Why Obama Is to Blame for Russia’s SpyWar on America

Practically every day we learn more about the Kremlin’s secret espionage offensive against our country. This week, we discovered that hackers linked to Russian intelligence have cracked into several think tanks in Washington, D.C.

This should not surprise. Moscow considers targeted hacking such as this to be legitimate intelligence gathering, and the Kremlin’s interest in behind-scenes goings-on in our nation’s capital is perennially high. Russian intelligence has spied on Washington—our leaders, politicians, and their battalions of think-tank and media hangers-on—for many decades. This is nothing new.

What is new and alarming is how brazen Kremlin spy operations against America have gotten of late. Everybody spies, but it’s usually wise to be somewhat discreet. The SpyWar is a marathon, not a sprint.

Vladimir Putin has decided that he doesn’t care we know what he’s up to. He’s thrown out the usual espionage rulebook and embraced street-fighting. Putin uses his spies to rough up Americans, the Kremlin assassinates its foes almost openly, even in our nation’s capital, while Russian hackers pillage American institutions, private and public, with near-impunity. The Kremlin even seems to be trying to tamper with our elections, which is an alarming development.

Now that Russia has decided to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in our election, employing fronts and cut-outs to shape our election to Moscow’s benefit, the Democrats are having a collective freak-out. Team Clinton rails against the Russians and their dirty tricks almost daily now. Senate minority leader Harry Reid has asked the FBI to look into the threat of Russian interference in our elections, while House Democrats want the Bureau to investigate Team Trump’s ties to the Kremlin—and whether anybody in the GOP is mixed up in Putin’s increasingly brazen spy games.

This is appropriate, and all Americans should hope the FBI handles this investigation better than its punting on Hillary’s emails. Democrats need to avoid turning this important matter into more partisan point-scoring theater, while Republicans who value our national security more than their party should assist the FBI in unraveling secret Kremlin games in Washington.

It’s nice that liberals are finally noticing what Putin’s been up to for years.

Part of that investigation needs to be assessing how all this happened. Simply put, Moscow now has a clandestine hold on Washington that it hasn’t enjoyed since the beginning of the Cold War, when Soviet spies lurked in practically every agency and department of our government. It took years to root those moles out and that process caused political torment for the country—an ugly experience no American should seek to relive. Cleaning Russian agents out of the Trump campaign should be the first step, but many more steps must follow.

There’s no point in blaming the Russians for this mess. Of course the Kremlin is the responsible party here, but spying is what Russians do. It’s in their collective DNA. Moscow has been employing aggressive espionage operations against the West for nearly a century—moles, deception, disinformation, and Active Measures to fool and intimidate foreigners. There’s literally nothing new in any of this. The only difference is that the current boss in the Kremlin is a KGB man and he really likes to use these clandestine weapons against his enemies.

Putin’s secret offensive against the West, the serious ramping up of spying and related shenanigans, kicked off back in 2006, when Moscow decided to use its intelligence agencies aggressively against NATO, especially against what the Kremlin in Cold War fashion calls their Main Adversary (that’s America).

Distracted by his Iraq debacle, President George W. Bush didn’t pay sufficient attention to the Kremlin’s declaration of SpyWar, though by his last year in office, between Putin’s breathing fire in public and his invasion of Georgia, it was obvious that the Russian leader no longer wanted to be our friend.

That said, nearly all the really bad news about Russian espionage against America has occurred during Barack Obama’s two terms in the White House. His “reset” with Russia was terribly timed, though at least Hillary Clinton was able to assist Russia in developing the very high-tech industry that’s now being used to cyber-pillage America. True to form, the Clinton Foundation made big money off this too.

Naïve and uninformed yet supremely self-confident, Obama and his bloated National Security Council ignored repeated warnings from the Intelligence Community about nefarious activities by Russian spies against America. Back in 2012, when Obama was castigating Mitt Romney for his “1980s thinking” when the Republican presidential nominee called Russia our main geopolitical threat, Moscow was becoming exactly that.

In response, Obama did basically nothing. His two terms have witnessed the greatest intelligence disasters in American history, most of them at the hands of the Russians. In fairness to Obama, American counterintelligence has been dismal for decades, but his presidency has witnessed it fall off the cliff altogether. The Navy’s captain-of-the-ship principle applies here.

Just how much damage our Intelligence Community has incurred under Obama defies easy description. We’ve had the Snowden debacle, the biggest loss of classified information in world history. There was the giveaway of more than 22 million personnel files held by OPM, exposing pretty much every American who’s had a security clearance since the Reagan years to blackmail. The security clearance process itself has totally imploded. To say nothing of letting Russian moles run rampant in our intelligence agencies, very likely enabling Moscow to tap into our most secret government communications.

Even as unambiguous evidence mounted of how deadly serious the Kremlin was about its secret offensive against America, Obama was AWOL, refusing to seriously wage the SpyWar against Russia. True to form, Obama’s reactions were timid, hedging, and lawyerly. Putin despises such weakness so the Russians simply ramped up their operations, resulting in the awful espionage mess confronting us right now.

The hash Obama made of countering Russian propaganda demonstrates how terrible a leader he’s been. Weaponizing of fake “facts” is one of the Kremlin’s more potent weapons in the online age. However, it’s also one of the easiest to counter. Back in the 1980s, Washington became proficient at debunking Kremlin lies, and after the Russians invaded Ukraine in 2014 it was obvious that we needed to start doing that again, particularly as Moscow’s disinformation got aggressive and nasty.

Merely debunking Russian lies is defensive—nobody was suggesting we start our own propaganda scheme—but even that was too much for Obama. A year ago, a tiny effort at the State Department to counter Kremlin disinformation never got off the ground. It was strangled in the crib by the White House. Intelligence Community officials who asked what happened were informed by Obama’s NSC that what the White House demanded was “not to upset the Russians.”

By refusing to counter Kremlin lies we’ve gotten more Kremlin lies, ever more noxious. By refusing to counter Russian espionage we’ve gotten more Russian espionage, ever more aggressive.

There’s really no point in getting upset at the Russians for spying. That’s as effective as scolding the dog for barking or punishing the cat for playing with yarn. What does work is pushing back, actually waging the SpyWar—aggressively and imaginatively, like Russians do. That’s the only language Putin understands, and Obama doesn’t speak a word of it.

There’s no time now for partisan game-playing. The Russians are winning the SpyWar, threatening our democracy itself. All the same, we must honestly address how it got to this awful point so we can undo the damage and prevent it from ever happening again. Magical thinking won’t help here and Obama and the Democrats must accept their large share of the blame.

It’s nice that liberals are finally noticing what Putin’s been up to for years. The mainstream media is now onto obvious Kremlin espionage fronts that I exposed years ago. Better late than never. Welcome to the party, it’s going to be a long one.

Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, the publisher of Observer Media.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.

With a saboteur-in-chief like Obama there really isn't much need for them to be spying on us.

Obama To Betray Missile Defense Secrets To Moscow

Investor's Business Daily ^ | January 9, 2012 | IBD staff

Appeasement: From ObamaCare to recess appointments, honoring the Constitution has not been an administration hallmark. But when it comes to betraying secrets to mollify the Russians, it becomes a document the president hides behind.

It was bad enough that the 2012 defense authorization bill signed by President Obama set America on a downward spiral of military mediocrity.

He also issued a signing statement, something he once opposed, saying that language in the bill aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on the U.S. Standard Missile-3 - linchpin of our missile defense - might impinge on his constitutional foreign-policy authority.

Section 1227 of the defense law prohibits spending any funds that would be used to give Russian officials access to sensitive missile-defense technology as part of a cooperation agreement without first sending Congress a report identifying the specific secrets, how they'd be used and steps to protect the data from compromise.

The president is required to certify that any technology shared will not be passed on to third parties such as China, North Korea or Iran, that the Russians will not use transferred secrets to develop countermeasures and that the Russians are reciprocating in sharing missile-defense technology. ..."

"In his signing statement, Obama said he would treat these legal restrictions as 'non-binding' and that 'my administration will also interpret and implement section 1244 (sic) in a manner that does not interfere with the president's constitutional authority to conduct foreign affairs and avoids the undue disclosure of sensitive diplomatic communications.'

Betraying our secrets is easy for a president who betrayed allies Poland and the Czech Republic to placate Moscow.

Poland was to host ground-based interceptors such as those we've deployed in California and Alaska, with missile-tracking radar deployed in the Czech Republic.

Obama pulled the plug when Moscow objected. Never mind, he said, we have a better approach: a four-phase plan that calls for using three versions of the Navy's Standard SM-3 interceptor missile that forms the backbone of its Aegis missile-defense system.

The fourth phase consists of a missile still on the drawing board scheduled for deployment by 2020, a version of the SM-3 called the Block IIB. It would intercept hostile missiles in the "early intercept" phase before an enemy missile could release its warheads and decoys. The Russians want the SM-3's secrets, and Obama appears to be willing to turn them over.

The president wants to save the New Start Treaty, which the Russians have threatened to abandon if we try to fully implement President Reagan's dream of defeating a nuclear missile attack.

Russia has unilaterally asserted that any qualitative or quantitative improvement in U.S. missile defenses would be grounds for withdrawal from the treaty.

Read More At Investor's Business Daily:
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/010912-597158-obama-gives-russia-missile-defense-secrets.htm#ixzz3jXmMbVwY
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March 2012...

"Obama was talking with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev when neither of them realized that their conversation was being picked up by microphones. Here is what they said:

Obama: "On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved, but it's important for him to give me space."

Medvedev: "Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you ..."

Obama: "This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility."

Medvedev: "I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir."

"This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility." That statement tells us much about the president's mindset.

The specific mention of missile defense is worrisome enough. Mr. Obama has retreated from the missile defense plan that was negotiated with European allies during the George W. Bush administration. Apparently, he is signaling Moscow that he intends to retreat further. The clear implication from the president's comments is that he cannot tell the American people before the election what he plans to do after the election.

In addition, there is the phrase "on all these issues," implying more is at stake than just missile defense."

Article: Obama plans double cross on missile defense
When it comes to keeping America safe, we shouldn't be too flexible:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/29/obama-plans-double-cross-on-missile-defense/print/

Re: "Simply put, Moscow now has a clandestine hold on Washington"

They'll have to get in line behind the ChiComs The Iranians...

Both of whom are strongly allied with the Russians.

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Aug 2015

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From the Sino-Russian Joint Statement of April 23, 1997:
"The two sides [China and Russia] shall, in the spirit of partnership, strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html
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"Joint war games are a logical outcome of the Sino-Russian Friendship and Cooperation Treaty signed in 2001, and reflect the shared worldview and growing economic ties between the two Eastern Hemisphere giants."

http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2005/09/war-games-russia-china-grow-alliance

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,170287,00.html
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Sept 11, 2014

China and Russia to build major seaport: report

China and Russia will build one of the largest ports in north-east Asia on Russia's Sea of Japan coast, reports say, in a further sign of the powerhouses' growing alliance.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-11/china-and-russia-to-build-major-seaport-report/5738036

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