The American intelligence community fesses up. Russia tried to get Trump elected. Is this crazy, or what?
I am home from two weeks at Harvard Kennedy School sitting amid students who primarily fit one of two profiles. They were either young idealist political people in their mid and late 20s hoping to start a career in public service or mid career military or civilians in their 30s and 40s who have high level academic or management jobs and who want the training and credentials to bring them to the very top of their professions and institutions.
I was surprised at something that did not happen when they were spoken to by the top intelligence person for the US Department of Defense, the Undersecretary for Intelligence, one of whose jobs was to defend the nation against foreign attack by computer. No one asked a hostile question, or even a probing one. No one asked why he was asleep at the switch. With permission from the course instructor, I wrote about it here. Shouldn't he be sweating under the hot lights of a Congressional Committee? Shouldn't he have been fired by Obama for incompetence? Shouldn't he go down in history like the Pearl Harbor commander who got word that enemy planes were headed to Hawaii and said to ignore it, that it must be a radar error?
I was a day early. Now the news is hitting the fan in earnest.
There are multiple interests and points of view:
There are multiple interests and points of view:
Trump's team and their GOP allies want to deny the implication that Russia had a hand in their election, having hacked both campaigns but released only information from the Democratic side and only information that was embarrassing, except for their hack of Republican Colin Powell, and only one of his emails that expressed frustration with Hillary. They insist that our intelligence people are incompetent and that irrefutable proof of Russian attack is lacking. They question the motives of the inquiry. The CIA is incompetent and the Democrats are sore losers. This group includes Trump and his close spokespeople, plus the Republican establishment who close ranks to defend their party leader, e.g. Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Fox News.
Anti-Russian GOP people have a long history of opposition to Russia, seeing it as a desperate Eurasian power with a 200 year history of empire building and that this attack is the continuation of the cold war. They want an investigation. Lindsey Graham and John McCain are examples.
Democratic hawks with an anti-Russian bent share the same mindset as the anti-Russian GOP people above, but often use less bellicose language than Republicans in order to be less offensive to the large peace-diplomacy wing of the Democratic base, while still being hawkish Russia-skeptics. They want an inquiry. Hillary Clinton is a prime example.
Democratic peace people who generally lean against hawks who treat Russia as the bad guy but who hate Trump and support any effort which de-legitimizes his election and reduces his claimed "mandate." They feel miserable about the loss to Trump and anything that weakens Trump helps their effort to mitigate the election disaster. Liberal Democratic senators are examples.
Good government people who are motivated less by prior attitudes toward Russia or Trump or partisanship but who find the notion that our democracy was hijacked to be an affront to a basic civic value. This would be the official stance of the mainstream media.
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| Trump turns the tables. He is the victim. |
Now they have all woken up. People are pointing fingers not just at the Kremlin but at the US failure to identify and neutralize the threat to the nation. Republican congressional committees now have a safe target; don't blame Trump for having a tainted victory. Instead blame Obama's intelligence team for failing to protect America. Trump is the victim here, and Obama the weak, feckless villain. That is a notion Republicans can investigate with joy. Trump likes this approach.
Readers of this blog are familiar with Guest Post author Thad Guyer, who in recent comments has been reflecting--to my mind--the gonzo unreality of the Trump transition. Media and pundits who attempt to cover Trump "straight" miss the wild over-the-top unreality of a election of a media performance artist celebrity who is elected amid a flurry of fake news stories. Hunter Thompson described a law enforcement convention in Las Vegas and the 1972 election in a style that captured its absurd contradictions. It turned out to be an astute way to capture those moments.
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| Cover Art for Fear and Loathing. |
"Gonzo", I will explain to young readers, was a style of journalism that was subjective, used exaggeration, satire, humor, and it attempted to reflect in its own style the underlying absurdity of what it was describing. It was simultaneous commentary on the election and the media. You have to be wild and crazy and write wild and crazy things to understand and describe wild and crazy events. Read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, a Savage Journey to the Heart of the America Dream.
A gonzo style is my characterization of Guyer's observations, not his. But I consider a gonzo approach to describing events to match the time and circumstance: the absurdity of fake news being treated as real, of falsehood being asserted as the "lived experience" of the mis-informed and therefore as legitimate as truth, of politics presented as spectacle of performance art. If it seems overwrought and chaotic and hard to follow, well, how better to describe the 2016 election and its aftermath than as gonzo.
Guest Comment by Thad Guyer
“FBI, KGB, and CIA Conspire to Defeat Clinton”
I guess international accord itself was the silver lining on the whole media eruption over Russian interference in the US election. American and Russian intelligence were seemingly united under the hashtag #neverHillary. First FBI Director James Comey tried to destroy Clinton twice, first with his announcement that the “extremely careless” Obama secretary of state should not be indicted, and then a second email review just before the election ala Weinergate. Next the KGB (“Kremlin Gmail Bureau”) hacks the Democratic National Committee email, and releases smoking guns about the effort to derail Bernie, CNN Donna Brazil leaking debate questions, and a whole steaming pile of other DNC misdeeds and elistist characterizations of voters. And now we learn that the CIA knew the KGB’s intent was to defeat Hillary, but didn’t tell the public.
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| Guyer |
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t this mean that the US and Russian intelligence establishments were united in their opposition to Clinton being the next president?
But why would the FBI, CIA and KGB be united against Hillary? The only advantage for sure Hillary offered Russian intelligence was weak email security, so weak that they could mine it out of Weiner’s computer while perusing photos of little girls. The only advantage for sure Trump offered Russian intelligence is he, like them, thinks the CIA is a confederacy of dunces who seem to screw up almost all intelligence from weapons of mass destruction to the DNC hack. The Clinton Global Initiative had already gotten Secretary Clinton to approve massive uranium sales to Russia, and the US did nothing other than more feckless sanctions when Putin annexed Crimea, invaded Ukraine and shot down a civilian airliner. Not a bad deal when Russia can do all that and the punishment is pay a fine. The point is Hillary was not some kind of fierce Russian adversary that Moscow feared.
What about the benefits of a Trump presidency for Russia? Trump’s campaign promised the most massive buildup of military power since WWII, and apparently our superpower rival against whom that military power would inevitably be aimed doesn’t care? What a bizarre conspiracy theory it would be that Russia wants Trump to make the American Air Force and Navy great again. Unless----- Trump’s deal is Russia inherits the Middle East—which, ah, they’ve already inherited.
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| Art as commentary on the improbable and absurd |
Russia in not just a strategic partner of Assad in Syria but more importantly of Iran (Shiite) vs. Saudi Arabi (Sunni). Russia has wagered heavily in the bloddy Shiite vs Sunni divide. So Russia wanted Trump’s support of a Russia-Iran alliance, and is willing to trade a historic US military build-up to get it? Newsflash: Obama already gave Russia (over Israel’s fierce objections) what it wanted in the Middle East, i.e., (1) the US nuclear deal allowing Iran to keep pursing nuclear capability in exchange for a 10 year delay in doing so, and (2) the US acquiescing to Assad’s juggernaut in Syria.
Oh no, the American and Russian intelligence alliance against Hillary is bringing about in me another fake news attack, just when I told everyone I would resist after having been duped by Obama was born in Kenya, the Pope endorsed Trump, and Hillary sold kids out of a DC pizza parlor. The following headline is bearing down on me: “Obama Allowed DNC Hacks to Sink Clinton, Feared Her Testimony About Him If Impeached”.
