The CIA was aware of Putin’s order to support the Trump Presidential campaign candidacy

The CIA was aware since August that President Putin personally ordered an operation to support Donald Trump presidential race.

The intelligence shocked the White House and put US security chiefs on a top-secret crisis footing to figure out how to react.

According to the Washington Post, CIA was aware since August that President Putin personally ordered an operation to support Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential Election.

According to the media outlet, the confidence that Democrat Hillary Clinton had won the election led the Obama administration to avoid take countermeasures.

After the shocking victory of Donald Trump, the US intelligence community had a great regreat for the missing action.

“From national security people there was a sense of immediate introspection, of, ‘Wow, did we mishandle this,'” a former administration official told the newspaper.

The Washington Post reports of a secret intelligence task force that was created by the US to firm up the information and respond to the Russian threat. The work of the experts was focused on preventing the hacking of voting systems undermining confidence in the vote tally itself.

The Obama administration opted to deliver a warning to the Russian government instead hacking back.

According to the Post, the US send at least four direct warnings to the Russians through different channels, including direct messages sent by Obama to Putin. The messages discouraged the Russian Government in hacking the US voting operations.

“We made the judgment that we had ample time after the election, regardless of outcome, for punitive measures,” a senior administration official told the Post.

Punitive measures range from sanctions to launching cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, in December an executive order issued by President Obama applies sanctions on Russian military and intelligence officials. 35 Russian operatives were ejected.

The Post reports that Obama authorized a plan to implant malware in the systems of critical Russian infrastructure, but it is unclear if  Trump has followed through with that.

 

Trump criticized the response of the Obama administration to the alleged Russian threat.

“If he had the information, why didn’t he do something about it? He should have done something about it. But you don’t read that. It’s quite sad.” said Trump in an interview at a Fox News program.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – CIA, President Putin)

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