Russian hackingWikiLeaks's CIA dump a likely Russian move to make Trump’s charges appear credible: Experts
Some Trump supporters have suggested that the hacking of the DNC and of the Clinton campaign was not the work of Russia’s intelligence agencies. Rather, it was a “false flag” operation carried out by the U.S. intelligence community, but which was made to look as if it was carried out by Russian intelligence. They portray Trump as a victim of the “deep state,” or permanent bureaucracy, which is hostile to the president’s agenda. Security experts say that the latest WikiLeaks’s publication of information about CIA hacking and surveillance tools – information likely given to WikiLeaks by Russian intelligence – may well be a Russian effort to make Trump’s fact-free charges, that he was “spied on” by U.S. intelligence, appear more credible.
There are two aspects to the latest massive release by Wikileaks of information about sophisticated CIA surveillance.
Most of the commentators writing about the massive release focused on the issue of privacy, highlighting how the CIA – and, by extension, the U.S. intelligence community – could penetrate everyday consumer electronics.
This line of commentary dovetails with concerns raised by Edward Snowden in 2013 – concerns which, he said, drove him to reveal NSA surveillance tools which the agency used to spy on American citizens.
The Guardian notes, however, that there is another aspect to the latest WikiLeake release.
American security experts see the leaks as the latest move by Russia to help President Donald Trump – the candidate Russia, undermining U.S. democracy, actively worked to help elect as president in November 2016.
Since mid-fall, Trump has openly and repeatedly denigrated the U.S. intelligence community, charging that those who worked for the different U.S. intelligence agencies were incompetent, “politically motivated,” and that the conduct of some agencies was reminiscent of the Nazi regime.
At the same time, he heaped praise on WkiLeakes (“I love WikiLeaks!” he said on 10 October).
Last Saturday, in a series of tweets, he also charged, without any evidence, that President Barack Obama had ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on his election campaign.
Security experts told the Guardian that the information WikiLeaks published about the CIA hacking tools feeds directly into the efforts by Trump and his supporters to portray Trump as a victim of the “deep state” – aka the “permanent bureaucracy.”
Some of these supporters have argued, or suggested, that the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and of the Hillary Clinton campaign was not the work of the FSB and the GRU – Russia’s domestic intelligence and military intelligence agencies, respectively – but rather a “false flag” operation carried out by the U.S. intelligence community, but which was made to look as if it was carried out by the FSB and GRU.
Among Trump supporters who have advanced this argument were not only wing nuts like radio personality Alex Jones (who has also claimed that the 9/11 attacks were an “inside job,” and that the Sandy Hook massacre was a hoax), but more respectable and informed individuals such as Carter Page and John Bolton.
The “Vault 7” documents WikiLeaks published on Tuesday give ammunition to those Trump supporters who are especially critical of what they call the deep state and its animosity toward Trump and his agenda.
