Posted on 07/22/2017 2:34:00 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and the CIA, on Friday called Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election the "most successful covert influence operation in history."
"Frankly, [the Russian meddling] is the most successful covert operation in history," Hayden told a national security panel in response to a question from moderator Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff. Hayden said the original cyberattack on the Democratic National Committee was not that surprising -- and even from an intelligence perspective, impressive.
"I just have to admit as a former director of NSA, [Russia's hack and theft of email] is honorable state espionage," Hayden said to audience laughter, speaking at the Aspen Security Conference.
Isikoff interjected, asking if the Russian dissemination of the emails through WikiLeaks should still be considered "honorable state espionage."
"If we as NSA could have an insight into … Russia through the same techniques, game on," Hayden said. "But now you make the great distinction: What the Russians then did with the information. And then that turned [it] into what we call a covert influence operation."
Hayden argued that the release of stolen Democratic emails on WikiLeaks was the Kremlin's egregious act, not the hacks to obtain the information.
"This is, at its heart, not a cyber issue. At its heart, this is a Russia issue," Hayden said. "The cyber-thing was a preliminary action in order to get some raw materials, … but that's not what made this different. That's not what made this egregious."
Isikoff asked why the U.S. government has yet to clearly delineate a "red line" when it comes to cybersecurity violations from other countries even though the cyberthreat has existed for years.
Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, also on the panel, responded that the Defense Department had issued a guideline which said attacks warrant a response if they result in loss of life or serious economic damage.
"The truth is the technology and the techniques that can be used have actually evolved more rapidly than our thinking about it," Chertoff said. "The value of norms would be it would start to create a basis for law-abiding countries to know when they can respond to a cyber act as if it were an act of war."
The U.S. lacks a standard of proof, which makes it difficult to prove who's responsible for a cyber attack, Chertoff said.
"If we confront the Russians, their response is, ‘Well, you don't have 100 percent proof, so we reject it,'" Chertoff said. "We have to establish a consensus about how much is enough."
Isikoff then pivoted to discuss the Syrian refugee crisis, which he said has resulted in 4.9 million refugees in Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, noting that former FBI agent Ali Soufan called it "the greatest humanitarian disaster of our lifetime."
National Counterterrorism Center Director Nick Rasmussen, another panel participant, said he wouldn't want to draw "a straight line" connection between someone being displaced by the Syrian civil war and that person becoming a potential recruit for terrorists.
But Rasmussen said that Soufan's description still holds. "First and foremost, it's a humanitarian crisis of epic proportions, but it does have a long-term security piece to it that we're going to be managing for a number of years," he said.
The counterterrorism expert also said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah poses a threat to the U.S. The Iranian-backed organization is recognized by the intelligence community as one of the most capable terrorist groups in the world, with access to technology and state sponsorship, he said.
But FBI arrests of individuals with ties to Hezbollah in the U.S. suggests that there's a presence of Hezbollah operatives in the homeland, Rasmussen said.
"We've known they look to lay infrastructure in all parts of the world to give itself options, to develop a playbook," Rasmussen said.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced legislation in the House and Senate on Thursday that would increase sanctions on Hezbollah for its actions in Syria and near the Israeli border.
Lying bastard.
I'm sure he knows that too... but facts don't matter to these people.
We know who Teddy Kennedy supported.
The successful operation is the one being run on the people of the United States by our own intelligence services.
The collusion and fraud that put Obama into the
Presidency was the height of deception.
There has been no bigger scam.
The Obama/Clinton/EU engineered coup in Ukraine doesn’t qualify as “covert”.
This guy is a disgrace. When the CIA was heroically battling communism, they were vilified. Now, these little toads are given respect. Hayden should be in jail.
Yep, its right up there with the Bay of Pigs.
Or is he saying that Trump and Trump Jr are smarter than Allen Dulles, George HW Bush and the rest of them put together?
What a load of crap. Podesta gets targeted with a phishing mail like every one of us does all the time. An aide checks with his IT guy who accidentally types that the email is “legitimate” and Podesta should immediately change his email password. The (stupid) IT guy tells the (stupid) aide to click the link in the phishing mail giving the attackers to the Podesta email account.
Soon after, WikiLeaks began releasing 10 years of his emails.
The emails are stored on either GMail or Clinton’s non-government server.
The DNC refuses to turn over the email server to the FBI for forensic investigation, but hires their own firm.
So, you have stupid democrats falling for a simple phishing attack; democrats illegally keeping email off government systems; democrats that won’t enlist the FBI to investigate; corrupt democrats keeping a ten year log / history of their corruption and crimes in emails; and a decade of Clinton and general democrat illegal acts revealed via the email trove.
Where, exactly, are the Russians in this? All of this was preventable if democrats obeyed the law, weren’t corrupt, and followed simple, well known email security practices. They are 100% responsible for their own undoing.
Biggest and most successful clandestine operation in history? Ridiculous!
How is that even possible? Hillary didn’t win.
[why did the Democrats deny access to the FBI?]
Because then we would have seen just how badly the Hillary machine screwed over Bernie during the primary amidst other skullduggery.
I have no doubt that putin is basking in the praise he is so powerful. Probably actually believes it
That is not what happened to me. A big long black SUV with tinted windows and little Russian flags on each side of the vehicle drove up to my house, four burly KBG agents got out, grabbed me, put a blindfold on me, and threw me in the back. I was taken to my precinct headquarters (Putin was driving.) They took my blind fold off, dragged me out of the car, marched me to the voting booth, and each pointing a gun at my head, in each cardinal direction, with thick Russian accents, ordered me to vote for Trump! Afterward they gave me an “I voted” sticker and took me home. Then they went next door and threw my neighbors into the the SUV and took off. This happened all along my entire street!
UNtil someone has proof the DNC was hacked I say Seth rich turned the files over to Assage and then was murdered by friends of the DNC, I mean after all, Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s brother is a lawyer in the office investigating Seths murder.
Little weasel.
62 million American voters colluded with Russia to elect Donald Trump. That’s a YUGE conspiracy!
There were three covert operations at play in the last election and its aftermath:
1) Operation False Poll Data;
2) Operation Illegal Voting;
3) Operation Destroy Trump, operated by the US intel community and media distortion complex.
“The Russians” is a tactical element of #3.
Hayden should be challenged to explain how he knows the Russians took the DNC emails, and how he knows Seth Rich did not. Or does he claim Seth Rich was working for the Russian government?
This is the biggest farce in history. You lost an election, get over it.
Wikileak'd DNC and Podesta, both. I don't believe there has been an accusation that Podesta was hacked by Russian phishers.
As for Hillary, the 33,000 emails are still missing.
On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. The final PDFs were made available on March 3, 2017.
Also, why didn’t he do something about it when he was with the NSA?
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