News Item

Report: Russian intel started the Seth Rich rumor to cover for DNC hack | Ars Technica

Mary Rich, the mother of slain DNC staffer Seth Rich, gives a press conference in Bloomingdale on August 1, 2016. SVR agents jumped on Seth Rich’s death as an opportunity to launch a disinformation campaign, according to a new report.

 

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR, or Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki Rossiyskoy Federatsii), the successor to the Soviet KGB’s First Chief Directorate, is the keeper of the KGB’s legacy of “active measures.” The group engages in political warfare using subversive operations to weaken the United States and links between NATO allies. And according to a new report from Yahoo News’ Michael Isikoff, the SVR played a particularly underhanded role in activities leading up to the 2016 US presidential election in order to create a counter-narrative to the exposure of other Russian intelligence agencies’ hacking operations at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). The SVR wanted to spin a conspiracy theory about the death of DNC staffer Seth Rich—a conspiracy theory that promoted Rich as the source of DNC and Clinton campaign emails published by Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks.

[…]

Source: Report: Russian intel started the Seth Rich rumor to cover for DNC hack | Ars Technica