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Musicmystery -> RE: Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House (12/12/2016 4:48:18 AM)
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A house divided: The alarming response to Russian meddling in American democracy
"Thanks to reporting by the Washington Post and New York Times—we now know that the CIA briefed senior members of Congress before and after the election that, in the consensus view of intelligence analysts, the Russians’ motive was not just to undermine confidence in American democracy generally, but actively to seek Mrs Clinton’s defeat. These latest revelations have probably not changed any minds at all. Republicans who hate Mrs Clinton are still delighted that she was defeated. Democrats who loathe and fear Mr Trump have one more reason to dislike him. Outside Washington, red-blooded Americans who mostly rather dislike President Vladimir Putin (pictured), according to polls, seem to be shrugging off the latest allegations: President-elect Trump was loudly cheered by spectators when he turned up in Baltimore on December 10th to watch the Army-Navy football game, an annual pageant of patriotism.
"And that is what is, or should be, so unsettling. Russian interference in elections across the Western world is like a nasty virus, attacking the body politic. Normally, America is protected by powerful, bipartisan immune responses against such a menace. It also boasts some of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence and cyber-defences, and when spooks tell the Republicans and Democrats who lead Congress and sit on the House and Senate intelligence committees of hostile acts by a foreign power, love of country generates a unified response. That immune response is not kicking in this time.
"The problem is not that all Republicans in Congress dismiss the claim that Russia tried to meddle in the election. Committee chairmen have promised urgent hearings. “We cannot allow foreign governments to interfere in our democracy,” said Representative Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee. Senator John McCain of Arizona, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and no friend of Russia, told reporters: “Everybody that I know, unclassified, has said that the Russians interfered in this election. They hacked into my campaign in 2008; is it a surprise to anyone?” The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Devin Nunes of California, has said that he believes Russia is guilty, but then turned his fire on the Obama administration, saying that President Barack Obama’s desire for a “reset” of relations with Moscow had led him and his spy chiefs to fail “to anticipate Putin’s hostile actions.” He grumbled that Team Obama had “ignored pleas by numerous Intelligence Committee members to take more forceful action against the Kremlin’s aggression.”
"Yet Republicans are not conceding a more incendiary idea: that the authoritarian, anti-American government of Russia wanted Mr Trump to win. Mr Nunes, a prominent Trump supporter during the election, calls that “innuendo” based on “lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.” Other Republicans are taking the view that it is all very complicated and murky. “All this ‘news’ of Russian hacking: it has been going on for years,” Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a member of Republican leadership, tweeted: “Serious, but hardly news.”
"A startling report in the Washington Post described Republican and Democratic members of the House of Representatives being briefed in a secure room at the Capitol last week and remarking, out loud, that they appeared not to agree even on basic facts, let alone their interpretation."
Interesting piece in the Economist -- http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/12/house-divided?fsrc=scn/fb/te/bl/ed/ahousedividedthealarmingresponsetorussianmeddlinginamericandemocracy
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