Im-Politic: Trump’s Accusers on Mishandling Intelligence Have Lots to Explain Themselves

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China, Im-Politic, intelligence, James Clapper, leaks, Russia, Stephen A. Hall, The New York Times, Trump, Washington Post

There was a funny article in today’s Washington Post Outlook section – not “ha ha” funny but funny in the sense that life serves up some coincidences that the adjective “embarrassing” doesn’t come close to covering.

The piece in question came from Stephen A. Hall, described as a 30-year veteran of the CIA’s Russia (and presumably Soviet) operations, and it went after President Trump for sharing intelligence information irresponsibly with Russia and thereby going far toward convincing valuable U.S. allies that his administration can’t be trusted with crucial strategic secrets.

Let’s leave aside the indisputable reality that the Soviet operations “run and managed” by Mr. Hall were completely blindsided by the fall of the Soviet Union – arguably the most important geopolitical development of the final half of the twentieth century. Let’s also leave aside that its Soviet operations were the scene of some of America’s most damaging intelligence failures when Hall was around. (Although I’m sure he wasn’t solely or even largely to blame.)

Let’s focus instead on an article that ran the very same day in The New York Times. It reported that “The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A.spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.”

The reason? An “intelligence breach” that according to The Times was “one of the worst in decades.” Indeed, the article continues, “The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.”

And when did Beijing manage in effect to destroy the American spy network in China? Reported The Times, “From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials….” Further, the article adds, this “previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors.”

Anyone remember who was in charge of the U.S. government and its intelligence community during those years? Aside from Barack Obama, there was also one James R. Clapper, Jr., who was named Director of National Intelligence in August, 2010, and who of course has emerged as one of President Trump’s chief critics. For good measure, Clapper was promoted to that position from the top intelligence job in the Pentagon.

More important: During his tenure as head of the nation’s espionage establishment – and during Mr. Obama’s in the Oval Office – evidently zero progress was made in identifying the moles and plugging the breach. To add possible insult to injury, Clapper also could well be one of the apparent scores of former intelligence officials who have been leaking oceans of highly classified information intended to damage the Trump administration.

Like most reporting about intelligence matters, The Times account of the CIA’s China disaster may be completely or largely or partly wrong. As a result, it will be interesting to see if there’s any pushback over the next few days. But if and until there is, Americans will be entitled to ask whether anything that the president has shared with the Russians has or is likely to damage the nation’s security or its relations with other intelligence services as the disasters associated with many of his leading attackers.

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Im-Politic: Initial Thoughts on the Trump Wars

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2016 election, Andrew McCabe, Director of National Intelligence, FBI, hacking, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, intelligence community, James Clapper, James Comey, John McCain, Justice Department, Lindsey Graham, Loretta Lynch, Michael T. Flynn, Richard M. Nixon, Russia, Russiagate, Sally Yates, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Trump, Wategate

Since I’m not a Trump or intelligence community insider, I’ve refrained from posting any items on the last crisis that began surrounding the administration starting with the president’s firing of James Comey as FBI Director. (I have commented on some aspects briefly on Twitter.) But since I’m a strong supporter of many positions championed by Mr. Trump both during the campaign and – to a lesser extent – in the White House, I thought that RealityChek readers would be interested in some observations about aspects of the uproar that deserve more consideration.

First and most important: Both current and former officials in the federal bureaucracy and even the intelligence community clearly hope to end the Trump presidency, and have decided to leak to the equally anti-Trump Mainstream Media even the most highly classified material if it’s judged to be potentially harmful to the president. Yet no leaks have revealed any evidence supporting the central allegation against the president: the charge that he or close aides colluded in any way with Russian efforts to fix the presidential election in his favor.

Given that the president’s foes long viewed the prospect of his victory with alarm, and given that they have sought to de-legitimize this victory since it unfolded the evening of last November 8, the absence of such a smoking gun after so many months is absolutely startling. If this evidence exists, what are President Trump’s adversaries waiting for?

P.S. – this argument pertains to retired General Michael T. Flynn, who advised candidate Trump and briefly became his White House national security adviser. Flynn has certainly acted in several instances like he’s had something (or things) to hide. But he’s been tracked for months by intelligence officials who – again – have been anything but reluctant to make troubling findings public. And nothing has emerged pointing to working with Russia to undermine the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

One possible explanation? Many anti-Trump-ers are waiting for the 2018 mid-term elections to get closer and closer, in order to boost the chances of a Democratic landslide before the administration had a chance to rebut the charges conclusively – and before Congressional Republicans have a chance to dissociate themselves from Mr. Trump. And maybe they’re being joined by some establishment Republicans, who hope to recapture their party from the Trump-ist forces. And maybe both factions are motivated mainly by the belief that Mr. Trump is such an unprecedented danger to the republic that any means are warranted to remove him from the Oval Office.

If so, however, some big legal issues pop up.  For instance:  Are individuals privy to information about crimes – and in fact major crimes – withholding them from law enforcement authorities? 

Second: Not only has no evidence of collusion been leaked. The former head of the entire intelligence community has just made clear that, during his own prolonged probe of Russia’s efforts to interfere with the election (a related but clearly separate issue, for which strong evidence exists), he saw none.

In March, James Clapper, who resigned as Director of National Intelligence soon after the election, had tantalizingly hinted at the existence of such material by telling a reporter that the intelligence community “did not include any evidence” in its January report on the Russian campaign “that had anything, that had any reflection of collusion between members of the Trump campaign and the Russians. There was no evidence of that included in our report.”

But when pressed by “Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd to confirm whether such evidence existed, Clapper responded, “Not to my knowledge.” And when asked under oath in Senate testimony on three months later whether that statement was still accurate, Clapper stated, “It is.” In other words, Clapper’s probe, which reflected the work of 16 intelligence agencies including his own Director’s office uncovered no collusion evidence.

The issue was briefly muddied during that same hearing by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates. Like Clapper, an Obama administration appointee to her latest position, Yates initially answered the question about collusion by demurring. She explained that her “answer to that question would require me to reveal classified information. And so, I — I can’t answer that.”

As noted by questioner Senator Lindsey Graham – no admirer of President Trump – the FBI that Yates helped supervise as the second-in-command at the Justice Department was part of Clapper’s Russia investigation. After Yates indicated that the FBI was conducting its own separate counter-intelligence inquiry into Russia’s activities, Graham asked Clapper if the evidence found by the Bureau at that time “was not mature enough” to justify including in the broader intelligence community report.

Responded Clapper: “[T]he evidence, if there was any, didn’t reach the evidentiary bar in terms of the level of confidence that we were striving for in that intelligence community assessment.”

So again, a protracted look into Russia’s Election 2016 hacking produced no evidence of collusion that the intelligence community as a whole believed was solid enough to justify even hinting at in its publicly stated conclusions.

Third: One highly damaging allegation that’s been made over the last week was the Washington Post‘s claim that Comey requested more resources from the Justice Department for his investigation just before he was fired. The clear implication: The president became convinced that Comey was ramping up his investigation – which began in July – and decided to fire him in order to deny him the funds needed to do the job adequately. Such an action, of course, would at least strongly resemble obstruction of justice.

This article, however, too, looks fishy. Post reporter Ashley Parker did include an on-the-record flat Justice Department denial, but needless to say, government spokespersons lie or dissemble all the time. Much more difficult to dismiss: Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe – who had been Comey’s former top deputy – stated in his own sworn testimony to Congress that he was unaware of any such request.

Yes, it’s true that Comey might have made the request without telling McCabe. But how much sense does that make? Nor can anyone accuse McCabe of being a Trump toady. His wife, Jill, had run for office in 2015 as a Democrat and had accepted $500,000 in campaign contributions from the political organization of a long-time Clinton family ally, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Finally (for now!), comes the subject, as reported in The New York Times, of Comey’s alleged memo claiming that President Trump asked him to drop his Russia investigation in a February meeting. The former FBI Director will surely have the chance to confirm, deny, or otherwise elaborate on this story and the conversation in his own testimony under oath to Congress.

As suggested by prominent Trump critic Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona, if this request was made, we’re talking about a genuinely Nixonian case of obstruction of justice. (The “smoking gun” tape that played such a decisive role in Richard Nixon’s impeachment and removal in 1974 centered precisely on a decision by the former President to order the FBI to stop its Watergate investigation.)

As Mr. Trump’s critics like to say, however, the Times article “raises questions” – indeed, big ones. First, it’s crucial to note that, as Nixon himself admitted, his actions were intended to cover up criminal activity. As noted above, there’s no evidence yet of a Russia-related crime committed by the Trump administration.

More immediately, Comey has not exactly been shy about loudly expressing, acting on, and widely sharing his concerns about obstacles to official inquests and other behavior he considered improper. In 2004, he threatened to resign as Deputy Attorney General over post-September 11 domestic surveillance programs he viewed as illegal. Last July, he famously held a press conference in which he took the extraordinary step of moving beyond his position’s investigative role to explain extensively his decision to recommend against indicting Hillary Clinton for using a personal email system as Secretary of State. And earlier this month, Comey said – again, under oath – that he took this step because he unilaterally decided that his superior, Attorney General Loretta Lynch had lost credibility as a Clinton investigator because of her meeting with the candidate’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, in June.

It’s certainly possible that Comey has decided to keep firsthand evidence of clear Trump criminality under wraps for going on three months now. But it sure looks out of character.

All of the above notwithstanding, there’s no question that the President’s undisciplined and often contradictory statements understandably have created major suspicions – which are by no means confined to his enemies’ ranks. The consequently confused efforts by his surrogates to clean up these messes have only compounded the problem. And even if the administration had its communications act together, one indisputable lesson of Washington and other scandals is that shoes keep dropping. Moreover, numerous continuing global business ties and burgeoning official responsibilities of the President’s children, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, and his family keep failing valid smell tests.

At the same time, the clearly organized Dump Trump effort by numerous persons with detailed knowledge of seemingly the full range of the federal government’s most sensitive activities suggests that “RussiaGate,” at least, could be different. Not in the sense that damaging claims won’t continue to be made, but in the sense that the anti-Trump-ers might have already leaked their worst.

The only certainty at this point appears to be that the various Trump Wars will rage on for months at a minimum – which means that the valid policy grievances of the president’s supporters and so many other Americans will continue to be neglected by their government.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: U.S. Cyber Strategy Still Seems Full of Holes

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arms control, asymmetrical war, China, cyber-war, deterrence, Iran, James Clapper, Joseph S. Nye, multilateralism, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Politico, Project Syndicate, Russia, treaties

Terrorism has understandably grabbed all the recent national security headlines lately, but two big articles this week have also valuably reminded us that major cyber threats still loom. Unfortunately, these pieces also (unwittingly) remind of all the reasons to worry that Washington still doesn’t have its arms around two of the biggest challenges facing the nation on the cyber front. The first is the asymmetry issue, which is a fancy way of saying that many of America’s current and likely cyber adversaries have much less to lose than the United States in a computer-war exchange. The second is the unlikelihood that the kinds of legalistic foreign policy approaches favored by much of the American establishment can meet this challenge.

Actually, the asymmetry issue has several cyber-related dimensions. One, widely noted (and especially by Chinese strategists), is that today’s civilian computer networks, whose development has long emphasized openness and information sharing, are vulnerable to attacks even from relatively low-tech countries. So for that reason alone, cyber-war can be a great geopolitical equalizer.

The second, however, is less widely noted. As I’ve written, the decision to launch a cyber attack against an adversary with significant cyber-war capabilities of its own rests on much more than a calculation of whether any assets the attacker values (its own cyber forces, its other military forces, its economy or broader society) can survive a retaliatory strike in meaningful form. This decision also hinges on more than how “meaningful” is defined for one or both parties to the conflict. It depends as well on a more fundamental, more political assessment regarding how much pain the two countries and societies can withstand.

Paradoxically, and especially relevant to Americans, the more advanced a country is, the less able it arguably is to deal satisfactorily with the disruptions stemming from a major cyber strike. And because the converse makes sense, too, it may not be decisive that the United States could inflict more damage in absolute terms in a cyber exchange on foes such as North Korea or Iran or Russia or even China than vice versa. The kinds of hardships stemming from the disabling of modern infrastructure could be much more tolerable for the peoples of these less developed, less prosperous countries than for Americans because much greater percentages of them rely so much less on these systems. Moreover, life without them is a much more recent memory – as are knowledge of and experience with coping.

That’s where, for all the information it contains (and keeping in mind that national cyber capabilities are closely guarded secrets), this detailed new Politico article on U.S. forces in this realm falls short. Even if America’s technological edge is as strong as portrayed, some of its adversaries might not be impressed enough to be deterred. One big possible policy implication: Asymmetry means that shoring up the nation’s cyber defenses, difficult as that is, is at least as important for ensuring cyber-security as creating matchless offenses. And as RealityChek readers know, U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper and other senior officials have said – for attribution – that these offenses actually aren’t so matchless. Another big implication – at least against China, trade and broader economic sanctions may be the most effective cyber counter-moves, since China’s dictators will struggle so to remain in power without the growing prosperity created largely by exporting to the United States.

One conclusion that shouldn’t be drawn from this cyber predicament is that a realistic way out is an international treaty or code of conduct banning or limiting cyber war. In this respect, it’s encouraging that Joseph S. Nye’s new essay for Project Syndicate is hardly a ringing endorsement of such legalisms and their effectiveness. But he does suggest that these measures can strengthen deterrence, and notes approvingly that

“major states have agreed that cyber war will be limited by the law of armed conflict, which requires discrimination between military and civilian targets and proportionality in terms of consequences. Last July, the United Nations Group of Government Experts recommended excluding civilian targets from cyberattacks, and that norm was endorsed at last month’s G-20 summit.”

Nye isn’t an Obama administration official, but he has been at the center of Democratic Party foreign policy circles for decades, and his pioneering emphasis on “soft power,” multilateralism, and other supposed substitutes for military might fits right in with Mr. Obama’s belief that world affairs is coming to be dominated by a fundamentally new, more cooperative set of dynamics and relationships. 

So it’s important to note that these ideas are simply efforts to define America’s biggest international problems – and international tensions in general – out of existence. Think about it: If the United States faced cyber-armed adversaries who were willing to abide fully by the conflict-limiting agreements they signed, these agreements wouldn’t be needed in the first place. For those countries would never take such commitments seriously unless they decided that their stake in maintaining whatever degree of (shaky) global peace and order prevails significantly outweighs whatever goals they could hope to achieve through major use of cyber-weapons – or any other weapons.

That is, if the world’s Chinas, Russias, and Irans were truly devoted to competing for influence peacefully and according to a set of rules, the rules would simply codify that reality. Their existence on a piece of paper cannot create it. And the asymmetry problem makes assuming their reasonableness (at least as Americans judge it) or perceived support for the global status quo even less reasonable.

Moreover, anyone believing that the history of nuclear arms control debunks that pessimism doesn’t understand that the various Cold War agreements signed by the United States and Soviet Union had nothing important to due with preventing armageddon. Instead, in this case, the conditions for a successful “balance of terror” – of mutual deterrence – were obviously in place. Fears of final physical destruction trumped all other considerations and produced restraint.

Sadly, there’s no evidence that any of the presidential candidates this year have better ideas. But as I wrote above, what the public doesn’t know about America’s cyber-war programs and strategies greatly (and properly) exceeds what it knows. So perhaps there’s some hope that truly realistic approaches are being developed, and that the next president will start learning about them once he or she is elected.

Following Up: U.S. Again Confirms it Lacks Cyber-War Superiority

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cyber-security, cyber-war, David Sanger, deterrence, Following Up, James Clapper, Martin Dempsey, technology, The New York Times

The Big Media’s habit of burying the most important news – or its most uproarious gaffes – just keeps growing and growing. Yesterday, I posed on the Financial Times‘ hilariously sympathetic portrait of American tech executives – who clearly conned two reporters into thinking they often served as diplomatic intermediaries between Washington and Beijing, and selflessly kept U.S.-China relations on a safe course that was continually threatened by reckless politicians. Completely ignored by the paper was the companies’ overriding self-interest in preserving China profits that too often have been made at the American domestic economy’s expense – and the resulting, often furious, lobbying, that has dominated their China policy role.

Today’s example is much more serious: A New York Times account of American struggles to combat cyber-hacking by China and other rivals that glossed over the latest official U.S. acknowledgement that America lacks the technological superiority required to retaliate against cyber-aggression without fear of a devastating response.

At least give Times reporter David Sanger credit for mentioning at all a statement by U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper that the United States lacks “both the substance and the mindset of deterrence” in the cyber-war realm. This confession went unreported outside specialty publications and website, if a Google search for the quote is accurate.

Admittedly, Clapper’s statement is somewhat ambiguous. A deficiency in the “substance” of deterrence could mean that technology capable of striking back at hackers and their sponsors with impunity simply isn’t available at all, or to U.S. policymakers. But Clapper’s reference to the “mindset” could also mean that this knowhow is available but hasn’t been deployed by the appropriate government agencies, or that it’s close enough to being developed but that a lack of political will keeps slowing progress.

In any event, Clapper’s sobering description of the global cyber-war situation sounds ominously close to that offered in January by retiring U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey – which you RealityChek readers learned about first! And as long as cyber attacks remain a threat to America’s national and economic security, that means that the U.S. government, corporate America, and vital infrastructure systems all remain dangerously vulnerable.