The Plot to Hack America

On May 18, 2016, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, briefed Congress about cyber-attacks and activities that may affect the 2016 Presidential campaigns. Clapper said of the 2008 campaign that foreign intelligence agencies “met with campaign contacts and staff, used human-source networks for policy insights, exploited technology to get otherwise sensitive data, engaged in perception management to influence policy… This exceeded traditional lobbying and public diplomacy.”⁷ He did not state which foreign agencies. Clapper stated that the U.S. intelligence community has observed espionage activity in the past two presidential elections, and that interest by foreign spies was much higher than in past election cycles. According to Ellen Nakashima, who wrote several stories on hacking for the Washington Post, the Public Affairs Director for the DNI, David P. Hale stated “we’re aware that campaigns and related organizations and individuals are targeted by actors with a variety of motivations—from philosophical differences to espionage—and capabilities—from defacements to intrusions…”⁸

During the 2008 election season, Chinese government hackers penetrated the computers of the Obama and McCain campaigns and made off with numerous policy documents related to China.⁹ Director of National Security at the time, Dennis Blair said, “based on everything I know, this was a case of political cyberespionage by the Chinese government against the two American political parties.”¹⁰

However, the nature of those hackings resembled traditional intelligence collection operations. Past operations include Chinese army hackers stealing a letter drafted by Senator John McCain supporting Taiwan. Chinese government officials contacted McCain’s office to lodge a complaint not realizing that the stolen letter had never left his office computer. Such inadvertent collection versus exploitation foreshadowing is rare in a truly coordinated information war, and this Chinese attempt at propaganda was sloppy and almost amateurish.

President Obama made reference to the hacks by the Chinese on May 29, 2009. “Hackers gained access to emails and a range of campaign files, from policy position papers to travel plans.”¹¹ He then laid out a new cyber security policy designed to deter attacks such as these. For all of the security measures and new legislation, the DNC of 2016 was still open to exploitation.

By the last week of August 2016, it would become patently clear that someone had stolen every facet of the Democratic Party system, took what they pleased, and launched an organized campaign to discredit it in the media. Simply put, the Democratic machine was hit by a terrorist attack without bombs. The effect of the hacker’s campaign was to influence a strategic outcome that could only help one American political party and indirectly help a foreign actor’s strategic policy against the West. A hack of this magnitude could only be perpetrated by a determined foe that wanted to foment division in the Democratic Party, a foe with the advanced cyber technology to see to it that Donald J. Trump would take advantage if the chaos caused at a critical moment in the process, almost exactly one hundred days from the election.

That foe had been waiting patiently for the right opportunity to damage America. And his opportunity would come to him, on a golden platter, at the Miss Universe Pageant of 2013 in Moscow.

3 THE SPYMASTER-IN-CHIEF

ACCORDING TO THE OFFICIAL KREMLIN BIOGRAPHY, Putin was interested in intelligence at an early age. When Putin attended a public KGB event as a teenager, he asked the amused officers how to achieve his goal of becoming an intelligence officer. They told him to either serve in the army or earn a degree in law, so he went to university for law at Leningrad State University, where he earned his degree in 1975. After graduation he joined and studied as a junior officer at the KGB 101st Intelligence School and later attended the Yuri Andropov Red Banner Institute. The spy craft programs he attended were designed to give the officer basic training including foreign language, surveillance, specialty photography, wiretapping, breaking and entry, small arms assassination, and how to manipulate people to become spies against their own nation. The school’s curriculum also included a heavy dose of indoctrination in Marxist-Leninist philosophy and an emphasis of service to the state above all else.¹ Here Putin would learn the organization’s unofficial motto: “Once KGB, always KGB.”

“Fairly quickly, I left for special training in Moscow, where I spent a year,” Putin said. “Then I returned again to Leningrad, worked there in the First Main [Chief] Directorate—the [foreign] intelligence service.”²