Has stopped short of formal accusations, they said friday that interference in the election process is a very serious matter. Joining me is david sanger, the National Security correspondent for the New York Times. I am pleased to have him at the table. Welcome. David good to be with you. Thelie in terms of what russians are doing, we will talk about that then we will talk about trumps interview about ukraine. Why would they do that . Who did it . Why did they do it . Then, how do we retaliate . All fascinating issues. To some degree, this is the story that i think most of us didnt see coming in this election. Strange as this cycle has been, it didnt seem likely that if all thetin would, evidence points in that direction, try to actively interfere with an american election. We do know the russians in the past have used information electionsin european and tried to interfere there. To be fair, the u. S. Has not messingve, in history, around in other countries elections. Charlie and showing some regret that they didnt ship so support the people on the streets of tehran when they protested their election. Obama wassident concerned about it back lash. Here is what we know. Got hacked, and we know they lost large amounts of emails and other data, including fundraising data, other databases. Charlie things embarrassing to them. David thats right. It resulted in Debbie Wasserman losing her position as the head of the party. That is what is known. If you follow the forensics inside the documents that have come out, not the ones released by wikileaks, but the ones that were leaked before wikileaks did its dont, there were leaks coming out from someone who 2. We himself guccifer dont believe he was an individual, we believe it was Russian Military intelligence. That theye know werent satisfied with the response to that, so they may have given documents to wikileaks or someone else. David we dont know the transmission. We dont understand how wikileaks got the documents. 2 really was. Er if you look at the documents that are released and you look into the metadata behind them, what do you find . Illic,g marks in cyr timestamps that lineup with moscow. Ip addresses, internet protocol addresses that are identical to ones used in previous hacks by the gr you and another Russian Intelligence Agency when they attacked the german parliament. There was an investigation. Unless somebody is doing one of the worlds best deception campaigns, which is possible, the forensic evidence would strongly suggest that this was done charlie there is agreement on that in terms of intelligence and security. More consistency on this than any issue i have seen since the north korean hack of sony. Charlie why did they do it . Thed the first hack into dnc was in june 2015. When nobody in russia, and nobody around your table, was predicting donald trump would emerge as the nominee. They the question is, were doing this because they were trying to collect things in general . Or were they specifically guessing that Hillary Clinton would get the nomination . Pretty good call in june of 2015. They were looking for material on her. We get to an interesting theory of motive. It is a eerie. In 2011 when Hillary Clinton was the secretary of state, there was a parliamentary election that put in place and solidified Vladimir Putins hold on the government in russia. There were signs of fraud in that election. As secretary out of state, as frequently american officials do in democratic and republican administrations when they believe there was corruption. Putin believed that she was encouraging people to come out and protest in the streets. Which some did. Hates nothing like chaos. David thats right. And nothing like open objection to his rule. Be thatind, it may well the United States started this, that we were messing in their elections. And if we want to go through that, he can show a way to do this, as well. This is theory, but it is a theory that was laid out in public the other day by the director of National Intelligence during the aspen security summit. Charlie the point is, in order to see donald trump elected, it because they dont want Hillary Clinton to be elected, if they did it with that motive. David there was a second hack of the dnc. We believe, by the military intelligence group, that came in the spring of this year. It is that hack that tipped off the dnc that something was going wrong, and that is when they called in private investigators from the fbi and so forth. The documentsike seized then are what we are seeing now. It is not clear that the russian intelligence agencies knew that the other one was in assistance. These guys dont communicate well. In fact, they compete with each other a fair bit. Sb is thethe f inheritor to the kgb, and the gru is . David it is the military intelligence unit. Charlie there are people who say that if in fact they could do that to the dnc, and they could do other hacking they might have done, why wouldnt they have hijacked Hillary Clintons server . We asked this question endlessly at the fbi. The Public Comments that the head of the fbi gave to Congress Last month was, he said, we have no direct evidence that there was any foreign power in her server, and he also said, if they were, and they were highly , it is noted hackers clear we would see the evidence. Charlie they could hide it. Could. They the fsb did a good job of hiding it when they were in. Does that tell you that they werent in the server . No. It tells you we cant prove they were or they were not. We havent seen any of those documents, published elsewhere. Them, that they had is an assumption, they would have released something that would be damaging to her. David you would think. We dont know the totality of want to wait might until a more damaging time. David or they might want to see the reaction. Harlie the u. S. Reacts we retaliate how . David whats the difference between this hack and what we do . This is a difficult problem for many in the Intelligence Community, because they dont ,ike the idea of classifying a the theft of data from the dnc as a cyber attack or necessarily, a great sin, an equivalent organization, political organization, in russia, china, europe, would be considered to be a legitimate target for the nsa. The difference is not that we steal stuff, the differences, whoever, thenor distributed it and used it for a political purpose to ostensibly manipulate an election, if you believe that evidence. The u. S. Government has been very careful and not come out and accused the russians of doing this. Their standard of evidence has to be a lot higher than the thatard of evidence individual companies, cyber companies, would have. The president will have to make a decision to retaliate or not. You want to do that based on as close to 100 certainty as you can get. Charlie they need more certainty before they retaliate . David what can they do the private companies cant . The nsas job is to put implants in Computer Networks around the world to see what is happening. Think of them as the cyber equivalent of radar stations that we set up around the world to see airplanes. Of course, to do that, you have to break into somebodys system, install an implant that is good enough that nobody will find it, keep it going, care and feeding of it each day, checking on it, make sure it is in the right place. You are watering it, treating it in the end, bonsai. The u. S. May or may not have ofdence that those implants, who ordered this or the data when it comes back. They may see something that the rest of us dont know. That is what it what happened in the sony case. The u. S. Was inside north koreas systems and had good direct evidence that north korea ordered the attack. Charlie they could see. David we dont know and they havent said if that is the case. Charlie the idea, if you dont want people to know what you have, you want them to stop doing whatever they do, that used to be the deal with cell phones. You remember how the cia got crazy because, maybe it was the times. Ofssaid they found phone number. David it was published and he stopped using cell phones. Charlie the community got upset about it. David they did. The same thing is true with these implants, and this was a big issue during the snowden revelations three summers ago, because we had evidence of how they were inside china, we publish a lot of that because at that point, the Intelligence Community was telling me telling us that the chinese intelligence had copies of the documents. We learned that while the u. S. Warns everybody not to buy chinese made Telecom Equipment from a certain company, they were inside that company. The question here is not, does everybody spy on each other. Of course they do. The question is, how do you use that material . And in this case, it you believe the american officials, the offense is not spying, the offense is using it to manipulate an election. Charlie that is going beyond the pale, if you try to manipulate election. David and if you are blocked let amir pugin, Vladimir Putin, you say, how is that different from the u. S. Actions . ,harlie it is the notion of when a government does it for private concerns, even if they are stateowned, that was an issue between the u. S. And the chinese. My impression is, the chinese said, we wont do that anymore. To satisfy the obama consideration. David thats right. The rules that u. S. Set up and try to negotiate with the chinese, this is not worked with russia, is, stealing intellectual property is illegal in both countries if you are coming into your studio and stealing your scripts. So it should be, there should be a norm against that in the cyber realm. There was an effort by the u. S. To try to impose a norm, which not many others have signed up to, like the chinese, that says we wont interfere with emergency services. And we also wont interfere with the Computer Emergency Response you backho try to get online. And what is coming down the line is, i think the u. S. Would like a rule that says, we are going to agree to not mess with each Others Nuclear codes. That could lead to a huge problem. Charlie such a huge risk. Want but you would only that deal with the other Major Nuclear powers. It is unclear how you would handle it with everybody else. Charlie the senator from , who used to be the chairman of the intelligence committee, the ranking minority member, has asked the fbi to investigate and release whatever their determination is as to whether or not the russians did it. David she did this with the intelligence member on the house side. The ranking house side. I talked to representative shift about that this weekend. Here is the concern. Two very major hacks on the u. S. Government, in which Everybody Knows who is believed to have done them. The net the government has never accused countries. The first was the theft of state Department Emails and white house emails and an attack on the joint chiefs of staff that is widely believed, inside the u. S. Intelligence committee can to be the work of the same two russian intelligence agencies. You know what they are doing at home. What they are doing back in washington right now is comparing the signatures on the dnc hack to the state departmentwhite house and jcf charlie they have an organized approach. David if the russian Cyber Community is anything, it is highly, highly organized. More organized and subtle over the years than the chinese. The chinese did the opposite. In both cases, the u. S. Government decided not to go reveal what they knew, in part maybe for diplomatic reasons, in part because they didnt want to reveal the intelligence about how they knew it. What you saw senator feinstein is,representative schiff do say look. This is so important of the to the operation of democracy that if you have evidence here, you find a way to make it public. Charlie the fbi is not responding. David and you know what . It is not the fbis decision. It will be the white house. You will have a fight that is going to come between, i dont know this, but i can predict it from history, between the Intelligence Community and people who say we cant reveal our methods, and others who will say, if you accuse the russians of messing with the system, you had better be ready to back it up. Charlie do you assume we will retaliate . David assuming the president is persuaded that this evidence is as good as we think it is from the private sector, it is hard for me to imagine, i wrote a story about this on the sunday times. It is hard for me to imagine that he couldnt do, couldnt avoid doing something. As in the case of sony, this goes beyond just spy versus spy. Sony was important because he believed the North Koreans were going after free speech and threatening theater goers. This would be important because, if you dont retaliate, the message you send is, our electoral system can be manipulated freely from the outside. Charlie there is the political ramifications in terms of, not just manipulating an election, with thehis being done approval, knowledge, direction of Vladimir Putin . Do we think this is pugin orderingthis putin this . These it could be one of intelligence agencies, or a freelancer hired by them. They are trying to impress pugin that they are evening the playing field. It may have not been ordered. To have easy in cyber cutouts. In the nuclear world, we knew the 20 or 30 people who could launch nuclear weapons. We knew the russians were, we newnew winter it was or it was coming from. Easye cyber world, it is to hire outsiders and have them do an attack that it is that is from a different location. It is fascinating that they were so sloppy about leaving pieces of evidence. Charlie we have been talking about foreignpolicy implications and what donald trump knows or doesnt know. You interviewed him. What is your question about what he knows about russia . It is hard to know what he said, because he said so many things. I met him, i talked to him, i never, i dont know the guy. Whathe talks about crimea, does he mean . What does he understand . When he talks about nato, is he saying they ought to pay their bills . Or that it should be a percentage of the gdp . David you have to separate out two different sets of issues. I have talked to him with maggie for three hours on National Security issues over two interviews, one in march and one in cleveland. My impression is this. , theye issues in which have been hobbyhorses of his for a while, like the fact that other members of nato dont pay their share, he is taking something that he has said and he is escalating into the next level. Nobody disagrees, including president obama, that the members of nato are not carrying their weight. What is different is, charlie they call them free riders. It includes britain. David the ones doing the most to carry their weight are the baltic states, the new members who are most worried about russia. Charlie and to nato should be concerned about. Thats right. They are such small economies that they are not much contributors in the larger nato enterprise because of their small size. He is taking this argument and going the next step and saying, if you dont pay up, i may pull out of nato. When we saw him in cleveland, the night before his acceptance speech, i said to him, i have just been it in estonia. If you saw the russians attacking or undermining one of these countries, would you come to their defense . And his answer was, i would basically check first and see whether or not they have been making their contribution. Well, then president obama came back and said, this is an alliance. This is not a business transaction in which we checked the ledgers each time. It would be a little like, your house is burning, charlie, you call the fire department, and lets check and see where your property tax payments are. Dot i think he is trying to may simply be, what mr. Trump is doing, is be a negotiating tactic to scare them into paying more for fear that we would pull back. The problem is, that feeds into an existing insecurity among many in europe that the u. S. Is pulling back, and of donald trump doesnt get elected, this reflects a broader move within from. S. To withdraw itself conflicts and from its defense commitments. Same question in japan and south korea. Thanks for coming. David sanger from the New York Times. Back in a moment. Charlie we continue our conversation on politics and Foreign Policy with richard hass, from the council on foreign relations. Donald trump and foreignpolicy. Can you define it . Richard it has two dimensions. One is economic nationalism, the idea that Foreign Policy is something of a drain and that the real purpose of american foreignpolicy should be to serve the american economy. The other is retrenchment, or of minimalism or isolationism. It is consistent with the idea that Foreign Policy is more about cost than benefits. He wants to dial down dramatically on what we do, and in his view, i believe that would spare us the problems of International Involvement and put aside a big pile of resources he believes could better be used at home. Charlie that is much more sophisticated than i imagined. I think it is simply more transactional. Sees alliances as transactions. If you take a step back, it reflects a larger mindset of the world ripped us off, by and large most the equivalent domestically, when he says the game is rigged, he says the world is ripping us off, allies of cost us more than they helped us. Dont emmy rossum, i think this is wrong, but when you look at history, the u. S. Has paid more than it has benefited from International Involvement. Just the price of leadership, the benefit of leadership. We won the cold war, we had an extraordinary 75 lead years of world leadership. We are still powerful. World war ii turned out the way it did,