Hardly a week has passed since November’s election without some new media revelation about ties between Team Trump and Russia. Trump himself engaged at various times in business dealings with shady Russians. Carter Page traveled to Russia and gave a speech. Michael Flynn spoke to Russian Ambassador Kislyak and even discussed policy matters with him prior to Trump’s inauguration. Paul Manafort was up to his eyeballs in Ukrainians (OK, technically they’re not Russians, but who can tell the difference anyway?). This past week brought a bumper crop of scandalous news, with Trump firing FBI Director Comey, presumably to fend off the hounds of justice nipping at the President’s heels, and then sharing information derived from a highly sensitive intelligence source with his Russian puppet-masters.
With charges and countercharges flying fast and furious, it is easy to forget—indeed, many people apparently have forgotten—what the various investigations are intended to accomplish. They are supposed to establish two things: 1) whether the Russian government surreptitiously interfered in the U.S. presidential elections to undermine American democracy generally, and the Clinton campaign specifically; and 2) whether the Trump campaign criminally abetted Russian mischief making.
It did not take long for an affirmative consensus to emerge on the first point. Some contrarians maintain that the same intelligence agencies that got it wrong on Iraqi WMD have no doubt gotten it wrong on Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee. I don’t find it a very compelling refutation. The Russian special services are past masters at the arts of kompromat and dezinformatsiya, and Kremlin opponents both domestic and foreign have experienced their prowess, often to devastating effect. I can’t imagine why the United States should have escaped their depredations, particularly since Putin neither feared nor respected Washington. It is noteworthy that Trump himself, who long belittled the notion of Russian meddling, was eventually briefed on the classified evidence and accepted it, however grudgingly, as persuasive.
The second agenda item, however, has proven much more problematic. Alas, it’s not enough to demonstrate that Team Trump was guilty of wishful thinking about Putin and Russia (it was, and perhaps still is), or that some of Trump’s associates have longstanding contacts with Russians (or with other Eastern Slavs whom the press could pass off to the ill-informed as virtual Russians). It’s not enough to show that Carter Page was a naïf, or that Michael Flynn was headstrong and careless. It’s not enough for Trump to dare the Russians to release Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, presumably hacked from her infamously unprotected server. It’s not enough for Team Trump to have been chummy with Russians or to have denigrated Clinton over shots of vodka. No, it will require concrete, stand-up-in-court proof of intentional acts of collusion between Team Trump and the Russian government, directed against Clinton and occurring during the presidential campaign.
And here, I’m afraid, the sheer implausibility of it all quickly becomes overwhelming.
The most improbable aspect of the collusion hypothesis, the point that begs all credulity, is the idea that the Russians would take Trump’s people—or any Americans, for that matter—into their confidence in such a delicate undertaking as the undermining of U.S. democracy. Having decided to embark on a campaign of “active measures” against the United States, the absolute last thing the Russian special services would do would be to tip their hand to any citizen of the target country—even someone in their thrall or on their payroll. It would only take one American with pangs of conscience to blow the whole operation. Trump’s detractors apparently assume that he and his lieutenants are so utterly depraved that they would cold-bloodedly betray their country to foreign interests in their lust for power. Russians would hardly make such an assumption.
And who, exactly, would have been the Svengali in the Trump camp—the criminal mastermind of the whole plot, or else the trusted go-between who enjoys the unquestioned confidence of both the Russians and The Donald? Carter Page, who had lived in Russia for several years and traveled there occasionally, including during the presidential campaign, has been a favorite suspect. However, his involvement with the Trump campaign was quite peripheral, and he apparently wasn’t even personally acquainted with Trump, let alone a member of his inner circle. Moreover, there was a recent press report that the Russian special services assessed Page several years ago for recruitment as an agent, but concluded that he was of no utility. The story rings true. It is difficult to see him as the nexus of international intrigue, or to imagine the Russians trusting such a person with such a sensitive mission. You might as well accuse Carter Page of burning down the Reichstag.
Furthermore, what specifically did the Russian special services even need from Team Trump in order to carry out their nefarious activities? Did the Trump camp steal the password to the DNC computer system and hand it to the Russians? Quite unnecessary. Did Trump’s people sit down with the Russians to brainstorm some good anti-Clinton fake news stories? The world champions of dezinformatsiya would hardly require any help from rank amateurs. Come to think of it, I have yet to hear any hypothesis, credible or otherwise, regarding the precise form that Team Trump’s collusion with the Russians might have taken. What, then, are the investigators even looking for? Presumably they’ll know it when they see it.
Incidentally, skeptics about a Russian hand in hacking the DNC cite the expertise of the Russian special services, arguing that the latter would never have been so careless as to leave some of the clues of Russian culpability that forensic analysis has uncovered. However, these skeptics assume that the Russians would have had their top experts working on the DNC job. But how likely was that? I expect the Russians have their best people working on the hardest targets, such as the White House, DoD, and State Department computers. Accessing the DNC’s computers, by all accounts, could have been a homework assignment for the Hacking 101 class at the FSB Academy. Yes, if you’re going to steal the crown jewels you need to employ your top criminal minds. The DNC hack was more like shoplifting at K-Mart. Accordingly, a certain degree of sloppiness in the execution should not rule out Russian culpability.
There appears to be a fundamental confusion in many minds between leads on the one hand, and evidence on the other. Decades of contacts and ties between Team Trump and Russia are leads worth investigating for clues of a possible crime; none of them constitute any actual evidence of wrongdoing. It is imperative that law-enforcement agencies run down every possible lead. However, it is completely unprofessional for law-enforcement and intelligence officers to maintain a steady stream of leaks about their investigation to the press, and this lack of professionalism, to my mind, suggests a lack of substance to the charges. If Team Trump did, in fact, connive with the Russian special services to sway the November elections, the charges would be of a most serious nature—treason, espionage; conspiracy at the very least. When law-enforcement agencies probe such grave crimes, they typically take great care to conceal the investigation lest they alert the culprit, giving him an opportunity to cover his tracks or to flee. They swoop down on the unsuspecting criminal only once they have quietly and scrupulously gathered all the incriminating evidence. However, in the case of Russiagate, each new lead has been—pardon the expression—trumpeted in the press, giving the suspects ample time to destroy evidence, fabricate alibis, or shop for real estate in the same suburban Moscow subdivision where Edward Snowden resides.
Perhaps even now our intelligence and law-enforcement agencies are pursuing a lead that will hit pay dirt. Maybe the hoopla over Michael Flynn, Carter Page and Paul Manafort is a clever diversion while the FBI inexorably closes in on the real culprit. I will certainly sit up and take notice if one of the aforementioned gentlemen should announce his plea for political asylum in the arrival lounge of Sheremetyevo Airport. However, those who hope Russiagate will lead to the President’s impeachment should prepare themselves for disappointment. If the months and years roll by with no evidence of collusion, then—to coin a phrase—“I hope you can let this one go.”
A postscript is in order regarding the latest Trump outrage to hit the headlines: the sharing of information derived from an extremely sensitive intelligence source during a White House meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak. While we can only speculate about the precise details of the conversation (and some of those details might be quite important), there are, broadly speaking, two accounts of the meeting. On the one hand, an anonymous leaker (most likely in the CIA), with access to the raw intelligence piece but no first-hand knowledge of the conversation, has suggested that Trump blurted out highly sensitive information, jeopardizing the source of the intelligence as well as our whole intelligence-sharing relationship with a friendly service. On the other hand, National Security Advisor McMaster, who was present at the meeting, has averred that Trump’s actions were wholly appropriate and did not reveal any sensitive information about sources and methods—in fact, that Trump had not even been briefed on the source.
It is McMaster’s account that rings true. To the best of my knowledge, U.S. presidents rarely if ever see raw intelligence reports containing the sources-and-methods details, which are often the most sensitive aspect of a report.
In addition, the information Trump shared was reportedly about an ISIS plot to smuggle bombs onto commercial aircraft hidden in laptop computers. If so, then Trump’s action was not only appropriate, but praiseworthy. Recall that ISIS bombed a Russian commercial airliner over the Sinai in 2015, killing hundreds of Russian tourists. If the information Trump provided Lavrov might help prevent another such incident, it would be monstrous to criticize him for it.
Moreover, even if Trump did reveal any data that could help identify the source, it is curious to allege that Trump put the source in danger from Russia. After all, ISIS is Russia’s sworn enemy, has conducted multiple terrorist operations against Russia, and gives every indication of contemplating others. Therefore, what possible motivation could Moscow have for eliminating an intelligence source working to undermine ISIS? It is hard to know which implication is more outrageous—that the Russians are such cold-blooded assassins that they would take out any intelligence asset they don’t control, or that they are too stupid to grasp their own manifest interest in this source’s continued collection against ISIS.
The press has speculated that Israel was the source of the intelligence report in question, and that Trump’s loose lips have jeopardized our whole intelligence-sharing relationship and therefore put American lives at risk. However, as previously noted, it is highly unlikely that Trump knew the source of his information. Moreover, the U.S.-Israeli security partnership has experienced many ups and downs over the years; reports of its death last week at the hands of Trump are greatly exaggerated.
The villain in this drama is not a foolhardy Donald Trump recklessly divulging top-secret information in order to impress his Russian guests. If ISIS now knows that someone is tipping off the infidels about impending terrorist operations, it’s not because Trump confided in Lavrov. Say what you like about the Russians, they know how to keep a secret. Rather, it’s the irresponsible behavior of the leaker that has put this information in the headlines and probably blown the source’s cover.
Nice work!