Steven L. Hall, Washington Post: Why the CIA won’t want to go public with evidence of Russia’s hacking
Revealing intelligence without revealing sources and methods isn't easy.
“If I can’t use this information, then what good is it to have it?! Why even collect it in the first place?!”
It’s a cry of frustration, an angry rhetorical exclamation I heard many times during my 30-year career as an operations officer at the CIA. Usually it comes from ambassadors or senior members of the national security apparatus in Washington, and occasionally even from analysts in the intelligence community who have been provided with a truly stunning piece of information acquired clandestinely from human or technical sources. The sense of frustration among these consumers of intelligence is heightened when the topic is critical and timely, and when both the government and the American public are clamoring for answers to difficult questions.
This is precisely where we as a nation find ourselves when discussing the claim by the U.S. intelligence community that Russian hackers attempted to influence the U.S. presidential elections. The White House has ordered a report on what the hackers did, and to what extent they were trying to help Donald Trump, before Trump is sworn in as president Jan. 20. News reports say officials at the FBI and the CIA have agreed that hackers targeted the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, to boost Trump. President Obama suggested this month that Russian President Vladimir Putin knew about the hacks.
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WNU Editor: I can understand the need for keeping secrets and for not revealing the sources that were used in making one's conclusions. But there are exceptions to this rule .... and this is one of them. During the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy made the decision to release classified pictures of Soviet missile sites in Cuba when he was making his case to the American people on why he was going to blockade Cuba. President Kennedy knew that his words were not enough .... he knew he had to present concrete evidence to the American people to make his case. Flash forward to today .... my advice to President Obama is that he should follow the same protocol. The Obama White House .... with only a few weeks left in its term .... is about to undertake actions against Russia that will definitely accelerate a new Cold War as well as binding the incoming Trump administration to a Russian policy that they have already said they are in disagreement with. With such high stakes now at play .... President Obama has to come clean on why he is doing this .... and like President Kennedy before him .... he has to make the case to the American people by providing hard-core facts and evidence. Unfortunately .... it looks like they have no interest in doing this .... and I will not be surprised if in the next week or two the White House will be issuing executive actions and public announcements that will only inflame tensions between the U.S. and Russia just when the Trump administration is about to enter office. Is this smart diplomacy .... in my humble opinion .... this is destructive and definitely not helpful .... and will force the incoming Trump administration to make decisions and concessions to Russia in order to repair this damaged relationship.
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