Zack
Beauchamp · Friday, January 06, 2017, 6:49 pm
Late
Friday afternoon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI)
released a declassified version of its report on Russia’s interference in the US
presidential election. The report, which draws on intelligence gathered by the
FBI, CIA, and NSA, concludes with “high confidence” that “Russian President
Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election” that included hacking the personal email accounts of
Democratic Party officials and political figures.
According
to the report, Putin’s aim was to impugn Hillary Clinton’s credibility and boost
Donald Trump’s chances of winning the election, and more broadly to make the US
electoral system look shady and untrustworthy.
Much
of this has already been reported publicly. But there are some key findings in
this report, such as the precise nature of the link between WikiLeaks and the
Russian hackers, that hadn’t been disclosed before.
Here’s
a guide to the report — its most important findings and, in particular, the new
and important disclosures it contains.
All
three intel agencies agree that Putin personally ordered the hack, and that the
goal was to help Trump
The
ODNI report states conclusively that Putin personally ordered the email hacks of
Democratic Party officials as part of a broader campaign to influence the US
election in Trump’s favor. This seems to have sprung, in part, from Putin’s
paranoia concerning perceived US attempts to undermine his government.
The
report explains that Putin was incensed about a series of scandals that
embarrassed his government, such as the Panama Papers leak, which revealed
(among other things) a secret $2 billion account held by Putin personally. The
Russian hacking campaign was designed in part to throw a similar kind of dirt on
the United States, which he held responsible for his embarrassment.
“Putin
publicly pointed to the Panama Papers disclosure and the Olympic doping scandal
as US-directed efforts to defame Russia, suggesting he sought to use disclosures
to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical,” the
ODNI report states.
The
campaign was designed to disproportionately target Clinton, whom Putin saw as a
threat — he blamed her, in particular, for the 2011 anti-government protests in
Russia. So the “consistent goals” of the influence campaign, the report says,
were “to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate
Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”
As
time went on, however, the Russian campaign shifted — evolving into an attempt
not just to hurt Clinton, but to outright elect Trump. The Kremlin, according to
the report, saw Trump as potential ally — someone with the right policy views
and the right dealmaking disposition.
“Putin
has had many positive experiences working with Western political leaders whose
business interests made them more disposed to deal with Russia, such as former
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder,” the report’s authors explain.
There’s
an interesting diversion at this point in the report. The CIA and FBI conclude
that the hack was designed to help Trump “with high confidence,” whereas the NSA
does so only with “moderate confidence.” This is a little hint as to the sources
for this report’s conclusions.
The
CIA and the FBI rely more on “human intelligence” — that is, spies talking to
sources. The NSA is responsible for what’s called “signals intelligence”:
electronic intercepts, email surveillance, and so forth. This suggests that one
of the report’s main conclusions — that the goal was to elect Trump — is based
less on technical analysis and more on information American spies gleaned from
their sources.
Then,
as the election got closer and closer, and a Trump victory looked less and less
likely, Russian aims shifted again — becoming a campaign aimed at weakening a
future Clinton administration.
It
seems the Kremlin was just as surprised as the rest of the world when Trump won
— and, indeed, thrilled. CNN and the Washington Post reported that the
classified version of the report includes quotes from leading Russian officials
celebrating on the night of Trump’s victory. They were, in the Post’s telling,
“congratulating themselves.”
Russia gave the information to WikiLeaks
The
ODNI report clears up one key source of confusion about Russia’s efforts: How
WikiLeaks got involved.
We
knew before this report that Russia was behind the hack of thousands of private
emails from Clinton allies. We also knew that WikiLeaks published a huge number
of those same emails. What we didn’t know is how the stolen emails got from the
Russian hackers to WikiLeaks.
The
report sheds some light on that question. It suggests that agents of Russia’s
military intelligence service, the GRU, specifically chose WikiLeaks to be the
outlet for much of its disclosures — and handed off the information to
them.
“We
assess with high confidence that the GRU relayed material it acquired from the
DNC and senior Democratic officials to WikiLeaks,” the ODNI writes. “Moscow most
likely chose WikiLeaks because of its self proclaimed reputation for
authenticity.”
This
fits with what we knew publicly, but directly contradicts WikiLeaks chief Julian
Assange’s recent assertion that “our source is not the Russian government.”
Which makes it seem like either the intelligence community’s assessment as well
as the publicly available evidence are both way off base, or Assange is
lying.
There’s
a third option, though: that the Russian agents hid their identity from Assange,
using a fake persona — Guccifer 2.0, an allegedly Romanian hacker who is, in all
likelihood, a front for Russian intelligence — as a cutout. The ODNI report, in
one sentence, kind of suggests that’s what happened (though the sentence is hard
to parse):
“We
assess with high confidence that Russian military intelligence (General Staff
Main Intelligence Directorate or GRU) used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and
DCLeaks.com to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and
in exclusives to media outlets and relayed material to WikiLeaks,” the report
says.
Whether
or not that interpretation is right, it’s quite clear from the report that US
intelligence believes that the Russian military intelligence service is
WikiLeaks’s source. This was always the most likely scenario, and now we’ve got
the ODNI report to back it up.
Russian
trolls were ready to delegitimize Clinton if she won
The
email hacks, according to ODNI, were only one part of a broader disinformation
campaign targeting the US election.
“Moscow’s
influence campaign followed a Russian messaging strategy that blends covert
intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian
Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid
social media users or ‘trolls,’” the report explains — in what might be the
first ever use of the word “trolls” in an official ODNI report.
One
of the most interesting little tidbits about these Russian social-media trolls
is what they were planning to do in the event of a Clinton victory. According to
ODNI, Russia’s social media operatives were primed to launch a massive
propaganda campaign aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the election —
playing into Trump’s theme that the election was “rigged.”
“Before
the election, Russian diplomats had publicly denounced the US electoral process
and were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results,”
the report explains. “ProKremlin bloggers had prepared a Twitter campaign,
#DemocracyRIP, on election night in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s victory,
judging from their social media activity.”
Trump
won, of course, so this plan never came to fruition. Official Moscow shut up
after Trump’s victory, wanting to maximize their influence with their preferred
president.
“Putin,
Russian officials, and other pro-Kremlin pundits stopped publicly criticizing
the US election process as unfair almost immediately after the election because
Moscow probably assessed it would be counterproductive to building positive
relations,” ODNI writes.
Read
more
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