The massive expose in Friday morning’s Washington Post starts with a bombshell:
Early last August, President Obama was handed an ”eyes only” memo from the CIA that described how evidence clearly showed Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally and directly involved in a cyber campaign to not only disrupt the U.S. presidential race, but to help throw the victory to Donald Trump.
Damage Hillary Clinton, Putin had told his intelligence operatives. And put Trump in the White House.
The expose is broken into 11 chapters and includes timelines, charts and other interactive graphics that lay out the story’s astonishing details. You should read it, but it will take you a while, so here are some of the highlights of the report:
- Calling Russia’s interference in the election “the crime of the century,” the report says that despite U.S. officials knowing a year ago what was going on, the Russians to this day have yet to face any consequences “because of the ways President Barack Obama and President Trump handled it.”
- Through interviews with more than three dozen current and former U.S. officials, The Post’s Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous tell the inside story of how the Obama administration handled the Kremlin’s meddling in the election;
- U.S. intelligence agencies had “sourcing deep inside the Russian government capturing Putin’s direct instructions in the operation;”
- Before he left office, Obama launched a covert operation to deploy “implants” in Russian networks, which the authors describe as “digital bombs that could be triggered in a retaliatory cyberstrike in the event of Moscow aggression.” And as if handing off the cars keys to his successor, Obama left it up to incoming-President Trump to decide to use the bomb or not;
- CIA Director John Brennan first alerts the White House in early August that Putin was personally involved in the election-hacking operation; but because the material was so sensitive, Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief and included instructions with the package that it be returned immediately after it was read;
- In subsequent meetings, Obama and his intelligence team met under top-secret conditions in the Situation Room, following the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid.
Get top headlines in your inbox every afternoon.
Sign up for the free PM Report newsletter.
