'The GOVERNMENT was behind my laptop hack': Former CBS reporter claims classified documents and spyware were planted on her computer by an official agency
(Hacking, hard drive cleaning, this is right up Barry's alley. Either O'Donnell or Rhodes called the WH and said…I think we got a traitor in our ranks.)
1. Sharyl Attkisson claimed that her laptop was breached in 2012
2. An outside source with a government agency confirmed the breach, and said hackers planted spyware and classified documents
3. Attkisson's new book, Stonewalled, details the hack along with ways the Obama administration harassed her during reporting
4. She also blames CBS for being willing to kill stories that were critical of government or controversial
5. A conflict of interest with CBS President David Rhodes, whose brother is part of the Obama administration, also complicated reporting
(It's not complicated. They do what they have to do to protect Barry)
Look at point 5 again. Talk about a conflict of interest!
Yep this is brother Ben.
From Wikipedia:
Benjamin J. Rhodes (born 1977) is the current deputy national security adviser for strategic communication for U.S. President Barack Obama.
If I'm not mistaken he was the same guy who came up with "it was the video" in the Benghazi debacle…you know.. "strategic communication". Now we know unequivocally why it was never investigated by CBS and why Attkisson took the fall. Get's you to wondering how many cozy connections the other networks have operating in the WH.
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By Pete D'amato for MailOnline
Published: 20:39 EST, 27 October 2014 | Updated: 02:50 EST, 28 October 2014
A former CBS reporter claims that a 'government-related agency' hacked her laptop and planted spyware and classified documents in a new book.
Sharyl Attkisson, who was with CBS, says an outside source with a government agency confirmed the breach and discovered the documents hidden in her computer.
The New York Post reports that an 'otherwise innocuous email' landed in Attkisson's inbox in early 2012 that was loaded with spyware.
Stonewalled: Ex-CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says that she encountered obstacles from the Obama administration and her own colleagues while reporting |
She made the discovery after she later met with an unnamed source at a McDonald's, who was 'connected to government three-letter agencies,' and passed off the computer.
She claims the second time she met her source, he gave her a run down of everything the government had planted on her computer, including keylogging software.
'The intruders discovered my Skype account handle, stole the password, activated the audio, and made heavy use of it, presumably as a listening tool,' she writes in her book.
'This is outrageous. Worse than anything Nixon ever did. I wouldn't have believed something like this could happen in the United States of America,' she says the source told her.
Worse, and in some ways stranger, she claims the source found three classified documents 'buried deep' her operating system where most users would not have known to access.
'They probably planted them to be able to accuse you of having classified documents if they ever needed to do that at some point,' the source said, according to Attkisson.
Novel: Her revelations claim to show there is a liberal bias in the news media as a whole that excuses the Obama administration |
(This is like saving money with Geico. Everybody knows that)
CBS had confirmed that Attkisson's laptop was hacked back in 2013, when it announced an unnamed cybersecurity firm had conducted a forensic analysis of the computer.
'Attkisson's computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012,' the network said.
'While no malicious code was found, forensic analysis revealed an intruder had executed commands that appeared to involve search and exfiltration of data.'
'This party also used sophisticated methods to remove all possible indications of unauthorized activity, and alter system times to cause further confusion,' the announcement stated.
The reporter also claimed to have recorded video of documents being edited in front of her eyes, but this is the first time anyone involved has tied the breach to a specific individual or entity.
Attkisson, who is now senior independent contributor for The Daily Signal, a media channel for conservative think tank Heritage Foundation, frames her book around this hacking attempt.
In it, she also says that her employer, CBS News, would kill stories or direct her away from lines of reporting critical of the Obama administration.
Attkisson writes a colleague told her that one executive wanted stories about failing green energy companies on the CBS Evening News, but then-executive producer Pat Shevlin did not agree.
When told that the stories would be 'pretty significant,' Shevlin retorted, 'What's the matter, don't you support green energy?'
Atkisson also claims one of her superiors made it a rule to explicitly label conservatives as such, but that liberals and left-wing analysts were not called out.
Apparently saving the details for the book, Attkisson says a conservative analyst who was far afield of her boss's personal views would be labeled 'right wing' in scripts.
Another issue Attkisson points out is that CBS President David Rhodes has a glaring conflict of interest with the Obama administration, as his brother Ben is Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications.
Nasty emails to Ben and David would apparently be sent when the network aired something distasteful to the administration, according to Attkisson.
CBS reporters have still gone after the Obama administration in the past — a 60 Minutes report from Lara Logan about the unpreparedness of consular security in Benghazi retracted after its primary source was determined to be a fraud.
For Attkisson though, the digging was too little too late, and she left the network in 2014, unsatisfied with what she saw as liberal excuses for the administration's actions.