Yes.  Now, these people are going to fucking pay. Jews and niggers are going to pay.  We are going to systematically kill large volumes of them and we're going to laugh because they have it fucking coming.

Urizenus:  do you ever worry that you might have trolled yourself into being a racist?

weev:  Oh no, racist!!!  Take my livelihood, rob me, make me a slave, JUST DONT CALL ME A RACIST. Fact:  the slur, racisti, was coined by the Jew Leon Trotsky in his "History of the Russian Revolution" in a hateful rant about "Slavophiles" and "Teutonic jackasses".  That's why blacks are never punished for systematic violence against whites. The majority of interracial violence is black on white.  Not just in the past century, but in totality.  Millions of Slavic slaves taken to Africa, All systematically killed over centuries.  No living white descendants.  2 million from south Europe alone.  Anyways…point being…"racist" is an anti-white slur.

Urizenus:  Now that I have some clarity on your current political views I'd like to pivot to a discussion of the alt-right movement and your involvement with it, if any.

weev:  Sure

Urizenus:  Would you identify in any way with the movement?

weev:  Sure. I mean, the alt-right is anything to the right of or more authoritarian than Breitbart. I am certainly somewhat to the left of paleoconservatism, I am quite centrist but I am a believer in racial nationalism, which generally makes me on the alt-right spectrum but I am a white supremacist.

Urizenus:  So which alt-right blog do you identify with most?  Daily Stormer?

weev:  Daily Stormer, yes, I am a regular contributor there and I help them a lot on the logistical end.  It is by far the most impactful site.  It has more traffic than all the others combined.  

Urizenus:  Help them how?

weev:  I scale the website, keep it running, etc., anything technical/logistical I do. It serves 3 million unique people.

Urizenus:  do they pay you?

weev:  I do all my work for the movement pro bono.  Generally the readers compensate me significantly. I am not sure what spectrum of my donations come from Stormer as it is all Bitcoin and has no notes attached.

Urizenus:  Can I ask how much you get in donations in a typical month?

weev:  A few hundred dollars. Enough to live.

Urizenus:  What is your take on the rise of Pepe?

weev:  It was a glorious effort. I mean we did classes…all sorts of stuff.

Urizenus:  Did classes?  What does that mean?

weev: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARYWTq_x9N4

Pepemancy 1 (Adolf Hitler School of Meme Magic)

We took thousands of kids, trained them in basic graphics, got them bullying journalists with custom Pepes.  There was this one girl that would constantly get Pepes raping her dismembered corpse every day.  Basically we explicitly targeted journalists and Hillary campaign staffers relentlessly.  We drove these people insane, a plague of frogs was upon them for a year, and suddenly they are screaming in public about a cartoon frog, and looking like fucking morons.

Urizenus:  Who is 'we'?

weev:  Daily Stormer was doing the classes, the how-tos.  Zeiger and Anglin at Daily Stormer were primarily responsible for just relentlessly bullying journalists and professional political insiders with Pepe. Nonstop Pepe.  The plague of frogs has definitely hit peak, we gotta work on developing the locusts next.

Urizenus:  So there was actually a discussion of the form:  "I know what.  Let's bombard everyone with dark Pepe memes"?

weev:  There didn't even need to be a discussion. It's obvious that journalists need to be bullied and it's also obvious that you need a consistent signature. Back when we used to break people on teleconferences we'd always like, get shittons of stuff delivered to their house and it would always have a two-liter of Coke.  Just fucking days of endless deliveries night and day, always a two liter Coke.  They'd disconnect their doorbells.  Then we'd just have someone outsider of their house, two-liter of coke in hand.  They were afraid of a two-liter bottle of coke by the time we were done.

Urizenus: So it was just random that pepe was chosen? It could have been one of the My Little Ponies?

weev:  No it was not RANDOM that pepe was chosen. It was MEME MAGIC. God you people are dumb.  Whoever heard of a plague of my little ponies?

Urizenus:  The ponies frighten me to the core.

weev:  Yes well, there is no magic in MLP.

Urizenus:  But ok, it could have been Jiminy Cricket

weev:  no

NO

Urizenus:  …cuz, plague of locusts…

weev:  NO THE FROGS CAME FIRST

Also…praise Kek.  We worship Kek.  That is a serious thing

Urizenus:  There has been much liberal blog writing about the origins of Kek.  What do you think of it?

weev:  I think that I can feel the warm glow of the black sun wash over me.  We're going to bring darkness to the earth.

Urizenus:  I don't know what that means.

weev:  you've never heard of the black sun? seriously?

Urizenus:  I've seen the pictures, but I don't know what to expect when it happens.  What will my day be like when the black sun covers my world?

weev:  I don't know.

Urizenus:  So why do we want that to happen?

weev:  You might not ever see it. You might not notice.  I, however, feel the glow.

Urizenus:  What does it feel like?

weev:  Victory.

Urizenus:  Does it smell like napalm?

weev:  Not yet.

Urizenus:  Are you involved in the presidential campaign?

weev:  Everyone is involved in the presidential campaign.  This campaign is a work of art. It encompasses our whole civilization. None will be spared from Kek's glory.

Urizenus:  What is the nature of your involvement?

weev:  Well, I mostly promote esoteric Kekism and exoteric white supremacism.

Urizenus:  What does esoteric Kekism have to do with Donald vs. Hillary?

weev:  Everything and nothing.

Urizenus:  That is vague.

weev:  Kek is a god ascendant.  Ancient gods are returning to the earth. Kek, Wotan, … they're here among us again.

Urizenus:  I'll get back to Kek. Let's focus on the election for a minute.  Are you supporting Trump now?

weev:  I am supporting Kek. I am supporting Wotan. I am supporting rebirth of the West

Urizenus:  Well, who does Kek want to be president?

weev:  TRUMP

Read the tweet: https://twitter.com/rabite/status/478967913270226945

June, 2014.  See how Kek delivers us prophecy? 365 days before Trump announced.  We had a whole year head start to make memes.

Urizenus:  but in supporting Trump, how much of that is just because you want to watch everything burn?

weev:  No.  We want the west great again.  America included.

Urizenus:  How is Trump going to accomplish this?

weev:  Have you ever seen rodelinda? https://www.youtube.com/embed/Akusa8kG0YQ

Andreas Scholl - Handel - Rodelinda - Aria - Dove sei

This is what we fight for.

Urizenus:  You fight for Rodelinda?

weev:  What about the Women of Eger

You ever seen that?  They held the south wall as the Islamic horde tried to destroy them.  Rocks, hands, kitchen knives… Can you imagine how fucking brave our forefathers and mothers were?  How much they sacrificed for our people to have lands and culture of our own? The Jews have tried to fuck with that.  And they are going to pay.  They are going to dearly pay.  But the white race will not die.  It will rise to a glory and height like never before.

Urizenus:  And you think Trump is going to accomplish this???

weev:  nah.  Not yet.  But he's a step in the right direction

Urizenus:  So... trump is like baby steps for you.

weev:  It's not exactly a baby step in the overton window.  It's basically thrown the thing open.  And if he loses, oh man, quick path to victory--a harder one, but a quicker one.  Revolts everywhere… racial holy war.

Urizenus:  Are you on the hunt for a new Hitler?  or do you think one will arise organically?

weev:  Nobody needs to hunt.  Listen, there are a thousand Hitlers.  "Let's kill Hitler!" -- what a fucking dumb kike fantasy.

Urizenus:  Do you have any sense of the breadth of your movement?  Is it limited to /pol/ or is it broader, in your view?

weev:  Stormer has 3 million unique monthly viewers.  That's like, a major metro daily.  I am barely on pol, only 4pol these days, and only during happenings.

Urizenus:  So let's talk about Kek.  Egyptian deity.  Which means He’s an African deity.

weev:  Listen, He's darkness.  He's the god of darkness.  Darkness is all encompassing and timeless.  We're using the Egyptian deity because Egyptian and Levantine polytheism terrifies the shit out of Jews. 

Urizenus:  Have you read Black Athena by Martin Bernal? All of Western Culture was stolen from Africa by the Greeks. Stolen. Black. Culture.

weev:  If you think niggers are so great, move to Africa.  You can easily live among niggers.

Urizenus:  I'm talking about Greek architecture, Greek philosophy, Greek gods…all taken from Africa.

weev:  This is hilariously untrue.

Urizenus:  No.  Fact.  Where would the Pythagoreans be without the Egyptians?

weev:  Lol, okay go live among niggers if you think they are so intelligent.  Don't know why you're around us whites.

Urizenus:  I don't have to.  When I read Plato I am reading work with its origins in Africa.

weev:  I myself never want to live around niggers.

Urizenus:  St. Augustine.  Straight up black.

weev:  lollllll  God you have been brainwashed.  It's pretty sad to see.

It's ok…I myself am going to live in white society.  I like white people.

Urizenus:  No... *you* have been brainwashed and we know how it happened.

weev: How did it happen, Peter.

Urizenus:  They call me Uri.

weev:  Please explain to me how it happened.

Urizenus:  19th century German historians tried to erase the black source of western culture.

weev:  lollll

Urizenus:  Even Plato knew about the black origin of his philosophy.  Remarked on it.

weev:  I don't care. I want to live among whites. I want white people to have independent nations of their own. I don't mind blacks having that.

Urizenus:  I'm not saying you should care.  I'm just saying your culture is black.

weev:  lol sure.

Urizenus:  I guess white culture would be druid culture or something. But it wouldn't be grounded in Greek and Roman thought and art.

weev:  Blacks will never make something like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WX83BSR0mug

Philippe Jaroussky - Vedro con mio diletto - Vivaldi

They have their own culture and that's great.  It's for them.

Urizenus:  No... you are soaking in black culture when you read Keats and Yeats and Plato.

weev:  looool

Urizenus:  Kek is out of deepest Africa.  Well up the Nile.  He's a Nubian god

weev:  He's darkness.  Darkness is eternal.

Urizenus:  It’s all a cosmic joke.  You are a vehicle for the rebirth of Africa

weev:  Great.  I do intend to help Africa.  Africa definitely needs rebirth as well.  Ever since whites abandoned its management it has been shit.

Urizenus:  Yeah, I hear they really miss King Leopold of Belgium.

weev: Oh yeah, the Congo STILL has people that eat each other in it but it's totally Leopold's fault it all went to shit.

Urizenus:  I have a horrifying thought for you. Have you noticed the similarity between "kek" and "cuck"?

weev:  Lol

Urizenus:  What if Kek is a meta-troll looking to turn you all into cucks?

weev:  Man you are really stretching here.

Urizenus:  No, I think the reasoning is solid.

weev:  omg, we are so cucks reclaiming our civilizations and knocking out the political establishments that took them from us.

Urizenus:  Or are you?  Dude, it could be a path to cuckdom.  Kek works in mysterious ways, as you are forced to admit.  The innocent green frog, a mole in the alt-right movement, delivering an army of white cucks to mother Africa

weev:  I would be very happy if all the cucks were sent to Africa.  They would be too; living amongst the niggers they love so much.  It would be win-win.

Urizenus:  The point is that you would be one of them.

weev:  I'm definitely pretty far away from Africa. And my passport has become significantly less useful because some diffusions are on it now.  So I am definitely staying here in a lily-white land of gorgeous Slavic women.  Great ballet.  You wouldn't believe how good the ballet is here.

Why does everyone hate my video?

Strategic blunder is probably the best description of the last week's decision to publish Jessica Tozer's 30 minute interview with General Keith Alexander on YouTube. What were they thinking?

After the strangely-edited video was placed in the free-fire zone of open public YouTube ratings, the General has been subjected to continuous withering enemy fire from viewers. Apparently  Keith "collect-it-all" Alexander's vision of NSA unconstitutional blanket surveillance is not popular. As of this writing, the video has 247 "likes" and 14,889 dislikes. 

Doesn't Alexander have someone in PR to advise against this sort of doomed propaganda social media outreach? With a 98% downvote rating, the NSA will need more than a oddly-staged video with narco-ambient background music to persuade the public.

Or is this part of an effort to throw Alexander under the bus? Cowboy Keith seems to have some enemies in the security establishment based on a recent less-than-complimentary piece in Foreign Policy. A convenient scapegoat might be useful to distract the public from deeper systemic issues.

Alexander poses with his co-star: a yellow extension cord

Even after putting aside the motivation for the video, I was left with questions. It would be interesting to know why someone couldn't find a better chair for the General Alexander to perch on for this video. I understand Alexander enjoys the Star Trek motif at Fort Belvoir's "Information Dominance Center", but his chair in this video is less than impressive.

I'd also like to know why yellow extension cord on the floor is effectively a co-star in the video. The yellow power cord appears frequently as the camera pans back and the editors try to vary the scene without ever showing Ms. Tozer speaking.

YouTube voting irregularities?

Despite an overwhelmingly negative reaction from YouTube viewers, a certain amount of paranoia has been evident in the comments, along with some odd fluctuations in the voting. If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear - unless you are critical of the current regime.

time to rally the Booz Allen contractors for more upvotes?

While it was recently announced that Gen. Alexander is planning to retire from the NSA next year, and despite the undeniable allure of the private security contractor revolving door, we can hope that the General can find time to join forces with Rebecca Black to sing a "Friday" duet.

Just think of the YouTube ratings they could achieve.

In a recent article here in the Herald, Urizenus Sklar argued that the US Attorney in the Barrett Brown case was attempting to smear Barrett by listing a whole number of allegedly bad attributes of Barrett and then publishing them in a public court document.  

I think Uri missed the bigger picture here. Not that Uri is wrong.  But Uri missed the fact that larded into the US Attorney's comments is a tacit indictment of the entire US criminal justice system.  

The US Attorney's screed against Barrett looked like this:

Perhaps without realizing the prejudicial effects on brown the media repeatedly has publicized potentially inadmissible and prejudicial information such as Brown’s … anarchist ideology… troubled childhood and alternative schooling, declaration that he is an atheist, use and abuse of ecstasy, acid, heroin, and marijuana, lack of steady employment, claimed diagnoses of ADHD and depression, associates descriptions of Brown as a junkie, name fag, moral fag, court jester…

Now, the question is this:  Why on God's Green Earth should it be impossible, or even difficult, for someone who is an atheist, or someone who is depressed, or someone who has ADHD or someone who lacks steady employment, or someone who has used drugs to get a fair trial in this country?

You see the deep point here is that implicit in the US Attorney's statement is the admission that for people who are even just a tiny bit outside of the mainstream, the justice system can not be counted on to be fair to them.  Any perceived flaw which sets you outside of a Norman Rockwell ideal is enough to ensure that the justice system, if you find your way into it, will grind you to pieces.  Tiny pieces.

If you are depressed, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you use marijuana, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had alternative schooling or raised by alternative parenting, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a student of, or influenced by, anarchist writings, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you were once a heroine addict, now on Suboxone, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had a troubled childhood, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you lack steady employment, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a moral fag (that is, if you are ethically motivated hacker), you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

In short, if you are remotely alternative and outside of the power structure, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you. 

That you US Attorney, for admitting this.  Now, when do we begin to fix the problem?

Perhaps without realizing the prejudicial effects on brown the media repeatedly has publicized potentially inadmissible and prejudicial information such as Brown’s … anarchist ideology… troubled childhood and alternative schooling, declaration that he is an atheist, use and abuse of ecstasy, acid, heroin, and marijuana, lack of steady employment, claimed diagnoses of ADHD and depression, associates descriptions of Brown as a junkie, name fag, moral fag, court jester…”

And not only was the prosecutor thoughtful enough to think of all the possible bad things one might say about Barrett, but she took the trouble to write them down so we could have them. And then she put them in a court document. And published it. And then a gag order was placed on Barrett and his defense team. Just so, you know, they wouldn’t damage his reputation by responding to these claims.

prosecutor's gag order: list bad things that might be said, then muzzle the target

Of course the ultimate concern is that all that chatter out there would make it impossible to impanel an impartial jury. Because people in the Dallas region are following this case in sooo religiously (being rabid readers of The Nation and all). And if there are two thing a Texan cannot abide it’s moralfags and namefags! Gosh, I’m so happy I live in a country where politicians appoint kind, thoughtful prosecutors that have everyone’s best interests at heart. Because, you know, if you are sending someone to jail for 105 years you wouldn’t want people to think they are - SHOCK! - an atheist or something.

Yes, summer is winding down, but it isn't too late to cram in some late late summer reading.  And who better to suggest good solid reading, but the FBI.  Dell Cameron, writing in the Daily Dot, has the goods.  He gives us the 20 online publications concerning Barrett Brown that the prosecution considers "must read."  Or is that "don't read".  Hmm these lists are so confusing...

Here is how Mr. Cameron lays it down.

I attended the gag order hearing on September 4 and listened as the U.S. government spoke candidly about the journalists who've covered Barrett's case. Twenty articles were admitted into evidence from various writers and websites. Much to my surprise, the U.S. government has great taste in journalism. I've collected the online articles it selected as evidence against Barrett Brown for your reading pleasure.

You want to know who made the list, don't you?  Well to see it you just gotta click through! [link]

Spoiler though, some of the names will be familiar to Herald readers!

Over the past several years, Hacktivists like the members of Anonymous and leakers like Chelsea Manning, with the assistance of publishers like WikiLeaks, have exposed gigabytes of secrets of the American empire. The consequences have been far-reaching, and by some accounts the revelations helped fuel the Tunisian uprising and the subsequent Arab Spring.

One potential danger with any alleged hack or leak is that one wants to make sure it is legitimate. The original concept of WikiLeaks, after all, was that the vetting of alleged leaks could be crowdsourced. While WikiLeaks has since employed alternative ways of vetting documents, vetting by crowd sourcing is certainly a good idea and one that we should endorse. Leaks cannot be taken as automatically true and we cannot rely on government institutions or corporations for the truth on these matters. Leaks and the products of hacks need to be vetted by the hacktivist community. A recent hack provides an example of what is at stake and how we can crowdsource the vetting of important leaks and hacks.

Back on January 22, a hacker by the name of JAsIrX announced the release of documents from the hack of a private military contractor called Britam Defence. Critical emails among the documents suggested that the Qatari government and Britam were, with the blessing of the United States Government, discussing details of a false flag operation that would involve making a chemical weapon attack look like it was under Assad's control.

The Britam hack involved the release of gigabytes of information, but the principle smoking gun in the document dump was a Dec. 24 email apparently from Britam Defence's Business Development Director David Goulding to Founder and Dynamic Director of the firm Phillip Doughty (a former SAS officer):

Phil

We've got a new offer. It's about Syria again. Qataris propose an attractive deal and swear that the idea is approved by Washington.

We'll have to deliver a CW to Homs, a Soviet origin g-shell from Libya similar to those that Assad should have.

They want us to deploy our Ukrainian personnel that should speak Russian and make a video record.
Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous. Your opinion?

Kind regards David

false flag forgery?

CW, is of course shorthand for "chemical weapon," and a g-shell is a "gas shell" for delivering chemical weapons.The document dump also included a number of contracts, and information on employees, including a folder /Iraq/People/ that contained the photocopies of passports of several Ukrainians - presumably who would be drawn on for the operation.

Many of us read of the Britam hack back in January and didn't pay much attention to the contents at the time, but given recent events and the accompanying drumbeat to war, people are revisiting the released documents, which seem remarkably prescient. If the documents from that hack are authentic, they provide evidence that the United States gave its blessing to the Qataris for a false flag chemical warfare attack, presumably as a pretext to propel us into military intervention in Syria.

News of the Britam hack was originally published in the Daily Mail's online publication The Mail Online and in Cyber War News, which is a usually reliable online publication that keeps track of hacktivist actions - in particular those by Anonymous. This was soon followed by a counternarrative in which it was claimed that Britam had in fact been hacked, but that it was a state-sponsored hack - either by an Iranian groups or by the Syrian Electronic Army - and that the incriminating emails were faked. The Israeli online publication Ynet, summarized the counter-narrative as follows.

Computer security experts called in by Britam have proved that the emails relating to Syria and Iran were fabricated, the report said.

"They are 100% false," said Simon Lalor, Britam's chief executive. "From a technical point of view, the emails are fabricated. Who wrote the content is another question."

He estimated that the company had been "used as a vehicle to create tension and embarrassment for those with a political motivation."

The hacking is being investigated by cybercrime and counterterrorism specialists at Scotland Yard, likely in collaboration with the security services. Iran's possible involvement in the cyber attack is also being probed.

Britam subsequently sued the Daily Mail, which removed the story from its website (the story is still available via web archive) and apologized saying "the emails turned out to be forged". Other publications did not remove the story (a spokesperson for Cyber War News told us the breach of Britam had been authenticated even if individual documents had not, so they do not intend to remove the story).

With the recent developments in Syria the Brtiam false flag story has regained legs, and a number of online news sources have been suggesting that the emails are credible evidence of a false flag operation. These include voltairenet.org, beforeitsnews.com, globalresearch.ca, and rumormillnews.com. Meanwhile, The Examiner, which published the story when it first came out continues to keep the story online and that story has been linked to frequently on Facebook and elsewhere in social media.So what are we to make of this? Are all these documents the product of the Britam hack (which no one disputes having happened), or are some of them manufactured? If there is "proof" that the documents are fraudulent, it would be nice to know what that proof is.

We asked some hacktivists connected with Anonymous to look into the matter and here is there basic assessment. While many of the files look legitimate, the document dump also included two emails (one on the Syrian false flag plot) that seem out of place in the context. The two emails in question are entitled "Iranian Issue" and "Syrian Issue". The real problem comes in the headers of the two emails.

Header from "Iranian Issue"
For; Thu, 16 Oct 2012 23:57:18 +0800 (SGT)
Received: (qmail 18137 invoked from network), 16 Oct 2012 15:57:27 -0000

Header from "Sirian Issue" [sic]
For; Mon, 24 Dec 2012 23:57:18 +0800 (SGT)
Received: (qmail 18137 invoked from network), 24 Dec 2012 15:57:27 -0000

is something odd in the e-mail header?

First, the process ID of the Qmail email program is the same (18137) and the possibility of two emails sent at different times having the same process ID is miniscule.

Second, the time on the emails is also identical down to the second. So it appears that the headers were the same and the hacker substituted two different messages in the body of the text. The only difference is the date. One is changed to 16 Oct and the other is set to 24 Dec. One problem with just changing the date is that the hacker forgot to change the day, so that it reads "Thu, 16 Oct 2012." Oct. 16, 2012 was a Tuesday. This is a devastating critique of the key letters that provided the evidence for a false flag operation.

None of this is to suggest that the Syrian gassing incident was not a false flag operation. Indeed The Mint Press has a very interesting article suggesting that Saudis provided the weapons to the rebels and that the attack was carried out by rebels (or perhaps the weapons were misused by the rebels).

It is also worth considering that the Britam hack might have been engineered by Britam itself and designed specifically to discredit anyone who might make a false flag charge. On the one hand, whoever made the forgery appears to have had access to an email that arrived on the Britam servers. Whoever made the forgeries was also clever enough to integrate some information on the emails with those of the legitimate material in the files - for example introducing an IP address from Singapore. But at the same time the forger made a very detectable error of getting the day of week wrong. So one might think that it could be an attempt to create an easily discredited false flag claim, thus inoculating Britam against future charges of that nature.

False flag operations are not new or rare. There is a long history of them, dating to the Roman Emperor Nero who used the pretext of the burning of Rome to carry out his persecution of Christians, and of course the burning of the Reichstag, which Adolf Hitler used as a pretext to purge the Communists from the German government.

False flag operations are also carried out by the United States - for example operation Ajax, which was an operation that removed Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from power in Iran in 1953. According to declassified CIA records (detailed by James Risen of the New York Times), among the many other actions in that operation, Iranians working for the CIA posed as communists and harassed Iran's religious leaders, and in one case bombed the home of a leading cleric. The operation successfully turned the religious leadership against the Mossadegh government.

Today false flag operations are so salient in our culture that even video games like Modern Warfare include false flag elements. The problem with trying to expose a false flag operation today is that the Internet is clogged with people claiming that any tragedy or attack is some sort of false flag operation - a notable example being 9-11 truthers. Truthers and other conspiracy theorists thus end up being "useful idiots" for the power structure, as they undermine the credibility of actual conspiracies and false flag operations when they do arise.

And this is the problem. People claiming the possibility of a false flag operation in Syria needs to be particularly cautious to make sure that their evidence is in order. The credibility of the hacktivist movement demands that we get the facts right. We expect governments to lie when expedient. We expect corporations to lie when expedient. Hacktivists cannot afford to be casual with the truth. Getting at the truth is their fundamental cause. It cannot take a back seat to any other cause. Truth first.