Evidence-free left-wing claims that the Kremlin elected Trump are politically toxic and threaten to undermine our system
For years, ever since I left the Intelligence Community, I’ve tried to raise awareness about the rising threatto the United States and our allies of foreign espionage. My background in counterintelligence for the National Security Agency made me a rare public voice of experience discussing the spy threat to our country, its security and its prosperity.
When the Edward Snowden story broke in June 2013, I was one of the first to state publicly that this sensational saga was, in reality, a stage-managed Russian intelligence operation designed to harm the West and its powerful intelligence alliance. That fateful summer I also pointed out that there were apparent links between Wikileaks and the Kremlin. These positions won me no friends among the great and the good, and many were the mainstream journalists and pundits who castigated my reality-based assessments as “paranoid” and “McCarthyite.”
As I’ve explained in detail in column after column, Obama’s two terms in office witnessed a stunning and unprecedented withering of counterintelligence and security in Washington, the Snowden debacle being only the most-reported of the disasters which have befallen American intelligence since 2009. This carelessness allowed the Russians to gain astonishing access to the inner workings of our government and our political system. Moscow’s far-reaching hacking of Federal agencies and countless private entities forms only the visible tip of the clandestine Russian spy-iceberg which has collided with Washington in recent years.
There’s no doubt that Vladimir Putin and his spy services played operational games with our election cycle, using Wikileaks to dump tens of thousands of unflattering emails from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. Their impact on the election is difficult to determine but it was doubtless harmful to Team Clinton.
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