Politics
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- utopian3
- Blatant witness intimidation.mg33
- He's such a fuckup that even when he says he has no tapes he still leaves it open that there may be tapes. What a donkey.kona
- "With all the recently reported electronic surveillance, intercepts, unmasking and illegal leaking of information, I have no idea...kona
- whether there are "tapes" or recordings of my conversations with James Comey, but I did not make, and do not have, any such recordings." - Cheeto in Chiefkona
- Stay focused on the gutting of MedicareBonSeff
- lolkona
- Have you seen the bill, Kona?BonSeff
- Yes. It's terrifying and is nothing more than tax cuts for the 1%. I was laughing because there is literally so much major crap to focus on, it's hard to focus.kona
- Wasn't laughing at you BonSeff. More laughing at the whole shit-show we're stuck in.kona
- True. Insanity.BonSeff
- allthethings2
Read the Long-Secret Senate Republican Health Care Bill
After weeks of negotiations behind closed doors, senators release their plan to repeal Obamacare.
http://www.motherjones.com/polit…
Excerpt:
The bill takes 25 pages to get to perhaps its most significant effect: a massive tax cut, with most of the benefits going to the wealthiest Americans. Like the health care bill that passed the House last month, the Senate’s legislation ditches all of Obamacare’s taxes and pays for that move by slashing spending on Medicaid—both Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid and general Medicaid funding. The bill puts a general cap on how much money the federal government will give states under Medicaid, ending the program’s open-ended promise to fund the health needs of poor people. In the long run, that will result in a massive reduction in Medicaid spending. The bill also grants states the option of adding a work requirement to their Medicaid programs. The measure would also revoke federal funding from Planned Parenthood. The bill bans any subsidies for insurance plans that offer abortion coverage.
And...
And...
And the only reason it won't pass immediately is that four GOP senators are objecting because it provides TOO MUCH coverage.
This is the idiotic state of affairs in this country. I'm ready to emigrate.
- so how can this possibly get by their voters?dorkKn1ght
- They watch FOXallthethings
- Here's a crazy thought. Before I read that Cruz was one of the Senators holding it back, I wondered if they were just saying that to save face with the GOP...kona
- ... Rather than say "This bill is so fucked up not even I can vote for it". But then I read Cruz and that guy would eat his own family if it benefited himkona
- but they'll feel the repercussions despite fox's propaganda. Are we all that dense? I thought trump voters we're surprisingly educated.dorkKn1ght
- just look at this article, mobile homes, no h.s. education, etc. it makes for people who are easily fooled.
https://nyti.ms/2jFU…dorf
- omg-4
- has it been added to the list of wins?!
http://replygif.net/…dorf - that's because all travel to the USA is down 70% post Trump.fadein11
- Who wants to cross a border when it's fucking 120 degrees in Arizona? Pence should be thanking climate change for the drop in numbers. Assholekona
- They can go back to along with those Carrier aircon jobs that Tangerine Dream promised would stay in the US but are in fact... going to Mexico!face_melter
- If they're illegal and undetected, how can they be so certain on the numbers?monospaced
- ha v.good point mono.fadein11
- I have 2 friends working on the busiest border in the country. Its the same, no worse, no better. They work check point, atv, & group tracking by foot.sofakingback
- My other friend that works ICE had tons of work with all the Haitian refugees. Which Trump never seems to talk about. The lines were ridiculous.sofakingback
- Not that its a good thing for people to cross here illegally. But, he hasn't done anything to influence a change, so why assume there is one?sofakingback
- How about this, omg. Show us proof? Show us numbers that back up your claim. Numbers that are not a carry over from Obama.sofakingback
- Illegal immigration plummets after Trump inauguration
http://bit.ly/2sGFBE…omg - he's got us. Trump solved your border issues in less than 6 months without doing a thing.fadein11
- Let's not pretend Trump didn't impact illegal immigration, especially on the south border.omg
- Hey, you can read all the self assuring things you want man. Whatever makes you happy. Im just telling you what's actually happening there.sofakingback
- Not like any of this matters or makes an impact to any of our lives. :)sofakingback
- Maybe the Mexicans realise that living in Mexico is now nicer than living in America.BusterBoy
- As a proud mexican, that is my dream. I hope for a day when no son of mexico will have to leave their home for a life of slavery in another country.sofakingback
- Sounds like a new slavery paradigm.omg
- ...but ever see Cloud Atlas where people became the food? Makes you think when Americans say they're in the mood for Mexican or Chinese.omg
- Is being a piece of meat, a life of slavery? There's literally no work involved. Just hangout and relax till your number is up. Dreams to Reality.omg
- has it been added to the list of wins?!
- utopian3
Trump Says He Doesn't Want Poor People In Charge Of The Economy
"I love all people, rich or poor, but in those particular positions I just don’t want a poor person. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?"
- sted3
- How is Outline doing? Topolsky's a wank. Adrianne Jeffries broke my heart after doing really good work on Motherboard only to go there and write about socks.face_melter
- Eh not so good :D lol I know Topolsky before he was editor @ Engadget so I'd rather not say anything :Dsted
- I had great expectations, but I'm getting frustrated every time when he post something and I start reading...sted
- oey0
No snowflakes? I mean, no tapes?
I am disappoint...- there's only 1 tape that matters and that's the one of him getting pissed on by 10 Russian hookers.fadein11
- hahahahahahahahhaaha...oey
- cant wait for the Pay-Per-View night when this blockbuster comes outRamanisky2
- they've had to delay it because of the Mayweather fight.fadein11
- Hahaha ratings will be tremendous.
the best.Ramanisky2 - :)fadein11
- A tweet made Comey admit under oath to being a leaker and a liar. Are you not entertained!?IRNlun6
- No it didn't. It made trump look like a liarmonospaced
- At what point do you start questioning the validity of news sources? Endlessly wrong about so many things. There was never an investigation against Trump.IRNlun6
- Dems leaders knowing full well there was no investigation or collusion continue to lie to the public. Blind rage towards Trump is destroying that party.IRNlun6
- You should listen to what Camille Paglia has to say about the Dem party and what journalism has become. One of the smartest liberals there is.IRNlun6
- BusterBoy2
They say you can judge a person's character by how they behave on the golf course.
What an asshat. Doesn't give a shit about anyone other than himself.
- http://i.imgur.com/x…
i'm still with these dawgs@angleseasted - wow... hahaha... that's pretty shit etiquette, donnyPonyBoy
- N****, fuck yo couch!scruffics
- Why the fuck does he play so much golf anyway? I'd like to think if I had the most important job on the planet I would put some effort in. I have guilt if Ifadein11
- miss a days work and I work for myself. Weird man.fadein11
- http://i.imgur.com/x…
- sofakingback4
Im an addict golfer, work in the golf industry, play on all types of courses with all types of people...
Never, ever, ever, would anyone consider this to be cool. The greens are sacred. People flip out about foot mark indentations, can you imagine a golf cart???
Now, here's what I find fascinating. A couple weeks ago, I saw a post on an Instagram feed I follow. Someone posted a video of a guy doing something that could cause damage to the putting green. Everyone lost their shit, doesn't matter what walk of life or place in the world, no golfer approves of that behavior.
Now...
Same feed posts this video and all the sudden, theres tons of Trump supporters defending him, saying its ok. "Its his course" "He's not really on the green" etc.
Thats how things are right now with everything, a Trump supporter could hate something, rally against it. but if Trump does it? It's ok. Hypocrisy is accepted.
It's a joke.
- utopian1
- USA
USA
USAutopian - another win!dorf
- should omg make a new jobs chat?sofakingback
- omg doesn't make chartsmonospaced
- chart chats?omg
- USA
- Continuity0
I don't want to sound un-hopeful, but are Dems in the US going to fuck Randy Bryce over the same way they fucked Bernie Sanders over ... or has a lesson finally been learned, here?
- I don't think Wash "learns". They may kneel to numbers (Sanders and Trump), but I fear there is no "learning".formed
- allthethings0
I was thinking about "us" vs "them" last night, specifically about how this lady on Twitter, during a conversation about healthcare, said, basically, "I work for what I get," painting people like me who believe in basic healthcare as a right as sucking on the government teat.
I hate all the talk about "entitlements." The right calls social security an entitlement. It's your own fucking money! It's been taken out of your check for 50 years, and then eventually you get it back. It's the government's way to sneakily tax people at the same time that it keeps hundreds of thousands of sick, old people off the streets.
The right has done a really good job of making the working middle class and some working poor angry at the people as poor as them or poorer, that they're lazy and "just don't want to work." But the fact is the Republican healthcare bill (and most other tax-oriented bills) screw all of those groups so they keep most of the money. I think this is proof that Democrats, who moved to the center in 1992 and have run scared of Republican efforts to paint them as socialists since about 1946, need to reclaim the mantle of the party of the worker. They have to reframe this narrative, say to the working poor that the "us" is the 99 percent, and the "them" is the 1%...right, this is what Occupy and Bernie were all about...but it means peeling away those people voting R because they've always voted R, or hate Hillary, or fear blacks, or whatever. Each of the faulty R-driven narratives about welfare queens have to systematically undermined, but in way that says "we have solidarity with workers," not that one of the baskets of poor whites is labeled "deplorables."
Healthcare should be the easiest to reframe: Healthcare is expensive, and rich people want to keep it all for themselves. Just like Congress votes to keep its own healthcare and says it's accessible to you if you can pay for it.
I know many of you have already thought all this. I'm just trying to keep myself sane writing it down.
- allthethings0
I'm assuming omg and his ilk will say, "So what?" But this is a big deal. Republicans, conservatives, used to care deeply about treasonous actions by Americans and the threat of foreign parties/governments undermining American institutions.
PART ONE
https://www.washingtonpost.com/g…
EXCLUSIVE
Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault
By Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous
June 23, 2017
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi¬mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.
But at the highest levels of government, among those responsible for managing the crisis, the first moment of true foreboding about Russia’s intentions arrived with that CIA intelligence.
The material was so sensitive that CIA Director John Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even that restricted report’s distribution was too broad. The CIA package came with instructions that it be returned immediately after it was read. To guard against leaks, subsequent meetings in the Situation Room followed the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.
It took time for other parts of the intelligence community to endorse the CIA’s view. Only in the administration’s final weeks in office did it tell the public, in a declassified report, what officials had learned from Brennan in August — that Putin was working to elect Trump.
Over that five-month interval, the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could “crater” the Russian economy.
But in the end, in late December, Obama approved a modest package combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues — expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds — with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic.
Obama also approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability.
In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy. It was a case that took almost no time to solve, traced to the Kremlin through cyber-forensics and intelligence on Putin’s involvement. And yet, because of the divergent ways Obama and Trump have handled the matter, Moscow appears unlikely to face proportionate consequences.
Those closest to Obama defend the administration’s response to Russia’s meddling. They note that by August it was too late to prevent the transfer to WikiLeaks and other groups of the troves of emails that would spill out in the ensuing months. They believe that a series of warnings — including one that Obama delivered to Putin in September — prompted Moscow to abandon any plans of further aggression, such as sabotage of U.S. voting systems.
Denis McDonough, who served as Obama’s chief of staff, said that the administration regarded Russia’s interference as an attack on the “heart of our system.”
“We set out from a first-order principle that required us to defend the integrity of the vote,” McDonough said in an interview. “Importantly, we did that. It’s also important to establish what happened and what they attempted to do so as to ensure that we take the steps necessary to stop it from happening again.”
But other administration officials look back on the Russia period with remorse.
“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” said a former senior Obama administration official involved in White House deliberations on Russia. “I feel like we sort of choked.”
The post-election period has been dominated by the overlapping investigations into whether Trump associates colluded with Russia before the election and whether the president sought to obstruct the FBI probe afterward. That spectacle has obscured the magnitude of Moscow’s attempt to hijack a precious and now vulnerable-seeming American democratic process.
Beset by allegations of hidden ties between his campaign and Russia, Trump has shown no inclination to revisit the matter and has denied any collusion or obstruction on his part. As a result, the expulsions and modest sanctions announced by Obama on Dec. 29 continue to stand as the United States’ most forceful response.
“The punishment did not fit the crime,” said Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia for the Obama administration from 2012 to 2014. “Russia violated our sovereignty, meddling in one of our most sacred acts as a democracy — electing our president. The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack. And U.S. policymakers now — both in the White House and Congress — should consider new actions to deter future Russian interventions.”
The Senate this month passed a bill that would impose additional election- and Ukraine-related sanctions on Moscow and limit Trump’s ability to lift them. The measure requires House approval, however, and Trump’s signature.
This account of the Obama administration’s response to Russia’s interference is based on interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials in senior positions in government, including at the White House, the State, Defense and Homeland Security departments, and U.S. intelligence services. Most agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the issue.
The White House, the CIA, the FBI, the National Security Agency and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.
‘Deeply concerned’
The CIA breakthrough came at a stage of the presidential campaign when Trump had secured the GOP nomination but was still regarded as a distant long shot. Clinton held comfortable leads in major polls, and Obama expected that he would be transferring power to someone who had served in his Cabinet.
The intelligence on Putin was extraordinary on multiple levels, including as a feat of espionage.
For spy agencies, gaining insights into the intentions of foreign leaders is among the highest priorities. But Putin is a remarkably elusive target. A former KGB officer, he takes extreme precautions to guard against surveillance, rarely communicating by phone or computer, always running sensitive state business from deep within the confines of the Kremlin.
The Washington Post is withholding some details of the intelligence at the request of the U.S. government.
In early August, John Brennan alerted senior White House officials to the Putin intelligence, making a call to deputy national security adviser Avril Haines and pulling national security adviser Susan Rice aside after a meeting before briefing Obama along with Rice, Haines and Denis McDonough in the Oval Office.
Officials described the president’s reaction as grave. Obama “was deeply concerned and wanted as much information as fast as possible,” a former official said. “He wanted the entire intelligence community all over this.”
Concerns about Russian interference had gathered throughout the summer.
Russia experts had begun to see a troubling pattern of propaganda in which fictitious news stories, assumed to be generated by Moscow, proliferated across social-media platforms.
Officials at the State Department and FBI became alarmed by an unusual spike in requests from Russia for temporary visas for officials with technical skills seeking permission to enter the United States for short-term assignments at Russian facilities. At the FBI’s behest, the State Department delayed approving the visas until after the election.
Meanwhile, the FBI was tracking a flurry of hacking activity against U.S. political parties, think tanks and other targets. Russia had gained entry to DNC systems in the summer of 2015 and spring of 2016, but the breaches did not become public until they were disclosed in a June 2016 report by The Post.
Even after the late-July WikiLeaks dump, which came on the eve of the Democratic convention and led to the resignation of Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) as the DNC’s chairwoman, U.S. intelligence officials continued to express uncertainty about who was behind the hacks or why they were carried out.
At a public security conference in Aspen, Colo., in late July, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. noted that Russia had a long history of meddling in American elections but that U.S. spy agencies were not ready to “make the call on attribution” for what was happening in 2016.
“We don’t know enough . . . to ascribe motivation,” Clapper said. “Was this just to stir up trouble or was this ultimately to try to influence an election?”
John Brennan convened a secret task force at CIA headquarters composed of several dozen analysts and officers from the CIA, the NSA and the FBI.
The unit functioned as a sealed compartment, its work hidden from the rest of the intelligence community. Those brought in signed new non-disclosure agreements to be granted access to intelligence from all three participating agencies.
They worked exclusively for two groups of “customers,” officials said. The first was Obama and fewer than 14 senior officials in government. The second was a team of operations specialists at the CIA, NSA and FBI who took direction from the task force on where to aim their subsequent efforts to collect more intelligence on Russia.
Don’t make things worse
The secrecy extended into the White House.
Susan Rice, Avril Haines and White House homeland-security adviser Lisa Monaco convened meetings in the Situation Room to weigh the mounting evidence of Russian interference and generate options for how to respond. At first, only four senior security officials were allowed to attend: John Brennan, James R. Clapper, Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and FBI Director James B. Comey. Aides ordinarily allowed entry as “plus-ones” were barred.
Gradually, the circle widened to include Vice President Biden and others. Agendas sent to Cabinet secretaries — including John F. Kerry at the State Department and Ashton B. Carter at the Pentagon — arrived in envelopes that subordinates were not supposed to open. Sometimes the agendas were withheld until participants had taken their seats in the Situation Room.
Throughout his presidency, Obama’s approach to national security challenges was deliberate and cautious. He came into office seeking to end wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was loath to act without support from allies overseas and firm political footing at home. He was drawn only reluctantly into foreign crises, such as the civil war in Syria, that presented no clear exit for the United States.
Obama’s approach often seemed reducible to a single imperative: Don’t make things worse. As brazen as the Russian attacks on the election seemed, Obama and his top advisers feared that things could get far worse.
They were concerned that any pre-election response could provoke an escalation from Putin. Moscow’s meddling to that point was seen as deeply concerning but unlikely to materially affect the outcome of the election. Far more worrisome to the Obama team was the prospect of a cyber-assault on voting systems before and on Election Day.
They also worried that any action they took would be perceived as political interference in an already volatile campaign. By August, Trump was predicting that the election would be rigged. Obama officials feared providing fuel to such claims, playing into Russia’s efforts to discredit the outcome and potentially contaminating the expected Clinton triumph.
Before departing for an August vacation to Martha’s Vineyard, Obama instructed aides to pursue ways to deter Moscow and proceed along three main paths: Get a high-confidence assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies on Russia’s role and intent; shore up any vulnerabilities in state-run election systems; and seek bipartisan support from congressional leaders for a statement condemning Moscow and urging states to accept federal help.
The administration encountered obstacles at every turn.
Despite the intelligence the CIA had produced, other agencies were slower to endorse a conclusion that Putin was personally directing the operation and wanted to help Trump. “It was definitely compelling, but it was not definitive,” said one senior administration official. “We needed more.”
Some of the most critical technical intelligence on Russia came from another country, officials said. Because of the source of the material, the NSA was reluctant to view it with high confidence.
John Brennan moved swiftly to schedule private briefings with congressional leaders. But getting appointments with certain Republicans proved difficult, officials said, and it was not until after Labor Day that Brennan had reached all members of the “Gang of Eight” — the majority and minority leaders of both houses and the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees.
Jeh Johnson, the homeland-security secretary, was responsible for finding out whether the government could quickly shore up the security of the nation’s archaic patchwork of voting systems. He floated the idea of designating state mechanisms “critical infrastructure,” a label that would have entitled states to receive priority in federal cybersecurity assistance, putting them on a par with U.S. defense contractors and financial networks.
On Aug. 15, Johnson arranged a conference call with dozens of state officials, hoping to enlist their support. He ran into a wall of resistance.
The reaction “ranged from neutral to negative,” Johnson said in congressional testimony Wednesday.
Brian Kemp, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia, used the call to denounce Johnson’s proposal as an assault on state rights. “I think it was a politically calculated move by the previous administration,” Kemp said in a recent interview, adding that he remains unconvinced that Russia waged a campaign to disrupt the 2016 race. “I don’t necessarily believe that,” he said.
Stung by the reaction, the White House turned to Congress for help, hoping that a bipartisan appeal to states would be more effective.
In early September, Jeh Johnson, James B. Comey and Lisa Monaco arrived on Capitol Hill in a caravan of black SUVs for a meeting with 12 key members of Congress, including the leadership of both parties.
The meeting devolved into a partisan squabble.
“The Dems were, ‘Hey, we have to tell the public,’ ” recalled one participant. But Republicans resisted, arguing that to warn the public that the election was under attack would further Russia’s aim of sapping confidence in the system.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. Through a spokeswoman, McConnell declined to comment, citing the secrecy of that meeting.
Key Democrats were stunned by the GOP response and exasperated that the White House seemed willing to let Republican opposition block any pre-election move.
On Sept. 22, two California Democrats — Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam B. Schiff — did what they couldn’t get the White House to do. They issued a statement making clear that they had learned from intelligence briefings that Russia was directing a campaign to undermine the election, but they stopped short of saying to what end.
A week later, McConnell and other congressional leaders issued a cautious statement that encouraged state election officials to ensure their networks were “secure from attack.” The release made no mention of Russia and emphasized that the lawmakers “would oppose any effort by the federal government” to encroach on the states’ authorities.
When U.S. spy agencies reached unanimous agreement in late September that the interference was a Russian operation directed by Putin, Obama directed spy chiefs to prepare a public statement summarizing the intelligence in broad strokes.
With Obama still determined to avoid any appearance of politics, the statement would not carry his signature.
On Oct. 7, the administration offered its first public comment on Russia’s “active measures,” in a three-paragraph statement issued by Jeh Johnson and James R. Clapper. James B. Comey had initially agreed to attach his name, as well, officials said, but changed his mind at the last minute, saying that it was too close to the election for the bureau to be involved.
“The U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” the statement said. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Early drafts accused Putin by name, but the reference was removed out of concern that it might endanger intelligence sources and methods.
The statement was issued around 3:30 p.m., timed for maximum media coverage. Instead, it was quickly drowned out. At 4 p.m., The Post published a story about crude comments Trump had made about women that were captured on an “Access Hollywood” tape. Half an hour later, WikiLeaks published its first batch of emails stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.
To some, Obama’s determination to avoid politicizing the Russia issue had the opposite effect: It meant that he allowed politics to shape his administration’s response to what some believed should have been treated purely as a national security threat.
Schiff said that the administration’s justifications for inaction often left him with a sense of “cognitive dissonance.”
“The administration doesn’t need congressional support to issue a statement of attribution or impose sanctions,” Schiff said in a recent interview. He said many groups inadvertently abetted Russia’s campaign, including Republicans who refused to confront Moscow and media organizations that eagerly mined the troves of hacked emails.
“Where Democrats need to take responsibility,” Schiff said, “is that we failed to persuade the country why they should care that a foreign power is meddling in our affairs.”- I love how "meddling" in other countries' elections become an issue NOW. What about the US meddling with every nations internal affairs for decades?renderedred
- I agree. The only part of Trump's rhetoric that I agreed with a little bit was that the US should remove itself from the world and invest in itself.allthethings
- I am not one of those American exceptionalists. I think we reaped what we sowed with regard to terror. We meddle all the time and need to stop.allthethings
- Your political system was eaten by the military-industrial complex and taken over by some really weird people. And I don't even mean Trump... It's broken.renderedred
- allthethings0
PART TWO
‘Ample time’ after election
The Situation Room is actually a complex of secure spaces in the basement level of the West Wing. A video feed from the main room courses through some National Security Council offices, allowing senior aides sitting at their desks to see — but not hear — when meetings are underway.
As the Russia-related sessions with Cabinet members began in August, the video feed was shut off. The last time that had happened on a sustained basis, officials said, was in the spring of 2011 during the run-up to the U.S. Special Operations raid on bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan.
The blacked-out screens were seen as an ominous sign among lower-level White House officials who were largely kept in the dark about the Russia deliberations even as they were tasked with generating options for retaliation against Moscow.
Much of that work was led by the Cyber Response Group, an NSC unit with representatives from the CIA, NSA, State Department and Pentagon.
The early options they discussed were ambitious. They looked at sectorwide economic sanctions and cyberattacks that would take Russian networks temporarily offline. One official informally suggested — though never formally proposed — moving a U.S. naval carrier group into the Baltic Sea as a symbol of resolve.
What those lower-level officials did not know was that the principals and their deputies had by late September all but ruled out any pre-election retaliation against Moscow. They feared that any action would be seen as political and that Putin, motivated by a seething resentment of Clinton, was prepared to go beyond fake news and email dumps.
The FBI had detected suspected Russian attempts to penetrate election systems in 21 states, and at least one senior White House official assumed that Moscow would try all 50, officials said. Some officials believed the attempts were meant to be detected to unnerve the Americans. The patchwork nature of the United States’ 3,000 or so voting jurisdictions would make it hard for Russia to swing the outcome, but Moscow could still sow chaos.
“We turned to other scenarios” the Russians might attempt, said Michael Daniel, who was cybersecurity coordinator at the White House, “such as disrupting the voter rolls, deleting every 10th voter [from registries] or flipping two digits in everybody’s address.”
The White House also worried that they had not yet seen the worst of Russia’s campaign. WikiLeaks and DCLeaks, a website set up in June 2016 by hackers believed to be Russian operatives, already had troves of emails. But U.S. officials feared that Russia had more explosive material or was willing to fabricate it.
“Our primary interest in August, September and October was to prevent them from doing the max they could do,” said a senior administration official. “We made the judgment that we had ample time after the election, regardless of outcome, for punitive measures.”
The assumption that Clinton would win contributed to the lack of urgency.
Instead, the administration issued a series of warnings.
John Brennan delivered the first on Aug. 4 in a blunt phone call with Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the FSB, Russia’s powerful security service.
A month later, Obama confronted Putin directly during a meeting of world leaders in Hangzhou, China. Accompanied only by interpreters, Obama told Putin that “we knew what he was doing and [he] better stop or else,” according to a senior aide who subsequently spoke with Obama. Putin responded by demanding proof and accusing the United States of interfering in Russia’s internal affairs.
In a subsequent news conference, Obama alluded to the exchange and issued a veiled threat. “We’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities,” he said. “Frankly, we’ve got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively.”
There were at least two other warnings.
On Oct. 7, the day that the Clapper-Johnson statement was released, Susan Rice summoned Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak to the White House and handed him a message to relay to Putin.
Then, on Oct. 31, the administration delivered a final pre-election message via a secure channel to Moscow originally created to avert a nuclear exchange. The message noted that the United States had detected malicious activity, originating from servers in Russia, targeting U.S. election systems and warned that meddling would be regarded as unacceptable interference. Russia confirmed the next day that it had received the message but replied only after the election through the same channel, denying the accusation.
As Election Day approached, proponents of taking action against Russia made final, futile appeals to Obama’s top aides: Denis McDonough, Susan Rice and Avril Haines. Because their offices were part of a suite of spaces in the West Wing, securing their support on any national security issue came to be known as “moving the suite.”
One of the last to try before the election was Kerry. Often perceived as reluctant to confront Russia, in part to preserve his attempts to negotiate a Syria peace deal, Kerry was at critical moments one of the leading hawks.
In October, Kerry’s top aides had produced an “action memo” that included a package of retaliatory measures including economic sanctions. Knowing the White House was not willing to act before the election, the plan called for the measures to be announced almost immediately after votes had been securely cast and counted.
Kerry signed the memo and urged the White House to convene a principals meeting to discuss the plan, officials said. “The response was basically, ‘Not now,’ ” one official said.
Election Day arrived without penalty for Moscow.
- allthethings0
PART THREE
The ‘tabledrop’
Despite the dire warnings, there were no meltdowns in the United States’ voting infrastructure on Nov. 8, no evidence of hacking-related fraud, crashing of electronic ballots or ma¬nipu¬la¬tion of vote counts.
The outcome itself, however, was a shock.
Suddenly, Obama faced a successor who had praised WikiLeaks and prodded Moscow to steal even more Clinton emails, while dismissing the idea that Russia was any more responsible for the election assault than “somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds.”
“The White House was mortified and shocked,” said a former administration official. “From national security people there was a sense of immediate introspection, of, ‘Wow, did we mishandle this.’ ”
At first, there was no outward sign of new resolve.
After his failed pre-election bid, Kerry returned with a fallback proposal, calling for the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference and make recommendations on how to protect future elections.
The panel would be modeled on the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, producing a definitive report and making recommendations that led to the overhaul of U.S. intelligence agencies.
“The idea was that if you think doing something aggressive is too inflammatory, then we shouldn’t have a problem getting to the truth about what happened,” said an administration official familiar with the Kerry plan. Trump was expected to oppose such a plan, but setting it in motion before he was sworn in would make it “harder and uglier politically” for him to block.
Supporters’ confidence was buoyed when Denis McDonough signaled that he planned to “tabledrop” the proposal at the next NSC meeting, one that would be chaired by Obama. Kerry was overseas and participated by videoconference.
To some, the “tabledrop” term has a tactical connotation beyond the obvious. It is sometimes used as a means of securing approval of an idea by introducing it before opponents have a chance to form counterarguments.
“We thought this was a good sign,” a former State Department official said.
But as soon as McDonough introduced the proposal for a commission, he began criticizing it, arguing that it would be perceived as partisan and almost certainly blocked by Congress.
Obama then echoed McDonough’s critique, effectively killing any chance that a Russia commission would be formed.
McDonough declined to comment on the principals’ committee meeting on the commission or any other sensitive matters but acknowledged that he opposed the idea, in part because he believed it would be premature to do so before U.S. intelligence agencies and Congress had conducted their investigations.
