Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

He really is that stupid.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

The lights are all blinking red.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The choice is between normal and crazy.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

No one could have predicted…

One of our two political parties is a cult whose leader admires Vladimir Putin.

This really is a full service blog.

You are here: Home / Archives for Foreign Affairs / Countries / Russia

Russia

Those Northern Radiation Observations

by | 115 Comments

This post is in: ,

Nations to the northwest of Russia reported slightly increased levels of radiation on several days in June. The levels were harmless to human health and the environment.  

The isotopes observed include Cs-134, Cs-137, Ru-103, I-131, and isotopes of cobalt. The possible source region for the June 22 and 23 observations was calculated by the monitoring organization for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (CTBTO), which has isotope monitoring stations around the world. The tweet doesn’t say this, but that region was probably calculated by considering the winds during that period. (Lassina Zerbo is the director of the CTBTO.)

Iodine-131 was observed at more northerly stations and on different days than the other isotopes. It has a half-life of 8 days and is a fission product, as are the other isotopes except for cobalt. Cobalt is an activation product of the steel containment vessel for a reactor. It seems likely that these observations come from a leaking nuclear reactor, but where?

Russia has reactors in the suspect area, but officials there have said that none of them have leaked.

Last week, a test of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile was thought to be planned for the Kapustin Yar test site, north of the Caspian Sea.

Nothing more than a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) was announced by the Russian government, so it’s not clear why this exclusion would have been for Burevestnik in particular. Up until now, Burevestnik tests have been further north. The deadly test of last year was within the area calculated by the CTBTO.

There’s not enough information to conclude anything more than that these emissions were from a reactor. Russia is party to conventions requiring it to provide information on accidents involving the release of radiation. The other nations within the possible source area have been conscientious about their adherence to those conventions. Russia hasn’t.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

Those Northern Radiation ObservationsPost + Comments (115)

What the President and the US National Command Authority Should Have Done In Response To Russia Taking Out Bounties On US & Coalition Military Personnel In Afghanistan

by | 311 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

As Cheryl has noted for us, The NY Times has reported that a Russian military intelligence unit, for those playing along at home, this would be a GRU unit, is taking out bounties on US and coalition military personnel deployed in Afghanistan. According to the reporting, the US Intelligence Community came to this conclusion and briefed it to the President and the principles within the National Command Authority no later than March of this year. At that point the National Security Staff of the National Security Council developed a package of responses ranging from issuing a démarche to the Russian government demanding that they stop to escalating sanctions to “other possible responses”. But, “the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.”

Let me repeat that: THE WHITE HOUSE HAS YET TO AUTHORIZE ANY STEP!!!!!!

I want to be really, really, really, really clear about what Russia, via the GRU, has been doing with these bounties against US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. It has been waging war against the US and our coalition partners, many of whom are our NATO allies, by proxy through Taliban backed or affiliated militia and irregular forces. In short, they have been waging a form of low intensity, irregular, and unconventional war against the US and our partners and allies in Afghanistan. US concept, doctrine, and law regarding how to respond to state directed cyberattacks and subverting influence operations undertaking by Russian military intelligence may not be adequate to formally state that those operations, which have been ongoing against the US and our allies and partners since at least 2014 are, in fact and in law, acts of war. But they are clear about what Russia’s GRU is doing in Afghanistan and what the GRU is doing in Afghanistan is waging war against the US and our allied coalition partners.

The President and the National Command Authority should have pushed back forcefully and hard as soon as this was brought to their attention. A démarche demanding the Russian government immediately desist should have been issued immediately. It should have delineated a very short window of time for Russia to stop its actions against US and coalitions forces, and if/when they didn’t comply, then the US response should have escalated. US Cyber Command, along with the cyber operations components of the CIA, should have been tasked with a swift and harsh response against Russian targets through the cyber domain if the diplomatic pushback failed. At the same time, US Special Operations Command should have been tasked with two overlapping missions if the diplomatic pushback failed. The first was to put SEALs, whose specialty is hunting, capturing, killing, and/or rescuing, into the Afghan theater with a very focused assignment: find the GRU personnel responsible for taking out the bounties and the Taliban affiliated militias and irregular forces who had accepted them, capture them if possible, and kill them if necessary. The second was to put small teams – Operational Detachments Alpha (ODAs) – of US Army Special Forces, the Green Berets, into the theater to conduct our own unconventional warfare operations against the Russian intelligence units and the Taliban aligned militias and irregulars they were partnering with. The Green Berets primary mission set is unconventional warfare. They are the best at it and should have been deployed, along with the SEALs, as soon as it became clear that responses through diplomatic channels had failed. This sequence of operations: diplomacy via a démarche and, if that failed, then a cyber response and two separate, but related special operations responses would create time and space for the development of plans and sequels to escalate as necessary. None of this has, of course, happened!

One of the primary reasons that Putin either authorizes and approves these types of operations against the US and our allies and partners, or tolerates them as freelancing provided they are successful, is because he has faced no real negative consequences for the war he has been waging against us and our allies and partners for the better part of the last decade! His irredentism in Georgia and then in Ukraine, his cyber war against our Baltic allies, his attempts to destabilize Finland, his ongoing interference in Ukrainian politics to reestablish what he thinks should be Russia’s near abroad, his use of the Wagner Group, a private military company (PMC) against the US, its allies and partners in Syria and other places, is all because he feels that he can get away with it. That the only country that could really stop him is the US and the only coalition that could do so is a US led NATO. And since that never happens, he is free to pursue his goal of leveling the international system so as to provide Russia, as an extension of himself, with greater power and leverage than it would otherwise have based on its relative economic and military power.

Putin’s actions have repeatedly demanded a much stronger response than he has actually received. To be very honest and to mark my beliefs to market, when it was clear that Putin was going to invade Crimea, and then did so, my assessment provided to the US senior military leader I was advising at that time was: “no one is going to risk a war with a nuclear power state over Crimea”. And while this was true, and we did not, the reality was that we should have. I was wrong. Putin’s invasion of Crimea needed to be met with force. The US and NATO should have mobilized to retake it for Ukraine and, while doing so, rolled up Russia’s little green men – whether Russian intelligence and special forces or Wagner Group mercenaries – and the Russian backed separatists in eastern Ukraine at the same time. I am aware now, as I was then, that Russian doctrine is to use nuclear weapons within the theater of operations when confronted with losing in a conventional war. In hindsight, we should have called their bluff. We did not do it then when Obama was president and it is certainly not going to happen with our current president; especially given that while he was being made aware that Russia was targeting our troops, as well as our allies, in Afghanistan, the President was inviting Putin to rejoin the G7 because the G8 just sounds better.

Until Putin is punched in the nose and knocked on his ass, he’s going to keep doing these things. I guarantee that it is only a matter of time until we find out that the GRU has been offering similar bounties against US and coalition forces operating in Syria and Iraq. Until Putin faces some real consequences for his actions and those of his subordinates who are successfully freelancing, he will continue to wage his 21st century form of war against the US, our allies, and our partners. The longer we wait to provide him with real consequences, the more likely it becomes that when we do, we will have limited ourselves to options that are very, very costly.

Open thread!

 

What the President and the US National Command Authority Should Have Done In Response To Russia Taking Out Bounties On US & Coalition Military Personnel In AfghanistanPost + Comments (311)

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

by | 34 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , , , , ,

The President, Republican members of the House and the Senate, Fox News personalities and talking heads, the President’s surrogates on other broadcast and cable news shows, the conservative social, digital, and news media, and the President’s campaign officials and surrogates have been calling for the release of the email that former Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (AP-NSA) Susan Rice sent to herself in January 2017 as a memorialization of the meeting about what the FBI’s counterintelligence officials had been discovering about LTG (ret) Flynn and his activities before he joined the President’s 2016 campaign, during the campaign, and during the transition.

This was purposefully conflated with unmasking by Congressman Nunes as part of his agitprop that President  Obama and his senior officials spied on the President’s campaign, including seeking to unmask LTG (ret) Flynn in signals intelligence collected on foreign targets. When the Trump administration declassified and released Rice’s email to herself, they only declassified and released part of it. Which, of course, led to screaming and yelling about coverups and conspiracies. Dr. Rice has long requested they declassify the whole email, as well as the transcripts of LTG (ret) Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak, as well as other Russian officials, and officials from other countries. Earlier today the Trump administration declassified and released the remainder of Dr. Rice’s email and no surprises at all, there’s nothing untoward at all in it.

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

As can be clearly seen from reading the email, no one involved did anything untoward, unethical, and/or illegal. As was the case with the unmasking conspiracy theory, there is no there there.

Here is Dr. Rice’s statement from this afternoon:

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 1 The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 2

And while Republican elected officials* and their surrogates are trying to spin this as evidence of illegality, it isn’t. And the most amusing part of today is that Senator Graham hung his tuchas way, way, way, way out over the edge this morning expecting to turn this into a scandal that he could weaponize on behalf of the President’s, as well as his own, reelection chances.

Ooopsie!!!!!

To quickly summarize:

  1. Dr. Rice’s email to herself memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting with President Obama, VP Biden, FBI Director Comey, herself, and several others clearly indicates that nothing untoward, unethical, and/or illegal took place. Rather, President Obama made it very clear that everything was to be done by the book.
  2. The release of the entire email further undercuts the Congressman Devin Nunes created agitprop and conspiracy theory that President Obama ordered the FBI to spy on the President’s 2016 campaign and he knows this because the evidence is being covered up in Dr. Rice’s email to herself, which is classified.
  3. That email is now declassified and released and once again Congressman Nunes is unmasked as a none too bright, conspiracy mongering fabulist.
  4. The declassification and release of Dr. Rice’s entire email memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting undercuts Senator Graham’s plans for a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation to get to the bottom of these allegations, because the declassified email shows those allegations to be complete bullshit.

Open thread

* Obligatory:

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will BePost + Comments (34)

The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Has Validated the Intelligence Communities Sources, Methods, and Findings That Russia Interfered In the 2016 Election To Help Elect Trump President

by | 46 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , ,

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has issued the fourth volume of its bipartisan report examining Russian interference in the 2016 elections. This fourth volume specifically focused on reviewing the US Intelligence Community’s (IC) assessment of that interference. The SSCI, in this fourth volume, has validated the IC’s sources, methods, and findings. They also found that multiple intelligence disciplines were used to attribute the hacking to Russia, which debunks the conspiracy theory that someone created the computer evidence to frame Russia. In short, the US IC had multiple sources and used multiple methods to come to this conclusion. The SSCI found that the investigation was properly predicated and undertaken and that there was no political pressure placed on the analysts. The SSCI report noted that the Steele Dossier was not used by the IC as source material for its analysis and assessment and that it is only included in an annex because the FBI insisted it had to be based on the directive the FBI received to conduct its part of the investigation. Finally, and just as importantly, the SSCI has concluded that not only did Russia interfere in the 2016 election, they did so specifically to elect Trump president.

This report undercuts Attorney General Barr’s repeated lies about the investigation into Russian efforts in the 2016 campaign and its efforts to both support the President’s 2016 campaign to ensure his election and to make contacts with the campaign to do so. It also undercuts the basis that AG Barr has provided to US Attorney John Durham as the predicate for his investigation into whether senior Obama administration officials, including Director of National Intelligence Clapper, Director of Central Intelligence Brennan, and Director of the FBI Comey, as well as other senior officials such as Deputy Director McCabe, acted illegally in an attempt to prevent Trump from being elected president. The SSCI’s findings all confirm DOJ IG Horowitz’s own findings, which AG Barr has both misrepresented and ignored. I do not think that this will stop the bogus investigation that AG Barr has tasked US Attorney Durham with conducting.

Here are the findings (bold dashes indicate redacted materials – the big black bars didn’t copy and paste):

I. (U) INTRODUCTION

(U) The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence acknowledges the impressive accomplishment in drafting and coordinating the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which was completed as a “Memorandum for the President” on December 30, 2016, – and a declassified version dated January 6, 2017, and made available to the public on the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) website. The Committee’s review focused on the highly compartmented “Memorandum to the President.”

II. (U) FINDINGS

1. (U) The Committee found the ICA presents a coherent and well-constructed intelligence basis for the case of unprecedented Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidentialelection. On the analytic lines of the ICA, the Committee concludes that all lines are supported with all-source intelligence, although with varying substantiation. The Committee did not discover any significant analytic tradecraft issues in the preparation or final presentation of the ICA.

(U) The ICA reflects proper analytic tradecraft despite being tasked and completed within a compressed time frame. The compact time frame was a contributing factor for not conducting formal analysis of competing hypotheses.

(U) The differing confidence levels on one analytic judgment are justified and properly represented. Those in disagreement all stated that they had the opportunity to express differing points of view. The decision regarding the presentation of differing confidence levels was the responsibility of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) John Brennan and the Director of the National Security Agency (NSA) Admiral Michael Rogers, both of whom independently expressed to the Committee that they reached the final wording openly and with sufficient exchanges of views.

(U) Multiple intelligence disciplines are used and identified throughout the ICA. Where the Committee noted concerns about the use of specific sources, in no case did the Committee conclude any analytic line was compromised as a result.

(U) In all the interviews of those who drafted and prepared the ICA, the Committee heard consistently that analysts were under no politically motivated pressure to reach specific conclusions. All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process.

2. (U) The Committee found that the agencies responsible for the !CA-CIA, NSA, and FBI, under the aegis of ODNI-met the primary tasking as directed by President Obama, which was to assemble a product that reflected the intelligence available to the Intelligence Community (IC) regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election.

3. (U) The Committee found that the ICA provides a proper representation of the intelligence collected by CIA, NSA, and FBI on Russian interference in 2016, and this body of evidence supports the substance and judgments of the ICA.

– Regarding FBI, the ICA states, in its “Scope and Sourcing” introduction, that “[w]e also do not include information from ongoing investigations.” – The Committee found that the information provided by Christopher Steele to FBI was not used in the body of the ICA or to support any of its analytic judgments. However, a summary of this material was included in Annex A as a compromise to FBI’s insistence that the information was responsive to the presidential tasking.

4. (U) The Committee found the ICA makes a clear argument that the manner and aggressiveness of the Russian interference was historically unprecedented. However, the ICA and its sources do not provide a substantial representation of Russian interference in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, as the Committee understands was part of the President’s original tasking.
5. (U . . – ) The Committee found that the ICA did not provide a set of policy rec~ations on how to respond to future Russian active measures, which was part of the tasking the President conveyed to the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper. The ICA did include, in the compartmented version, an unclassified section independently produced by OHS, FBI, and the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), “OHS/FBI/NIST Recommendations : Options to Protect and Defend US Election Infrastructure and US Political Parties.”

(U) The absence of policy recommendations was deliberate, due to the well-established norm that the IC provides insight and warning to policy makers, but does not itself make policy.

6. (U) The Committee found the ICA would benefit from a more comprehensive presentation of how Russian propaganda-as generated by Russia’s multiple state-owned platforms-was used to complement the full Russian influence campaign.

(U) Open source collection is a long-standing discipline for CIA and other elements of the IC, and open source reporting is used throughout the ICA to support specific analytic assertions. However, open source reporting on RT and Sputnik’s coverage of WikiLeaks releases of Democratic National Committee (DNC) information would have strengthened the ICA’s examination of Russia’s use of propaganda. On this point, the Committee finds that Annex – of the ICA — “Open Source Center Analysis: Russia: Kremlin’s TV Seeks to Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US,” published December 12, 2012-should have been updated to provide a summary of Kremlin propaganda in 2016, thereby making a more relevant contribution to the ICA. An update to this assessment was not produced by the Open Source Enterprise until after the publication of the ICA.

7. ———————————————————————————————————————————————– The role of social media has been a significant focus by the Committee and is discussed in a separate volume of this report.

Someone is going to need to do a welfare check on GG and the Intercept crowd. Whomever it is should demand both hazard and danger pay!

Open thread!

The Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Has Validated the Intelligence Communities Sources, Methods, and Findings That Russia Interfered In the 2016 Election To Help Elect Trump PresidentPost + Comments (46)

Open Thread: Russian Interference Programming Note

by | 94 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,


 
Peripherally related:

At 10:16 a.m. on a wet and dreary Friday morning, Russia’s energy minister walked into OPEC’s headquarters in central Vienna knowing his boss was ready to turn the global oil market upside down.

Alexander Novak told his Saudi Arabian counterpart Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman that Russia was unwilling to cut oil production further. The Kremlin had decided that propping up prices as the coronavirus ravaged energy demand would be a gift to the U.S. shale industry. The frackers had added millions of barrels of oil to the global market while Russian companies kept wells idle. Now it was time to squeeze the Americans.

For over three years, President Vladimir Putin had kept Russia inside the OPEC+ coalition, allying with Saudi Arabia and the other members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to curb oil production and support prices. On top of helping Russia’s treasury – energy exports are the largest source of state revenue – the alliance brought foreign policy gains, creating a bond with Saudi Arabia’s new leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

But the OPEC+ deal also aided America’s shale industry and Russia was increasingly angry with the Trump administration’s willingness to employ energy as a political and economic tool. It was especially irked by the U.S.’s use of sanctions to prevent the completion of a pipeline linking Siberia’s gas fields with Germany, known as Nord Stream 2. The White House has also targeted the Venezuelan business of Russia’s state-oil producer Rosneft.

“The Kremlin has decided to sacrifice OPEC+ to stop U.S. shale producers and punish the U.S. for messing with Nord Stream 2,” said Alexander Dynkin, president of the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, a state-run think tank. “Of course, to upset Saudi Arabia could be a risky thing, but this is Russia’s strategy at the moment – flexible geometry of interests.”

The OPEC+ deal had never been popular with many in the Russian oil industry, who resented having to hold back investments in new and potentially profitable projects. In particular, Igor Sechin, the powerful boss of Rosneft and a long-time Putin ally, lobbied against the curbs, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified discussing private conversations.

The Kremlin was also disappointed the alliance with Riyadh hadn’t yielded major Saudi investments in Russia.

For several months, Novak and his team had been telling Saudi officials they liked being in the OPEC+ alliance but were reluctant to deepen production cuts, according to people familiar with the relationship. At the last OPEC meeting in December, Russia negotiated a position that allowed it to keep production fairly steady while Saudi Arabia shouldered big reductions.

When the coronavirus started devastating Chinese economic activity in early February – cutting oil demand in Saudi Arabia’s biggest customer by 20% — Prince Abdulaziz tried to convince Novak that they should call an early OPEC+ meeting in response to cutback supply. Novak said no. The Saudi king and Putin spoke by phone ­­– it didn’t help.

As the virus spread and analysts forecast the worst year for oil demand since the global financial crisis, the Saudi camp was hopeful Moscow could be won round at the next scheduled OPEC meeting in early March. The Russians didn’t rule out deepening cuts, but kept making the point that shale producers should be made to share the pain. Putin, who has been the final arbiter of Russia’s OPEC+ policy since the alliance started in 2016, met oil Russian producers and key ministers last Sunday…

Open Thread: Russian Interference Programming NotePost + Comments (94)

The Weaponization of Intelligence for the President’s Political Purposes: The Coming Influence Operation Against Senator Sanders

by | 44 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

Last night I wrote that it was a problem that Senator Sanders sat on the information that Vladimir Putin was interfering in the Democratic primaries to elevate his candidacy for a month. That by waiting, by not finding a way to get the information released or even leaked in a manner that he could control to get ahead of the information, he placed himself at the mercy of someone else leaking it. Someone else did leak it. And that leak was not done to assist Senator Sanders or his campaign. By sitting on the information, Senator Sanders made himself vulnerable to the other two principal leaders who also had the information: the President and Vladimir Putin. Neither of whom wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because they want him to become President. Rather the President wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because he has determined that Senator Sanders will be the easiest of the Democratic primary candidates to defeat. Vladimir Putin wants Senator Sanders to be the nominee because he has assessed that Senator Sanders is the most likely to create chaos within the Democratic Party, which furthers his goal of seeing the President reelected.

As was easily predictable, the information is now being weaponized by the President’s surrogates.

Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA) O’Brien’s statement clearing the President of suspicion, but reaffirming the negative information against Senator Sanders will just be the first of many. Expect the Acting DNI, Ambassador Grennell, to make similar statements. Likely backed up by further leaks and/or official disclosures. US intelligence will be weaponized to dirty up Senator Sanders by the political loyalists the President has placed in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The narrative will be to tie the information that Putin is interfering in the primaries on behalf of Senator Sanders with Senator Sanders long history of support for hard socialist and communist leaders and officials in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and parts of Asia. This may not be fair, but this is what is going to happen.

This influence campaign, one which will be carried out not just by surrogates and supporters outside of government, but by actual appointed senior officials in the President’s administration like APNSA O’Brien has done with his statement today are not really intended to effect Senator Sanders’ core supporters. Nor is it really intended to influence the Democratic primary. What it is intended to do is create material for Facebook ads to micro-target more moderate Democrats, Democratic leaning Independents, and formerly Republican leaning Independents, as well as to provide material that can be weaponized to reach these same people on Twitter and other social and digital media platforms. The point of doing this will be to depress Democratic turnout, as well as the turnout of non Democrats that will be needed to ensure an Electoral College victory against the President should Senator Sanders be the Democratic nominee. It is also intended to effect down balance races to maintain the Republican majority in the Senate, flip the House majority back to the Republicans, and capture as many Democratic held governorships and state legislatures as possible before the next round of redistricting after the 2020 census.

I’m not writing this to harm Senator Sanders. I guarantee that there is a similar influence operation already planned for each of the potential Democratic nominees. Whichever Democrat gets the nomination is going to face something similar. We’ve been watching the operation against VP Biden for well over a year now. And we know, because I’ve put it on the front page at least eight times, that the seeds of that influence operation against VP Biden were first sown in 2o14. And that should be a concern to Senator Sanders, his campaign, his key surrogates, and his supporters because Senator Sanders has over 40 years of taking controversial, hard left positions and supporting some of the worst hard left, socialist, and communist leaders outside the US. And because the Soviet Intelligence Services were collecting video and audio on him the entire time he was in Soviet Russia for his honeymoon; video and audio that Vladimir Putin will weaponize if and when he feels the need too. And that’s before the President, his campaign, and his surrogates decide to juxtapose the now leaked intelligence that Putin is acting to aid Senator Sanders in the Democratic primary with Senator Sanders voting record regarding Russia – a voting record that leaves a lot to be desired. He voted against the Magnitsky Act in 2012, the sanctions against Russia in 2014 and 2017, and didn’t vote at all when the sanctions against Russia bill came up in 2019. This voting record combined with the now leaked intelligence that Putin is interfering in the Democratic primary on his behalf is all the President, his campaign, and his surrogates need to argue that the President is the one who has and will continue to stand up to Putin, not Senator Sanders who always votes in Putin’s favor. That’s not my argument, that is me anticipating the President’s argument.

This is the reality of the 2020 election. I warned everyone who reads Balloon Juice that the 2020 election was going to be open information warfare back in March 2019. What is happening should not be surprising to anyone. And if Senator Warren or Mayor Buttigieg or Senator Klobuchar were the front runners right now, we would have different weaponized information to produce influence being deployed against them right now. And if one of them should become the front runner, we will.

Open thread.

The Weaponization of Intelligence for the President’s Political Purposes: The Coming Influence Operation Against Senator SandersPost + Comments (44)

Senator Sanders and the President Have Both Been Briefed that Vladimir Putin Is Interfering On Their Behalf In the 2020 Presidential Election

by | 151 Comments

This post is in: , , , , , , , ,

The Washington Post has reported that both Senator Sanders and the President have both been briefed that Vladimir Putin is interfering on both their behalf in the 2020 election:

U.S. officials have told Sen. Bernie Sanders that Russia is attempting to help his presidential campaign as part of an effort to interfere with the Democratic contest, according to people familiar with the matter.

President Trump and lawmakers on Capitol Hill have also been informed about the Russian assistance to the Vermont senator, according to people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence.

It is not clear what form that Russian assistance has taken. U.S. prosecutors found a Russian effort in 2016 to use social media to boost Sanders campaign against Hillary Clinton, part of a broader effort to hurt Clinton, sow dissension in the American electorate and ultimately help elect Donald Trump.

Senator Sanders both gave The Washington Post an appropriate response, but had his campaign issue it as a formal and official one as well.

“I don’t care, frankly, who Putin wants to be president,” Sanders said in a statement to The Washington Post. “My message to Putin is clear: stay out of American elections, and as president I will make sure that you do.

Senator Sanders and the President Have Both Been Briefed that Vladimir Putin Is Interfering On Their Behalf In the 2020 Presidential Election

Unfortunately Senator Sanders was briefed on this information a month ago!

That’s a problem. Despite the briefing being classified there are ways to get ahead of these things and getting the information out, because eventually the information is going to leak out anyway. This information did, indeed, leak out. And it would not surprise me if the President didn’t leak it to try to distract from the reporting about the briefing he and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence received about Putin’s ongoing election interference. The specific problem here is that Senator Sanders knew, the President knew, and Vladimir Putin knew. The rest of us, however, did not know. We may have surmised based on what we know happened in 2016, but we did not know. And that means for the past month the President and Vladimir Putin have had leverage over Senator Sanders. I’m not suggesting that Senator Sanders is an agent of either one’s influence, but by sitting on the information for a month it provided both of them leverage that they could have used against him.

If there is one overarching lesson that we should all take away from what Putin did in 2016 and has been doing since 2016 is that when senior officials, or those seeking high office, refuse to be forthcoming about their activities, actions, and interests (personal, professional, business), it provides the other people that know about these activities, actions, and interests leverage over them. The problem in 2016 wasn’t that the President, as a candidate, was trying to do business in Russia. The problem was he kept lying about it over and over and over all while Putin and several of those around Putin knew the truth. Which provided Putin with leverage over the President. The same dynamic was also at play when Senator Sanders and his supporters demanded to see transcripts of Secretary Clinton’s speeches during the 2016 campaign because they wanted to know what she may or may not have said or promised to those who were paying her to give those talks. There was no indication she promised anyone anything, But the argument then was that it provided the interests paying for her to give a speech leverage on her above and beyond the speaker’s fee and expenses she was paid.

I know, you know, we all know that Senator Sanders is not a witting or unwitting asset of Putin’s. We know that Putin doesn’t actually want him to be president, Putin just wants him or his supporters to create chaos by ripping the Democratic Party apart* in order to achieve the strategic effect that Putin does want: having the President reelected to a second term. Because that strategic effect creates even more chaos, which increases the likelihood that Putin achieves his overarching strategic objective: weakening the US and with it the US created and backed post WW II international order; leaving Putin free to operate with impunity. Loose lips may sink ships, but in this case being forthcoming is the way to ensure operational security and dispel questions and doubts.

Open thread.

* I do not actually know what will happen if Senator Sanders wins the Democratic nomination for president. I would like to believe that we are all mature enough and realistic enough to recognize the threat to the Republic overrides our individual political preferences in a potential Democratic candidate. I would like to say I was sure this would be the case, but I cannot.

Senator Sanders and the President Have Both Been Briefed that Vladimir Putin Is Interfering On Their Behalf In the 2020 Presidential ElectionPost + Comments (151)