After Donald Trump’s election victory last month, reports of Russian involvement in the election have emerged, raising concerns among many over the integrity of our democratic processes and sparking debate over the role of the CIA in American affairs and abroad.
It was evident during the general election campaign that hackers released a trove of emails from top DNC members, including the private email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, to the public. Many of these emails, released through Wikileaks, contained information damaging to the Clinton campaign. At that point, however, it was unclear who was behind these hacks and what their intent was.
That changed when a recent CIA report officially declared that the Russian government under President Vladimir Putin interfered in the election to benefit Donald Trump. While public statements made by members of the Senate Intelligence Committee familiar with the report have not specified if Russians were behind the hacking of Podesta’s email, the Intelligence Committee has pushed for a hands-on investigation into Russian intervention in the election. Leaders in this movement for a special investigative committee include Republican John McCain of Arizona and Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York.
The reports should "alarm every American," Schumer, among others, said in a joint statement.
The Clinton campaign has supported such an investigation, but some Republicans have dismissed these reports as partisan mischief by the Obama Administration following an election loss. It is evident from CIA reports earlier this year which were not made public that White House intelligence officials knew about Russian hacking as early as July, when emails were leaked from the DNC that showed the party’s illicit efforts to help a particular candidate win the nomination. The administration refrained from publicizing this knowledge until after the election, a decision that has bothered some Republicans. President-Elect Trump does not see the hacking reports as significant and has said that he thinks “the Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the greatest defeats in the history of politics in this country.”
In explaining his delay to give inform the public of the hacking, President Obama said that he did not want to be seen as meddling with the election by promulgating such information. President Obama at this stage is intent on dealing with the Russian attacks and ordered the Intelligence Committee to do a full review of all malicious cyber activity timed to U.S. elections, going back to 2008. He, like many other Democrats, is seriously distressed over the possibility of foreign powers having a hand in U.S. electoral processes.
Such hacks “undermine our democracy,” Hillary Clinton said to a group of donors. What troubles people like Clinton even more is that the U.S. is not friendly with Russia or Putin, and sees Putin’s abuse of power to fight for territory in the war-torn Middle East as an international threat to democracy.
Clinton cited a personal feud with Vladimir Putin as the incentive for the Russian attacks. Putin “has a personal beef against me,” she said. Clinton went so far as to say that it was the combination of the Russian hacks and FBI director James Comey’s letter to Congress about the investigation into her private email server in the days preceding the election that cost her the presidency. Her husband, Bill Clinton, standing outside the state house during Monday’s Electoral College vote, told reporters that his wife fought hard, but “at the end, we had the Russians and the FBI deal. But she couldn’t prevail against that.”
Some have noted that amidst the hysteria over Russian intervention in U.S. political processes, many have forgotten that the U.S. interferes with other countries in the same manner. In an article for the New York Times, Ariel Dorfman describes how in 1970 CIA officials collaborated on the assassination of the head of Chile’s armed forces. Some have warned against U.S. retaliation and escalating this issue into a head-on cyberattack conflict, arguing that a scenario like that could have massive consequences, especially when it is between two superpowers like the U.S. and Russia.
Although President Obama is waiting for a full review of Russian activity in the election to be completed by intelligence officials, he has vowed to retaliate against the Russian government, a promise that may put Trump in a tough position when he becomes president next month.
At this point, no actions have been taken against the government of Russia, and while Trump favors a positive diplomatic relationship with the country, it is unclear for the moment how the U.S.-Russian connection will emerge from this conflict.