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Friday, June 23, 2017
VietPress USA (June 23rd, 2017): Please read this news from Yahoo News at:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-approved-cyber-weapons-response-russian-attacks-report-143126463.html
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https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-approved-cyber-weapons-response-russian-attacks-report-143126463.html
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Obama approved ‘cyber weapons’ in response to Russian attacks: report
Michael Walsh
Reporter
WaPo reporter Greg Miller on Putin election interference report
WaPo reporter Greg Miller on Putin election interference report
In its final months, the Obama administration debated dozens
of options to punish Russia for its cyber campaign to disrupt U.S. democracy,
according to a new report.
The Washington Post published a deeply sourced article
Friday morning on former President Barack Obama’s secret campaign to make
Moscow pay for attempting to influence and discredit last year’s presidential
election.
Last August, Obama received a report from the CIA that
Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out specific instructions to damage or
defeat then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and help elect
Trump, according to the Post.
“He also has a personal animus toward Hillary Clinton, whom
he blames for uprisings in Russia several years ago when he returned as
president of Russia. There were protests — lots of protests. And he still
believes that a lot of that activity was incited not just by the United States,
but by Hillary Clinton,” one of the report’s authors, Greg Miller, said on the
“Can he do that?” podcast.
Though Obama approved retaliatory measures in late December
— sanctions and the expulsion of 35 Russian diplomats — they were modest
compared to the more aggressive alternatives the White House had reportedly
considered: stronger sanctions that would “crater” Russia’s economy, the
release of material (gathered by the CIA) that would humiliate Putin and
cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure.
In fact, according to the Washington Post report, which
cites more than three dozen current and former senior U.S. government
officials, Obama had authorized “planting cyber weapons in Russia’s
infrastructure — the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the
United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow.”
Former President Barack Obama wanted Russian President Vladimir Putin to pay for interfering with the U.S. democratic process last year. (Yahoo News photo Illustration; photos: AP) |
“The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action
finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be
up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability,” the report
said.
President Trump seems unlikely to follow through on using
these cyber weapons, considering his dismissive comments about Russian
interference in the election.
And during the campaign, Trump embraced the WikiLeaks email
disclosures that the U.S. intelligence community later said were the result of
Russian hackers weaponizing information stolen from the Democratic National
Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman.
The Obama administration was largely silent throughout this
time, issuing an Oct. 7 statement accusing the Kremlin of being behind the
attack. But that news failed to make much of an impact, as Oct. 7 was the same
day the Washington Post published the 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape in which
Trump boasted about groping and forcibly kissing women.
After Trump won the election, Obama issued the round of
sanctions against Russia and seized two diplomatic compounds. Despite intense
deliberation — reportedly treated with secrecy tantamount to that surrounding
the Osama bin Laden raid — those moderate sanctions are still the most
significant public response to the Russian influence campaign.
Some administration officials regret that the White House’s
response was not more forceful.
President Trump smiles at supporters as he arrives to speak
at a rally on June 21, 2017, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. (Photo: Charlie
Neibergall/AP)
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