The fact that you are free is not your achievement, but rather a failure on our side"

[kpete]

Tinker. Tailor. Mogul. Spy?
A former diplomat dissects the Trump dossier.

by James Bruno
January 13, 2017

Feliks Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police – the Cheka – said, “The fact that you are free is not your achievement, but rather a failure on our side.” A clear-eyed killer responsible for the summary executions of tens of thousands during the Bolsheviks’ Red Terror, Dzerzhinsky knew of what he spoke and he didn’t mince words. Fortunately, a heart attack took him down at 49, but his ilk lives on. We Americans should never let our guard down in face of freedom-phobic adversaries like Vladimir Putin. But I fear we are now doing so.

The United States has just endured a carefully planned, well-orchestrated assault against its democratic form of government in the form of a grand cyber-theft of information and targeted release of that information. After a thorough scrub of available intelligence, seventeen U.S. intelligence agencies concluded unanimously that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

In my twenty-five years in the service of Uncle Sam as a diplomat, I was a daily consumer of intelligence reporting. Information produced by spies is just one stream in a flood of facts, speculation and analyses that cross the desks of policymakers, others being press reports, think tank pieces, university research papers and personal conversations. All sources have their flaws as well as their benefits. Key to a report’s value is corroboration from other sources and reliability of the sources of the information being given.

While I have not had the privilege of reading the classified version of the report by the Director of National Intelligence on the Russians’ active measures, it is clear to me from the conclusions that corroboration and source reliability are at a very high level given CIA’s, NSA’s and the FBI’s stated “high confidence” or “moderate confidence” in their conclusions. This is “intellese” meaning reliable multi-source information has been corroborated at multiple levels, leading the vast majority of analysts to conclude with little doubt that Moscow launched an influence campaign against the U.S.

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MORE:
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/01/13/tinker-tailor-mogul-spy/

[mopinko]

1. a real partisan failure here-

this- "to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process" should have been given a much higher profile than the actors involved.
this part they accomplished w/o a doubt. and now cheeto is the one who is diminished by it all, even as hillary sits, playing w the grandkids, in new york.

dont be stupid enough to think they are on your side cheeto. they arent. that was not the outcome they had planned. you just got lucky, due to the gullibility of a lot of people in this country.
they have driven a wedge that will take generations to undo.

and when you displease pootie, it will be you in the crosshairs.

russia is playing a long game, and we are stuck in our 4 year time frame.