Many politicians, government officials and media have raised a big stink about Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign, specifically the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). These loud and persistent voices keep stressing how this is an attack on American democracy and how Russia is an enemy.
But if Russian meddling is such a big threat, how do we explain the behavior of both the DNC and the FBI? In September of 2015, Special Agent Adrian Hawkins of the FBI called the DNC to inform them “At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named ‘the Dukes,’ a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.” See here.
If this hacking were such a big deal that affected the fundamentals of the country’s government election processes, why didn’t the FBI immediately launch an investigation? Why didn’t it take measures to identify the culprits? Why not bait a trap or a sting? Why didn’t it warn everyone at the DNC, all of whom were vulnerable? Why did it content itself with a phone call to the DNC?
The person whom Hawkins reached was a low-level tech person who worked for an outside contractor geared to keeping servers and other devices operating; but he was “no expert in cyberattacks”. He thought that Hawkins was a possible prankster. He didn’t return further calls of Hawkins in October of 2015; but neither did Hawkins have the energy to travel the 0.5 miles from his office to the DNC headquarters in order to find someone more interested in his message.
DNC’s tech chief, Mr. Brown, was informed in November of 2015 when the FBI warning ramped up: Hawkins had revealed that a DNC computer was sending information to Russia. Mr. Brown was busy on another matter. He did not inform higher-ups like Ms. Wasserman Schultz and Amy Dacey. How long would this have taken? A few minutes? Where was the alarm over internal communications being sent outside, apparently to Russia? Where were the attempts by the FBI and DNC either to identify the hackers or to raise the organization’s firewalls and malware detection methods?
Months go by with nobody apparently getting too worked up over the hacking. It is March of 2016 and by then the bona fides of Agent Hawkins have been established. By mid-April, the DNC has installed a “robust set of monitoring tools”.
In the last week in April, these tools apparently give a warning of a security breach. The highest-level DNC officials form a committee (Schultz, Dacey, Brown and Michael Sussman) and they decide to hire CrowdStrike. Why? Why do they not call in the FBI? If the crime is one that’s so almighty important and so connected to the nation’s democracy, why call in a private contractor to do the investigating? Why not the FBI?
A lengthy Esquire article about the co-founder of CrowdStrike, Dmitri Alperovitch, provides important details. CrowdStrike was called in on May 5, 2016. The next morning, their team on the spot called Alperovitch and told him that the breach was Russian.
Did Alperovitch consider this as undermining the electoral process? Did he call the FBI with the information he had? We have no indication that he did, but we are told that his first call was to his own company’s director of services, a former executive assistant director at the FBI. This man, Shawn Henry, went into the DNC and examined the system for at least the next two weeks to determine the “pathology” of the breach. Where was the FBI? When was it informed? Is it normal FBI policy to allow a private firm like CrowdStrike to examine what could be important evidence of a crime, and especially one purported to be espionage?
James Comey gave his answers to these questions on January 10, 2017. A senior official backed him up the next day.
“The FBI requested direct access to the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) hacked computer servers but was denied, Director James Comey told lawmakers on Tuesday.
“The bureau made ‘multiple requests at different levels,’ according to Comey, but ultimately struck an agreement with the DNC that a ‘highly respected private company’ would get access and share what it found with investigators.
“‘We’d always prefer to have access hands-on ourselves if that’s possible,’ Comey said, noting that he didn’t know why the DNC rebuffed the FBI’s request.”
“‘The FBI repeatedly stressed to DNC officials the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data, only to be rebuffed until well after the initial compromise had been mitigated,’ the official said.
“‘This left the FBI no choice but to rely upon a third party for information. These actions caused significant delays and inhibited the FBI from addressing the intrusion earlier.'”
There is also an unconfirmed contradictory report:
“‘The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington (DC) Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and U.S. Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,’ Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News in an email.”
If the FBI had really wanted to gain access to the evidence in the DNC servers, it had all the legal tools to do so. If the DNC had really wanted an investigation by the government, because this is a matter of national importance, it could have had the FBI carry it out.
The DNC delayed giving the FBI any access. The FBI delayed pushing legally for access.
The DNC did something that is shocking: It scrubbed all the evidence and then it met with the FBI!
“On the afternoon of Friday, June 10, all DNC employees were instructed to leave their laptops in the office…For the next two days, three CrowdStrike employees worked inside DNC headquarters, replacing the software and setting up new login credentials…” [Emphasis added]
“The D.N.C. executives and their lawyer had their first formal meeting with senior F.B.I. officials in mid-June, nine months after the bureau’s first call to the tech-support contractor.” [Emphasis added]
If CrowdStrike has kept all of the files it used in order to reach its conclusions, the FBI can examine them because the raw evidence is gone. If it has kept those files, then a copy should have been sent to the FBI for its examination. However, Comey’s language says otherwise. He has said that the FBI has had to rely upon what CrowdStrike’s information is.
The DNC waited until it had cleaned up everything and then met with the FBI formally for the first time. The DNC and the FBI both mishandled this case.
The DNC made itself vulnerable to hackers, not exactly what you would expect within a process that they and others keep telling us is so vital to the nation.
The FBI produced no energetic responses to the DNC hacking. The DNC failed to place the case in the hands of the FBI. This behavior belies the idea that the DNC hacking was important to the democratic processes of the country or the 2016 election outcome.
Various bodies are looking for collusion of Trump’s associates with Russia. This is not because the DNC was hacked, but instead aimed at discrediting Trump. In a supportive move to hurt Trump, Obama “Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking”, we are told by the New York Times.
The investigations that will now proceed under the direction of Robert Mueller will look “into ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russian officials.” We know that Obama’s own Justice Department and FBI didn’t even investigate the hacking of his own party’s central committee. We know that neither the DNC nor the FBI pushed for such an investigation, even though something illegal and concrete did happen, according to both these organizations.
However, nothing concrete has happened between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials that has been reported to be the basis of a real crime. Nothing. This person happened to give a speech in Moscow, that one lobbied for Turkey, another one said hello to the Russian ambassador, yet another did business in Russia, etc.
Mueller’s investigation is motivated solely by power politics. It has nothing to do with election influence or preserving elections from foreign influences, of which there are many. It has everything to do with an unconventional coup against Trump, that is, ending his term as president or otherwise undermining his agenda.
3:24 pm on May 21, 2017
