Why didn't 17 US intelligence agencies end Russian meddling?

[Elvis]

The United States spends $50,000,000,000 every year on national security intelligence. Fifty billion every year. Why didn't any of the 17 intelligence agencies detect Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election before the fact?

Were they too busy spying on citizens of the "Homeland"?

If they detected it, did they tell anybody? What did they try to do about it? Did they do anything else with the information?

I want information. Information.

[seemslikeadream]

they did but you do not believe them right?

so what's there to talk about?

could you give me links that are acceptable to you please?

[Elvis]

Slad, would you mind deleting that off-topic post? Thanks.

This thread is for earnest investigation of the questions I put forward.

Let me be perfectly clear—

you do not believe them right?

—that is NOT right, your assumption is 100% incorrect, and it doesn't belong in this thread. Thanks.

[seemslikeadream]

is this earnest?


they did tell and McConnel refused to release bipartisan statement

Yes, 17 intelligence agencies really did say Russia was behind hacking
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... /92514592/

Before the fact

McConnell Refused To Sign Bipartisan Statement On Russian Interference
Biden said the Obama administration sought a united front to dispel concerns that going public with such accusations would be seen as an effort to undermine the legitimacy of the election.

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... terference

better?

I really didn't think you believe the 17 intel agencies

[Elvis]

Dear readers, I was not clear in the OP, so I've amended the question:


The United States spends $50,000,000,000 every year on national security intelligence. Fifty billion every year. Why didn't any of the 17 intelligence agencies detect Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election before the fact?


I ask because I haven't heard it asked anywhere in the MSM, or for that matter, anywhere, and I'm curious. Clearly, a bunch of Russians, Ukrainians and others were trying to influence the U.S. election through social media, etc., and I would expect the intel agencies to have picked up on it, especially if the perpetrators were operating in concert with any Russian officials or oligarchs, which appears so. I assume these figures are monitored by U.S. intelligence.

[PufPuf93]

they did but you do not believe them right?

so what's there to talk about?

could you give me links that are acceptable to you please?

Seriously. This is the USA and RI. Why would any of us believe anything out of the intelligence agencies anyway? Look at their history. Look at their lack of oversight. Look at their documented methods of manipulating opinion. Trump and cohorts have all sorts of Russian connections, not unlike Ford and IBM and others and the Nazis. Look at the CIA and post-WWII Nazis. The agencies have a credibility problem regardless of the awfulness of Trump and probably are pretty much incapable of dealing straight witht he public. At best they have failed in this case. Probably something more sinister is at play. We are along for the ride.

[mentalgongfu2]

While not wanting to get in the middle of the personality conflicts that seem to dominate RI these days, I would point out that USA Today article posted above by slad was originally published in October 2016. While math is not my best subject, I'm pretty sure that October came before the November election.

On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails 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 US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

While the agencies all issued the statement together, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Politifact he took Clinton to be implying each agency came to the conclusion independently, a situation Cheung finds "unlikely."

This summer, Wikileaks released a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee. And over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has been releasing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. The Clinton campaign has neither confirmed or denied the authenticity of the emails, though they have pushed back on certain emails and warned that stolen information could be altered.

Take it with as much salt as needed, but it sure seems like at least some of the agencies came to the very conclusion that Russian sources were attempting to interfere in the election, and DHS made a public statement to that effect on behalf of all the agencies. All of this prior to the election.

[PufPuf93]

While not wanting to get in the middle of the personality conflicts that seem to dominate RI these days, I would point out that USA Today article posted above by slad was originally published in October 2016. While math is not my best subject, I'm pretty sure that October came before the November election.

On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails 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 US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

While the agencies all issued the statement together, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Politifact he took Clinton to be implying each agency came to the conclusion independently, a situation Cheung finds "unlikely."

This summer, Wikileaks released a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee. And over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has been releasing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. The Clinton campaign has neither confirmed or denied the authenticity of the emails, though they have pushed back on certain emails and warned that stolen information could be altered.

Take it with as much salt as needed, but it sure seems like at least some of the agencies came to the very conclusion that Russian sources were attempting to interfere in the election, and DHS made a public statement to that effect on behalf of all the agencies. All of this prior to the election.

Why didn't the USA then do something about the Russian meddling?

As stated, the Russians had used similar "actics and techniques" elsewhere. The USA also monkeys with other countries elections and likely has had a far bigger impact than Russia globally.

I don't like how the election turned out (as a adult life long Democrat party member with no inclination to leave).

The issue shoudl have been addressed timely rather then after the rersult of an unfortunate election. Actors internal to the USA mess with elections and the Parties skirt the edges of various laws as standard practice and there is some talk but now action to the degree that some experts think we no longer have a democracy.

The intelligence agencies and media where they have long been imbedded pick and chose what issues get attention. These agencies have a huge effect on public opinion and elections.

To me the Russia election issue rings hollow and by design generates hysteria when there are plenty of financial issues to remove Trump and cohorts.

Why didn't the intelligence agencies do something about Russian meddling in our election in a timely manner? There was nothing to stop them. POTUS Obama was still in office. IMO Obama was best POTUS since prior to Reagan and likely the best we will have in my dwindling life. Why is not the concern show to the fact that the entire election process was goofy and we ended up with two candidates that represented wealth rather than people? Why don't the intelligence agencies spend some time molding the minds of folks that are flocked to Trump? and so on.

[Elvis]

Why would any of us believe anything out of the intelligence agencies anyway? Look at their history. Look at their lack of oversight. Look at their documented methods of manipulating opinion. Trump and cohorts have all sorts of Russian connections, not unlike Ford and IBM and others and the Nazis. Look at the CIA and post-WWII Nazis. The agencies have a credibility problem regardless of the awfulness of Trump and probably are pretty much incapable of dealing straight witht he public. At best they have failed in this case. Probably something more sinister is at play. We are along for the ride.

That credibility problem is of course an important context, deception goes with the territory. But at some level, I think at least one of their basic functions is to actually look for real threats and try to prevent attacks on America, and that there must be at least a few sincere personnel doing that sort of work with the best intentions.

First decent hit in a cursory Web search is this recent New York Times piece below, which reflects some blame-shifting among the parties, around the question of what they knew and why they didn't try to stop the attack. Much of the story is irrelevant stuff about Trump's whining, omitted below. The political explanation is that Obama wasn't forceful with the Russians because he didn't want to appear partisan. The most interesting figure to me is Clapper.

Everybody in the article reframes the question. The matter is confused by separating "information warfare" from "hacking" and as a whole, that third paragraph is just weird. Also the writer's refererences to Russian efforts to hack voting machines in 21 states and protecting balloting machines is either pure ignorance or pure hyperbole. If it's the former, for crying out loud—do I know more about this than the New York Times reporter? Anyway, I want to see the intelligence briefing mentioned.

MARK LANDLER
FEB. 20, 2018
. . .

Some former Obama officials now confess to misgivings about Mr. Obama’s reluctance to act, or speak out more forcefully, even as the evidence piled up during the spring and summer of 2016 that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee and were behind the leak of damaging emails about Hillary Clinton.

Yet the officials say the indictment last week of 13 Russians by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, does not suggest that Mr. Obama could have prevented the Russian campaign. The evidence uncovered in this phase of the investigation, they noted, is about Russia’s information warfare, not its hacking, and the government does not control what flows into the social media accounts of American citizens.

“If there was a problem, it was that the government didn’t have any levers to pull in this space,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser and one of Mr. Obama’s closest aides. “The U.S. government isn’t designed to guard against the manipulation of every individual American’s Facebook feed and Twitter feed.”

“So it comes back to one question,” Mr. Rhodes added. “Could he have talked about it more?”
. . .

In fact, Mr. Obama personally issued a warning to Mr. Putin in September not to tamper in the election — a warning the administration repeated a few weeks later. On Oct. 7, his administration formally accused Russia of stealing and leaking emails from the Democratic National Committee and a range of other institutions and individuals.

Mr. Obama, his former aides said, had hoped that the announcement, by the director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., and the Department of Homeland Security, would follow a bipartisan statement by congressional leaders about the need for state and local authorities to guard their voter-registration and balloting machines from Russian hacking.

The White House provided an intelligence briefing to the lawmakers, including Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin and the House speaker, and Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the Senate majority leader. But Mr. McConnell, two former officials said, refused to back a statement publicly challenging Russia and told Mr. Obama that he would view an effort by the White House to do that as partisan.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said that the White House asked him to sign a letter warning about the threat of cyberattacks, and that he did so. But that letter did not name Russia and only spoke generally about the threat to the electoral process.

Other Republican senators faulted the Obama administration on Tuesday for failing to warn officials in 21 states where intelligence agencies had detected efforts by the Russians to probe voting machines that they were at risk of being infiltrated. In some cases, officials in those states were not cleared to be briefed on the intelligence.

“I am very concerned that the Obama administration did so little,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine. She added, referring to the F.B.I. director at the time, “They were aware — the intelligence community leaders were fully aware, whether it was Jim Clapper or James Comey, that the Russians were attempting to interfere in our elections — and they put out that brief statement before the election.”

Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, said that even after Mr. Obama formally named Russia, the administration declined to declassify information related to meddling by the Kremlin. “I’m not sure why they continued to sit on that information,” he said.

Some former administration officials said they pushed for the United States to take pre-emptive or deterrent measures against Russia in the summer of 2016. But the White House was reluctant, in part because the intelligence agencies still had not reached a consensus about who was responsible for the hacking. There were also concerns about Russia retaliating and whether the United States should use similar tactics.

Looming over all this was Mr. Obama’s worry that if he spoke out strongly, he would be viewed as trying to tilt the vote.

“He really did feel, in September and October of an election year, as the head of the Democratic Party, that his role in adjudicating the information Americans received should be limited,” Mr. Rhodes said. “If he had ratcheted up that rhetoric, we would have seen exactly what we see today. It would have been called fake news.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/20/us/p ... dling.html

[Elvis]

Interestingly, this Minnesota Public Radio item seems to have been taken down:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/ ... irefox-b-1

original link gets this:

Error

Something is broken in our system, but it's already been logged.

[mentalgongfu2]

While not wanting to get in the middle of the personality conflicts that seem to dominate RI these days, I would point out that USA Today article posted above by slad was originally published in October 2016. While math is not my best subject, I'm pretty sure that October came before the November election.

On Oct. 7, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement on behalf of the U.S. Intelligence Community. The USIC is made up of 16 agencies, in addition to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails 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 US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

While the agencies all issued the statement together, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told Politifact he took Clinton to be implying each agency came to the conclusion independently, a situation Cheung finds "unlikely."

This summer, Wikileaks released a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee. And over the past two weeks, Wikileaks has been releasing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails. The Clinton campaign has neither confirmed or denied the authenticity of the emails, though they have pushed back on certain emails and warned that stolen information could be altered.

Take it with as much salt as needed, but it sure seems like at least some of the agencies came to the very conclusion that Russian sources were attempting to interfere in the election, and DHS made a public statement to that effect on behalf of all the agencies. All of this prior to the election.

Why didn't the USA then do something about the Russian meddling?

As stated, the Russians had used similar "actics and techniques" elsewhere. The USA also monkeys with other countries elections and likely has had a far bigger impact than Russia globally.

I don't like how the election turned out (as a adult life long Democrat party member with no inclination to leave).

The issue shoudl have been addressed timely rather then after the rersult of an unfortunate election. Actors internal to the USA mess with elections and the Parties skirt the edges of various laws as standard practice and there is some talk but now action to the degree that some experts think we no longer have a democracy.

The intelligence agencies and media where they have long been imbedded pick and chose what issues get attention. These agencies have a huge effect on public opinion and elections.

To me the Russia election issue rings hollow and by design generates hysteria when there are plenty of financial issues to remove Trump and cohorts.

Why didn't the intelligence agencies do something about Russian meddling in our election in a timely manner? There was nothing to stop them. POTUS Obama was still in office. IMO Obama was best POTUS since prior to Reagan and likely the best we will have in my dwindling life. Why is not the concern show to the fact that the entire election process was goofy and we ended up with two candidates that represented wealth rather than people? Why don't the intelligence agencies spend some time molding the minds of folks that are flocked to Trump? and so on.

All fair points.

But as to the OP question about intelligence agencies not DETECTING interference - they clearly did, and it was clearly publicized to some extent prior to the election in a number of public forums in addition to private ones. Which, I dare say, makes the OP question kind of BS, as it is asking "why didn't X happen?" when X clearly DID happen.

[Elvis]

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats acknowledged at a hearing on Feb. 13 that “there's no single agency in charge” of blocking potential Russian meddling

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 6-meddling

Hey genius, who's in charge of the agencies? wtf.

[Iamwhomiam]

Quite frankly, was the known Russian hacking, their human and bot generation and promotion of emotionally influential fake news postings to targeted social media users, retaliatory? Or just tit for tat everyday business? Does it matter?

[mentalgongfu2]

Elvis, will you acknowledge that the alleged Russian meddling was detected and commented upon before the election? I don't know if you're deliberately avoiding replies to my posts, but it feels that way at the moment. I can go find more articles that show US Intelligence agencies were making these statements prior to November 2016 if I must. This was not something that appeared only after Trump's election.

[Iamwhomiam]

Elvis, isn't this the link: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2018/02/21/npr-fact-check-why-didnt-obama-stop-russias-election-interference-in-2016

Fact Check: Why didn't Obama stop Russia's election interference in 2016?

Philip Ewing · NPR · Feb 21, 2018