National Security Officials Try to Counter Trump’s Russian Propaganda

The Associated Press reports, Countering Trump, US officials defend integrity of election:

Senior national security officials provided fresh assurances about the integrity of the elections in a video message Tuesday, putting them at odds with President Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit the vote.

“I’m here to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never been higher,” Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said in the video message. “That’s because of an all-of-nation, unprecedented election security effort over the last several years.”

The video appeared to be aimed at soothing jangled nerves of voters ahead of an election made unique by an expected surge in mail-in ballots because of the coronavirus pandemic. Though Trump was not mentioned during the nine-minute video, the message from the speakers served as a tacit counter to his repeated efforts, including in last week’s presidential debate, to allege widespread fraud in the mail ballot process and to preemptively cast doubt on the legitimacy of the election.

The video was released as U.S. officials have revealed ongoing foreign efforts to interfere in the election, including Russian attempts to denigrate Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. A recent blog post by Microsoft described election-related hacking attempts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian agents.

William Evanina, the U.S. government’s chief counterintelligence official, said in Tuesday’s video that foreign adversaries are spreading disinformation, engaging in influence operations, conducting cyber activities with the intent of gaining access to election infrastructure and trying to collect derogatory information on candidates, campaigns and prominent Americans.

“Despite these nefarious efforts, our election system remains resilient,” said Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. “To be clear, it would be very difficult for adversaries to interfere with or manipulate voting results at scale.”

The officials conceded that the Nov. 3 election will be different than past ones because of the millions of Americans expected to vote by mail. But they offered no support for the idea that mail-balloting will be tainted by fraud or foreign interference as they detailed the steps their agencies are taking to safeguard the vote.

“No matter which method you choose, your voice is important,” said FBI Director Chris Wray. “Rest assured that the security of the election, and safeguarding your vote is, and will continue to be one of our highest priorities,” Wray said.

In an acknowledgment that the tallying of election results may be delayed not by fraud but for legitimate reasons, Krebs said the outcome of the vote may not be known on Nov. 3 — “and that’s OK. But we’re going to need your patience until official results are announced.”

The four officials described the work of their respective agencies in countering foreign interference and influence operations, with Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, describing efforts to “hunt” adversaries in cyberspace, attribute particular malicious software to individual culprits and impose costs for attacks.

Okay. But can we trust these assurances?

National security reporter Josh Rogin at the Washington Post reports that Trump’s team trusts Russian intelligence over U.S. intelligence:

As the election draws near, President Trump’s political appointees, private lawyers and GOP allies on Capitol Hill are escalating their campaign to help the Russians interfere in U.S. politics. Now they’re effectively asking Americans to side with Russian intelligence services over the U.S. intelligence community — and the president is going along.

You can’t swing a dead cat in the Republican Party without hitting a Russian active agent or “useful idiot.” They are all traitors who are betraying their country.

Over the past few months, Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, GOP senators, U.S. lobbyists and pro-Trump media organizations have been working with Russian intelligence agents to launder Russian disinformation about the Bidens and Ukraine’s alleged involvement in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This effort is “probably” directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin himself, according to a secret CIA assessment I revealed in September.

Now, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe is working to spread Russian intelligence directly— without even bothering to launder it. On Sept. 29, he sent a letter to Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in which he announced that he was declassifying a Russian intelligence assessment obtained by the U.S. intelligence community in late July 2016. The Russian assessment described an alleged Clinton campaign effort to “stir up a scandal” by tying then-candidate Donald Trump to Putin and Russia’s hack of the Democratic National Committee.

Ratcliffe’s letter didn’t actually say Hillary Clinton was responsible for spurring the FBI investigation into the Trump campaign’s connections with Russia, but Trump made the link that same night — in his debate with Joe Biden. Referring to the letter, Trump said: “You saw what happened today with Hillary Clinton, where it was a whole big con job.” Ratcliffe’s letter said the intelligence community didn’t know the accuracy of the Russian intel or to what extent it was “exaggeration or fabrication.” He later clarified that he doesn’t think it was “disinformation.”

On Tuesday, Ratcliffe released heavily redacted declassified notes about the Russian intelligence assessment from then-CIA Director John Brennan and a heavily redacted copy of an investigative referral sent to then-FBI Director James B. Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok about the Russian intelligence.

Pro-Trump media outlets have suggested that this Russian intel assessment adds evidence to their claim that Moscow fed former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele disinformation, prompting the FBI investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Pro-Trump lawmakers immediately celebrated the latest disclosures as a “smoking gun,” pointing to Clinton’s supposed guilt and the FBI’s refusal to investigate the Russian information.

But Strzok, who helped lead that investigation until he was fired in 2018, told me in an interview that the Ratcliffe letter offers zero new evidence that would support Trump’s claims about Clinton. Also, Strzok said, it’s impossible to know for sure what the Russians were talking about, because Ratcliffe didn’t release any information about the underlying Russian sourcing or reporting.

“There’s not anything nefarious there. [Trump’s allies] are trying to claim that Clinton spun all this up,” he said. “This is clearly false. Her campaign did not. Yes, they were highlighting the links between Trump and Russia, but that was obvious to everyone at the time.”

Brennan said Tuesday on CNN that there was nothing illegal about what Clinton was doing, even if the Russian assessment was true. “It was a campaign activity,” he said, which would not have warranted any FBI investigation.

The theory that Clinton and Steele were the source of the FBI investigation, a theory Trump often repeats, doesn’t make any sense, said Strzok. In his new book “Compromised: Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump,” Strzok details exactly how the FBI investigation started in 2016. An allied government informed U.S. officials that Trump aide George Papadopoulos had told an Australian diplomat Moscow had compromising information on Clinton and was offering to work with the Trump campaign to publicize it. The information from the Steele dossier came to the FBI after that.

CIA Director Gina Haspel and National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone reportedly opposed Ratcliffe’s decision to selectively declassify information about the Russian intelligence assessment, because they believe such releases risk exposing the U.S. intelligence community’s sources and methods. Strzok told me Ratcliffe is only releasing the bits about the Russian assessment that fit Trump’s narrative, while withholding the source information, which might undermine its credibility.“

Even that letter is going to harm our intelligence community’s ability to gather intelligence and to recruit sources in particular,” he said, adding that if Ratcliffe released the sourcing information, it’s “likely going to point to the fact that these reports are not the smoking gun Ratcliffe and others want you to believe.”

The fact that Ratcliffe is willing to release sketchy Russian information from 2016 but won’t be transparent with Congress about Russian interference efforts in 2020 shows that he is prioritizing politics over national security, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Intelligence Committee, told me. Ratcliffe is giving the world — including the Russians — key insight into U.S. intelligence collection on Russia.

“It’s a betrayal of the fundamental premise of classification — don’t let your adversaries know what you know,” said King. “My larger concern is over the politicization of the intelligence community — it’s one of the worst things that can happen to the country.”

There’s no doubt the U.S. intelligence community made mistakes in 2016, but it is still more reliable than Putin’s, no matter what Trump or Ratcliffe says. The Trump team’s efforts to help Russia undermine confidence in our own government must end.

It will only end when Americans overwhelmingly vote Donald Trump and his disloyal pro-Russia Republican enablers out of office.