Similar communications occurred between WikiLeaks and the GRU- operated persona DCLeaks. On September 15, 2016, @dcleaks wrote to @WikiLeaks, “hi there! I’m from DC Leaks. How could we discuss some submission-related issues? Am trying to reach out to you via your secured chat but getting no response. I’ve got something that might interest you. You won’t 168 be disappointed, I promise.” The WikiLeaks account responded, “Hi there,” without further elaboration. The @dcleaks_ account did not respond immediately. The same day, the Twitter account @guccifer_2 sent @dcleaks_ a direct 169 message, which is the first known contact between the personas. During subsequent communications, the Guccifer 2.0 persona informed DCLeaks that WikiLeaks was trying to contact DCLeaks and arrange for a way to speak 170 through encrypted emails. An analysis of the metadata collected from the WikiLeaks site revealed that 171 the stolen Podesta emails show a creation date of September 19, 2016. Based on information about Assange’s computer and its possible operating system, this date may be when the GRU staged the stolen Podesta emails for transfer to WikiLeaks (as the GRU had previously done in July 2016 for the DNC 172 emails). The WikiLeaks site also released PDFs and other documents taken from Podesta that were attachments to emails in his account; these documents had a creation date of October 2, 2016, which appears to be the date the 173 attachments were separately staged by WikiLeaks on its site. Beginning on September 20, 2016, WikiLeaks and DCLeaks resumed communications in a brief exchange. On September 22, 2016, a DCLeaks email account [email protected] sent an email to a WikiLeaks account with the subject “Submission” and the message “Hi from DCLeaks.” The email 174 contained a PGP-encryted message with the filename “wiki_mail.txt.gpg.” Investigative Technique█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ The email, however, bears a number of similarities to the July 14, 2016 email in which GRU officers used the Guccifer 2.0 persona to give WikiLeaks access to the archive of DNC files. On September 22, 2016 (the same day of DCLeaks’ email to WikiLeaks), the Twitter account @dcleaks sent a single message to @WikiLeaks with the string of characters Investigative Technique█ █ █ █ █ █ █ █ █