Malcolm Nance - The Plot to Hack America

Several internet hoaxes spread on social media and caused panic in around the country in the fall and winter of 2014. The first came after an explosion at a Louisiana chemical plant in September, then later an Ebola outbreak, and a police shooting of an unarmed black woman in Atlanta in December. None of these events, however, actually happened. 62But this was not immediately clear in any of the cases. During the chemical plant hoax, for example, posts inundated social media, residents received frantic text messages, fake CNN screenshots went viral, and clone news sites appeared. 63In each instance, reporter Adrian Chen discovered, a Russian group known as The Internet Research Agency concocted the elaborate hoaxes. Online, these pro-Russia, anti-everyone paid staffers are known as the “Trolls from Olgino.” 64

Chen traveled to the Russian city of St. Petersburg and reported extensively on the so-called “troll farms” for a June 2015 article titled “The Agency” in The New York Times magazine. He wrote that the agency had become known for “employing hundreds of Russians to post pro-Kremlin propaganda online under fake identities, including on Twitter, in order to create the illusion of a massive army of supporters.” 65

Analysts suspect that Putin business associate Engeny Prigozhin runs the agency. Chen identifies him as “an oligarch restaurateur called ‘the Kremlin’s chef’ in the independent press for his lucrative government contracts and his close relationship with Putin.” 66The Times quoted former employees as saying that the agency had “industrialized the art of trolling.” 67Chen wrote, “The point was to weave propaganda seamlessly into what appeared to be the nonpolitical musings of an everyday person.” 68In an interview with PBS NewsHour, Chen said the purpose was “to kind of pollute the Internet, to make it an unreliable source for people, and so that normal Russians who might want to learn about opposition leaders or another side of things from the Kremlin narrative will just not be able to trust it.” 69

A year before Chen reported on the Internet Research Agency, Max Seddon reported for BuzzFeed about leaked emails that showed the agency had begun a project to flood social media and the “comments” sections of popular American websites such as Politico , The Huffington Post and Fox News, pushing themes such as “American Dream” and “I Love Russia.” BuzzFeed reports one project team member, Svetlana Boiko cited fears that news organizations and internet commenters were not writing positively of Russia. In a strategy document, Boiko wrote that non-Russian media were “currently actively forming a negative image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community.” 70

After the Ukrainian crisis began, followed by the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014, BuzzFeed reported an increase in Pro-Kremlin internet activity, which Seddon writes, “suggests Russia wants to encourage dissent in America at the same time as stifling it at home.” 71The documents show that each day, the “trolls” were expected to comment on news articles fifty times, tweet fifty times from ten accounts, and post three times on six Facebook accounts. 72

After WikiLeaks released the leaked DNC emails in July, Chen, now a staff writer at The New Yorker , wrote that since his original article there appeared to be decreased activity at the Internet Research Agency. But he did notice a trend in some of the Twitter accounts that continued to post. He writes, “But some continued, and toward the end of last year I noticed something interesting: many had begun to promote right-wing news outlets, portraying themselves as conservative voters who were, increasingly, fans of Donald Trump.” 73

FOR PUTIN’S LUCKY-7 OPERATION TO BE successful, the CYBER BEARS teams would need a dissemination platform once the information had been recovered. The hacking teams would store the main flow of data and assess the data for the most damaging files. FSB Kompromat disinformation campaigns rely on the theft of politically explosive data, then secretly leak it out to the global news media though a third party in order to protect the actual source. This third party is known in intelligence parlance as a cutout.

The LUCKY-7 information warfare management cell would distribute documents stolen by the Cyber Bears in a manner that would meet the results the Kremlin desired. This would require serious control of the data release scheduling, constant monitoring of the political landscape, and analysis of the contents of the documents so that the most damning could be released. Emails of immediate value could be released to the public via a trusted “cut-out.” Files that could harm Trump, such as the opposition file, would be made public to dilute their power and allow him to respond.

The cutout for these operations would be a globally-known person whose organization’s mission is to daylight secret documents. The FSB chose Julian Assange, a British citizen who is a vocal and vehement enemy of Hillary Clinton, and the founder of the online organization WikiLeaks. Assange has described WikiLeaks as a “giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents.” 1By the end of 2015, the site claimed to have published more than 10 million documents, many of which have been controversial or classified. The site has drawn both praise and scorn since its inception. 2

Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 with the purpose of providing an outlet for leaked documents. “WikiLeaks is developing an uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass document leaking and analysis,” the website’s “About” page read in 2008. “Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations.” 3

Born in Australia in 1971, Assange had inconsistent homeschooling during a childhood marked by constantly being on the move. His family moved thirty-seven times by his fourteenth birthday. 4By the time he was a teenager, Assange had developed an interest in computers, and in 1987, at age sixteen, he received his first modem, which he hooked up to his Commodore 64 to connect to a network that existed four years before the World Wide Web came into use. 5

Julian quickly discovered the world of hacking and “established a reputation as a sophisticated programmer who could break into the most secure networks,” including that of the U.S. Department of Defense. 6In 1991, Assange was under arrest and charged with thirty-one counts of hacking and related charges stemming from his infiltration of telecommunications company Nortel; he pled guilty to twenty-five charges—the remaining six were dropped—but a judge ruled he only had to pay “a small sum” in damage, citing his “intelligent inquisitiveness.” --226, -193

It wasn’t until 2010 that WikiLeaks entered the mainstream consciousness when the site published a video, dubbed “Collateral Murder,” 7showing two U.S. helicopters opening fire in Baghdad, killing at least a dozen people, including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children. 8Reuters had been attempting to get the footage released under the Freedom of Information Act for years before WikiLeaks released it in April 2010. The New York Times wrote:

The release of the Iraq video is drawing attention to the once-fringe Web site, which aims to bring to light hidden information about governments and multinational corporations—putting secrets in plain sight and protecting the identity of those who help do so. Accordingly, the site has become a thorn in the side of authorities in the United States and abroad. With the Iraq attack video, the clearinghouse for sensitive documents is edging closer toward a form of investigative journalism and to advocacy. 9