Having been exposed as unable to maintain the security of the U.S. Federal Government’s databases (comprehensively hacked by China over recent years) or Hillary Clinton and the DNC’s electronic communications (comprehensively hacked by someone, presumably Russia), the American security apparatus now has the chutzpah to charge the Russians with the merest fraction of what they have been doing themselves to other countries for decades, instead of apologizing to the American people for their own incompetence.
The U.S. “Intelligence Community” (I love the way everyone is rebranded as a “community” these days) released the following public statement last Friday:
"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”
You might ask how Russia achieved any of these goals, especially how Clinton was successfully denigrated and made less electable. Were there dirty tricks? Blackmail? Assassinations? Forgeries?
In a word, no – all the hackers did was release confidential emails, the contents of which were not disputed as truthful. The emails showed, essentially, that Hillary Clinton and the leading lights of the DNC were both corrupt and incompetent. This must be the first time in history that spies destabilized a democracy by telling the truth!
You might as well charge Woodward and Bernstein with a conspiracy to denigrate President Nixon.
So much for the hypocrisy and deflection, but there is another, more sinister angle. If the Russians are deemed to have crossed a red line, why tell everyone about it? Why not simply quietly make the Russians pay for what they did? I think there are two possible answers, either or both of which may be true, and neither of which augur well for the political health of the U.S.A.
The “intelligence community” might believe that President-elect Trump knew about the Russian hacking, approved of it, and promised that he would act to make sure no serious counter-measures are taken.
Alternatively, the “intelligence community” has some other kind of beef against Trump, and is simply politicizing this issue and using it as a stick to beat him politically with.
I hope the transition of power in the U.S.A. does not get any more turbulent.
