Obamas secret struggle to punish Russia for Putins election assault

[joshcryer]

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.

...

The material was so sensitive that CIA Director John Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even that restricted report’s distribution was too broad. The CIA package came with instructions that it be returned immediately after it was read. To guard against leaks, subsequent meetings in the Situation Room followed the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/obama-putin-election-hacking/

Obama was too good for his own good.

[LenaBaby61]

1. Pres. Obama stayed too above it all ...

And now the people he fought so hard for to get some type of health care for are going to pay for it DEARLY, because he didn't want to appear to be partisan with this bombshell information that he could have released, dealing with the fact that there was a hostile foreign government who was interfering with our democracy, and with the lives of it's citizens.

Putin's laughing @ the USA, and treasonous thuglicans are about to launch an assault on the Dems the likes we've never seen before if treasonous Yertle's death bill is voted on, and is signed into law by treasonous tRumputin.

Dems bring tricycles to tank battles. thuglicans bring Abrams tanks to tank battles.

When going high can literally get you KILLED IE: Losing health care.

[Igel]

2. Possibly.

But transparency then and there would have been in the public interest. Might not have made a lot of difference, since the anti-HRC campaign was going on before the pro-Trump campaign started.

The actual hacking? Sure. A lot of systems are too open. But mostly it's the wetware in front of the computer screens that needs upgrading, because almost all of the hacking relied on phishing and the eagerness with which little greedy or curious human trout took the bait. (If anything important was "hacked," it was the electorate and the media, but that kind of manipulation isn't what the word typically means. The computer hacking that seems to have mattered the DNC and others were told about and did little about. The election board hacking is indeterminate at this point, but a rebuttal to the claim that a serious problem in an election board's territory would provoke an outcry relied crucially on how all the voting irregularities in Florida in 2000 drew no attention whatsoever until the Gore campaign raised the issue ... Really.)


At the same time, letting the info Obama was given out would possibly compromise some really important intelligence sources, and might just have done that. What Trump told Putin was bad; the additional information that came out was just as damning, but received with joy at the "transparency" of it all.

I have to wonder if this apparently high-level leak would have been met with same glee last October, and what effect it'll have on US intelligence capabilities after yesterday. Especially since the leak does nothing practical except to cover the butt of somebody whose butt needs no covering. If something seriously bad happens in the next six months, there'll be the question: "If we still had those sources, could we have done something to stop that seriously bad thing?" Of course, for most if it's not a slam-dunk "yes" then the answer must necessarily be "no" ... the power of binary thinking.