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Russian Connection 5: In Which We Plan Sleepovers


Destiny

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V. interesting from Richard Burr:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/richard-burr-on-senate-intelligence-committees-russia-investigation-2-years-on/

Spoiler

 

The investigation into Russian intelligence activities by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence turned two years old, without fanfare, last month.

For almost as long, the inquiry, led by Republican Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina and Vice Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, has been held up as the last bastion of bipartisanship in Washington.

After a parallel investigation divided the House Intelligence Committee last year, the Senate's probe has been under intense pressure to offer a single set of findings.

 

Burr, who is known in Senate hallways for his preference to go sockless and the two-fingered hook that often bears his jacket, has spoken little about the probe he leads. But he thinks deeply about how its conclusions should be presented. And he acknowledges now that the investigation is broader, and perhaps more consequential, than it has long been thought to be.

"I'm not going to tell you that what we set out to do — which was to understand what happened in '16 — is what's extended the life of the investigation," Burr said in a rare interview with CBS News. "I think it's a better understanding of what happened and how coordinated and organized the effort was."

Spoiler

 

He spoke in his second-floor chambers in the Russell Senate Office Building, where multiple deer mounts circle the ceiling and a non-working fireplace is stacked with real wood. Burr, 63, had angled himself in a worn leather chair, legs extended, and tented his fingers around the edges of a coffee cup. He spoke quietly, with occasional long pauses as he considered his responses.

"We'll be judged at the end of this on the product that we produce," he said solemnly. "We'll also be judged on the process that we chose ... None of us ever anticipated that this would be two years."

For more than an hour, Burr detailed the committee's work and findings to date, explained why its investigation will stretch beyond its second year, and addressed the potential of a partisan breakdown at its conclusion. He described the committee's coordination with the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, its plans for delivering a final report, and hinted at what kinds of questions it may, at least for now, have to leave unanswered.

 

He made clear that the investigation is not compiling the story of one pivotal election, but of something larger, more complicated and, from a counterintelligence perspective, more nefarious. The final report may be so highly classified, he said, that a meaningful portion may not be made public at all.

"Many of the connections that we've made are the direct result of intelligence products," he said. "I think it's safe to say we've interviewed people that I don't even know if the special counsel knows about them — but you've got to remember that we're on a totally separate path than what they are."

Quote

 

He acknowledged that a core part of committee's charge is to tell the country, in the greatest detail possible, what happened in 2016.

"The other piece of that," he said, "is probably work that the committee will do for the next decade. And it's work that has helped even our intelligence community's understanding of Russia's capabilities and intent behind this."

"This was not," he stressed, "'Let's go screw with the Americans in 2016.'"

Where it began

The committee's investigation was first announced in a joint statement from Burr and Warner on January 13, 2017 — one week before President Trump was inaugurated.

"The Committee will follow the intelligence wherever it leads," the joint announcement laying out its parameters read.  "We will conduct this inquiry expeditiously, and we will get it right." 

Burr, a Charlottesville native, had been named a national security adviser to the Trump campaign in October — as it happened, less than an hour before the "Access Hollywood" tape became public, and soon after the Obama administration released its first statement on Russia's election interference efforts.  

His proximity to the Trump campaign and early statements suggesting it would be off-limits in the investigation initially alarmed some Democrats and prompted calls for an independent commission. Some observers urged the hiring of professional investigators.

After some behind-the-scenes wrangling, the political campaigns became part of the inquiry's scope, but Burr held firm that the probe would be driven by the committee's own staff. In a sign of Democrats' early unease, Warner said he would seek out other solutions if the committee demonstrated it could not "properly conduct" the investigation. 

In subsequent months, Burr's defense of former FBI Director James Comey after his firing and his pushback against Mr. Trump's claims of having been "wiretapped" by the Obama administration helped grow perceptions that the committee's efforts would be bipartisan.

Burr said he felt vindicated by his decision to empower the committee's staff to run the investigation. He said their access to highly classified intelligence from the agencies the committee is equipped to oversee often allowed them to know in advance what they needed to elicit from a witness.

 

 

 

"Outside investigators, Burr said, "would've never had access to some of the documents that we were able to access from the intelligence community.

In some cases, he said, it was "a precedent of information-sharing that had not ever existed in the history of the country."

"It also gave us tremendous insight to know when somebody was lying to us," he said, adding that the committee had "not been shy" in referring individuals for criminal prosecution. He declined to say how many referrals had been made.
 

Spoiler

 

Neither Burr, Warner nor the rest of the committee's 13 members participate in the closed-door witness interviews — though they can request a briefing at any time. The day-to-day investigative work and the long-term arc of the inquiry has been driven by the same core team, which has grown slightly from an original staff of seven to nine. Interviews have been as short as one hour and as long as 10 hours.

"They come to agreement between the nine of them on every step they take, every person that they call in; for the most part, every question that they ask is gamed out between all nine of them," Burr said of the team.

 

The investigation now spans continents and includes sources from countries besides Russia. The staff have traveled overseas and witnesses have come in to testify from abroad. "I don't think we've got any rock that we haven't turned over, regardless of, geographically, where it's located," Burr said.

Though the team is known to work six and sometimes seven days a week, Burr denied it had taken a toll. "Morale's great," he said. "I think that they're fueled by what they find."

And the biggest compliment they receive, he continued, is when witnesses later say they could not tell which staff members were Democrats and which were Republicans. "That's the way it should be," he said.

Spoiler

 

"It's sort of why I get baffled when I get asked the question, 'Does this fall apart at the end?'"

He paused.

"It's hard for me to believe this could fall apart at the easiest point, which is: 'Here are the facts. Write the report.'"

What's been done so far

The secure spaces where the committee does most of its investigative work are a networked sprawl across the second floor of the Senate Hart building, a stark white structure with a soaring central atrium. As with other secure complexes in the Capitol, it has numerous entries and exits that can facilitate the discreet delivery of a witness.

Inside those spaces, the staff have several investigation boards mapping out known connections between witnesses — and a constellation of players whose roles and relationships are not fully understood.

 

"There've been a lot of people — a lot of people — that none of you have caught," Burr said, referring to the reporters who linger outside to catch a glimpse of persons of interest.

Smiling as though he had pulled a satisfying prank, he said, "Not all the interviews have taken place up here."

Spoiler

 

After he and Warner agreed on the investigation's overall parameters, it was initially structured to include three buckets:

a review of the intelligence underpinning an assessment of Russia's efforts to target the 2016 election;

an examination of the "active measures," including cyber activities, that Russia employed; and

an inspection of counterintelligence concerns stemming from possible links between Moscow and the campaigns.  

It has since expanded to include at least two additional inquiries: an evaluation of the Obama administration's response to Russia's efforts, and a deep dive on the effect of foreign influence campaigns on social media.

To date, the committee has interviewed more than 200 witnesses and reviewed more than 300,000 pages of documents; it has held more than a dozen public hearings and released two interim reports.

The first, on election security, was issued last March and found that the Department of Homeland Security's response to Russia's incursions was "inadequate." It included a number of policy recommendations about how to better protect U.S. election systems and the voting process.

The second, released in May, included the initial findings of a review of the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on Russia's active measures — an unclassified version of a more comprehensive report is still forthcoming.

"We see no reason to dispute the conclusions," of the ICA, Burr said at the time, in a simple assertion that nevertheless generated headlines for its contrast with a finding by the House Intelligence Committee's Republican majority.

Their final report cited "significant intelligence tradecraft failings" in the assessment made of Russian president Vladimir Putin's intentions. On a bipartisan basis, the Senate committee substantiated the finding that Putin had developed a "clear preference" for Donald Trump.

Since those reports were released, both Burr and Warner have made overly optimistic statements about the timing of subsequent findings.

That optimism seems to persist. Burr said the committee is "close to pushing out the door" an assessment of the Obama administration's response, estimating that it would be a "matter of weeks." (He had predicted in August that this report, and a second on the role of social media, would be released in September.)

He and Warner have also offered inexact estimates of when the overall investigation would wind down; it was already supposed to have ended by the end of 2017, by spring 2018, before the midterms, and then by the end of last year.

Burr insisted each prediction had come with a disclaimer: "We don't know what we don't know."

What's taking so long?

Burr had not wanted to expand the universe of witnesses the committee interviewed, but felt he had little choice. He guessed that the committee had completed interviews with its target list "fairly early on" in 2017.

"It's not the people that were on the deck that we knew about that lengthened the time. It was the people that we didn't know about that we came to the conclusion — either for the campaign interactions or for this bigger picture that we're looking at — that extended the timeline," he said.

Adding a new witness to the roster added at least three weeks to the investigation, he said, between scheduling, logistical preparations, and dealing with legal counsel. 

 

 

Though most witnesses were encouraged to come in voluntarily, Burr acknowledged he had resorted to issuing subpoenas — either because all other appeals had gone unanswered, or because witnesses themselves had requested it.

Requested to be subpoenaed?

"Can't get into who," Burr said, "but there are some that" — he intimated an elbow nudge as he imitated a witness saying, "'I'll come if you subpoena me.'"

"They wanted the cover of being compelled," he said.

Spoiler

 

Burr also argued that a subpoena was not a surefire way for him to get answers since he was effectively out of tools if witnesses, like Trump advisor Roger Stone, indicated they would plead the Fifth.

"They can refuse a subpoena and we can go through a fairly lengthy Senate process to hold them in contempt," he said, "but understand that when I start that process, we've pretty much given up on the ability to have an interview."

"So it's only to be able to say, in the annals of history, 'We used every tool that we could but we couldn't get them here," he said.   

 

One key witness whom the committee had been unsuccessful in engaging, Burr said, was Christopher Steele, the British former intelligence officer who authored the controversial, partially verified dossier, which described links between Trump associates and Russia and played a part in triggering the FBI's counterintelligence investigation.

Last February, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, sent a letter to a Washington-based lawyer acting as an intermediary for Steele asking whether Steele may have been indirectly on the payroll of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to Putin. The implicit suggestion of Grassley's inquiry was that the dossier contained purposeful misinformation intended to help Russia. It is not a view, or a suspicion, that Democrats share.

Spoiler

 

Burr would only say that Steele remained of interest, but out of reach.

"We've made multiple attempts," to elicit a response, Burr said, but declined to surmise why Steele would not engage.  

"You'd have to ask him," he said, referring to Steele. "I think there will always be some questions as to…" he stopped, and paused for a long time.

"…whether his connections to this extend far outside of the contract."

Preexisting connections to what or whom?

"Oh, I can't get into it," Burr said. "Those are things that I'd love to know the answers to, but I don't have the ability to do it. And I'm sure at some point — maybe — we'll know the answer to that."

Burr has previously said it would be impossible to assess the credibility of the dossier without understanding who Steele's sources and sub-sources were; failing to speak directly with Steele suggests that the committee has not, itself, come to a determination of the dossier's reliability.

"I think it's safe to say that we have followed every potential lead and we know a heck of a lot more today than we did two years ago," he said. "But I can't tell you we —" he trailed off again.

"— we know the motivation."

A request for comment from Steele was not returned.

Was there collusion?

It is not lost on Burr, who has been on the Senate intelligence committee for over a decade, that he now leads the same body that has been charged with conducting authoritative investigations of some of the most momentous events — and biggest intelligence surprises — in U.S. history.

The committee has issued unflinching reports on the Iran-Contra affair, Iraqi WMD intelligence, and the intelligence community's activities before 9/11.

It is, of course, the same committee that in more recent years fell apart along partisan lines while investigating the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation and detention programs.

Both Burr and Warner have said they intend to ensure their investigation withstands the test of time.

"I've been around this town long enough to know that little, if any, of the facts surrounding the '16 election — even if we didn't find them — at some point, they're going to be public because somebody's going to write a book that was involved. And they're going to produce documents that maybe we didn't get," Burr said.

"But I look at that with the belief that it will validate what we put in our report, as long as we don't let politics drive what the final conclusion is," he said.

That was the very thing that seemed to derail the ultimately rancorous investigation led in the House by Republican Chairman Devin Nunes of California. The committee's Republican majority, over the protestations of Democrats, issued a final report last spring that found "no evidence" that the Trump campaign colluded or conspired with the Russian government — while acknowledging there had been instances of "poor judgment" demonstrated by some Trump officials.

Democrats, led by Ranking Member Adam Schiff, have vowed to keep the investigation open and issue their own conclusions.

President Trump seized on the Republicans' findings and suggested Nunes should receive the Medal of Freedom while decrying the Democrats' efforts as "presidential harassment" and Schiff as a "political hack."

 

 

Comparatively, Mr. Trump has had little to say about the Senate's investigation or its leadership.

"When you don't do something in public, you don't become the target of criticism or praise. And that's fine with me," Burr said.

Spoiler

 

He and the vice chairman are known to have made an agreement that the committee would not do anything that was not agreed upon by both sides, whether that meant calling in witnesses, issuing subpoenas or opening new — or closing existing — avenues of inquiry.

"I don't know that we've had any big disagreements," Burr said of Warner. "We both committed at the beginning that the investigation would go wherever the facts told us to go."

Still, over time, rumors of a growing friction between the two began percolating on Capitol Hill. They suggested that, for as much discipline as its leadership had demonstrated, the committee was fated to reach an impasse on the same question that had divided other inquiries: was there collusion?  

 

For now, Burr appears to have arrived at his answer. "If we write a report based upon the facts that we have, then we don't have anything that would suggest there was collusion by the Trump campaign and Russia," he said.

The finality of Burr's assertion was jarring — but he had said a version of it before. He told Fox News in September that the committee had found no "hard evidence" of collusion, though new information could still come to light.

He now doubled down, adding it was "accurate with everything we've accumulated since then."

It was the first time the chairman sounded like he was not speaking for the entirety of his committee, given the disconnect between his view of a set of facts and that of the vice chairman. (Warner declined to be interviewed for this article.)

In January, Warner said the revelation that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort shared polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a business associate of Manafort's known to have ties to Russian intelligence, was the "closest we've seen" to collusion.

Warner tweeted, "My question is, what did the President know about Mr. Manafort's collusion with Russian intelligence, and when did he know it?"

Spoiler

 

Burr did not use the word then and would not now. Manafort, he said, "shared polling data with a former partner of an effort to do campaign services in the Ukraine." It was a "stretch," Burr said, to call that collusion.

He was no more persuaded by the broader set of reported interactions between Mr. Trump, more than a dozen of his associates, and Russians.

"I'm unpersuaded because — the majority of contacts — we've talked to, or we've gotten documents from," he said.

He argued that the underlying motivations behind some interactions were often hard, and sometimes impossible, to determine, and that what might look like collusion could have an alternative rationale.

"There's an awful lot of connections of all these people," he said. "They may not be connections that are tied to 2016 elections in the United States, but just the sheer fact that they have a relationship — it may be business. It may be Russian intelligence. It may be they're all on the payroll of Oleg Deripaska," he said.

"We've got to try to determine, in our particular case, 'Do they fit in this bucket' — which is the 2016 election efforts — or 'Do they fit in this bucket,' which is the world that we discovered and that we want to continue to look at on more of a counterintelligence platform," he said.

"In a lot of cases, we found out they fit in neither bucket, or we don't know which bucket. And, in some cases, we've come to the conclusion we will never know the answer; therefore, this question is pushed aside," he said.

In the end, he said, neither his nor the committee's interpretation of the facts should be paramount.

"I have no belief that at the end of our process, people that love Donald Trump are going to applaud what we do. And I have no belief that people that hate Donald Trump are going to reverse and say, 'Well, you know, this clears him.' They are solidly in one camp or the other," he said.

"I'm speaking to what I hope is the 60 percent in the middle that are saying, 'Give me the facts that I need to make a determination in this one particular instance — what happened.' And that's what our focus is," he said.  

He would not concede that the committee was destined for disagreement, though he said he had always allowed for the possibility it could happen.

"If the committee's driven based upon the facts that we have at hand, I have a very difficult time understanding how you can come to two different conclusions," he said. "Unless, for the first time, you let politics come into play."

Catching himself slightly, he added, "Now, we're in Washington and so — anything can happen."

What comes next?

Burr has often voiced his awareness that his committee's report will be tested by the special counsel's findings. He has said he's comforted by it, in part because Mueller, by virtue of having more and better investigative tools, may provide answers that proved elusive to his team.  

Still, Burr said, "none" of his investigation's timeline is dictated by that of the special counsel; he denied the committee was waiting for Mueller to show his cards before it showed its own.

"If I can finish tomorrow, I would finish tomorrow," he said. "We know we're getting to the bottom of the barrel because there're not new questions that we're searching for answers to."

He added the disclaimer that if a new person of interest arose, the committee would pull the necessary threads.

But he remained evasive as to whether Mueller's final report should itself be made public — even if it could conceivably fill in some gaps within his own probe. "I'm going to leave that up to whoever the A.G. is at the time," he said.

Would he ask — or, if needed, compel — Mueller to testify before the committee, after his work was done?

"Open question," he said. "I don't know the answer."

How the committee will issue its overall findings, once it arrives at them, also appears to be an open question. Burr said a formal draft had not yet been started, and he could not make a prediction about how much of it, ultimately, would be declassified. 

He did not say whether the final product would be something like a thoroughly sourced chronology or whether it would include an evaluative judgment — from the investigators who spent two years examining it — on the question of collusion. The latter sounded unlikely.

"What I'm telling you is that I'm going to present, as best we can, the facts to you and to the American people. And you'll have to draw your own conclusion as to whether you think that, by whatever definition, that's collusion," he said.  

His last words were of caution.

"My only advice to you is, be careful. There are a lot of false narratives out there," he said.

He said the committee had wasted some of its time interviewing witnesses who, it turned out, just wanted to be part of the story. "Don't get ahead of this process," he said.  

"People that are sitting, writing the headlines for our report or for Mueller's report may find out that the headline is significantly different."

"And I think the most difficult thing that we've had to do is to separate fact from fiction through the whole process, because if we took every story that you" — meaning the media — "wrote, or every rumor that's out there, we would never finish."

He laughed a final time.

"There are too many Russians." 

 

 

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Things are so far gone that they're openly and brazenly admitting it.

 

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So Ivanka sat for an "exclusive" interview with ABC on The View to discuss her "Global Women's Initiative".  The interviewer, Abby Huntsman, lobbed more easy questions than a pitcher in a softball game.  Abby Huntsman is the daughter of Jon Huntsman, Trump's ambassador to Russia. ABC didn't bother to mention that.  Anyway, this initiative would be funded through U.S. Agency for International Development or USAID.  Trump has attempted to slash the budget of this agency, because it might help poor people in other countries. 

Looking at facebook responses, interviewing Ivanka wasn't a very popular move.  One person said that cleaning the cat's litter box was a better use of her time and I can't disagree. 

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An item to add about Russia.  Russia is planning a test disconnect from the entire Internet sometime in the next month or two. Some speculate that Putin would like a Russian "sovereign internet."

Some fear he wants to set up a Chinese-style Great Firewall. Others think that an independent Russian internet would allow Russia to wage (more) cyberwar with impunity with zero fear of retaliation.   It's probably all of those things. 

Although Russia has an immense land mass, it's a third-rate country with a faltering economy and regressive leadership.  Cyberwar can be done for cheap.  Something to keep in mind. 

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20 hours ago, Howl said:

An item to add about Russia.  Russia is planning a test disconnect from the entire Internet sometime in the next month or two. Some speculate that Putin would like a Russian "sovereign internet."

Some fear he wants to set up a Chinese-style Great Firewall. Others think that an independent Russian internet would allow Russia to wage (more) cyberwar with impunity with zero fear of retaliation.   It's probably all of those things. 

Although Russia has an immense land mass, it's a third-rate country with a faltering economy and regressive leadership.  Cyberwar can be done for cheap.  Something to keep in mind. 

I've been seeing theories that Putin is doing this so he can attack 'our' internet and destroy or diminish it in some way, or, as you say, use it to wage cyber warfare more insidiously. I have to admit that I find that to be a rather frightening prospect. 

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It's a terrifying prospect.  However, we've been subject to election interference, so we know about that. Hackers took down Kiev's power grid in the Ukraine. 

'CRASH OVERRIDE': THE MALWARE THAT TOOK DOWN A POWER GRID

They've also possibly diddled around with small blackouts in the US.  It's a brilliant strategy, really.  If, for example, Russia wanted to invade a country, they could knock out the power grid and communication infrastructure, leaving the invaded country helpless.  

The US jerked Iran around with the Stuxnet virus attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.  It's now thought that Iran has counter attacked against some US banks. 

Anyway, I was contemplating what would happen in this country if cell service went down across the US for even an hour.  

Edited by Howl
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I think this belongs here, because Russia....and Trump corruption.

OK, raunchy parties + Trump aaaaand here we go: 

Frankly the person that knows the most is likely the woman in the photo with David Geovanis....and, uh, Stalin. 

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Russia.  There is a quite realistic possibility that Putin is the world's richest man and he is corrupting the world with money.  He's running a 3rd rate country because it's wealth and future have been stolen through rampant corruption.  Mobligarchs are allowed to flourish as long as Putin gets his cut. 

Britain, and particularly London, is awash in dirty Russian money. Russian money and influence has threatened Britain's future through Brexit, it has reached the US and is threatening our democracy through election interference and compromising/buying politicians.  It will continue to pop up in other countries in Europe.   I think we've all underestimated Putin, to our own peril. 

I just came across The Moscow Project, which keeps track of critical points, timelines and players in the Russia influence drama and Mueller's investigation.  It seems like a potentially excellent resource.  About The Moscow Project

Quote

The Moscow Project is an initiative of the Center for American Progress Action Fund dedicated to analyzing the facts behind Trump’s collusion with Russia and communicating the findings to the public. The Moscow Project’s team employs a multi-disciplinary approach towards its work, leveraging a unique combination of experience and expertise gained on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, and in private industry to examine this complex and sprawling series of events stretching back decades.

The Moscow Project is an initiative of the American Progress Action Fund

About

Quote

The Center for American Progress Action Fund is an independent, nonpartisan policy institute and advocacy organization that is dedicated to improving the lives of all Americans, through bold, progressive ideas, as well as strong leadership and concerted action. Our aim is not just to change the conversation, but to change the country.

 

Edited by Howl
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Oooopsie, Ted.  You have a Russia connection! Ya burnt! (for Seth Myers fans will understand this) 

   Please follow the Jennifer Cohn tweet.  We're talking troves of data leaked to the Russians.  Bad voting machines with huge potential for data leaks.  Off now to post this to the Elections thread. 

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1 hour ago, Howl said:

Oooopsie, Ted.  You have a Russia connection! Ya burnt! (for Seth Myers fans will understand this) 

   Please follow the Jennifer Cohn tweet.  We're talking troves of data leaked to the Russians.  Bad voting machines with huge potential for data leaks.  Off now to post this to the Elections thread. 

This begs the question if there should be a Senator O'Rourke" in the Senate right now. 

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"U.S. Cyber Command operation disrupted Internet access of Russian troll factory on day of 2018 midterms"

Spoiler

The U.S. military blocked Internet access to an infamous Russian entity seeking to sow discord among Americans during the 2018 midterms, several U.S. officials said, a warning that the group’s operations against the United States are not cost-free.

The strike on the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, a company underwritten by an oligarch close to President Vladi­mir Putin, was part of the first offensive cyber campaign against Russia designed to thwart attempts to interfere with a U.S. election, the officials said.

“They basically took the IRA offline,” according to one individual familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. “They shut ‘em down.”

The operation marked the first muscle-flexing by U.S. Cyber Command, with intelligence from the National Security Agency, under new authorities it was granted by President Trump and Congress last year to bolster offensive capabilities.

Whether the impact of the St. Petersburg action will be long-lasting remains to be seen. Russia’s tactics are evolving, and some analysts were skeptical of the deterrent value on either the Russian troll factory or on Putin, who, according to U.S. intelligence officials, ordered an “influence” campaign in 2016 to undermine faith in U.S. democracy. U.S. officials have also assessed that the Internet Research Agency works on behalf of the Kremlin.

“Such an operation would be more of a pinprick that is more annoying than deterring in the long run,” said Thomas Rid, a strategic studies professor at Johns Hopkins University, who was not briefed on the details.

But some U.S. officials argued that “grand strategic deterrence” is not always the goal. “Part of our objective is to throw a little curve ball, inject a little friction, sow confusion,” said one defense official. “There’s value in that. We showed what’s in the realm of the possible. It’s not the old way of doing business anymore.”

The action has been hailed as a success by Pentagon officials, and some U.S. senators credited CyberCom with averting Russian interference in the midterms.

“The fact that the 2018 election process moved forward without successful Russian intervention was not a coincidence,” said Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), who did not discuss the specific details of the operation targeting the St. Petersburg group. Without CyberCom’s efforts, there “would have been some very serious cyber incursions.”

Cyber Command and the NSA declined to comment.

The disruption to the Internet Research Agency’s networks took place as Americans went to the polls and a day or so afterward — as the votes were tallied, to prevent the Russians from mounting a disinformation campaign that casts doubt on the results, according to officials.

The blockage was so frustrating to the trolls that they complained to their system administrators about the disruption, the officials said.

The Internet Research Agency as early as 2014 and continuing through the 2016 presidential election sought to undermine the U.S. political system, according to the Justice Department. Posing as Americans and operating social media pages and groups, Russian trolls sought to exacerbate tensions over issues such as race, sexual identity and guns.

The agency, according to federal prosecutors, is financed by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a tycoon from St. Petersburg and an ally of Putin. Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency and a company Prigozhin runs called Concord Management and Consulting, were among 16 Russian individuals and companies that a grand jury indicted a year ago as part of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In a response to questions from The Washington Post, Prigozhin said in a statement on the Russian version of Facebook, “I cannot comment on the work of the Internet Research Agency in any way because I have no relation to it.” Concord Management declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation in the United States.

Another element of the Cyber Command campaign, first reported by the New York Times, involved “direct messaging” that targeted the trolls and as well as hackers who work for the Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU. Using emails, pop-ups, text or direct messages, U.S. operatives beginning last October let the Russians know that their real names and online handles were known and they should not interfere in other nations’ affairs, defense officials said.

Some Internet Research Agency officials were so perturbed by the messaging that they launched an internal investigation to root out what they thought were insiders leaking personnel information, according to two individuals.

The operation was part of a broader government effort to safeguard the 2018 elections, involving the departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice, as well as the FBI. It was led by Gen. Paul Nakasone, who in July formed the Russia Small Group, made up of 75 to 80 personnel from CyberCom and NSA, which are part of the Defense Department.

When Nakasone took up the helm at the NSA and CyberCom in May, the White House and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told him his priority needed to be the defense of the midterm elections, officials said. No one wanted a repeat of the 2016 campaign, when the GRU hacked Democratic Party computers and released troves of emails and the Internet Research Agency mounted its social media campaign to exploit social divisions.

In August, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said Russia was continuing “a pervasive messaging campaign” to try to weaken and divide the United States, though officials also concluded it was not as aggressive as the 2016 operation by Russia.

Two new U.S. authorities facilitated the move against the Internet Research Agency. A presidential order last August gave CyberCom greater latitude to undertake offensive operations below the level of armed conflict — actions that don’t result in death, significant damage or destruction. And a provision in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act also cleared the way for clandestine cyber operations that fall below that same threshold, categorizing them as “traditional military activity.”

“The calculus for us here was that you’re just pushing back in the same way that the adversary has for years,” a second defense official said. “It’s not escalatory. In fact, we’re finally in the game.”

But other officials are more circumspect.

“Causing consternation or throwing sand in the gears may raise the cost of engaging in nefarious activities, but it is not going to cause a nation state to just drop their election interference or their malign influence in general,” said a third official. “It’s not going to convince the decision-maker at the top.”

The operation also was the first real test of CyberCom’s new strategy of “persistent engagement” issued in April, which involved continually confronting the adversary and information sharing with partners. CyberCom in fall 2018 sent troops to Monte­negro, Macedonia and Ukraine to help shore up their network defenses, and the Americans were able to obtain unfamiliar malware samples that private security researchers traced to the GRU, according to officials

The Cyber Command campaign also was part of what Nakasone has described in an interview with Joint Force Quarterly as “acting outside our borders, being outside our networks, to ensure that we understand what our adversaries are doing.”

 

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On 2/25/2019 at 11:16 AM, fraurosena said:

This begs the question if there should be a Senator O'Rourke" in the Senate right now. 

Well, exactly.  I voted for Beto; my "Beto for Senate" sign is leaning forlornly on the garage wall. 

Some voting machines in Houston were showing "Ted Cruz" as the selection for Senator for those voting a straight Democratic ticket. Although in Austin, I was kicking myself for not double checking the selections on my ballot while voting a straight Democratic ticket.  

That said, it's hard for people who don't live here to realize just how Red Texas truly is.  I'm simply amazed that Beto came as close as he did to beating Ted.  That said, I saw Beto signs in many tiny Texas towns, where coming out for a Democrat could have some serious repercussions. 

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37 minutes ago, Howl said:

Well, exactly.  I voted for Beto; my "Beto for Senate" sign is leaning forlornly on the garage wall. 

Some voting machines in Houston were showing "Ted Cruz" as the selection for Senator for those voting a straight Democratic ticket. Although in Austin, I was kicking myself for not double checking the selections on my ballot while voting a straight Democratic ticket.  

That said, it's hard for people who don't live here to realize just how Red Texas truly is.  I'm simply amazed that Beto came as close as he did to beating Ted.  That said, I saw Beto signs in many tiny Texas towns, where coming out for a Democrat could have some serious repercussions. 

At some point the Repugliklans with their horrible and atrocious antics will inevitably alienate the run of the mill R's in the 'red' states. And Beto's popularity is a sign of that happening.

It also seems to me, looking at things from afar, that without gerrymandering, voter suppression and voter fraud, the republicans would never win any elections. Your current system distorts the results and makes them seem more numerous than they actually are. There is no doubt in my mind that in a fair and truly democratic election, Beto would have won by a huge margin. Texas just might be bluer than you think. 

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What is that sound I hear coming from the R's? Oh yeah! Crickets.

??????

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And Felix Sater leads a colorful life 

 

Court docs for those about to read court docs 

 

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3 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

And and they can now throw you in jail if complain about it... :pb_sad:

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