by Bill Gertz
“The FSB operation to kill Mr. Litvinenko was probably approved by [FSB director Nikolai] Patrushev and also by President Putin,” commission chairman Sir Robert Owen stated. Other chilling evidence of the Russian government murder of Litvinenko included a T-shirt obtained by the commission bearing the words “POLONIUM-210 CSKA LONDON, HAMBURG to Be Continued” and on the back, “CSKA Moscow Nuclear Death Is Knocking Your Door.” CSKA is the Russian acronym for Central Sports Club of the Army.
Litvinenko was not the only victim of the Russian intelligence killing operations. Several political killings were also linked to them, including those of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and opposition politicians Sergei Yushenkov and Vladimir Golovlev. All were shot.
Russian intelligence did not stop its operation against Litvinenko with the defector’s murder. Another target was the legendary Soviet-era dissident and human rights advocate Vladimir Bukovsky, who had befriended Litvinenko after his defection and testified to the British commission in 2015. Bukovsky was among the few people who had been able to gain access to the KGB archives between the fall of the Soviet Union and the ascension of Putin. Bukovsky revealed some of the documents that influenced Litvinenko about the KGB.
Bukovsky, a survivor of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and prison psychiatric hospitals, would be targeted in a Russian disinformation operation shortly before he was to testify before the Owen commission in March 2015. A Russian hacker broke into his laptop computer and planted child pornography photographs on the device. A Russian intelligence agent then tipped off the European Union law enforcement agency, Europol, to the photos. British authorities charged Bukovsky with five counts of producing indecent images of children, five counts of possessing indecent images of children, and one count of possessing a prohibited image. Russian state-run media quickly reported the charges. It was a classic Russian disinformation and influence operation.
Bukovsky adamantly denied the charges and blamed the FSB for the operation. In protest, he launched a defamation lawsuit against the Crown Prosecution Service and in April 2016 went on a hunger strike to protest the charges. “The KGB didn’t change at all,” he told the Guardian newspaper. “It’s the same KGB, only been renamed. And I happened to be their enemy for 57 years. . . . I’m on hunger strike not because of trying to prove anything to the FSB. We’ve known each other for half a century. There’s nothing new they can tell me or I can tell them. I’m doing it for the British public.” Bukovsky ended the hunger strike after the court proceedings were delayed and told a British court he was targeted in a Russian FSB intelligence operation.
The Litvinenko case highlights the growing danger of Russian intelligence and information warfare operations, which pose a direct threat to the United States. The case of Russian information warfare against the U.S. presidential election shows the threat is not limited to overseas assassination.
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July 2016, Russia carried out one of the most daring information warfare attacks in history. It was a thinly veiled attempt to disrupt the U.S. presidential election process. Using the left-wing antisecrecy website WikiLeaks as a cutout, Moscow’s government hackers released some twenty thousand internal documents hacked from the computer network of the Democratic National Committee. The emails revealed that the DNC had used covert smear tactics during the presidential primary campaign to support the eventual nominee Hillary Clinton against democratic socialist candidate Senator Bernie Sanders. The emails revealed DNC plans to produce negative publicity for Sanders by revealing the senator was an atheist. The campaign was part of an effort by the supposedly neutral DNC, which in reality had been working to back the less-than-electric candidacy of former secretary of state Clinton, who would accept the nomination at the national convention overshadowed by the email disclosures.
The FBI launched an investigation into the information warfare attack and Secretary of State John Kerry raised the issue of the Russian hacking and influence operations against the Democrats during a meeting with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Vienna. Lavrov indignantly denied Russia was behind it. Clinton campaign spokesman Robby Mook blamed Putin for interfering in the election by seeking to promote the candidacy of New York real estate mogul Donald Trump, who during the campaign had voiced admiration for the strength of the Russian leader, who in turn had responded with positive words for Trump.
Putin shrugged off the accusations and responded under the traditional intelligence principle that lying to protect the secrecy of operations is a rigid requirement. “Listen, does it even matter who hacked this data?” Putin asked. “The important thing is the content that was given to the public.” By focusing on the content, the Russian leader was amplifying the main goal of the operation—to influence the outcome of the U.S. election in ways that might support someone who Moscow perceived would adopt more favorable U.S. policies.
“There’s no need to distract the public’s attention from the essence of the problem by raising some minor issues connected with the search for who did it,” Putin told Bloomberg news service, referring to the DNC breach. “But I want to tell you again, I don’t know anything about it, and on a state level Russia has never done this.”
Representative Mike Pompeo, Kansas Republican and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, told me, “Evidence and experts have pointed to Russia as the culprit behind the hack of the DNC, which is not surprising. What is new, and what we must act on, is possible foreign interference in our democratic process.”
American government officials disclosed later that the U.S. intelligence agencies were conducting an investigation into a widespread Russian covert operation to disrupt the 2016 presidential election by exposing damaging information on Clinton and thus boost the election fortunes of her Republican rival, Trump.
The Russian operation’s first casualty was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the DNC, who was forced to resign the day before the convention began. The Russians had exposed how Schultz was not neutral during the primary campaign and sought to help Clinton win the nomination over Sanders.
Forensic analysis by computer security experts revealed that the Russians hacked the DNC and then orchestrated the document release to a hacker named “Guccifer 2.0,” and to the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, when questioned if the Russians were behind the DNC email leak, at first refused to identify the source and later denied the material was provided by Moscow. Guccifer 2.0 also denied he was linked to Moscow.
The National Security Agency, however, which has formidable cyber-intelligence capabilities, believes the Russians are behind the political information warfare operation, according to American officials close to the agency.
President Barack Obama, as he did throughout his entire presidency, turned a blind eye to the Russian hacking and influence operations, just as he did in the case of China’s information attacks. The president made clear after meeting Putin at a summit of the Group of 20 nations in Hangzhou, China, that he did not raise the Russian influence operation targeting the American election with the Russian leader. “We did talk about cybersecurity, generally,” Obama said of the meeting with Putin. “I’m not going to comment on specific investigations that are still live and active. But I will tell you that we’ve had problems with cyber intrusions from Russia in the past, from other countries in the past.
“We’re moving into a new era here where a number of countries have significant capacities, and, frankly, we’ve got more capacity than anybody both offensively and defensively,” Obama said, suggesting that U.S. military and cyber-intelligence capabilities, which the president refused to use against adversaries on numerous occasions, might eventually be employed.
However, Obama has taken an extremely conciliatory approach to cyberattacks against America and instead voiced concerns repeatedly that he worries that a tough stance against foreign cyberattacks would lead to a cyber arms race si
milar to conventional arms races in the past. It was vintage Obama; he had no problem projecting weakness in dealing with America’s enemies.
“What we cannot do is have a situation in which suddenly this becomes the Wild, Wild West, where countries that have significant cyber capacity start engaging in competition—unhealthy competition or conflict through these means when, I think, wisely we’ve put in place some norms when it comes to using other weapons,” he said.
The comments revealed that the Obama administration had no intention of attempting to deter strategic information warfare attacks, whether on U.S. computer networks or through covert intelligence and influence operations.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was the Russian government that was behind the hacks,” said James Lewis, a specialist in cybersecurity at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to the DNC cyberattack.
Just over a month before tens of millions of Americans cast their votes in the presidential election of 2016, the U.S. intelligence community issued an extraordinary statement blaming Russia for conducting information warfare attacks aimed at influencing the outcome of the election. “The U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced in a joint statement. “The recent disclosures of alleged hacked emails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the U.S. election process.” The influence operation was not new for the Russians, who are conducting similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia in seeking to influence public opinion, the statement noted.
It was only the second time the U.S. government publicly linked a foreign government to a strategic cyberattack. The first was the North Korean hack against Sony.
Putin was not named in the statement, but intelligence agencies concluded that “senior-most” Russian officials authorized the attacks. The statement stopped short of blaming Russia for cyberattacks involving two incidents involving the scanning of election-related networks in Arizona and Illinois, and said the ability of hackers to remotely change ballots or election results would be extremely difficult, even for sophisticated nation-state attackers.
As in the Sony hack by North Korea, once again the White House promised a response to Russian government cyber interference in American politics. A senior White House official said the American public and the democratic system remained resilient against foreign attempts to manipulate public opinion. “The U.S. government is committed to ensuring a secure election process and has robust capabilities to detect efforts to interfere with our elections,” the official said. “The president has made it clear that we will take action to protect our interests, including in cyberspace, and we will do so at a time and place of our choosing.” Operational secrecy, the official added, would mean the public would not know “what actions have been taken, or what actions we will take.”
Among the hacked information made public by the Russians in an apparent bid to boost the election fortunes of Donald Trump was an audiotape of Hillary Clinton speaking to a group of supporters in February 2016. In the tape, Clinton stated she would be in favor of canceling a new long-range cruise missile needed as part of the U.S. nuclear modernization program to replace aging nuclear missiles and bombers. “The last thing we need are sophisticated cruise missiles that are nuclear armed,” she was heard saying. The audio was posted on the website DCLeaks.com that U.S. officials believe is a conduit for Russian intelligence agencies involved in the election campaign influence operation.
The audio was a scoop for my online newspaper, the Washington Free Beacon, and investigative reporter Lachlan Markay, who would be falsely accused by New York Times reporters David Sanger and William Broad of “mysteriously” obtaining the audio. Markay had found the audio through dogged reporting—he had searched the large and disorganized files posted by DCLeaks.com. The audio had been attached to an email sent by Clinton presidential campaign volunteer Ian Mellul to Nick Merrill, the campaign’s traveling press secretary. The Times’ suggestion that somehow the Free Beacon was a tool of Russian intelligence for publishing the story on the audio was dismissed by Free Beacon executive editor Matt Continetti in a tweet: “My reporter found recording on dcleaks.com. Feel free to update weird implication in story.” The Times did not update or correct its story, an indication of how politicized America’s once-great newspaper of record had become.
Not to be outdone by DCLeaks.com, the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks published a batch of emails that the organization said were hacked from among thousands of emails from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager between 2008 and 2016. They included details of speeches Clinton had given to banks and financial institutions while secretary of state and for which she was paid some $3 million, including $675,000 for speeches to Goldman Sachs. During the presidential primary campaign, Clinton was asked if she would release transcripts of the speeches and deflected the question by saying only that she would look into the matter. The emails were embarrassing for the former secretary of state, who had moved to the left politically in a bid to compete against democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, who during the campaign attracted widespread support for advocating the reining in of America’s banks. Clinton’s leaked speeches also revealed controversial support for open borders. WikiLeaks did not disclose how it received the emails, but U.S. intelligence agencies were confident that their disclosure was the work of Russian government hackers.
The Russian operation to influence the election was no match for hardball Democratic presidential campaign politics. The day the official U.S. government joint statement was issued identifying the influence program, Democratic political operatives published details of a 2005 video showing Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump making vulgar comments about women. The news media feeding frenzy that ensued effectively drowned out the latest eye-opening and politically damaging hacking disclosures by the Russians through DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks.
Russian information warfare capabilities are among the most advanced of any nation and are built on a foundation of similar operations honed to perfection during the Soviet Union, a period that stretched from 1917 to 1991. American intelligence officials believe the current government unit in charge of Moscow’s information warfare programs is the Federal Security Service, which in the 2010s emerged as the most powerful spy agency in Moscow, eclipsing the civilian SVR foreign spy service and the once-powerful military spy agency known as GRU. In September 2016, word came from Moscow that Putin was planning KGB 2.0 in the form of a super security and intelligence agency to be called the Ministry of State Security, or MGB. The new ministry would elevate the FSB and combine it with the SVR and Federal Protective Service, which guards Russian leaders. The ministry would be invested with sweeping new powers.
The Russian official behind the presidential campaign operation was identified as Colonel General Sergei Beseda, head of the FSB’s Fifth Service, known as the Directorate of Operational Information and International Communications. Beseda was slapped with U.S. Treasury Department sanctions in July 2014 following Russia’s military annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea—an operation that was among the most strategically significant Russian information warfare operations and one that set in motion all the conditions for the new Cold War with Moscow.
On the night of February 27, 2014, an extraordinary event began unfolding on the Crimean Peninsula, located in the northern part of the Black Sea in Ukraine, a former Soviet republic southwest of Russia and the size of Poland and Germany. Masked troops wearing khaki green uniforms with no military markings or insignia landed at Simferopol International Airport aboard six unmarked helicopter transports and three IL-7
6 troop transports. Within a few hours, the troops had taken over key military bases in Crimea, including airfields and ports at Sevastopol, and the Supreme Council of Crimea, the local parliament in Simferopol. They hoisted the Russian flag from the top of the building. The covert troops were dubbed “Little Green Men” and turned out to be much more than ordinary Russian armed troops. The Little Green Men were in reality elite Russian special operations commandos, known as Spetsnaz, and were armed with the most modern arms, like AK-74 assault rifles and PKP machine guns. To avoid detection from NATO intelligence-gathering assets, the Little Green Men followed complete radio silence during the operation, which would continue over the next several days.
The covert military operation had come just two weeks after the ouster in Kiev of Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was driven from power by crowds of protesters after he refused to conclude an agreement between Ukraine and the European Union. The deal was sought by a large majority of Ukrainians who wanted Ukraine’s closer integration with Europe as protection against the increasingly expansionist and hostile Russia.
In an attempt to counter the negative connotation associated with the term “Little Green Men,” Russian government propagandists orchestrating the Crimea coup from Moscow tried to rename the intruding forces the “Nice People,” over concerns that “Little Green Men” was viewed as too threatening. By March 18, Russian intelligence agents operating inside Crimea had engineered a unilateral declaration of independence from Ukraine. The takeover of the strategic peninsula that included large and valuable industries was complete.
Russia’s Little Green Men were the inaugural players in a new form of Information Age conflict called hybrid warfare. It includes the use of deception, propaganda, covert intelligence and political influence operations, and other information warfare techniques, combined with conventional military forces, and in this case produced the bloodless takeover of a major portion of a foreign country. The annexation of Crimea represented a shift in the geopolitical threat environment. For the first time since Stalin sent Soviet military forces to take over eastern Poland in 1939, Russia assumed an expansionist military posture. The takeover of Crimea is a valuable lesson in understanding Moscow’s use of information warfare to achieve strategic objectives in the twenty-first century.