How Trump Is Beating the Russia Rap

Source: Observer | March 1, 2017 | John R. Schindler

Kremlin ties could unravel the new administration—but Dems wounded own cause by downplaying Russian threat for so long

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Many in Washington, including at least a few of our spies, think the administration will eventually be overwhelmed by its shady relationship with Vladimir Putin and his unpleasant regime. The president’s ham-handed efforts to dismiss the Russia story as “fake news” have not quieted his critics, by no means all of whom are on the Left. Rumors of unsavory connections to the Kremlin swirled around Trump throughout the presidential race, but neither his rivals nor the media dug as deeply into those allegations as they should have. To compensate, parts of the mainstream media have now gone into overdrive, searching meticulously for proof of unethical and perhaps illegal ties between the White House and Putin.

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It must be said that President Trump is greatly helped by his adversaries on this issue. Strategists know that having a cooperative enemy is just about the best gift anyone can hope for, in politics as in war, and Trump has just about the most cooperative enemies imaginable here. After decades of low-balling the Russian threat, when not mockingly denying it outright, liberals suddenly see the Kremlin bear lurking menacingly around every corner. Leftists who castigated American intelligence as the enemies of civil liberties, openly hailing defectors to Moscow like Edward Snowden as heroes, now regard our spies as the saviors of our democracy.

This kind of naked partisanship isn’t fooling anybody in the Intelligence Community, which is skeptical of all partisan politics. Worse, the Left has embraced many White House critics whose sole credential is vehement loathing of Republicans in general and Trump supporters in particular. Many of the talking heads cited whenever the issue of Trump and Russia comes up are self-proclaimed experts, while others are outright frauds (MSNBC is particularly egregious in this regard).

Yet this case, given its importance and complexity, demands real expertise—and it can’t be denied that expertise in general is under attack in our society, as elaborated in an excellent new book, The Death of Expertise. Simply put, you need to know a lot of things to grasp the full scope of Russian spy-games against America and how they impact our politics right now.

You need a deep understanding of Russian spycraft, what Moscow calls konspiratsiya (yes, “conspiracy”), which goes back a century and more. The good news is that Kremlin spy-games have remained remarkably consistent over time; the bad news is they’re very intricate and long-term. Russian intelligence agencies are far more aggressive and risk-taking than Western counterparts and they are much more patient. In Moscow, successful espionage operations are measured in decades, not years.

You also need a deep understanding of how the Russians conduct offensive counterintelligence operations, particularly the recruitment of moles inside the enemy’s spy services. The Trump presidency is one piece of a complex Putinist puzzle which includes the long-term, far-reaching penetration of American intelligence agencies by Russian spies. Here the Snowden Operation forms a portion of a much bigger espionage story which must be unraveled to understand how 2016 happened.

Last, you need a deep understanding of how Russian intelligence disseminates propaganda, what the Kremlin calls Active Measures, against their foes. Particularly important is the use of disinformation, which the KGB and its successors have perfected over decades, and they now can disseminate it quickly and easily online. Above all, what’s required to get to the bottom of the Trump mystery is a well-honed ability to unravel the full scope of interlocking Russian spy-games in their strategic—not just tactical—complexity.

The good news for the White House is that the number of people in the West who can grasp all that is rather small. Even in our Intelligence Community, this specialization is rare and customarily considered somewhat odd. You need to understand the Russian mindset, which means you should speak their language and comprehend how they think. You need extensive knowledge of Kremlin spy-cum-propaganda operations going back many decades. That expertise is hardly ever achieved by scholars, so we’re talking about people with a lot of education but also practical experience in high-level counterespionage against the Russians.

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To sum up, the knowledge required here can’t be obtained by reading a few books and consulting Wikipedia. Neither does partisan hackery help in getting to the bottom of Trump’s murky Russia ties. However, dull amateurism matched with naked partisanship constitutes most of what passes for media analysis of this critical issue, and as long as that continues to be the case the president will skirt the serious inquiry the country needs to unravel Donald Trump’s strange relationship with the Kremlin.

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