Obama White House Knew of Russian Election Hacking, but Delayed Telling
Source: New York Times
The Obama administration feared that acknowledging Russian meddling in the 2016 election would reveal too much about intelligence gathering and be interpreted as “taking sides” in the race, the former secretary of homeland security said Wednesday.
“One of the candidates, as you recall, was predicting that the election was going to be ‘rigged’ in some way,” said Jeh Johnson, the former secretary, referring to President Trump’s unsubstantiated accusation before Election Day. “We were concerned that by making the statement we might, in and of itself, be challenging the integrity of the election process itself.”
Mr. Johnson’s testimony, before the House Intelligence Committee, provided a fresh insight into how the Obama administration tried to balance politically explosive information with the public’s need to know. That question also vexed federal law enforcement officials investigating Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.
Mr. Johnson said he became increasingly concerned about the vulnerabilities of the nation’s election infrastructure, particularly after the hacking at the Democratic National Committee last summer. The administration formally accused the Russian government of hacking into emails from the D.N.C. and other institutions and individuals on Oct. 7.
Read more: https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/06/21/us/politics/jeh-johnson-testimony-russian-election-hacking.html
Unbelievable. In short, the Homeland security Department chose not to disclose the hacks because Trump would be mad, as he said the elections would be rigged.
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vi5
(13,305 posts)Yes, it would be absolutely unheard of for a Democratic president to take the side of the Democratic candidate in an election.
I mean after all Morning Joe and David Brooks might furrow their brows at such an action and express disappointment.
Good lord at what point are our "leaders" going to fucking wake up and get it?
karynnj
(60,796 posts)they could not know the impact of putting out a statement that the Russians were attempting the hack the election. It could have been seen as spectacularly backfiring had they done so. I have not read much of the testimony, but if it is similar to things said before I don't know how different the statement would have been to the statement that 17 intelligence agencies saw Russia as behind the hacking. That statement came out in early October and - when the New Yorker behind the scenes article came out, the timeline was that they knew in - I think- late July.
Remember that HRC spoke of the 17 agencies' determination that Russian did the hacking and even called Trump a Russian puppet in one of the dates. Those words echoed everywhere - on SNL and on social media. Looking to get a link, I found this article that spoke of how that went viral. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article125773299.html Reading it now, I see it differently than I did when I watched the debate and thought Trump made no sense and HRC really defined him there. What Trump said in the debate was essentially what their response was - that this happened because Obama was weak on national security and Clinton would be too. This plays to the decades old meme that Democrats - even if they are war heroes - are bad on national security.
As I said, I have not read or watched most of yesterday's testimony and am assuming that he did not say that they had proof during the election that Trump actually colluded with Russia. I assume that had he said that, that would - of course - have been the headline - as well as a call to immediately impeach him.
If what he said was that they were cautious about saying that Russia was behind the hacking and stayed quiet for a month and a half before making the statement in October, then I suggest that the article I linked to is worth reading in retrospect. I do have a question for people who followed social media more than I did and who looked at the "other side" - Did that exchange go viral on the right ... as it did on the left? If so, it is beyond scary that people could have seen this clip so differently.
adigal
(7,581 posts)He betrayed all of us. I am beyond pissed at him still.
karynnj
(60,796 posts)Hacked the DNC and Podesta. Did you look at the link. HRC spoke of it in the debate and EVERY late night show mocked that part of the debatr.
What do you think Obama could have done?
adigal
(7,581 posts)What the heck do you think he could have done?? Plenty!!
karynnj
(60,796 posts)How do you use the "bully pulpit" to deal with the Russian hacking?
adigal
(7,581 posts)of a president.
My beef isn't with the amount of time the Obamas spent campaigning. It is that Obama never told us about the hacking.
Sheesh.
karynnj
(60,796 posts)In times of old, when the President asked for time, all three networks gave it to him as did at least some of the at most 5 independent channels. A charismatic President could speak, over the media, directly to the country, preempting nearly all broadcasting. Those days are gone. As we see now, the other side really does have not just its own opinions, but they have completely different facts.
Not to mention, Presidents used the bully pulpit to lobby for some general or specific action. President Obama at the convention and at many speeches made a case for voting for Clinton. I do not understand why you think Obama speaking to the nation on the hack would have even increased the people who knew about it. More importantly, why do you think that would make people vote for Hillary rather than Trump?
Both sides heard the accusations that the Russians hacked the DNC and Podesta. Listen to the debate. Trump during the election was arguing that we did not know who was hacking AND that if they did it was because Obama was not feared by Putin. The Obama administration DID put out that all 17 agencies agreed that the hacking was done by the Russians.
It has only been since the election that there were stories that Trump or people associated with him MAY have colluded in the hacking. Ifuggesting that Obama should have claimed that Trump was complicit when the facts did not yet back that up, I'm sorry, but that was not going to happen.
bucolic_frolic
(54,081 posts)He knew.
I thought it a game of dominance and credibility, and that the media and Democrats
should have and would denouce such attacks on facts, truth, credibility. If all we have
are lies and damaged truth, then we have #FakeNews, and that is all we have, and that
is what we got.
onetexan
(13,913 posts)he was the one crying wolf and also the one committing treason. He repeatedly said the system was rigged 1) to divert the suspicion away from himself and his campaign, and 2) as a preemptive strike so that IF in the event Hillary won he could plant that seed of doubt ahead of time in the minds of his numbnut followers that the system was rigged in her favor. What we're witnessing now being played out w/ the investigations into Russiagate is only scratching the surface. As Mccain has said, there's alot more shoes to fall from this centipede.
Catmusicfan
(816 posts)McConnell threaten the gang of 8. If after all this is reveal Republicans do not turn against their party leaders than screw them! They deserve this insanity!
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)"Taking sides" and "meddling."
Zoonart
(14,191 posts)Back to blaming Obama.
CrispyQ
(40,690 posts)Now the Con will dismantle everything you put in place. So much for your legacy. And so much for our country. 
DK504
(3,847 posts)they can get in and change the votes in half of out states, so there goes our elections.
No one in the government has been banging their fists on their desks screaming about cybersecurity and keeping the elections safe. Last I watched the news telling us the idiot state officials were told by the FBI and Homeland they told the gubmint to F off. I know the states have their own thing going on, but when from all 17 of our intelligence agencies our government and elections have been hacked where is the authority to secure the voting process????
Will there be a chance in hell we will ever win another democratic election or will they always be fake totals for voter tallies?
Lonestarblue
(13,237 posts)The only way to know if we won is to insist on verifiable ballots and automatic voter registration that can't be tampered with. Otherwise, between Republican efforts to kick people likely to vote for Democrats off the registration lists and the Russians changng anything they want, we will not win. I'm jokong here, but perhaps we should invite another country, maybe France (which is anti-Trump) to hack our voting systems for the 2018 election to give the wins to Democrats! After all, Trump publicly invited the Russians to continue their hacking.
Shell_Seas
(3,566 posts)Who would have thought things would turn out like they did?
DK504
(3,847 posts)but he needed to be barnstorming the country and getting interviews on every new program telling us what the hell was happening. Russians hacking our election isn't a partisan situation. It was an act of war and terrorism, they stole our election, plain and simple.
Perception be damned. The truth needed tone broadcast everywhere. Our side hasn't learned how to message and to counter the Republican message.
underpants
(195,028 posts)
Skittles
(169,667 posts)coming in AND going out
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)To recap, there was a handful of electronic meddling going on, each distinct:
1. Hillary's private email server was apparently compromised by several different parties, perhaps simply by Carlos Danger (aka Anthony Weiner) being the idiot that he is;
2. John Podesta's private account, where he left the password as "password"; this appears to have been private hackers doing what they do because they can;
and much more seriously:
3. Someone, probably Russians, downloaded several local voter registration files and copied them. It's not clear what the purpose of this was. Theoretically, they could have added fake registered voters, but there is no evidence they did, nor evidence of illegal voters. This one is, by far, the most puzzling.
4. Whatever happened with the House Democrats internal server, which was apparently copied or accessed by contractors who have now fled to Pakistan (I think). I am assuming this was a blackmail effort or simply intelligence gathering by yet another outside interest. I doubt we will ever know what happened here because, Debbie Wasserman refused to let DHS investigate. If I was guessing (and keep in mind I was and am a Bernie supporter), it would show the DNC was even more unfair to Bernie than we already know about.
I think that's the world of the hacks we know about. Are there any others?
Not Ruth
(3,613 posts)I thought that you are normally forced to choose a strong password.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)But that's what the newspapers tell me.
karynnj
(60,796 posts)Having the local voter registration creates a "frame" that they could use to define the universe of voters. They could then have used Cambridge Analytica (Mercer owned and backing Kushner's data efforts) to fill in all the information obtained from all their sources. As they also compromised the DNC, I wonder if they had the information collected by both Clinton and Sanders. This would mean that they would know what each campaign thought was the position in the primaries. Combining the Clinton and the Sanders info, would be interesting.
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)My wild guess (based on the counties targeted for exfiltration* being heavily Democratic) is that the Russian intended to put in a bunch of fake voters, not with the intent to create fake votes (a registration does not equal a vote), but to give Trump the ability to reasonably argue that Hillary won the election with fake voters -- provided by the Russians no less.
And showing that areas she won were filled with fake registrations would have greatly weakened her presidency and thus weakened the USA by disunity.
Remember, everyone was surprised by Trump winning, including the Russians.
(And before anyone asks, no, I don't have a shred of evidence to support this guess. I just worked my adult life in/around Congress where the Soviet Union was a real threat and did exactly this kind of crap all the time, all over the world. My theory fits the KGB Playbook, circa 1965, and I'm sticking to it.)
* "Exfiltration" is your word of the day. It means "unauthorized copying, transfer, or retrieval of data from a computer or server."
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)statements by president, pressers, several times Obama broke in on day TV and made statements.
The last 6-12 months of the attacks on Americas democracy ARE extensively covered in these archives.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room
MosheFeingold
(3,051 posts)It's a giant website and includes all sorts of very interesting things, but it's difficult to winnow out the germane examples of hacking related to the 2016 election.
To my knowledge, the ones relevant are the four listed, #3 being the most troubling.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)the last about 6 months of "press briefings" were almost always full of hacking questions.
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-and-releases
quite a few statements are about the Russia thing especially the last couple months of Obama admin.
BeyondGeography
(40,818 posts)It was his signature flaw.
Locrian
(4,523 posts)enough
(13,689 posts)disillusioned73
(2,872 posts)
DeminPennswoods
(17,301 posts)TBH, there should have been no consideration of what anyone "perceived" to be the motive. This was a serious attack on our democracy. Obama was president of all Americans and we were all affected by what Russia did.
PRESIDENT Obama should have given a national, primetime address from the Oval Office and laid out exactly what was known, period.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)authorizing drone attacks that killed innocents.
His worse days/time in office? The children slaughtered in the mass murder shooting in their classrooms.
Obama never was a "bar fighter" a deplorable person, its not who he is or ever was. Or wants to be.
BeyondGeography
(40,818 posts)He didn't have to get down to their level; understanding the full implications of it was a key part of his job and he fell woefully short there.
BruceWane
(383 posts).... but I think to many of the people in the security and intelligence community, the USA is not nearly as far away from falling apart as the general population tends to think.
I think this quote -
“We were concerned that by making the statement we might, in and of itself, be challenging the integrity of the election process itself.”
- kind of tells what I thought of the Obama administration's apparent reluctance to publicly give a strong acknowledgement of the extent of meddling.
The average american citizen sees the USA as this permanent, everlasting thing. People in the business of national security and intelligence, people who have seen - and even seen to - the collapse of other governments and nations understand that the USA is not really so different from places where things have fallen apart.
The average american sees the instability in many parts of the world as a problem with "those people", as if being born in the upper part of North America somehow imparts some kind of "stable democracy gene" into the occupants of the area.
We had a distinct violent mob mentality emerging from far-right origins, spreading like wildfire through white middle America in a way that few had foreseen or even really thought possible. From the perspective of people who have spent their lives involved in worldwide geopolitics, I can see where caution would be taken before stoking those flames with reports that invite people to question the validity of the election process itself. If the process by which a government is elected is invalid, then isn't the government itself illegitimate?
The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)IMO the nation is teetering on the precipice of armed race/religion/class warfare, and it would take very little to tip the balance. Having the previous sitting president undermine the integrity of the electoral system could have done it. In fact, the current sitting president and his advisors are aiming to do exactly that. Even a successful investigation that reveals the full extent to which the system has been corrupted by Russo-Republican interests could do it.
We are clearly in the danger zone.
Amaryllis
(10,988 posts)“We were concerned that by making the statement we might, in and of itself, be challenging the integrity of the election process itself.”
If you have evidence that the election process lacks integrity and has been compromised, should you not challenge it???
Bayard
(28,648 posts)Except when your opponent is a big snake slithering underground. I understand why Obama did what he did because he didn't want to spew a Dem version of Hillary's emails. He never thought Rump would win.
pirateshipdude
(967 posts)Response to Goprox (Original post)
Name removed Message auto-removed
lark
(25,906 posts)Wonder what McTurtle really threatened Obama with? The story doesn't pass the sniff test. If Obama was sure Russia was stealing the election, he should have made stopping that priority number 1 but didn't for some very strange reason. Boggles my mind!
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)those Russians in the two private mansions was a separate "hacking"? issue.
That instant deportation of all those Russians, we the public still don't know why that happened. Probably because its part of investigations or has to remain top secret for some reason.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)They just didn't blab it to the public EARLY last year because it would have challenging the integrity of the election process!
All the members of congress/senate knew too by their daily secret briefings.
Any of our elected who knew states and local election material was hacked could have warned their hacker buddies to stop.
The last month of Obama's White House pressers covered the Russia hacking problem extensively, hundreds of questions answered by Obama directly and his spokesmen.
The entire public history and statements, thousands of answered questions are ALL there online at white house Obama Archives for anyone to read.
Guy Whitey Corngood
(26,848 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)this republican admin seems to love them. Doesn't seem worried some of those Russians entering the USA may be up to no good.
KPN
(17,146 posts)I personally wish Obama had made more known publicly sooner, but no one can say with any certainty that the results of the election would or even might have been different. I'm certainly not sure they would have been.
The thing I do feel certain about is Republican voters are much more easily manipulated by "messaging" and the GOP has mastered the art of reaching/triggering the emotions of the easily manipulated. Somehow, we need to give them better competition in this regard, with messaging aimed at Rs as well as Is and Ds. Had Obama brought Russian hacking up before the election, imagine the uproar in response to likely GOP talking points: "Obama's trying to cancel the election" or something to that effect.
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)
rogue emissary
(3,340 posts)From the NYT article:
He said he considered having elections systems designated as “critical infrastructure,” a classification that would allow for the same cyber security protections available to the financial services and transportation sectors.
But the reactions to that idea, at least from several state election officials who control elections, “ranged from neutral to negative,” Mr. Johnson said.
LS_Editor
(920 posts)Paladin
(32,305 posts)He had faults, like all presidents do. But compared to what we're saddled with now, Obama looks saintly.
The Democrat-trashing I'm seeing here on DU is genuinely disturbing. Must we prop up our opposition in such an obvious fashion?
DeminPennswoods
(17,301 posts)This was a big test for a president and Obama pretty much muffed it by treating the Russian interference more as a campaign than a national security issue.
Paladin
(32,305 posts)I had a belly-full of the God-awful 2016 campaign, and I am fed up with the endless breast-beating around this place. Yes, mistakes were made; human beings were and are involved, so errors were committed. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. We've got battles to fight.
adigal
(7,581 posts)That was his fatal flaw. And we are all paying for it now.