RussiaGate and Propaganda by Oliver Boyd-Barrett;

Author:Oliver Boyd-Barrett; [Неизв.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2019-06-26T20:00:00+00:00

7 Fake news and intelligence

Hacks and hackers

Alleged “hacking” of DNC/Clinton/Clinton Foundation/John Podesta emails by Russian spies

Special Counsel Robert Mueller issued indictments early 2018 against Russians and Russian institutions that he claimed were guilty of attempts to meddle with the US presidential election by means of bots and trolls (Special Counsel’s Office 2018). He had not yet indicted the supposed perpetrators of the alleged hacking of DNC emails, even though the ICA and Steele dossiers indicated culpability of Russian intelligence. In all, he indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies on conspiracy charges. Some were also accused of identity theft. The charges specified a Russian propaganda effort to interfere with the 2016 campaign. The companies involved were the IRA, often described as a “Russian troll farm,” and two companies that helped finance it. Russian nationals indicted included 12 of the agency’s employees and its alleged financier, Yevgeny Prigozhin. These indictments were never likely to be tested in any court of law. In May 2017 Mueller’s team appeared taken by surprise when Prigozhin showed himself ready to defend his companies (Brown 2018) and, when other attorneys began to demand discovery – which would have forced Mueller to reveal his (possibly shaky) evidence – things went quiet, and memory of the March indictments was shrouded in July by a set of new indictments focusing on the so-called hacking of the DNC emails. Many of Mueller’s charges against members of the 2016 Trump campaign in some way implicated them in attempts to influence, access, or in some way benefit from the WikiLeaks publication of the emails, usually presumed to have been hacked by Russian intelligence. It is not obvious why, had there truly been collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, Russia would not have provided the emails directly to the campaign but, arguably, the aim was to publicly embarrass the Democratic Party in a manner that would not implicate Trump.

The saga began well before the election, and resulted from the scandal of Clinton’s use of a private server while she headed the State Department from 2009 to 2014 (Zurcher 2016). Clinton and her colleagues were condemned in July 2016 by FBI Director James Comey (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2018), following investigation, as “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” The “private server” scandal extended to the alleged deletion by Clinton of emails that were “personal,” and the court-enforced publication of those that were State Department business. WikiLeaks published most of the latter following Freedom of Information (FoI) requests. Conflation of the “private server” scandal and the “DNC hack” scandal may account for missteps of those Trump campaign officials who hoped that further embarrassing revelations about Clinton would emerge in time to influence the election. The important takeaway point is that Clinton’s opponents hoped that incriminating material would be unearthed amongst unpublished emails from her period as Secretary of State, or that related to the controversial Clinton Foundation, or that related to the conduct of the Democratic National Campaign from the start of the 2016 presidential election (Hicks 2016).

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