Has Putin already won? He divides US intel from political leaders
BY ALEX GALLO, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 03/25/17 08:00 AM EDT
On Capitol Hill this week, we witnessed the much anticipated questioning of FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers by the House Intelligence Committee on Russia's intelligence operations against the United States during the 2016 elections.
Was it Putin’s objective to influence the outcome of the 2016 U.S. elections? Or was his objective to generally undermine confidence in our electoral system and our democracy? These, and many other questions, must be asked and answered.
However, there is another, equally nefarious objective that Putin has also pursued through his covert influence operations, but it has yet to be discussed in any meaningful way among our political leadership. It is Putin’s goal to undermine his enduring adversary: the U.S. Intelligence Community.
While Putin’s objectives through these “active measures” have been multi-faceted, I believe one of Putin’s key, strategic goals from the get-go has been to drive a wedge between the U.S. Intelligence Community and U.S. political leadership — not to mention the American public. By creating this wedge, Putin likely surmised that new constraints would be placed on the U.S. Intelligence Community by our political leadership — thereby providing him more freedom of maneuver to pursue his other objectives.
There are three bits of information over the last two weeks that demonstrate to me that Putin may already be winning.
First, on March 7, Wikileaks dumped the “biggest ever” leak of classified documents that outlined alleged CIA hacking tools and capabilities. This is significant because it was intended to subtlety raise questions about whether the CIA uses these capabilities against Americans — given the common nature of the products that it alleged the CIA could hack: Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Microsoft's Windows, and Samsung smart TVs.
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http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/foreign-policy/325546-has-putin-already-succeeded
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