Page 48 - Covert Action News Today

Action operation against american interests that we may have ever seen. its going to take a while to find out. this is something that under mined faith in our democracy, pitted groups against each other, and maybe, we may know soon, may have decided who was the president of the united states. when youve got an election that was decided by 77,000 voters in three states almost anything can affect it. >> you talked in the past how previous presidents have worried about whether or not russia or othe...

Interference with that history in context. >> sure. i think this -- the russian interference in the 2016 election fits perfectly into the past history of the way the kgb has operated over the years. they are experts at covert action programs that are designed to inject disinformation into foreign countries, and one of the cold war cases that i talk about in the piece is called operation infection in the early 1980s where the kgb went to great lengths through cutouts and intermediaries and using,...

Action operation against american interests that we may have ever seen. its going to take a while to find out. this is something that under mined faith in our democracy, pitted groups against each other, and maybe, we may know soon, may have decided who was the president of the united states. when youve got an election that was decided by 77,000 voters in three states almost anything can affect it. >> you talked in the past how previous presidents have worried about whether or not russia or othe...

Long time. it was kind of the precursor to fake news. >> yeah, the documentation of that in the piece and then it led me down a rabbit hole looking at doctors who were paid off and letters written into news publications and publications running stories on the connections across the world, all of it a kgb operation to spread this damaging misinformation. >> the interesting things, there were east german scientists involved in spreading this rumor at a time when vladimir putin was a kgb officer in...

They are experts at covert action programs that are designed to inject disinformation into foreign countries, and one of the cold war cases that i talk about in the piece is called operation infection in the early 1980s where the kgb went to great lengths through cutouts and intermediaies and using, you know, unwitting news organizations to spread the rumor and the false story that the united states was behind the hiv aids virus and that had an effect in the third world for a long time. it was k...

Title staff secretary sees and handles and hears. >> lets start there, brian. the staff secretary handles all of the most sensitive correspondence and memoranda and decision documents that go to the president of the united states. including everything pertaining to national security. including everything from the national security council, including covert action documents that the president and only the president can review and sign. so this position, the staff secretary position, requires the ...

The first such finding to conduct covert action, influence, operations, cyber actions and others against russia. something like that hadnt been done since the cold war ended. but during that period of time the options that were being considered, which included doing fake personas, fake websites, perhaps even zapping websites and servers, some of that was considered either not to be -- to be effective or to result in retaliation, and some officials even thought that the u.s. spies shouldnt be inv...

Doesnt happen again? >> well, i know there are many conversations happening at the national security council, which is the entity that drives the strategy. this is, this is a tricky issue. its part of covert action. and its very clear from the national security act of 1957 that the cia was responsible for covert action. but the cia cant do things in the united states of america, in english language. so this is going to have to cause and require a change in how the intelligence community and fede...

Side. but it does seem that that -- the reporting has born out by enlarge a real serious effort by the russians to mess with this election. >> i think youre right. we need to remember this began as a counter intelligence investigation looking at a covert action by russia, a potential adversary, seeking to affect our election in 2016. it began as you say with the fbi, cia, other intelligence agencies gathering information that by august and september, they were presenting to members of congress a...

Last year being extremely alarmed from the russia side. that was apart of the story. they read into the intercepts about putin, really alarmed by what the russians were up to, the scope of the efforts, the degree to which they desired to penetrate an infiltrate these campaigns, that does not speak to the res posty on the other side. a real serious effort bit russians to mess with this election. >> i think youre absolutely right. we need to remember that this began really as a counterintelligence...