Mediaboss Marketing

The Obama administration received multiple warnings from national security officials between 2014 and 2016 that the Kremlin was ramping up its intelligence operations and building disinformation networks it could use to disrupt the U.S. political system, according to more than half a dozen current and former officials.

As early as 2014, the administration received a report that quoted a well-connected Russian source as saying that the Kremlin was building a disinformation arm that could be used to interfere in Western democracies. The report, according to an official familiar with it, included a quote from the Russian source telling U.S. officials in Moscow, "You have no idea how extensive these networks are in Europe ... and in the U.S., Russia has penetrated media organizations, lobbying firms, political parties, governments and militaries in all of these places."

Story Continued Below

That report was circulated among the National Security Council, intelligence agencies and the State Department via secure email and cable in the spring of 2014 as part of a larger assessment of Russian intentions in Ukraine, the official said.

There was no explicit warning of a threat to U.S. elections, but the official said some diplomats and national security officials in Moscow felt the administration was too quick to dismiss the possibility that the Kremlin incursions could reach the United States.

Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning in your inbox.

By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Even if the Russians and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin had these ambitions, they were doubtful of their capacity to execute them, the official said of the Obama administration.

Former White House officials, requesting anonymity to discuss intelligence reporting, confirmed that the administration began receiving increased traffic in 2014 about Russian disinformation and covert influence in campaigns, but said they did not recall receiving that specific warning about Russian inroads in the United States.

Ned Price, a former spokesperson for the National Security Council, rejected the idea that the administration failed to heed warnings about Russian interference in the U.S. political system or Russian cyberespionage in general.

The Obama administration was nothing but proactive in responding to Russian aggression in all of its forms, especially as Moscow became more brazen with and following its military moves against Ukraine beginning in 2014, Price said, citing sanctions and increased American support to NATO as evidence of the former administrations seriousness.

But subsequent events including Russias interference in the American election through hacks of the emails of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta, among other intrusions identified by U.S. intelligence have left many in the former administration wondering whether they could have done more.

People have criticized us ... for not coming out more forcefully and saying it, former CIA Director John Brennan said at the Aspen National Forum in July. There was no playbook for this.

On Oct. 7, 2016, about a month before the election, the administration revealed, through a statement from the director of national intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security, that the U.S. government believed Russia was behind the hacks and was seeking to interfere with the election. The revelation, which many in the White House expected to be bombshell news, was largely overshadowed by the revelation that same day of an Access Hollywood tape in which Donald Trump made crude and sexist comments to anchor Billy Bush.

But others in the national security community say an overly cautious Obama White House could have done more both during the campaign and in the previous months and years to alert Russia that it was aware of its intentions to subvert the U.S. democracy along with those of some other Western countries and would retaliate forcefully at the first sign of Russian interference.

POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen current and former officials from across the national security spectrum, including intelligence agencies, the State Department and the Pentagon. Almost all said they were aware of Russias aggressive cyberespionage and disinformation campaigns especially after the dramatic Russian attempt to hack Ukrainian elections in 2014 but felt that either the White House or key agencies were unwilling to act forcefully to counter the Russian actions.

Intelligence officials "had a list of things they could never get the signoffs on, one intelligence official said. The truth is, nobody wanted to piss off the Russians.

Among the strategies put forward prior to the 2016 election were closing two Russian dachas in Maryland and New York, which were long suspected of being Russian intelligence sites, expelling diplomats and engaging in counterintelligence operations that would alert Putin to the United States determination to strike back against any attempts at interference in the U.S. political system.

Officials outside the White House blamed micromanagement by the National Security Council for the lack of a more forceful response, while a former NSC official says any failure to act forcefully against Russia was because of concerns by the State Department and, less frequently, the Defense Department about potential retaliation by Moscow.

The frustrations [about lack of forceful action] are justified and, frankly, were shared by the White House, said the former official, who requested anonymity due to this person's continuing work in Russia.

The options were being discussed. They werent being implemented, the former official added.

The State Department and Pentagon often objected to harsher measures endorsed by the intelligence community, one official said, a difference in perspective that some attributed to the fact that diplomatic staff and defense attaches were obvious targets of retaliation, rather than intelligence officers who usually work undercover.

Concerns about Russian cyberespionage and election meddling largely grew out of the events following Russias annexation of Crimea in March 2014, followed by an aggressive Russian effort to influence the Ukrainian presidential election that May.

A Russia-backed cyberattack against Ukraines voting infrastructure during the May election was thwarted at the 11th hour. The cyberintrusions which in some cases could have changed voter tallies were discovered just hours before what could have been catastrophic outcomes.

The reports from sources deep inside the Russian government were alarming, one current U.S. official who served under the Obama administration said. We started getting stuff in April, May [of 2014] that was extraordinary about the extent of the threat and the capacities the Russians were building.

We were worried [Putin] would try to test us, recalled a former Obama administration official.

The Ukraine crisis coupled with the Kremlins embrace of National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden, who continues to be granted asylum by Moscow was a sobering moment for the White House, one recently departed intelligence officer and the current administration official said.

Yet the administration still was reluctant to engage in more forceful counterintelligence strategies against the Kremlin, including more aggressively tracking and tailing Russian operatives within the United States, according to five of the officials who spoke to POLITICO.

Those outside the White House said they received frustrating mixed messages: The White House would subsequently dismiss Moscows capabilities while also citing fear of an escalation with Putin.

Price, the former NSC spokesman, denied those claims.

We responded with the same clarity of purpose following Moscows aggression against U.S. officials in Russia and, of course, in the face of the Kremlins attempt to undermine the integrity of our electoral process, he said.

But several senior intelligence and administration officials recall it differently.

It just seemed like it was difficult, especially after the Crimea and the Ukraine ... there still wasnt a willingness to more heartily engage in the effort, the former intelligence officer said.

In one particularly frustrating instance, officials said, they reiterated a longstanding desire to shut down the two Russian dachas in Maryland and New York. Amid escalating tensions, it was often presented as a way to send a message to Moscow.

For quite some time, it was an active option. Secretary Kerry refused to consider it, the former NSC official said. We were getting pushback from the head of the agency being harassed. That was a constant frustration.

Former Secretary of State John Kerry was overseas and unavailable for comment. But a former senior State Department official, speaking as a representative of Kerry, saw it differently. Kerry agreed to shut down the dachas, but had not settled on the timing, the official said.

Tensions finally reached a fever pitch in the summer of 2016. Just days before Russian operatives began releasing troves of stolen DNC emails, a CIA officer under official diplomatic cover was brutally beaten outside the U.S. embassy in Moscow. The officer managed to slip to safety inside the door of the U.S. compound but was immediately evacuated for medical care.

U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials worked frantically to compile retaliatory options for the Obama White House. Despite being presented with several strategies including more aggressively tailing Russian diplomats in the U.S. it opted to do nothing immediately.

There was some real anger, the former intelligence officer said. We werent going to mug anybody, but we could at least be more overt in our coverages. We could expel some people, we could do more overt surveillance on people.

Another former intelligence official put it this way: The longer we dont push back, the harder they push.

Even after the release of emails designed to damage Clintons campaign, the White House was reluctant to respond, something that several recently departed Obama-era officials have lamented.

After compiling a list of potential retaliatory options in the summer of 2016 including kicking out more than 100 Russian diplomats, one official told POLITICO the pushback from national security agencies was so great and varied, the NSC official said, that for months nothing was done.

Any of these actions risked a Russian reciprocation, the former NSC official said. We were kind of caught in a catch-22.

After the election, in December, the White House finally announced the expulsion of 35 diplomats and ordered the Kremlin officials out of the two Russian-owned dachas.

But in a further indication of the tensions within the Obama team, Kerry rejected suggestions that he personally break the news of the expulsions and closing of the dachas to Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, the former NSC official said. Instead, the job was left to Pat Kennedy, one of Kerrys undersecretaries.

The former State Department official, speaking for Kerry, said the option of having Kerry communicate the expulsions and closing of the dachas to Lavrov was never discussed. But the former NSC official was unmoved.

The idea of having Kerry doing it with Lavrov was raised several times and he didnt want to do it, the NSC official said.

The expulsions and closing of the dachas were symbolic moves that stung the Kremlin, but for many intelligence officers, it was too little, too late.

While some Obama White House officials privately concede that they, too, wish there had been a more forceful response, others stand by the decisions that were made.

People at the working level dont necessarily understand the full scope of policy implications, one former White House official said.

Now, to the further frustration of some intelligence officers, there is little indication that, for all Trumps bluster, hell be tougher on the Kremlin. In his first months in office, the president has signaled a willingness to work with Moscow on several fronts, and has pushed back hard against his own intelligence communitys assessment that Russia actively worked to elect him to the presidency.

Its a bitter pill for many who see Trumps election as the avoidable outcome of years worth of counterintelligence failings against Russia.

They were warned. They underestimated it until it was too late, the current administration official said of the Obama White House and Russia, with a tinge of bitterness. They just didnt know how to deal with the bad guys.

Missing out on the latest scoops? Sign up for POLITICO Playbook and get the latest news, every morning in your inbox.

Go here to read the rest:
Obama team was warned in 2014 about Russian interference - Politico

But while most politicians -- on both sides of the aisle -- were quick to condemn the rally and its participants, one individual for some 48 hours was far too measured and calculating in his response. And it took public outcry and a White House in crisis mode for President Donald Trump to course correct.

And we are right to sharply criticize both presidents for failing to stare hate squarely in the face and call it exactly what it is.

"This represents a turning point for the people of this country. We are determined to take our country back, we're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump, and that's what we believed in, that's why we voted for Donald Trump, because he said he's going to take our country back and that's what we gotta do."

To borrow and remake an ill-fated 2012 campaign debate quote from Obama: Mr. Duke, the 1950s called, and they want their pathetically racist ideologies back.

Trump's initial response on Saturday, in which he acknowledged there were "many sides," left many of us feeling unsatisfied. We wanted him to act presidential. We wanted him to clearly enunciate the threat and condemn it in the strongest and most unequivocal language. And he let us down.

But there is also a hypocrisy in the coverage of this event and the President's subsequent responses, one that mirrors the Obama presidency and is worth exploring in greater detail.

Those of us who've spent a career identifying the evil among us and are committed to keeping America safe shake our heads at the political pretzel-twisting politicians subject themselves to. If it meets the definition of terrorism, call it that. Once the perpetrators have been identified through exhaustive investigation, describe them in easily discernible terms.

And, when I served as the special assistant to the assistant-director-in-charge of the FBI's New York office in Manhattan in 2015, I sat in on innumerable secure video teleconferences with the bureau's 56 division heads and FBI headquarters. Watching briefings in which senior FBI officials had to comply with Holder's DOJ mandate not to use "radical Islamists" to describe cases focused on radical Islamists often resulted in a wry and resigned smile from the briefer saddled with this ridiculous restriction. Holder insisted we refrain from "calling it what it is," and instead mandated that these cases be described in more nebulous and ambiguous terms: "combating violent extremism" matters.

While we're all outraged over Trump's indelicate dance to avoid calling the white racists, bigots and anti-Semites who have attached themselves like a barnacle to the GOP's ship hull what they are, let's be careful not to isolate the few, in order to smear the whole --- a lesson we were repeatedly lectured about during the Obama era.

The world just isn't as black and white as the bigoted protesters in Charlottesville would lead us to believe.

Excerpt from:
Trump is repeating Obama's mistake - CNN

In the latest sign the Trump administration is looking to overturn Obama-era policy at home and abroad, the U.S. military is preparing to restart a long-running military exercise with Egypt after President Barack Obama cancelled it in 2013 to protest the killing of hundreds of protesters in Cairo.

The restart next month of the biannual Bright Star exercise, a bilateral effort now focused on counterterrorism operations, comes as Egypt struggles to contain a potent insurgency on the Sinai peninsula. Though Egypt may invite other countries such as Sudan as observers, only U.S. and Egyptian forces will take the field, U.S. defense officials said.

The renewal comes just months after Trump welcomed Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to the White House in April, showering him with praise for fighting extremists at home and and in North Africa. The Obama administration struggled to craft a coherent policy toward Egypt after the 2011 uprising there, abandoning longtime U.S. support for ousted president Hosni Mubarak, then warily embracing the democratically-elected Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi, then growing distant from Sisi after the military reasserted control in 2013.

Unlike in past years, however, Bright Star will feature a smaller U.S. military footprint, a U.S. official with knowledge of the planning told Foreign Policy,with several hundred personnel taking part, as opposed to the thousands that deployed from the early 1980s until it was called off.

In previous years, hundreds of U.S. airborne troops dropped into the Egyptian desert and Marines stormed the beaches; the largest Bright Star took place in 1999 and included about 70,000 troops from 11 nations.

But theres little need for that kind of show this time around, said David Schenker, director of the Program on Arab Politics at the Washington Institute. Cairo has no real peer threat in the region, but its borders with Libya and Sudan are increasingly causes for concern. Instead, battling Islamist terrorists who have gobbled up parts of the Sinai peninsula is Cairos main worry yet proving a tough task for Egypts traditionally-focused military.

The work next month will be focused primarily on counterterrorism, detecting and eliminating roadside bombs, and border security operations all tasks crucial to ending the years-long insurgency in the Sinai, which has seen the influx of Islamic State fighters and funding over the past two years. The largest group in the Sinai, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, is responsible for dozens of roadside bombs and other attacks, and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in late 2014. The group currently controls large swaths of the peninsula.

The Egyptian military has been fighting and losing an insurgency in the Sinai for the last several years, Schenker said, and has shown little interest in restructuring its large and lumbering military to fight an entrenched insurgency. A smaller exercise focused on these highly technical things is the best thing that Egypt could get.

The exercise was last held in 2009, as Cairo called off the 2011 event due to the Egyptian revolution that eventually ousted Mubarak, and president Obama halted the follow-on event in 2013 after Egyptian security forces killed hundreds of civilian protesters.

Obama is widely seen as having given al-Sisi the cold shoulder. But hed started to roll back some of the penalties imposed on Egypt well before Trump took office. In March 2015 he ended the freeze on $1.3 billion in U.S.military aid, resuming the shipment of F-16 fighter planes, Abrams tanks and Harpoon missiles, and other equipment.

Photo Credit: MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images

Twitter Facebook Google + Reddit

View original post here:
With Obama Gone, Trump Pentagon Resumes Major Egyptian War Game - Foreign Policy (blog)

The Clean Water Act is an important piece of legislation. When enacted in the 1970s, it solved a real water quality and pollution problem throughout the nation. Moreover, as its early enforcement unfolded, Congress and even the EPA were careful to include important provisions to protect the economy. Americas farmers, in particular, were assured that normal farming practices would be protected from federal micromanaging; amendments clarified that plowing to produce crops is not regulated by the Act, and other normal farming practices do not require permits.

Lawmakers understood that wed have a hard time feeding our nation if farmers had to go through the Clean Water Act permitting process, which is long and expensive, simply for the right to grow food.

But those protections are under unprecedented assault, through a groundbreaking federal prosecution launched during the Obama Administration that has somehow continued under the Trump Administration.

The target is my familys business, Duarte Nursery, Inc., and the 500 jobs of our employees. Career prosecutors at the Justice Department and entrenched bureaucrats at the Army Corps of Engineers are seeking devastating fines, all because we planted wheat in a field we own in Northern California.

Theyre going after us because we didnt get a permit to plow, even though the Clean Water Act says no permit is needed and indeed no permit has ever been required or issued to a wheat farmer ever before; and we didnt avoid some small wet spots in our field, even though theyre similar to many others commonly farmed through by farmers all over the US (and those seasonal wetlands are still present on our property, as they were before our plowing).

From the beginning, the government put forward allegations that were grossly incorrect. A Corps of Engineers field agent accused us of deep ripping, three feet deep, permanently destroying more than 20 acres of wetlands. If true, this would have required a permit in many cases. But not only was this not true, the Corps agent avoided opportunities to find out what actually happened, and then destroyed documents in his file to prevent their disclosure to me and the public.

The governments own expert report admits that the plowing averaged four to seven inches, which does not require a permit. Undaunted, a government team of 12 experts and others had the run of the property for two weeks. They dug up 20 vernal pool wetlands, two-to-three feet deep, with a diesel excavator. At the end of their investigation, the government faced a failed theory of prosecutionthere was no deep ripping and the wetlands were all still present, even in a five year drought. But the prosecution team persisted, now with senseless metaphors: they argued that five inch plow furrows were really small mountain ranges and the plowing like a tornado. Sadly, a federal judge agreed with the government, holding us liable because our plowing moved soil back and forth and from side to side.

Now, the court is poised to hear the governments arguments to impose astonishing financial penalties. The proposed $2.8 million fine, coupled with a requirement that my business and myself personally fund over $30 million to a private wetland mitigation bank, is ruinous. It will destroy an important California family business and many jobs. It will also give the federal government unlimited power to extract wealth from family farms and rural communities nationwide.

Over the years, members of both parties in Congressin particular, but not limited to, representatives from rural areashave worked hard to sustain the farming safeguards in the law. It is widely recognized that the attack on my family business threatens those safeguards. House Judiciary Chairman Goodlatte and House Agricultural Committee Chair Conaway recently sent a strong letter to Attorney General Sessions asking him several important questions specific to this case. Iowa Senators Joni Ernst and Charles Grassley have spoken against this abusive prosecution. As stated by attorney Tony Francois of Pacific Legal Foundation, which is representing my business without charge against the Corps., my case should alarm every farmer in America, and every family that values having food on their table. If the farming protection in the Clean Water Act is going to be plowed under, we may not have a lot of domestically grown food to eat.

President Trump recognized early in his campaign that the Obama Administrations illegal expansion of Clean Water Act jurisdiction, through an open-ended WOTUS rule, would be a threat to rural America. President Trumps move to repeal the Obama WOTUS rule was very important. Now we need the same attention to this prosecution against me, my family business, and, by extension, Americas farmers from coast to coast.

John Duarte is president of family owned Duarte Nursery, Inc., headquartered near Modesto.

View original post here:
Obama Is Gone, But Not His Administration's Crusade To Crush A Farmer - The Daily Caller

Barack Obama delivered an empowering video message to attendees of Chance the Rapper's surprise concert Saturday night, a free gig the rapper planned after serving as grand marshal of the city's annual Bud Billiken Parade.

"I wanted to just have the chance to say to all of you that the Bud Billiken parade stands for so much of what our community is about," Obama said in the prerecorded speech, which was shown on the Auditorium Theatre'sscreens.

"We want to make sure our kids are safe, we want to make sure that they are ready to go back to school. We want to make sure that we are nurturing and protecting and encouraging and loving the next generation of leaders all throughout the city of Chicago. So Chance, I'm grateful for everything that you've done on behalf of the young people back home."

Obama added, "I am hopeful that everybody who is at the concert today, everybody who is getting involved, everybody who's been part of the parade, that all of you are in the mindset that you could do anything that you want to as long as you put your mind to it."

Chance the Rapper previously appeared onstage with Obama at the then-president's annual National Christmas Tree Lighting ceremony in Washington, D.C. in December 2016.

Earlier in the day, Chance the Rapper's SocialWorks charity distributed 30,000 backpacks filled with school supplies to Chicago children.

The #BBBash concert, which Chance the Rapper handed out free tickets to while on the parade route, also promised "special guests," with the rapper delivering surprise appearances by Future and Jeremih.

Sign up for our newsletter to receive breaking news directly in your inbox.

Read the original post:
See Barack Obama's Empowering Video Message at Chance the Rapper Concert - RollingStone.com