This was so off the mark it made me laugh, and it was also very useful information. They didn’t want to hear from me, and obviously it would make them happy if I would just go away. Okay, boys, I mused, give me a lump sum to spend on rousing up people of color and I’ll leave you and your data points alone. You ain’t gonna get this on the cheap, though.
After the session with Charles, when I came to understand my relationship to Brooklyn, I looked over the list I’d made at the Broadmoor Hotel when I was in Colorado Springs. It was nine pages of detailed cost estimates for advertising buys and literature in communities of color in almost every state, but particularly in the battleground ones. I was still trying to get that $8 million. In a campaign that was well on its way to raising a billion, that was a pittance.
I called Brandon and Charles into my office to talk about getting this money out of Brooklyn. Automatically Brandon was a no, absolutely. I was not asking for his permission. I was asking for his tactical advice in getting what I wanted from Brooklyn. His best friend was Heather Stone, the chief of staff in Brooklyn. She could shut this down if she chose. Brandon was the one choosing, though. Oh, no, he said. You are not going to get $8 million. They are not going to give that much to you to manage. You should ask for $2 million.
This was not a consultation as far as I was concerned, and I was not finding his advice to be useful. When he said I wouldn’t get $8 million I thought he was operating as my emissary in the negotiations. I had offered to take it down to $7 million and then $6 million, ready to settle this and get to work. Then a day later he told me it was all set. They’re transferring $2 million.
“As an initial payment?” I asked.
No, he said. That was it. That was all that I would get.
Said who? Had Brandon even submitted my numbers to Brooklyn? This was not a miscommunication. He said he got what he could get, but I don’t think he even tried. I sensed that he and Heather had agreed on $2 million, and he’d just waited a while to let me think there was a negotiation. Then Charles came in to ask if we knew why Brooklyn had just transferred $2 million into our accounts.
They transferred the money so fast it was as if they were showing me the window was closed. Not a chance to ask for more. What gave Brandon the right to decide this? I was furious, and he seemed almost amused at my rage.
That night at Wings and Wine I had more wine than wings. I was taking a second look at Charles. Was he really here for me? Or was he Brandon Number Two?
I told Charles that I wanted to talk to him. How was he moving between these two parts of the campaign? Who did he think he answered to? He had the perfect answer. He was going to have conversations with Brandon, but he never wanted me to think he didn’t have my best interests at heart. He would be honest with Brooklyn, but the person he reported to was me and he understood his fiduciary responsibility was to the DNC.
“Okay, Charles,” I said. “Let’s figure out how I can raise $6 million.”
Wings and Wine was fun that night. Everyone had come to the DNC from different constituencies. Some of the staff were from nonprofits, some from unions, and others from businesses. All of them remained connected to their former jobs. We decided to meet again the next day with lists of organizations that had not reached their limit in campaign or political contributions. The next day we had a pretty good list of places we could ask to contribute to the DNC, and I asked everyone to start making calls, and I made some calls on my own. The campaign to raise money for our Victory Fund went great the first day, with strong responses, and lots of pledges to contribute. By the next day someone had leaked that list to Brooklyn. When I started to make my calls that afternoon, I found that Brooklyn had gotten there first and captured that money. Now they wouldn’t even let me raise my own money.
I know Charles was working his best for me, even if he was a double agent. He kept telling Brooklyn I was not going to let this go. I had heard that Brooklyn planned to put me on the road as a top surrogate just to get me out of the building. I wished I could tell them that was a bad idea, because what I saw in the battleground states only increased my sense of urgency.
I asked to get Charlie Baker, Marlon Marshall, and Dennis Cheng from Brooklyn on a conference call so that we could straighten this out. This was not a pleasant conversation. My emotions were high. I felt like I wanted to set the record straight. I gave up everything for this miserable job! I also knew that the woe-is-me tactic was not going to get me any respect or any money so I dropped that, but the wound still ached. Why were they making it so hard for me to do my job? I was not getting anywhere with them, though. They were holding firm on the $2 million, and also on the idea that they needed to control every dollar raised from now until November.
“All I want you to do is to treat me with some respect,” I said, my voice rising. “I’m not Debbie, I’m not Hannah, and I’m not Patsey the slave.”
There was no response to that name. I didn’t believe that these nice liberals would have missed seeing the film 12 Years a Slave, in which Solomon Northup’s friend Patsey was played so well by Lupita Nyong’o, who won the Oscar for the role.
“Patsey the slave!” I said. “Y’all keep whipping me and whipping me and you never give me any money or any way to do my damn job. I am not going to be your whipping girl! From this time on, we’re keeping the money we raise, is that clear? Patsey is keeping her money!”
I could only imagine their faces when I dropped that line. Calling them out that way was crude, but it was effective. Finally they allowed me to raise my money to fund the DNC’s outreach to the minority community using Michelle and Barack Obama in our advertisements and some targeted funds for the state campaigns.
I got daily reports from Andrew Brown, our CTO, and often the news was that the Russians were attacking the system, trying different routes to get in. I put a big calendar on my office wall and placed a yellow or green X on the days when the Russians were active. It was breaking my heart that this attack on our democracy was not getting more attention from everyone in DC. I was using my connections to the Democratic powers that be to get them to talk about it. The media was still covering it like these were “alleged” attacks, unproven. Why wasn’t Obama saying something? Where were the intelligence agencies? This was a national emergency.
On September 22 Congressman Adam Schiff, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, made a first step. They issued a statement about the hacking, saying it had taken place on direct orders from Vladimir Putin, who was “making a serious and concerted effort to influence the election.” They called on him to halt. “Americans will not stand for any foreign government trying to influence our election. We hope all Americans will stand together and reject the Russian effort.”
I wasn’t clear on what that statement was supposed to make people do. How do Americans “stand together and reject the Russian effort”? Do we shake our fists at Vladimir Putin from across the sea? It was another drop in the ocean of confusion created by Donald Trump. In the preparations for the first presidential debate, it hardly got noticed.
The first presidential debate was at Hofstra University in Hempstead, Long Island, set for Monday, September 26. I had never seen a rumble of anticipation like the run-up to this debate. It was like Donald Trump was back in WWE wrestling. The networks hyped this contest endlessly, with journalists denigrating Donald’s ability to outmaneuver Hillary because she was such a practiced debater. The rumor was that Donald had refused to do debate prep. He was so confident that he’d do well that he didn’t need any coaching. This set the tongues a-wagging, because everyone knew how thoroughly Hillary prepared for everything. This would be a clash of styles and temperament for the whole country to judge.
There was also the question of Hillary’s health, which was a subject of endless speculation. One New York Times reporter wrote, “Her dismal public standing on questions of candor, combined with decades of conspir
acy theories about her health, had already produced an uncommon challenge for aides and supporters seeking to tamp down speculation about her physical condition.” You’d think she was going to stumble onto the stage and collapse, but the press was always ready to pounce on Hillary, who by the day of the first debate was only two points ahead of Donald in the polls.
That morning I booked myself on as many talk shows as I could to spread the word about the virtues of Hillary and how she was a formidable opponent. I wanted to have some war paint on—makeup that would not just make me pretty but let the world know that I was prepared to kick some ass. GMA anchor Robin Roberts hooked me up with her makeup artist, Elena George, a great gift from one tomboy to another. At one of the early primary candidate debates, Elena had put these mink eyelashes on me. From that moment I looked better and felt stronger. I knew if I had those mink eyelashes I could do anything.
I felt I looked good in my tan jacket and black skirt with those heels that you only wear twice a year, like Easter shoes. I had lost weight on the stress diet of salad and wings and scotch. My exercise regimen was running through airports, so I felt fit, as I had been doing a lot of that.
My message about Hillary on these morning shows was that this was her moment to pivot, to talk about the future she sees for the country and take the world’s focus off the past. I knew that I would also face questions about her health. Donald kept talking about stamina but it was code for her being a woman, being weaker and a bit confused by the big old complex world around her. This insult was not lost on women, and we talked about her resilience. As we got to Hofstra University for the debate, I knew this was not David vs. Goliath, but it had that kind of mood.
I was honored that the campaign seated me in the front, next to Vernon Jordan and Bill Clinton, those two old dogs. This is one of those moments when a lady keeps her knees together. I was sitting in high cotton. Chelsea Clinton was sitting on the other side of her father. Terry McAuliffe and many other prominent Democrats were seated in the row behind me. The auditorium was buzzing with excitement as the moderator, Lester Holt, took his place at the desk facing the stage, with the audience craning their heads around to see who else was in the room.
Trump walked across the stage like he was a gangster, like the village thug straight out of Queens. There was so much sexism around Hillary I was praying that she looked good that night. When she walked onto the stage I thought, Praise the Lord, she looks fantastic. She looked rested and refreshed, bright and shiny, the best of the best. He looked not like he came to debate but to beat her up.
This was the wrong arena for him to win that. Women of Hillary’s era, like Eleanor Holmes Norton, are thinkers. They are brainiacs. They have shattered so many glass ceilings that they just dust those shards off their shoulders and keep on. That night Hillary came to represent.
Sitting there in the front row, I kept thinking to myself that Donald was not prepared for this. I could hear him sighing. Al Gore got into so much trouble in one of our debates because people thought his sighing was condescending. With Donald it was more of a snort and a sigh, snorffling. He was so insecure on that stage, he had to keep interrupting Hillary as she spoke, which made him look weak, as if he was scrambling. It was clear to me that he didn’t really know why he was running for president. On the other hand he knew exactly what he was doing, even though he did not come to the debate well rehearsed. These guys had it all sewn up in the bag. They didn’t spend much money campaigning. I guess he felt he didn’t need to prepare because he knew the Russians were taking care of this for him.
Hillary scored many points on him that night, but there were two that stuck out for me. One was when she mentioned that the Russians were hacking our election and he disputed it. He said it could be China, or it could be a four-hundred-pound guy sitting in his bedroom. Wow! I felt certain he was going to live to regret that statement. I just didn’t know how impervious he was to regret.
The other thing that made me smile was when he went after Hillary for her stamina, noting she had been off the campaign trail for weeks, implying she was so frail she needed two weeks to recover from her fainting episode. She was ready for him. She said, yes, she had been away preparing for the debate. And then she added with a big smile, “preparing to be president.”
I was sure every woman who has been marginalized and ignored by a male boss who seems to have no skills other than his authority over her recognized the expression of triumph on Hillary’s face.
In the spin room after the debate, all the Hillary surrogates felt her victory. She was back. This was not the Hillary who had stumbled two weeks before. This was the Hillary we all believed in. She made us proud, she looked good, and everything worked as we hoped it would. I was proud of her posture, her demeanor, her stamina, and her ability to connect with the audience.
Across the room, Trump was blustering and making excuses. “They… gave me a defective mic! Did you notice that?” As the interview went on, he hammered his point. “I wonder. Was that on purpose? But I had a mic that wasn’t working properly.”
I really did see the pivot in Hillary’s performance that I had hoped for, and I was confident at that moment that the campaign could use the energy from this to get back on target.
I was doing my own little tweet storm that night praising Hillary:
“Trump wanted to talk about ‘stamina,’ but he ended up looking like Babe Ruth trying to run a marathon.”
“Hillary’s suit was bright red… and by the end of the night, so was Trump’s face.”
And the best one at 11:30 p.m.:
“Hillary Clinton’s strong performance shows she is the only candidate READY and qualified to serve as president.”
Yes, and for the first time in a while, I believed she would be.
THIRTEEN
Hacker House
Every week when I dialed into the conference call with the cybersecurity task force I had recruited to prevent the DNC from being hacked again, I learned more about the hacking. I came in thinking I knew more than the average person might about the world of the Internet. Hell, I’d run a presidential campaign for the guy who invented it. What I found out on these weekly phone calls was that I didn’t know nothing.
One of the task force members was Aneesh Chopra, who had been the nation’s chief technology officer. Aneesh had been working with government policy on technology for his whole career, and his calm and steady voice and simple language when he taught things I needed to learn was respectful and coherent. I recognized that he had had to explain complicated things like hacking to many government officials over the decades, and he had perfected a method of communicating with us. Like most of the nation and like most who had served in the government, when I pictured hackers I thought of disgruntled loners, or computer guys who just wanted to see if they could break into a company or a government. You know: the aforementioned four-hundred-pound guy sitting on his bed in his underwear.
Aneesh explained my idea of these hackers was stuck in the 1990s. Back then hackers had been pranksters, or solo operators with a grievance, like an environmentalist who hacks into a logging company website to disrupt their operations, or someone who had a beef with an ecommerce site who takes it down for a day or two, costing the company thousands of dollars of revenue. That was then. Now I needed to think of the hackers who had attacked the DNC as soldiers who wore crisply pressed military uniforms and clocked in to work precisely on time, dedicated to their mission to disrupt politics any place their government chose as a target. The four-hundred-pound hacker might noodle around trying to break in and be excited if he got lucky. If he didn’t, he’d move on after a few hours. Our hackers worked this as a full-time job and they were relentless.
In the last fifteen years, hacking had become a government operation done by well-trained teams. For a very small investment on the part of the government they served, these dedicated teams of hackers would break into big companies to steal intellectual property like proprietary metho
ds of rolling out steel or design schematics. Big corporations like Goldman Sachs or Walmart knew this. They are being attacked all the time and, because of that, they build cybersecurity into their budgets. For them it is a cost of doing business.
Governments have not been doing the same, and they have not built very strong barriers to hacking. The government’s notion of a cyberthreat was mostly limited to an enemy trying to disrupt our power grid or our water system. The government’s low-cost calculation was that if they kept the computers that run the electric grid or the reservoir pumping station disconnected from the Internet, they wouldn’t have to worry too much about being hacked. In the last eight years the government has started to spend a lot more money on cyber protection but one could argue that they need to spend it smarter because, as we saw at the DNC, the threat is increasing.
Hacking expanded into geopolitics early in this century when governments started hacking their political adversaries. The Chinese hacked the 2008 U.S. election, breaking into the Obama campaign to collect political information about the candidates and opposition research. While the method was unexpected, what they gathered from the intrusion was the kind of information that any government would want to know about who might be running the United States after the next election. The Obama hack was an act of espionage, but it was not a big blow to the operation of the party or of the election.
At first the DNC had assumed that when Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear gained entry to the DNC’s servers, they were after the same kind of material the Chinese had sought in 2008. Although the Russians had sown disinformation through fake news in the Ukrainian election in 2014 and hacked into the election system to manipulate the vote totals, no one thought they would be bold enough to try something like that in the United States. Nor did anyone suspect that they had the political sophistication to weaponize the information they had gathered from our servers, understanding exactly when they should release which emails they had stolen, so that the information would have the maximum impact on the voting population. Our hacking was unlike anything members of our expert task force had ever seen. This was one of the reasons why the DNC didn’t respond as aggressively as it might have when the officers found out it had been hacked. What happened to us had no precedent in American politics.
Hacks Page 13