Since the election, we’ve learned that Vice President Mike Pence used private email for official business when he was Governor of Indiana, like so many other state and federal officials across our country (including, by the way, many staff in the Bush White House, who used a private RNC server for government business and then “lost” more than twenty million emails). We’ve learned that Trump’s transition team copied highly sensitive documents and removed them from a secure facility. We’ve learned that members of Trump’s White House staff use encrypted messaging apps that seem to evade federal records laws. And we know now that Trump associates are under federal investigation for far more serious things. Yet most of the fulminating critics have gone silent. It’s almost as if they never really cared about the proper maintenance of government records or the finer points of retroactive classification, and the whole thing was just a convenient political piñata.
The further we get from the election, the stranger it seems that this controversy could swing a national election with such monumental consequences. I picture future historians scratching their heads, trying to understand what happened. I’m still scratching mine, too.
When reason fails, the devil helps.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
Trolls, Bots, Fake News, and Real Russians
Some people are blessed with a strong immune system. Others aren’t as lucky. Their defenses have been worn down by disease or injury, so they’re susceptible to all kinds of infections that a healthy person would easily fight off. When that happens to someone you love, it’s terrible to watch.
The “body politic” works in much the same way. Our democracy has built-in defenses that keep us strong and healthy, including the checks and balances written into our Constitution. Our Founding Fathers believed that one of the most important defenses would be an informed citizenry that could make sound judgments based on facts and reason. Losing that is like losing an immune system, leaving a democracy vulnerable to all manner of attack. And a democracy, like a body, cannot stay strong through repeated injuries.
In 2016 our democracy was assaulted by a foreign adversary determined to mislead our people, enflame our divisions, and throw an election to its preferred candidate. That attack succeeded because our immune system had been slowly eroded over years. Many Americans had lost faith in the institutions that previous generations relied on for objective information, including government, academia, and the press, leaving them vulnerable to a sophisticated misinformation campaign. There are many reasons why this happened, but one is that a small group of right-wing billionaires—people like the Mercer family and Charles and David Koch—recognized long ago that, as Stephen Colbert once joked, “reality has a well-known liberal bias.” More generally, the right spent a lot of time and money building an alternative reality. Think of a partisan petri dish where science is denied, lies masquerade as truth, and paranoia flourishes. Their efforts were amplified in 2016 by a presidential candidate who trafficked in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet; a candidate who deflected any criticism by attacking others with made-up facts and an uncanny gift for humiliating zingers. He helped to further blur news and entertainment, reality TV and reality.
As a result, by the time Vladimir Putin came along, our democracy was already far sicker than we realized.
Now that the Russians have infected us and seen how weak our defenses are, they’ll keep at it. Maybe other foreign powers will join them. They’ll also continue targeting our friends and allies. Their ultimate goal is to undermine—perhaps even destroy—Western democracy itself. As the former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, told Congress, “If there has ever been a clarion call for vigilance and action against a threat to the very foundation of our democratic political system, this episode is it.”
This should concern all Americans—Republicans, Democrats, Independents, everyone. We need to get to the bottom of it. The 2016 election may be over, but we have new elections coming up soon. I’m going to lay out what is known in as much detail as I can, so we can try to understand what happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. There’s a lot we still don’t know, investigations are ongoing, and the story changes daily with breaking news. Trump, his allies, and others have vigorously denied accusations of wrongdoing. You can look at the facts and decide for yourself. But what should be beyond doubt is that foreign interference in our elections is wrong, period. And the threat we face, from without and within, is bigger than one campaign, one party, or one election. The only way to heal our democracy and protect it for the future is to understand the threat and defeat it.
V for Vendetta (and Vladimir)
President Obama once compared Vladimir Putin to a “bored kid at the back of the classroom.” “He’s got that kind of slouch,” Obama said. When I sat with Putin in meetings, he looked more like one of those guys on the subway who imperiously spread their legs wide, encroaching on everyone else’s space, as if to say, “I take what I want,” and “I have so little respect for you that I’m going to act as if I’m lounging at home in my bathrobe.” They call it “manspreading.” That was Putin.
I’ve dealt with a lot of male leaders in my life, but Putin is in a class by himself. A former KGB spy with a taste for over-the-top macho theatrics and baroque violence (a public inquiry in the United Kingdom concluded that he probably approved the killing of one of his enemies in London by poisoning his tea with polonium-210, a rare radioactive isotope), Putin has emerged in the popular imagination as an arch-villain straight out of a James Bond movie. Yet he’s also perennially misunderstood and underestimated. George W. Bush famously said that after looking Putin in the eye, he found him “very straightforward and trustworthy,” and was “able to get a sense of his soul.” My somewhat tongue-in-cheek response was: “He was a KGB agent—by definition, he doesn’t have a soul.” I don’t think Vladimir appreciated that one.
Our relationship has been sour for a long time. Putin doesn’t respect women and despises anyone who stands up to him, so I’m a double problem. After I criticized one of his policies, he told the press, “It’s better not to argue with women,” but went on to call me weak. “Maybe weakness is not the worst quality for a woman,” he joked. Hilarious.
Putin still smolders over what he views as the humiliations of the 1990s, when Russia lost its old Soviet dominions, and the Clinton administration presided over NATO’s expansion. And things got a lot worse between us during my time as Secretary of State.
When President Obama and I came into office in 2009, Putin and his prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, had swapped jobs as a way of thwarting constitutionally required term limits. Surprisingly, Medvedev showed some independence and a willingness to pursue better relations with the United States. We knew Putin was still the real power in Russia but decided to see if we could find some areas of shared interest where progress might be possible. That was the origin of the much-maligned “reset.” It led to several concrete successes, including a new nuclear arms control treaty, new sanctions on Iran and North Korea, a much-needed supply route to equip our troops in Afghanistan, increased trade and investment, and expanded counterterrorism cooperation. In the spring of 2011, President Medvedev agreed to abstain on the UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force to protect civilians in Libya from the dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, a decision that angered Putin.
President Obama and I agreed that seeking pragmatic cooperation with Russia on certain issues was not inconsistent with also standing up for our values and showing support for the democratic aspirations of the Russian people. I felt a responsibility to speak out against the Kremlin’s repression of human rights in Russia, especially the intimidation and murder of journalists and political opponents. In October 2009, I was in Moscow and did an interview with one of the last remaining independent radio stations in the country. I expressed support for human rights and civil society, and I said that I t
hought a lot of Russians wanted the thugs who attacked journalists brought to justice. I knew Putin wouldn’t be happy with me saying these things on his own turf, but I felt that if the United States accepted a gag order on these issues, that decision would reverberate, not just in Russia but also around the world.
The KGB taught Putin to be suspicious of everyone. Russia’s troubles in the 1990s and the “color revolutions” of the 2000s—the string of popular revolts that toppled authoritarian regimes in several former Soviet bloc countries—took him from suspicious to paranoid. He came to view popular dissent as an existential threat. When he heard me and other Western leaders voice support for civil society in Russia, he saw it as a plot to undermine him.
For Putin, a pivotal moment came in 2011. In September he announced he would run for President again. In December there were widespread reports of fraud in parliamentary elections, which sparked domestic protests and international condemnation. At a conference in Lithuania focused on promoting democracy and human rights in Europe, I expressed America’s concerns. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” I said, “and that means they deserve fair, free, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.” Tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets amid chants of “Putin is a thief,” an unprecedented popular challenge to his iron grip on the country. Putin, more paranoid than ever, thought it was a conspiracy orchestrated from Washington. He blamed me in particular, saying I “gave them a signal.”
Putin quashed the protests and once again became President, but he was now running scared and seething with anger. In the fall of 2011, Putin had published an essay promising to regain Russia’s regional and global influence. I read it as a plan to “re-Sovietize” the lost empire and said so publicly. Once back in office, Putin moved to put his vision into action. He consolidated power and cracked down on any remaining domestic dissent. He also took a more combative tone toward the West and nursed his personal grudge against me. By the way, that’s not just how I saw it; grudge is also the word the U.S. government used in its official assessment.
In a series of memos, I warned President Obama that things were changing in Russia, and America would have to take a harder line with Putin. Our relationship was likely to get worse before it got better, I told the President, and we needed to make it clear to Putin that aggressive actions would have consequences.
There’s a Bear in the Woods
During Obama’s second term, when I was out of office, things did indeed go from bad to worse. When popular protests in Ukraine forced the country’s corrupt, pro-Moscow leader to flee, Putin swung into action. He launched an operation to subvert and seize Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, a vacation destination for wealthy Russians. That was followed by further efforts to destabilize eastern Ukraine, home to many ethnic Russians, eventually leading to a protracted civil war.
Watching from the sidelines, I was struck by the sophistication of the operation. It was much more effective than Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia. Nationalist propaganda on television, radio, and social media radicalized ethnic Russians, while cyberattacks muzzled opposing voices. Undercover Russian paramilitary special forces swept into Crimea to organize protests, seize buildings, and intimidate or co-opt Ukrainian officials. Meanwhile, the Kremlin denied it all, despite the fact that the whole world could see photos of Russian soldiers carrying Russian weapons, driving Russian vehicles, and speaking with Russian accents. Putin called them indigenous “self-defense groups.” Ukrainians called them “little green men.” Once the occupation was a fait accompli, the Russians staged a rigged referendum to give themselves a patina of popular sovereignty and then annexed the peninsula, formally making it part of Russia.
The Russians did one other thing, which didn’t get enough attention at the time but in retrospect was a sign of things to come. In early 2014, they released on Twitter and YouTube what they claimed was an audio recording of a private conversation between two veteran American diplomats, our Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoff Pyatt, and my friend and former advisor Toria Nuland, who was then the top State Department official for Europe. On the Russian tape, Toria used colorful language to express her exasperation about European foot-dragging over Ukraine. Moscow clearly hoped her words would drive a wedge between America and our allies. The incident didn’t have lasting diplomatic repercussions, but it did show that the Russians were not just stealing information for intelligence purposes, as all countries do; they were now using social media and strategic leaks to “weaponize” that information.
In the wake of Russia’s Ukraine operations, I expressed my concerns to some of my former national security colleagues. Moscow had clearly developed new capabilities in psychological and information warfare and was willing to use them. I was worried the United States and our allies weren’t prepared to keep up or respond. I knew that in 2013, one of Russia’s top military officers, Valery Gerasimov, had written an article laying out a new strategy for hybrid warfare. In previous generations, the Soviet military had planned to fight large-scale conflicts with massive conventional and nuclear forces. In the twenty-first century, Gerasimov said, the line between war and peace would blur, and Russia should prepare for under-the-radar conflicts waged through propaganda, cyberattacks, paramilitary operations, financial and energy manipulation, and covert subversion. The operations in Crimea and eastern Ukraine (and, I would argue, the harboring of NSA leaker Edward Snowden) proved that Putin was putting Gerasimov’s theory into practice.
Sometimes these tactics are called “active measures.” Thomas Rid, a professor of security studies at King’s College London, offered a good primer in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in March 2017. “Active measures are semicovert or covert intelligence operations to shape an adversary’s political decisions,” he explained. “The tried and tested way of active measures is to use an adversary’s weaknesses against himself,” and the rise of the internet and social media has created many new opportunities. As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it, “The Russians have been at this for a long time,” and now “they’ve adapted old methods to new technologies—making use of social media, malware, and complex financial transactions.”
I was also alarmed to see Russian money, propaganda, or other support aiding right-wing nationalist parties across Europe, including Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, Alternative for Germany (AfD), and Austria’s Freedom Party. According to the Washington Post, the Kremlin has also cultivated leaders of right-wing American organizations such as the NRA, the National Organization for Marriage, and individuals like the evangelist Franklin Graham. Putin has positioned himself as the leader of an authoritarian, xenophobic international movement that wants to expel immigrants, break up the European Union, weaken the Atlantic Alliance, and roll back much of the progress achieved since World War II. People laugh when Putin has himself photographed riding horses shirtless, winning judo matches, and driving race cars. But the macho stunts are part of a strategy. He has made himself an icon to traditionalists everywhere who resent their increasingly open, diverse, and liberal societies. That’s why he formed a close alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church, passed vicious antigay laws, and decriminalized domestic violence. It’s all about projecting an image of traditional masculinity, Christian morality, and white nationalist purity and power.
During the campaign, I asked my team to start working on a more aggressive strategic approach toward Russia. I didn’t want to be dragged into a new Cold War, but the best way to avoid conflict and keep the door open for future cooperation would be to send Putin a message of strength and resolve on Day One. It’s been said that he subscribes to Vladimir Lenin’s old adage: “Probe with bayonets. If you encounter mush, proceed; if you encounter steel, withdraw.” I wanted to be sure that when Putin looked to America, he saw steel, not mush.
I wanted to go further than the Obama administration, which resisted providing defensive
arms to the Ukrainian government or establishing a no-fly zone in Syria, where Putin had launched a military intervention to prop up the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad. I also intended to increase our investment in cybersecurity and pursue an all-hands-on-deck effort to secure cooperation between the government and the private sector on protecting vital national and commercial infrastructure from attacks, including nuclear power plants, electrical grids, dams, and the financial system.
All of this is to say that I had my eyes open. I knew Putin was a growing threat. I knew he had a personal vendetta against me and deep resentment toward the United States.
Yet I never imagined that he would have the audacity to launch a massive covert attack against our own democracy, right under our noses—and that he’d get away with it.
Since the election, we’ve learned a lot about the scope and sophistication of the Russian plot, and more information comes to light every day. But even during the campaign, we knew enough to realize that we were facing, in the words of Senator Harry Reid, “one of the gravest threats to our democracy since the Cold War.” And it just got worse from there. I won’t try to provide you a definitive account of every twist and turn of this saga—there are plenty of other sources for that—but I will try to share what I experienced, how it felt, and what I think we need to do as a nation to protect ourselves for the future.
The Budding Bromance
It was strange from the start. Why did Donald Trump keep blowing kisses to Vladimir Putin? He said he would give Putin an A for leadership, and described the Russian President as “highly respected within his country and beyond.” Trump reveled in reports that Putin had called him “brilliant,” even though the more accurate translation was “colorful.” In a particularly telling exchange on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Trump defended Putin’s alleged murder of journalists. “At least he’s a leader, unlike what we have in this country,” Trump said. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he added, “I think our country does plenty of killing also.” No previous American presidential candidate would ever have dreamt of trashing our country like that or suggesting moral equivalency between American democracy and Russian autocracy. No wonder Putin liked Trump.
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