Follow The Trail Of Russian Bodies
D.S. Mitchell
Calamity Politics is a progressive political blog that attempts everyday to provide interesting and topical articles, focused primarily on the U.S. national political scene. Topics of analysis and commentary are determined by me. Sometimes I discuss the headlines of the day, sometimes I veer off and talk about things that make me smile and others that make me mad. Today, I am going to reach back in to recent history. The news of the day, again involves the Russians and possible disclosure by President Trump of highly classified information. So, I thought it might be good to have a refresher course on Russia’s war against our democratic institutions. Sources for this article are Del Quentin Wilker, the LA Times, Melissa Ryan Extra Newsfeed, and AP correspondents, Deb Reichmann and Eileen Sullivan, and finally CtrlAltRightDelete.
On March 30, 2017 Clint Watts, terrorism and espionage expert, Robert A. Fox Fellow, Program on the Middle East and Senior Fellow, Program on National Security, appeared before the Senate Intel Committee to discuss the Russian intervention in the 2016 presidential election. Watts gave the committee and the American public a history lesson into the activities of the Russians, tracing the Kremlin’s efforts to influence our elections as a decades long effort using misinformation to undermine our democracy.
Wilker in his LA Times article declared, “Watts provided a road map to better understand” the shady practices by Moscow. To understand the activities, he urged the Senate and the U.S. government to “follow the money” to figure out “how misinformation websites and social media outlets are being funded.”
Furthermore, “while the Russians conducted their hacking in the Internet’s shadows, their efforts to influence the election was hardly a secret. You can hack stuff and be covert, but you can’t influence and be covert, you have to ultimately show your hand, and that’s why we have been able to discover it online.”
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) questioned Watts on how the Intel Committee “can track this fuzzy line between the Russian oligarchs, Russian organized crime, and the Russian government”?
Watts responded that the attack had been a two prong attack, there was “the virtual or the Internet component and an actual physical real world component”. Watts indicated the virtual assault came from a disproportionate number of conspiratorial or fake news outlets in Eastern Europe, websites funded directly by Russian government sources, or the very least, pro-Russian funding sources.
Russia allegedly used state funded propaganda and paid trolls to make unpleasant comments on social media services. Watts said the Russians have been explicitly linked to the Hillary Clinton and John Podesta emails, calling those efforts “the boldest yet” to interfere in the U.S. election process. According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Russia provided emails to WikiLeaks.
Julian Assange WikiLeaks founder disputes origin of emails and argues he is not an arm of the Russian espionage web. While Trump rejects Russian intervention in the 2016 election and in fact expresses improving relations with Putin.
During testimony Watts outlined how candidate Trump used disinformation in his speeches, tweets and talking points. The hair raising moment came when Watts offered, “I think the answer is very simple and is what no one is really saying in this room. The reason active measures have worked in the U.S. election is because the Commander-in-Chief has used Russian active measures at times against his opponent.”
The second part of the attack that needs to be reviewed, Watts claims, is “follow the trail of dead Russians. There’s more dead Russians in the past three months that are tied to this investigation who have assets all over the world. They are dropping dead, all over the world, even in Western countries.” Seven Russian diplomats have died suddenly since November 2016, including UN Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, who dropped dead at his desk.
What emerged from the Watts testimony was Russia’s intent to promote western candidates that are sympathetic to their world view and foreign policy end goals. Winning a single election is not their goal, but through active measures Putin hopes to topple democracies through the pursuit of five intersecting objectives:
- ) “Undermine citizen confidence in democratic governance.
- ) Foment and exacerbate divisive political fractures with the targeted government.
- ) Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions.
- ) Create general distrust or confusion over information sources by blurring the lines between fact and fiction.
- ) From these objectives, the Kremlin can crumble democracies from the inside out, creating political divisions, with the subsequent result, first the dissolution of European Union and break up of NATO.”
Finally, the Russians seem to favor the AltRight movement. The Russians seem focused on the far right candidates any place in the world, because they view such candidates as an opportunity to promote white supremacy and obstruct growing globalism. According to Watts, “AltRight supports disruption of democratic institutions of which they don’t trust, or they simply don’t believe in democracy at all. The AltRight interests interlock closely to Putin’s goals.
The central issue for the American people is to find out if Donald Trump colluded with the Russians to become President of the United States. This is not an attack solely on the Democrats, this is an attack on America, and “we need to know what team Trump and his associates are playing on”.
The news that has come out in the last 45 days makes me and most sensible observers, worry about the man in the White House, and the security of this nation.
Join the Resistance
Dar
