← The Rest Is Classified
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- [00:04]
David McCloskey
For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad free listening, early access to series first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter and discounted books. Join the Declassified club@the restisclassified.com.
- [00:25]
Gordon Corera
Did the Russians interfere in in the 2016 US election? And were Trump and Putin working together? Well, welcome to the Rest Is Classified. I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [00:37]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [00:38]
Gordon Corera
And you've just given away the whole series.
- [00:41]
David McCloskey
Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. The Russians interfered in the election, people. Case closed.
- [00:49]
Gordon Corera
Well, believe it or not, that is the subject we're going to be exploring in this series in a little bit more depth than just the one word answer that we just had from David. But I guess, David, it's a big subject, it's a contentious subject, but it's also a really interesting subject from the restless classified perspective because it's going to allow us to get into a particular type of Russian intelligence operation, what's called an active measure. We'll get into what that is in a few moments. The aims of these kind of operations, the deep mechanics of how they happen, and crucially, the consequences. How much impact do they actually have? And there is, as we'll see, a long tradition of this in Russia. But this is a really interesting case which has drawn a huge amount of attention and controversy in recent years, hasn't it?
- [01:37]
David McCloskey
I think, Gordon, it's fair to say that this is the Rest Is Classified lens on the 2016 election. And this is a story, really a spy story that shaped the politics of that really tumultuous year in American democracy. And I think we probably would be remiss if we didn't start with a brief word on the politics which you alluded to, Gordon, which is this is a hugely partisan issue in the United States. Anything that has to do with the sort of nexus of Trump and the Russians is going to be hugely divisive. This is not a politics show. We don't claim to have the expertise of, of our friends at the Rest Is Politics or the Rest Is Politics us. But yeah, we are going to look at the intelligence story. We're going to focus on the espionage here. And at its heart is a Russian intelligence operation, a Russian active measure. Now, one of the major questions this story will raise is how do we make sense of Trump's connections to Russia? And we have a treat for members of our Declassified Club because we are doing a miniseries that is going to run alongside this sort of main series on the pod, examining Trump's ties to Russia and really helping I think in a very fact based and chronological way, helping people make sense of the Trump Russia connection. What's hype? What's actually fact? How do you think about the relationship that Donald Trump has with Vladimir Putin and with Russia?
- [03:10]
Gordon Corera
Yeah, because it is one of the questions we both get asked. I certainly get asked almost every time I'm doing a public event or a Q and a is, is Trump a Russian agent question? What's the nature of the relationship, how we understand it? It's a question that comes up again and again. It's a complicated one and it's one we're going to explore in that mini series. But that does allow us to focus much more in this series on what we know the Russians were doing to try and influence the election and some of the real details about the espionage and influence and intelligence side of things, particularly in terms of what the Russians were aiming for.
- [03:48]
David McCloskey
That's right. So if you want to listen to that miniseries, go ahead and go join the club. Go to thereestisclassified.com, join the declassified club. We'll be putting out three episodes of that miniseries to run alongside this series on the Russian active measure. I think going back to that, though, Gordon, you could probably make the case that this Russian intelligence operation is one of the most consequential espionage operations ever conducted. It has massive impact not only on the process of the election. We'll talk more in detail about what exactly that means, but on US Institutions, on perceptions of our intelligence system and our political elite and the ripple effect. And this is why I make the case that it's so consequential is we're still seeing the impact of it today. It has been almost 10 years. And I think a lot of the dialogue around a deep state, the Russia hoax, Russia gate, all these terms will be familiar to at least to Americans who are engaged in kind of the politics around this. They all originate in this 2016 operation.
- [05:00]
Gordon Corera
And in many ways, I think what's so interesting is it's an operation which has an outsize impact, I mean, a far greater impact than I think even the Russians may have predicted, precisely because of the way it plays into politics, into the psychology of Donald Trump, into American politics, and the way it has a tsunami of kind of fear and perception about what are the Russians doing? What might they be doing? Is the Russian hand everywhere? Is it nowhere? Is it being overstated. All of those questions spring out of this very specific intelligence operation. And I think it's a really interesting case as well of how intelligence kind of spill into wider society and politics with an unpredictable impact, I think.
- [05:42]
David McCloskey
Well, it also raises what I think is a very big and uncomfortable question. Question which, which we are going to attempt to answer throughout the the series, which is, did a Russian active measure operation turn the tides in the election and help elect Donald Trump? Now, that question in and of itself in some quarters, at least in the US would be very incendiary, but I, I would say you don't have to argue that the campaign colluded with the Russians to make that point. It should be an apolitical statement to argue that the Trump campaign may have benefited even indirectly, from what we'll see as a Russian operation that is going to end up being designed in large part to weaken his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
- [06:32]
Gordon Corera
But I don't think it's a straightforward answer, or as straightforward as some people think, actually, the impact I think it is worth, by the time we get to the end of it, really kind of drilling down on that question of impact, because I think sometimes it is maybe overstated. But that's one of the things we'll get to, isn't it?
- [06:44]
David McCloskey
I mean, even the fact that we have to pose the question or that the question comes out of the discussion of a Russian intelligence operation, I think is an indication of just, you know, how big of a deal that operation actually was and is. I also think that the 2016 operation is. It's a great example of a kind of newish sort of intelligence operation, one that, as we'll see, has a very long tradition, particularly in Russia. But in many ways it's the fusion of a very old school political warfare and disinformation campaign alongside modern telecommunications infrastructure and technologies. And the blending of those things together is something that I think very much defines the geopolitics of our world today. And we kind of see an early indication of this in this Russian operation in 2016. So, again, we're going to focus on the espionage and as we've said, we've teed this word up a few times now. The thing we're going to look at is a particular type of operation. It's not a recruitment, it's not an assassination, it's an active measure.
- [07:56]
Gordon Corera
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- [09:12]
David McCloskey
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Gordon Corera
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- [09:48]
David McCloskey
Well, it's certainly better than a passive measure, isn't it, Gordon? If we have a measure, we want it, we want it to be active, right?
- [09:54]
Gordon Corera
Definitely.
- [09:55]
David McCloskey
Definitely. That is something you and I don't agree on much, Gordon, but we can, we can agree on that. So this is, this is absolutely vital for understanding the entire story to come, because an active measure is a very particular type of intelligence operation. And I think it is one of the dynamics that really does distinguish Russian espionage from Western espionage, because in a lot of the stories that we've done on this program, Gordon, we've talked about intelligence gathering essentially as going out and trying to steal secrets and in some cases covert action. So you could think about, you know, the things that the CIA has done. Well, in our first episodes, right on Iran, covert action to overthrow the Iranian government. We think about intelligence as being sort of stealing secrets and those types of COVID actions. But the Russians think more broadly about influencing events and people, so that that is an active measure. And it is so fundamental to the Russian understanding of intelligence that a retired KGB general by the name of Oleg Kalugin, who I think you've met, is that he said that this type of subversion has long been the, quote, heart and soul of Russian intelligence. And what it does is it aims to create division within an adversary country or between allies to weaken them. It can involve influencing politics and elections, sowing division in a society, discrediting opponents, and it often involves using fake documents and fake agents. So it is a massive kind of disinformation and political warfare campaign that is designed to sow chaos essentially in a, in a target system, country, nation, whatever.
- [11:50]
Gordon Corera
Yeah. And it, it's got deep roots in Russian, even pre, pre revolutionary intelligence. But in, in the Cold War, the KGB really did have a machine to do this. I mean, there was a whole part of the KGB service a, which was dedicated to using forged documents and disinformation. In 1980, the estimate was that the Soviet Union spent $3 billion, so about two and a half billion pounds a year on active measures. It was that intrinsic to the idea and political KGB officers based in embassies abroad were expected to spend a quarter of their time doing active measures, as well as all the kind of political reporting, political espionage they were doing. I mean, it was that central to it. And I looked a lot into this when I was working on the Mitrokhin archive, the KGB archivist who detailed many of these operations. And there's many interesting cases where the KGB is doing things like spreading conspiracy theories. For instance, the extraordinary conspiracy theory that the CIA might have been behind the
- [12:53]
David McCloskey
JFK assassination, which has infected your brain, Gordon.
- [12:57]
Gordon Corera
Yeah, I'm still reading books about that. But what's so interesting is you go back to the 60s and the KGB is covertly financing books to be published in America within a year of the assassination, using its agents, who are publishers to push the idea the CIA is behind it also in the 60s, trying to discredit J. Edgar Hoover, stir up racial tensions in the U.S. they try and discredit Martin Luther King. They hope more radical, divisive voices in the civil rights movement will come to the fore. I mean, they even go so far. I mean, sometimes active measures goes from information to action because they even at one point plant small bombs in black areas, African American areas of New York, and fake claims it was Jewish groups to try and spread division. So this is something which is deeply rooted and a real core part of particularly KGB doctrine.
- [13:49]
David McCloskey
There's an author named Vladislav Bittman who wrote a book on active measures called the Deception Game. And he noted that when he was working for an Eastern block intelligence service, that the key was mixing kind of accurate details with forged ones. This is kind of another feature of many Active measures campaigns is there might be a measure of truth that's swirled into the disinformation that is coherent and sort of partially responds to reality or at least accepted views. And so it can look initially credible. And then this is interesting, you know, because he's writing decades before the 2016 operation that we're talking about is he explains how leaking stolen documents had been a standard procedure in disinformation activities. So again, you see this long, long tradition, many of the sort of elements of an active measure go go back decades and in fact listeners to the rest is classified will know Gordon that you are very fond of. When I have long setup sections that go deep into the history, Gordon Carrera loves to cut them, mentions a family. Listeners to the bin Laden series will know that I had extensive things prepared about bin Laden's wives, that Gordon was completely disintegrated anyway. I had examples of, I guess you could say active measures adjacent activities that had been conducted by the czarist intelligence services, the Cheka, in the first years of sort of the revolution. Gordon und mercilessly struck them from the script.
- [15:22]
Gordon Corera
I put in some more recent examples,
- [15:25]
David McCloskey
slightly more relevant points. Allegedly more relevant.
- [15:28]
Gordon Corera
Yeah, because you made that point about stolen material. There's a good case, I think, in the 70s where a US classified military manual gets stolen and then they copy it and insert some extra lines into a genuine classified military manual suggesting that the US intelligence services might be willing to plot violence amongst allies in allied countries as false flags to blame communists and build support for the US military presence in those countries. And this is in the 1970s when there's a lot of suspicion about US intelligence post Watergate and some of the revelations. So you can see that's the modus operandi they're using. One of the realities, though, we should say, is that they weren't always effective, partly because the KGB wasn't always that subtle in its understanding of how the media space or how the information space in the west works. Often they would fall flat. I do remember Oleg Kalugin, the former KGB general who left for the west at the end of the Cold War, told me that they actually used our friend Kim Philby to help them.
- [16:38]
David McCloskey
Yes, friend of the pod.
- [16:39]
Gordon Corera
Friend of the pod. They run things by Kim Philby and they said, look, we're planning this active measure against Britain, this piece of false information. And he would say, oh, that won't work. That sounds too Soviet. So you can see how they need some help to work out how to plant information because they're Cultivating journalists or intellectuals to push out these stories. Information laundering would be the modern word. There's one, I think, really interesting example, which was something called Operation Denver. I'm not sure why it was named Denver, whether it started there, but it spread. The idea that secret US military research at Fort Detrick was behind the creation of the AIDS virus. And this is in the 1980s when AIDS was just emerging and the challenge was getting that story out. And they plant it in a small journal in India first, which is funded by the KGB in 1983. And it takes years for it to be picked up. It takes another couple of years before Soviet news outlets start to push it, citing the Indian journals. Then they can claim they're not the source. It comes from this Indian journal. And then you see it start to spread. And by 1987, over 40 countries are reporting this claim. But it's taken four years to get it spread. But it does have a real impact eventually in how people see the potential for U.S. malfeasance behind AIDS.
- [17:59]
David McCloskey
Well, and that's another theme, I think, of this series, is that 40 year stretch from the KGB initially planting the story to it. Really catching fire is no longer kind of a feature of the active measures and disinformation landscape. Right. Because our modern technological infrastructure, the Internet, social media, allow these kind of claims to spread, to go viral much more quickly and effectively than the tools the KGB, you know, had at its disposal in the 1980s. I also think, I mean, Gordon, it's worth mentioning that, you know, political interference has long been a part of active measures. I mean, getting agents or intelligence officers to infiltrate campaigns and using information as a weapon. I mean, this was the case, for instance, in 1968 when the, the Russians use this against Nixon. They think Nixon's too hardline and anti communist. The KGB not a big fan also of Ronald Reagan. So they want to undermine his campaign in 1984. KGB issues orders to do whatever they can to stop him. You know, work with any other campaign, use front groups, use journalists. Another feature of an active measures campaign to kind of attack and stop Reagan. Right. So I think the 2016 campaign that we're going to talk about can seem like it's unique, but the reality is that the Russians have attempted to politically interfere in US Presidential campaigns going back, you know, decades.
- [19:36]
Gordon Corera
One of the things to say as well, David, is that we don't always learn from the history. I think we forgot the history of what the KGB was up to at the end of the Cold War. We thought it was over and in fact, there is this continuity in Russian intelligence operations in its desire to use active measures to influence, to undermine, to sow dissent. It continues. Now, maybe it's a bit quieter in the 1990s, but as you hit the start of the 21st century, you've got two things, really. One is technology is going to transform the ability to do active measures because you've got the Internet, which is going to offer this new vector to spread information. And of course, in Moscow, in Russia, there's a new leader, Vladimir Putin. And so there, David, with Vladimir Putin coming to power in the Kremlin in 2000, let's take a break. And when we come back, we're going to see how Putin is driven to use active measures in a new, potentially transformative way and eventually directed against the United States. It's not just something you made. It's the privilege that you get to work with your hands. It's building something that serves a purpose, proof that you have the grit to keep going. At Timberland, we understand you take your craft seriously, and we do, too, which is why our products are built to the highest quality. We put in the work so you can perfect yours with purpose, in every detail, and crafted with intention. Timberland built on craft. Visit timberland.com to shop.
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Gordon Corera
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- [21:41]
Gordon Corera
Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Book Club, a new podcast from Goal Hanger, hosted by me Go Dominic Sambrook and me, Tabitha Syred.
- [21:50]
David McCloskey
As some of you may know, I have been Dominic's producer on the Rest Is History, and we even did a miniseries last year about all things books.
- [21:58]
Gordon Corera
And since we enjoyed that so much, we have decided to roll it out as its own show. So it'll be coming out every Tuesday. We'll be doing a different book each time and digging into all the stories behind them.
- [22:10]
David McCloskey
And we are going to be talking about the historical contexts behind some of the great, greatest and most famous books of all time. We're going to be digging into the remarkable people behind them, the unexpected stories behind the stories, and also unraveling the plot of each book a bit and delving into the depths of the story.
- [22:28]
Gordon Corera
Now, you don't have to have read the books to listen to the show, but we hope that by the end of each episode you will be able to pretend to people that you've read them. That is the key thing. And either way, whether you read them or not, we hope that you'll learn lots of fascinating facts, you'll do lots of great stories and maybe Tabby the Odd laugh.
- [22:44]
David McCloskey
We will be looking at thrilling gothic bodice rippers like Wuthering Heights and Frankenstein, as well as iconic stories like the
- [22:54]
Gordon Corera
Great Gatsby or Little Women and then
- [22:56]
David McCloskey
also some more modern stuff. So Game of Thrones, Normal People, the Hunger Games, Hamnet, all manner of exciting stories.
- [23:03]
Gordon Corera
So please join us on our journey, journey into all things books. Wherever you get your podcasts, just search for the book club every Tuesday and hopefully we will see you there. Well, welcome back. Vladimir Putin has come to power in Moscow in 2000. We looked a bit at his rise, didn't we, in the miniseries we did for Club Members with Mark Gagliotti, the expert at the formative experiences for this former KGB officer and what molded him. And it is the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the chaos and humiliation of the 90s which really shapes him. It's interesting because a lot of people I think, in the KGB blamed the CIA for the collapse of the Soviet Union. They thought that actually the CIA had been secretly trying to divide and undermine the Soviet Union, which of course was a multi ethnic multinationality state at that time, and that it broke up into its constituent parts, Russia being only one of them, Baltic states, Ukraine, all these others. And I think it's true that many KGB officers thought this was all the result of an American active measure, if you like, although the Americans wouldn't call it of an active measure. Now, that's not necessarily the case, but that was part of the perception.
- [24:36]
David McCloskey
I think the Soviet Union would have definitely held together if it hadn't been for the CIA. You know, it wasn't because you couldn't make toilet paper or anything like that, but right. This is the mentality, right, of Putin and the KGB officers around him. Now, we talked a bit in our series with Mark Galeotti about how Putin in those first few years in office, I mean, takes power in 2000, he's relatively solicitous of the west, at least not openly confrontational. And then it flips and it doesn't flip overnight. But there's a series of events that I think Kind of reshape the relationship between Putin and the US and the west more broadly. There's of course the Iraq war, the invasion of Iraq in 2003. There's criticism from the West, I think rightly so, of Putin's extremely brutal war that he's prosecuting in Chechnya throughout much of the early 2000s. There's NATO expansion, which as you know, as we see Putin is not a fan of. So by 2008, Putin becomes the prime minister rather than the president. Dmitry Medvedev is the president for four years between 2008 and 20, 2012. And there's maybe some speculation that Putin might fade away and let a new generation take over. Oops, that did not happen in 2011. There are elections for the Duma, Russia's parliament. And those elections are absolutely rife with manipulation. Now one of the things that I think is interesting, Gordon, is that essentially the Russian intelligence services perform an active measure on the Russian population itself. I think the initial petri dish for a lot of what we're talking about actually originates inside Russia because Putin's party doesn't perform very well. Protests break out. It's clear that there is opposition to Putin returning as president. And Putin is very shaken by all of this. And again, that mindset that we're talking about of all of this being a CIA, a Western plot, KGB paranoid mindset, isn't it? He basically sees this as another domino in these color revolutions that had been sweeping X or former Soviet states and kind of the Russian near abroad. So places like Georgia, In Ukraine in 2004, there had been these so called color revolutions bringing to power political parties and politicians that were anti Russian. And again, Putin sees all of this not as a sort of expression of the popular will that the people around Russia or even some Russians inside Russia don't want to be subjugated by Putin and the people around him. He sees this as a CIA plot. This is the CIA using active measures against Russia. And I think that's a really important point for the mindset that's going to frame the 2016 election. Is that wrongly, I would argue Putin has come to the conclusion that he has been the victim of a very elaborate CIA and Western active measure already.
- [27:55]
Gordon Corera
And it's really interesting, isn't it, who he blames specifically for inciting some of the protests and supporting some of the protests. It's the US Secretary of State at the time who is Hillary Clinton, Obama's Secretary of State. And he views her as having legitimized and supported some of these opposition groups and protests, even the idea she might have been giving signals to them through their speech to rise up and protest against him. And so I think this is where some of the very personal antagonism starts between Vladimir Putin and Hillary Clinton.
- [28:33]
David McCloskey
When, when Putin actually announces his presidential campaign in 2011, he's sitting around a table speaking to all of these kind of stony faced political allies and he says that Clinton, quote, set the tone for certain actors inside the country meeting the protesters. She gave the signal. There's kind of two big points here, right? One of them is that Putin believes he has been the target of an ongoing series of U.S. active measures. And two, he sees Hillary Clinton as being to some degree the mastermind of those active measures. During Putin's presidential campaign announcement, he's sitting around a table speaking to a group of political allies and he says Putin says, quote, that Hillary Clinton had set the tone for certain actors inside the country. He's referring to the protesters who are angry that Putin is going to return to power and that he's, you know, and his party have essentially rigged the election. She, Clinton gave the signal. There's kind of two big points here. One of them is Putin, by the time you get to 2011, 2012, believes strongly that he has been the target of an active measure. And I think it's not just Russia, but his, his control, his political control over Russia has been the target of a CIA or Western active measure. And then the second point is that one of the primary Western politicians behind this is Hillary Clinton. Those are two, two very important points to frame. What's going to happen in 2016 is he's been victimized and he's been victimized by Hillary Clinton.
- [30:16]
Gordon Corera
That's right. And now he's back as president, as leader of Russia, and it is a different Putin. I think it took a while for people in the west to understand it was a different Putin after 2012. He's more aggressive, he's more nationalistic. He's reaching deeper into social conservatism, into religious currents. And he's starting to see Russia as in conflict, maybe not war, but a conflict with the West. And he's more willing to use aggressive tools, what are sometimes called gray zone activities against the West. It's interesting because as we get into 2013 and the run up to 2016, Putin has been worried that the Internet, that technology, that a free information space, is a threat to his hold on power. He views the Internet as dangerous. He famously calls the Internet a CIA project at one point. And by that, I think he means, you know, it was created by the US Government to spread Western ideas. It's a vector for subversion and protest, for Western information warfare. And he's starting to think about how to fight back against that and looking for ways and tools of doing it. And you get this very interesting article in 2013 by General Valery Gerasimov, who we encountered in our Prigozhin series, didn't we, as a tvege still there, as the Chief of General Staff and head of the Russian military, he publishes this article, which in a relatively obscure journal, but it becomes seen as a definitive article about what gets called the Gerasimov Doctrine. Now, Mark Galeotti, who, who we've spoken about, is one of those who comes up with that term, and he thinks it's been slightly overstretched as a term. But the key thing to know is Gerasimov is arguing, isn't he, that the west is using new tools and information warfare against Russia. And there is a new information environment thanks to things like the Internet and social media, which is allowing a new form of warfare to be waged by reaching out to populations and mobilizing them potentially for protest, as seen just a couple of years ago in the Arab Spring, which had been really 2011, 2012, hadn't it?
- [32:38]
David McCloskey
The interesting, I think, again, to the Putin mindset is, as he's realizing, and his intelligence services are beginning to kind of use information warfare quite broadly. He, again, I think, sees himself as being a target of these exact same tools on the part of the West. Now, you remember, Gordon, in The spring of 2016, the Panama Papers, when that kind of scandal broke, which is basically this massive document dump from a Panamanian law firm called Mossack Fonseca that showed the techniques that Putin himself and a lot of other wealthy people use to kind of hide money. It showed, in some cases, Putin and Putin affiliates, including, I think, a. Was it a violinist or cellist with the St. Petersburg Orchestra who had accounts, you know, in the Caribbean that were worth millions and millions of dollars. And it's sort of, where did this come from? And it's quite obvious it came from Putin. So Putin was, was angry, to say the least, about this, this document dump. And he's, he's asked at a press conference in April of 2016, so just as this election interference story is gonna, is gonna start, he's asked about the release of those papers. And he says officials and state agencies in the United States are behind all this. Right. The Americans, Putin says, are trying to weaken Russia from within to spread distrust for the ruling authorities and the bodies of power within the society. So it's an active measure in his mind.
- [34:14]
Gordon Corera
And what's so interesting is there isn't any evidence I've seen that it was an active measure. Like so many things we're talking about, Russia interprets it as such because you've got a KGB officer who's trained in active measures running the country and a bunch of other security officials around them. They are obsessed with active measures because this is what they've spent their career doing. So when they see these Panama papers, they assume it must be when as far as I know, and I could, could be wrong, there could be a hidden hand somewhere in was just someone who worked in the company leaking this information. But it is an example where Moscow and Russia and Putin are becoming paranoid. You also get, we glossed over one character as well, who we should probably just mention briefly, which is friend of the show Edward Snowden, who also makes his appearance in Moscow and ends up after leaking lots of American intelligence secrets in Moscow. But I guess the crucial thing about Snowden is not so much the fact he ends up in Moscow, but the fact that he reveals the extent to which the US is controlling the Internet and has the ability to spy on the world through the Internet, which again feeds into this idea that the US is using information as a weapon. That's the mindset which has grown, isn't it?
- [35:29]
David McCloskey
That's right. And I'll refer listeners, those who might be new to the program. We did a six episode series on the Edward Snowden debacle, I think it was last spring. And Gordon throughout that series expressed a very worrisome affection for the young Edward Snowden.
- [35:46]
Gordon Corera
So that's all that is a mischaracterization, fake news.
- [35:50]
David McCloskey
It's all on tape. It's all on tape. And you can go, you can go listen to it, go judge for yourself. I mean the other, the other thing that I, we, we probably shouldn't gloss over is that in 2013, 2014 there were massive protests in Ukraine about essentially whether Ukraine would be looking toward the EU or would be looking back toward Russia. And there was a massive people power movement that came out into Maidan Square in Kiev to essentially say we, we don't want to live under the Russian thumb. And at that point in time there was a quite pro Russian Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, who essentially makes a decision to take, I think what you could call more or less a cash bribe from the Russians from Putin to scrap an EU association agreement, and that that triggers this protest movement. Putin sees, again, a US Hand behind those protests as being yet another active measure against Russian power, control and influence in Ukraine. And I think we should say that, you know, your point, Gordon, on. We've been talking about Putin's mindset here for a bit. I think one of the very interesting themes of this entire story is that both sides, the Russian and the American side, because they conduct intelligence work in very different ways. There's a very different culture and mindset and historical experience with intelligence in both countries. The mirror imaging that is done in both societies makes it very hard to analytically understand what's happening. So in Putin's world, he's been victimized by US active measures going back to the mid 2000s. Right. Which I think is not true. But he's interpreting all of this through the lens of the way that he is a former KGB officer and the way that the Russian intelligence services operate, which is active measures are a big part of what they do. We'll see as we get to it in the US Response that I think one of the reasons why we struggle to understand what actually happened is we don't have a long tradition of active measures in this country. I think we're actually quite bad at information operations. It's not ingrained in the sort of intelligence.
- [38:20]
Gordon Corera
Culturally.
- [38:20]
David McCloskey
Different. Culturally, it's different. And. And so when we. When we are facing down a Russian active measure, we don't see the full scope of it because we view intelligence work as well. You're. You're stealing secrets, and it goes far beyond that. So both sides, I think, really throughout the story, will have a very hard time grappling with what they're dealing with because of that mirror imaging.
- [38:44]
Gordon Corera
A lot of this does go back. We're picking up that point and also going back to that issue of Ukraine and Maidan and the change of regime in Ukraine, of course, then you get the start of the first wave of the Ukraine conflict and Russia seizing Crimea. What you also get is a sense within Russia that it is in conflict with the west at this point, something which I don't think the west recognizes on our part because we don't recognize what they're willing to do. But Ukraine is important. It will be important to our story in lots of ways, because you can start to see as well, can't you, that Russia will start to fight back and use information operations and active measures in the context of that conflict in Ukraine. That's where things are starting to heat up as we get through 2014, isn't it?
- [39:31]
David McCloskey
That's right. In one instance, the Russians intercept a phone call between a very senior State Department official named Victoria Nuland, who I believe was the most senior State Department official on Russia at the time. She's talking to the US Ambassador to Ukraine, and Victoria Nuland on the call says, bleep gun, Becky, the eu, and then the Russians collect this. Unbelievable. That's why I asked Becky for the BLEEP gun.
- [39:58]
Gordon Corera
Well, I meant the sentiment.
- [39:59]
David McCloskey
Oh, the sentiment. Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, the EU can be very frustrating, Gordon. Let's.
- [40:03]
Gordon Corera
We can all. Let's not.
- [40:04]
David McCloskey
Let's not get into that.
- [40:05]
Gordon Corera
We'll get into whether there was a Russian hand in Brexit. Yeah, that's Alastair Campbell's big thing. But, yeah, sorry, back to the story.
- [40:13]
David McCloskey
And Victoria Nuland, by the way, is the one who, during the protests, wasn't she, like, handing out muffins to some of the protesters? And the Russians just latched onto that as, like, evidence of U.S. support. As you know, Victoria Nuland is handing out baked goods to. To protesters on the Maidan. Anyhow, the Russians take that intercepted phone call, they dump it out on the Internet and put it up on YouTube. And I think it's a great example of an old school intel collection method, obviously intercepting phone calls, that happens all the time. But the new one, which is, let's put it out there, let's put it on social media, let's make it available to create tension with the eu. So make it. Make it hard for Victoria Nuland to deal with, you know, in the State Department more broadly, to deal with European officials and, and create a political kind of wildfire around that content, as opposed to what the Russians are actually doing in Ukraine and gets picked up by, obviously, Russian TV stations, but ultimately a bunch of American and European news agencies who are just. Just all over it.
- [41:19]
Gordon Corera
Yeah. And I think it is the first sign we get of Russia, and it's often in Ukraine, as we'll see also with cyber hacking as we come to it, that Russia trials a lot of these techniques, as you said, sometimes domestically to try and sway opinion at home, to support the regime, but often in Ukraine abroad as the first place. They try things out and then they're going to try it further afield. So by the time we get to 2016, you can see that Putin is getting paranoid. He thinks the west is trying to undermine him. He thinks it's using the Internet to do that. He thinks he's in a conflict with the west and he particularly hates Hillary Clinton.
- [41:57]
David McCloskey
That's right. And interestingly enough, Gordon, some of the first inklings, I think, of what. What is going on in the run up to 2016 come from a contact of the US State Department. Now, we have not spoken much on this podcast about diplomatic reporting, have we, Gordon? We've mostly talked. We've talked about sigint, we've talked about humans. Embassy reporting. State Department reporting, in some ways is quite similar to human. Right? I mean, it is a. It is a State Department officer in a foreign embassy, you know, a political officer, an economic officer who has contacts in that society. Right. In that country. They could be business leaders, they could be Ministry of Foreign affairs officials. Right. They could be kind of members of the sort of cultural, political, business elite, whomever the difference. So they're going to go out, the State Department officers will go out and they'll meet and talk to these people, and then they will write that up in cables that are usually classified secret. But what differentiates that from kind of the human that CIA collects is that it's usually not collected clandestinely. The host government understands that the Americans are meeting with members of their government. And even if it's not information that is going to be made public, it usually is not. It's not clandestine. You're not stealing a secret from the foreign government. And folks who want to look at State cables, there have been a bunch that have been leaked over the past decade which can be, you know, obviously they can be quite embarrassing because the diplomats will write up reports and send them back to Washington. And sometimes those reports include details on foreign leaders that are not particularly flattering.
- [43:47]
Gordon Corera
Yeah, we'll get to the leaks. We'll get to the leaks. Maybe soon a bit further on down the story.
- [43:51]
David McCloskey
Yeah, that's right. Now, this story comes from a terrific book on the Russian active measure called Russian Roulette by Michael Is Isikoff and David Korn. And they write in their book that in early 2014, a US diplomat assigned to the US embassy in Moscow reached out to someone. They call it a secret source in Russia. I'm not quite sure what to make of that, because again, usually these contacts are, you know, known to the host government. And this diplomat was. Was trying to understand Russia's plans toward Ukraine and Crimea. Again, it's not a paid source, but this person had ties into the Kremlin, and it provided useful information in the past in the spring of 2015. So the state Department officials had a bunch of interactions with this person. The source comes back with something that's particularly interesting. And he tells the State Department official that the Kremlin is planning a wide ranging campaign to attack Western institutions and undermine Western democracies. So again, it's, it's an active measure. It would include cyber attacks, information warfare, propaganda, social media campaigns. This source offered general reports on Russian penetration of media organizations, lobbying firms, political parties. It's interesting because I think while it in retrospect paints a picture of what is going to come, it's not particularly surprising at the time to U.S. officials. Again, consider the history we talked about. Russian active measures are just sort of part of the game. But State Department wrote that, you know, the size and magnitude and the seriousness of their intent was disturbing because it showed this kind of growing capacity for mounting influence operations and active measures against the U.S. now the U.S. official who's meeting with the source ends up filing more than a dozen embassy cables with this intelligence. I think these are what are called notice cables, Gordon. No dissemination, very limited kind of distro. Like usually if a diplomatic cable was sent back to Washington and then got distributed at CIA, it would be quite easy to access because again, it's usually just classified secret. The notice cables would sometimes, if my memory is correct, come to you, just hard copy and be harder to get. They'd be harder to get your hands on because it would typically be written by the ambassador or a very senior official inside the embassy and would include information that would be particularly sensitive. So kind of getting closer to human, but. But not, not quite.
- [46:18]
Gordon Corera
And it was seen as significant and interesting reporting, but it maybe doesn't feel like it has the impact you might expect.
- [46:27]
David McCloskey
I can understand why it wasn't really acted upon because on the one hand it is, it is giving kind of high level plans and intentions for what the Russian government intends to do. It's explaining that an active measure is coming or underway. But it doesn't give you enough specificity about the targets, I think, or maybe even the broader intent in order to be able to stop it. It's not particularly actionable and does seem to fit in line with what at that point must have seemed like. You know, just an ongoing wave of Russian active measures that are directed against the US and the West.
- [47:07]
Gordon Corera
That's right. And I think there was a bit of complacency about, well, the Russians might try and do this kind of thing, but it never really has much impact, doesn't work, won't sway anything. I just think that there was a complacency about the potential impact of these kind of operations. At the time.
- [47:24]
David McCloskey
Well, that's right. And one US Official leader said anybody who had any doubt about Putin's intentions just wasn't reading what we reported reported. And I think that's maybe not quite true because to your point, there was a sense that while we understand Putin's intentions, it just might not make much of an impact. In speaking with a number of former CIA and former FBI officials who were involved in the story, the complacency point was a big one because whether it was a failure of an imagination, an intelligence failure, we just didn't, we didn't see this coming. But in any case, the stage is set for a very audacious Russian active measure, one that is going to end up targeting all of American society. And maybe there, Gordon, we'll end this first episode exploring Russian active measures and Vladimir Putin's intentions. And next time we will see how that active measure is unleashed on the United States.
- [48:23]
Gordon Corera
But of course, if you don't want to wait for that next episode, you can hear it right now and the rest of the series. And you will get access to the very special bonus series looking at Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and 2016, all of that if you join the declassify club@therealisclassified.com Lots of other benefits there as well, including a weekly newsletter. But otherwise, we'll see you next time.
- [48:52]
David McCloskey
We'll see you next time. Anthony Scaramucci here. As much as I love talking politics and let's be honest, it sometimes gets me in trouble, my other and probably safer passion is books. We just dropped our 200th episode on
- [49:12]
Gordon Corera
my podcast, Open Book.
- [49:14]
David McCloskey
Another goal. And to celebrate, we spoke with none other than Waterstones and Barnes and Noble CEO James Dawn. Let's take a listen.
- [49:23]
Gordon Corera
It's a phenomenal piece of technology, James. Everything has changed.
- [49:27]
David McCloskey
Our phones have changed, our computer, way
- [49:29]
Gordon Corera
we look at the TV, the book
- [49:31]
David McCloskey
is a 500 year old piece of technology. You think in 500 years it'll be with us, James?
- [49:36]
Gordon Corera
I think so. And I think it's astonishing simply how extraordinary, durable it is and effective it is. And as you say, newspapers, we don't read them anymore. It's on your iPad, it's on your phone, music. The format changes all the time. Not with books. And I think when publishers also concentrate on the physical attributes of a book as well, they are lovely things and treasures forever. There may be too many books being
- [49:59]
David McCloskey
published right at this moment. Do you believe that and tell us why?
- [50:02]
Gordon Corera
Far, far too many books. And it's getting ever, ever, ever worse. This is speaking as a bookseller who crafts a physical space. So I only have so much space and there's more and more and lots of self publishing. Nothing wrong with writing a book and wanting to see it out in the world. But for myself, I have to curate all the time. And the bit that I regret is that people get upset with me for not carrying their book well. I just can't. I don't have the space for it. And that's really what I mean. The fact that they sell on Kindle or they sell on Nook or online is fine by me. I want people reading, but I myself have to curate and the reality is that I can't take the vast majority of books that are published.
- [50:40]
David McCloskey
I hope you enjoyed that clip. To hear more from James Thorn and others, subscribe to Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:48]
Gordon Corera
Troy, the Odyssey, the Iliad. All of these great ancient epics depict a monumental collapse that destroyed the interconnected empire of 3000 years ago. And to understand the Bronze Age apocalypse that homer wrote about 400 years after it happened, subscribe to Empire World History, a fellow Goal hanger podcast where we are deep diving into the biggest imperial collapse in ancient history. To get a flavor of the series, here is a clip from our episode with none other than Stephen Fry. It is one of my favorite subjects, the story of the Greeks and the siege of Troy and Odysseus return home. Of course I say Greeks. Homer called them the Achaeans, the Danaans, the Argives. The word Greeks is a much later one, but it refers really to the Mycenaeans, a warrior aristocracy essentially obsessed with honor and reputation that would give them an eternal glory. A kleos, as they call it. It's the Kleos that's in the name of so many Greeks. You know, Cleopatra and all the Socrates, Heracles, who's Hercules, you know, Hera's glory. He was actually named Heracles because she hated him, because he was a love child of Zeus. And she never liked Zeus's love childs. Her husband, her errant husband. And so, as an attempt to placate her, Teiresias, because he was born in Thebes, suggested that he change his name as a baby. This was to Heracles, the glory of Heracles. It didn't help much. It didn't help at all. Athena even. They even put her on Hera's breast when Hera was asleep because it would bond them if he suckled her milk. But she woke and saw it and tossed him away and her breast milk spread across the sky to form the Milky Way.
- [52:31]
David McCloskey
I didn't know that story because Galaxy,
- [52:33]
Gordon Corera
of course, is from the Greek for milk galactic, as in lactic. So the chocolate makers are right. Anyway, this is completely separate. Lovely though. Cleop, Keep going. Don't stop. Well, we really hope you enjoyed that clip. Hear more on the Bronze Age apocalypse and how it shaped the ancient Greek epics. Just subscribe to Empire wherever you get your podcasts.