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By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN

The federal prosecutor leading the probe into the 2016 Trump-Russia investigation might be pursuing a basis to accuse former US intelligence officials who served under former President Barack Obama of hiding intelligence about Russia's election interference, according to The New York Times.

The Times reported that John Durham, the US attorney tapped by Attorney General William Barr to look into the investigators, is questioning past disputes between different US intelligence agencies' analysts over sharing highly sensitive information regarding Russia's scheme to meddle in the 2016 US election.

Durham and his team of investigators have looked at emails and interviewed a small group of intelligence analysts from several US agencies, including the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency about the motives behind those disputes, in which some wanted access to information from other agencies but were initially blocked from viewing it, according to the Times.

A spokesman for Durham, the CIA and the NSA all declined to comment to the Times. The Justice Department declined to give the Times details about Durham's work.

FBI and NSA officials have told Durham and his team that their interpretation is incorrect and that it does not reflect how the US intelligence community functions, according to the Times.

Durham has zeroed in on a confrontation between the CIA and NSA over the identity of a CIA informant who had been inside the Russian government, the Times reported.

NSA analysts had wanted to know more about the informant to weigh the credibility of the source's information, according to the Times. The CIA was hesitant at first to share details about the Russian covert source, but eventually came around, the Times reported. According to the newspaper, it's unclear whether Durham has interviewed the informant, who was extracted from Russia to the US in 2017.

Durham is also questioning a dispute over a data set, the Times reported. A source told the Times the disagreement was over whether NSA analysts could view the CIA's raw data or whether the CIA needed to filter the sensitive information before sharing it.

The Times also reported that the FBI wanted access to unclassified emails of American officials that the Russian government had previously hacked, which a foreign ally had obtained a copy of and provided to the US.

Obama's White House counsel declined to have the FBI go through the emails, which included messages from Obama and members of Congress, citing executive privilege.

In a January 2017 assessment, the US intelligence community concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an "influence campaign" aimed at hurting Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and helping President Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. The CIA and FBI had "high confidence" in its judgment while the NSA had "moderate confidence."

According to the Times, Durham's line of questioning appears aimed at understanding how US intelligence analysts reached their conclusions and whether the CIA played a role in fueling suspicions at the FBI about Trump and Russia.

Sources familiar with the inquiry told the Times that Durham appears to be chasing the idea that former CIA director John Brennan had a preconceived notion about the Kremlin and hindered other agencies from viewing his agency's sensitive data.

"I think it's kind of silly. Is there a criminal investigation now on analytic judgments and the activities of CIA in terms of trying to protect our national security?" Brennan said Thursday on MSNBC.

The Times previously reported Durham had requested Brennan's emails, call logs and other documents from the CIA.

Brennan has previously said he would have "no qualms whatsoever" and would be "happy" to talk to investigators he hopes are conducting the review "in a fair and appropriate manner."

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NYT: US attorney leading Russia probe investigating whether US intelligence agencies hid information - WICZ

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Amid swirling rumors that she isthe author of the infamous anonymous New York Times op-ed trashing President Donald Trump, there are reports thatdeputy national security adviser Victoria Coates will be reassigned.

Trump administration officials are in discussions to move Coates tothe Department of Energy, Axios reported, citing two sources familiar with the planning. The move is not entirely without merit, given her strong ties to the department.

The move, should it take place, would suggest that Trump, who has been the target of snitches and saboteurs within his administration from the beginning, is just getting started in draining the swamp, as he so often promises to do.

The reassignment wouldfollow on the heels of Army Lt. Col Alexander Vindman and his twin brother,Army Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, being dismissed from the National Security Council and escorted off White House grounds.

Trump also canned U.S. ambassador to the European UnionGordon Sondland, and the president andnational security adviser Robert OBrien quietly cut70Obama-era holdovers from the NSC.

Fresh from being acquitted in the House Democrats partisan impeachment effort, the Trump-hating media has been reporting ongoingpersonnel moves as retaliation as if the president is some rogue dictator lashing out in revenge.

A more accurate depiction may be to say that he is looking to jettison members of the Democratic resistance buried within the administration, scheming to destroy him.

Coates hasvehemently denied to colleagues that she is Anonymous, as some people in the administration have allegedly tagged her, according to Axios.

President Trump questioned who this source actually is in a 2018 tweet.

Does the so-called Senior Administration Official really exist, or is it just the Failing New York Times with another phony source? If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist, the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once! he tweeted.

In addition to the Times op-ed, there was also a bestselling book about the resistance movement against President Trump in his own White House. Axios noted that one of the literary agents behind the book released a statement saying explicitly that Coates is not the author, did not edit the book, did not see it in advance and did not know about it.

Another administration official now under fire isIntelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.

Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., is threatening to take action against Atkinson over his handling of the whistleblowers complaint that started the impeachment deal, unless he complieswith congressional requests for information and documents.

I will be referring this matter for investigation by the Department of Justice if you once again refuse to comply, Nunes wrote in a letter to the inspector general.

The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.

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Another NSA deputy adviser about to be reassigned over disloyalty, reports say - BizPac Review

The University of South Florida (USF) has appointed J. Michael (Mike) McConnell, retired U.S. Navy vice admiral and former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), as executive director of Cyber Florida. McConnell brings an extensive military and intelligence background that will help further Cyber Floridas mission of positioning the state as a national leader in cybersecurity.

Cyber Florida is a state-funded organization hosted at USF that works with all 12 public universities in Florida, as well as private industry, government and the military to build partnerships and develop programs that grow and strengthen Floridas cybersecurity industry.

Mike is one of the leading voices in cybersecurity nationally, and I have no doubt that his vast experience and relationships with key policymakers will be a tremendous asset to Cyber Floridas continued progress, which will benefit future generations of Floridians, USF President Steven C. Currall said.

McConnells distinguished career spans over 50 years, focused on international and foreign intelligence issues, including 29 years as a U.S. Navy intelligence officer. In 2007, he became the second U.S. Director of National Intelligence, serving under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. From 1992 to 1996, he served as NSA director. McConnell has received the nations highest award for service in the U.S. intelligence community from both Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Hes also been vice chairman of Booz Allen Hamilton, a management and information technology consulting firm.

McConnell holds a masters degree in public administration from George Washington University and a bachelors degree in economics from Furman University. He is a graduate of the National Defense University and the National Defense Intelligence College, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has been awarded four honorary doctorate degrees including one from USF.

McConnell is already deeply familiar with Cyber Floridas mission and goals, having served as chair of Cyber Floridas Board of Advisors since 2015. In his new role, McConnell will divide his time between Tampa and Washington, D.C. In the nations capital, McConnell will leverage his relationships with the national security, homeland security, law enforcement, intelligence and business communities to identify strategic opportunities for them to work more closely with Cyber Florida.

I am honored to lead Cyber Florida and build on the organizations remarkable success in recent years, McConnell said. Through education and problem-solving research, we can address the critical need to train a more skilled cybersecurity workforce and create new technologies to protect our nations infrastructure.

Since its founding in 2014, Cyber Florida has implemented numerous initiatives across the state, including helping to establish nearly 50 cybersecurity degree or certificate programs, providing seed funding for nearly 75 research projects, participating in hundreds of events or presentations to raise cyber awareness and publishing books for public guidance. Cyber Floridas current director, Sri Sridharan, has announced plans to retire, effective June 30.

McConnells appointment is effective from February 17.

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Former NSA Director to Lead Cyber Florida at the University of South Florida - HSToday

The stock now we are analyzing at is National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) which is now in overbought queue as the Relative Strength Index has been observed at 73.3. As commonly stock is overbought when RSI goes above 70 (look further in the section of technical indicators).

There are a lot of factors to determine whether trading of National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) stock is going to end in profit or not but one of the most commonly known important factors has remained the overbought and oversold conditions. So, identifying oversold and overbought stocks is an important skill for every investor or trader. Commonly, traders use technical indicators for oversold and overbought stocks while investors use fundamental factors. Most common Technical indicator that is used to identify overbought and oversold stocks is the Relative Strength Index or called RSI. While most common fundamental indicator that Investors cognize to identify overbought and oversold stocks is P/E Ratio.

How much NSA Stocks is Volatile?

Now we will look for the boiling points and excitability of NSA stock. Last weeks volatility stood at 1.65% and last months volatility marked at 1.51%. Volatility of a stock indicates how tightly the price of a stock is constellated around the mean or moving average. A Stocks volatility is generally associated with investment risk; however, traders can also use it to lock in superior returns. Volatility is also measured by ATR which is an exponential moving average (14-days) of the True Ranges. The stocks ATR value pointed at 0.55.

At this moment, Stocks beta measure is 0.3. Beta is also one of the most popular indicators to measure risk of stock trading. It is a measure of a stocks volatility in relation to the market. Analysts also use it often when they need to determine risk profile of a stock. If beta is higher than 1 then risk is higher and if beta is lower than 1, then risk will be low.

Now here, we will be looking at the trend of NSA stocks performance for different time intervals in order to evaluate the companys share value step by step.

National Storage Affiliates Trust Stock Performance:

Traders shown interest in National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) as it recorded negotiations of 284168 shares while stock maintained an average volume of 356.05K shares. It has a market capitalization of $2.16B. NSA stock recognized return of 4.50% over last weekly trading activity and showed performance of 7.08% over monthly period. Shares are now at 12.81% for the quarter and 13.26% for the last six months. The company is driving a 24.78% of return over the course of past one year and is now with performance of 8.45% so far this year. National Storage Affiliates Trust traded with move of 1.39% at $36.46 per share on Tuesday trading session. Shares of company positioned at 0.83% from its 52-week high price while it has been noted 34.24% away from low price over the last 52-weeks.

National Storage Affiliates Trust Stock Look at Technical Side:

Most commonly used indicator to identify overbought and oversold conditions is Relative Strength Index (RSI). RSI is actually a range bound oscillator which is scaled mainly from 0 to 100. RSI from 30 to 70 are considered as a normal state but a RSI indicates the oversold situation when it comes below 30 and If RSI of a stock goes above 70 then it indicates the overbought situation. So as Currently Relative Strength Index (RSI-14) reading of National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) stock is 73.3, technically its an overbought stock.

Though, occasionally stocks can indicate an opposite short-term movement then it becomes important to look for trades in direction of a bigger trend. Like when bigger trend of prices stayed down when RSI was over 70 and bigger trend of stock price stayed up while RSI is below 30 then a 14-day RSI can be considered as a short-term indicator. So, in that situation a Simple Moving Average (SMA) can be crucial to look.

Simple Moving Average calculated as an average of the last N-periods (20-Day, 50-Day, 200-Day). A Simple Moving Average is one of the most flexible as well as most-commonly used technical analysis indicators. It is highly popular among traders, mostly because of its simplicity. It works best in a trending environment. Any type of moving average can be used to generate buy or sell signals and this process is very simple. National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) stock price is above from its 20 days moving average with 4.37% and trading above from 50 days moving average with 7.14%. The stock price is performing along above from its 200 days moving average with 13.20%.

NSA Stock Under Profitability Spotlight

Net profit margin of the company is -7.30% that shows how much the company is profiting by every dollar of sales. Operating Margin is noted at 32.10%.

Return on Assets (ROA) shows that how much the company is profitable as compared to its total assets which is -0.90% for stock. On the other hand, Return on Equity (ROE) is -3.80%. ROE actually measures financial performance and could be thought of as the return on net assets. It is considered a measure of how effectively management is using a companys assets to create profits. Return on Investment (ROI) is 5.00%. ROI measures the efficiency of investments. It helps to directly evaluate the amount of return on a specific investment, relative to the total investments cost.

Forward price to earnings ratio of 87.02.

Analysts Estimation:

Now at last but not the least, we will review what the Analysts are buzzing about this Stock. Looking for Analysts opinion is also important to understand where the stock is heading. Analyst has some hope that stock may be reaching the Target Price value of $34.88 in coming one year period. The Target Price expected by analysts that is achievable in short term period (1 year). Analysts Mean Recommendation of the stock is now at 2.3 (1.0 Strong Buy, 2.0 Buy, 3.0 Hold, 4.0 Sell, 5.0 Strong Sell). EPS growth for the next year is expected to be 59.92% and projected to gain growth of 391.40% for this year. Earnings per share EPS is one of the most important variables in determining a shares intrinsic value. EPS (ttm) is reported at -0.47. Analysts have some long term expectations that stock could hit EPS growth of 11.00% in next 5 years period while EPS growth seen at 34.10% for past 5 years period.

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National Storage Affiliates Trust (NSA) overbought Stock to Bite? We have reviewed it - News Welcome

The latest Senate report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, released Feb. 6, contained several broad recommendations for how the government can improve effectiveness in securing American elections.

While the Senate Select Committee on Intelligences third volume lists seven recommendations for correcting shortfalls made by the Obama administration in responding to Russian election interference, the federal government has already made progress in several of the recommended areas since the committee started its report.

The committee recommends that the executive branch bolster partnerships with countries considered near abroad to Russia. The bipartisan report states that Russia has been using these countries as a laboratory for perfecting information and cyber warfare. For example, in the military conflict between Ukraine and Russian, Russian-backed hackers have targeted the government and shut down the countrys power grid.

Expanding partnerships with such countries will help to prepare defenses for the eventual expansion of interference techniques targeting the West," the report read.

U.S. Cyber Command has taken similar measures in recent years, partnering with the Montenegrin government for the last two years to search for malicious actors in networks in the lead up to both nations elections in 2020. The U.S. Secret Service also engages with foreign states on cybersecurity issues, like in 2017 when it trained local officials in Estonia.

Having U.S. cyber personnel near the Russian cyber hot spots will help the United States learn more about Russian behavior. Tom Kellermann, a former commissioner on the Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th President of the United States, said that partnerships will help the United States determine the root cause of Russian intrusions.

How did they get in in the first place and how did they stay in? How did they maintain persistence?" said Kellermann, now head of cybersecurity strategy at VMware. These are the critical lessons we should learn from assisting our allies in order to protect our democracy."

The committee also recommended that the United States lead the way on establishing international cyber norms, writing that U.S. leadership is needed to balance any formalized international agreement on acceptable uses of cyber capabilities.

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This is another area where the U.S. government has already made progress. At the United Nations, the United States has worked to establish international cyber norms and proposed creating a group to study how to enforce cyber norms, all while butting heads with the Russian and Chinese representatives.

According to Chris Painter, a former top cyber official at the Department of State, while the United States has led on establishing some norms, like critical infrastructure shouldnt be targeted outside of wartime, there is still outstanding work to be done on enforcing those norms.

We have to make sure that those norms are just not paper tigers, Painter said. They have to be accepted by countries around the world and there has to be accountability when people break them."

Another recommendation from the committee suggests that credible information about foreign information or cyber operations be shared as broadly as appropriate within government, Congress and, when appropriate, private-sector partners. The committee also adds that the federal government must have substantive and timely outreach with state and local governments when election infrastructure is targeted.

The federal government has made strides in this area, particularly with its outreach to state and local governments, an effort spearheaded by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security. Top election officials in states have security clearances to gain access to more threat intelligence and CISA frequently holds phone calls with state operators of critical infrastructure, which includes election officials.

Within the intelligence community, NSAs new Cybersecurity Directorate is also making an effort to share contextualized threat intelligence with the defense industrial base.

As part of the recommendation, the committee also said that feds needed to create a mechanism for notifying the public of operations.

Delaying the release of information allows inaccurate narratives to spread, which makes the task of informing the public significantly harder, the committee wrote.

Both the IC and civilian government have partnered together to establish a process for public notification of cyberthreats. Back in November, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NSA, DHS, State, CIA, NSA and FBI agreed to a framework in which they would discuss potentially exposing an interference operation after convening leaders from all the agencies.

The committees other recommendations were that the executive branch prepare for the next attack, integrate responses to cyber incidents, prioritize collection on information warfare, and clarification of roles and authorities within the IC.

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The progress the government has made on election security - fifthdomain.com