Several of you asked in comments yesterday morning what I thought about The Guardian‘s big scoop based on purported leaked Kremlin documents from January 2016 that supposedly reveal the formal planning by Putin and his intelligence and nat-sec leadership to make Trump president. As I was typing this up last night, Cheryl was doing her post and we agreed that I’d just finish drafting mine and save it for later as we are in almost complete agreement about The Guardian‘s reporting.
Since it’s now later, I figured I’d freshen it a wee bit and hit publish. Everything up to the Updated on 16 July at 2:00 PM EDT was written yesterday.
My initial response as a comment yesterday was:
This is certainly disinformation agitprop, in that what leaked is accurate in its contents, but not the real thing. Which allows Putin to both finally take credit for the op he’s been running informally since 2014 and formally since 2016 and also further that operations objectives of sowing socio-political discord in the US.
To clarify and be more specific, this is almost certainly disinformation and agitprop. While it is also most likely accurate in the contents in terms of the underlying facts of 2016 – as in Putin did have a preference for Trump and was utilizing his resources to elevate his candidacy and his chances – there is no way that this leaked Kremlin document is legitimately documenting whatever planning was going on in 2016.
The reporting in The Guardian Luke Harding, Julian Borger, and Dan Sabbagh is interesting, but… The report that the document:
“No 32-04 \ vd” – is classified as secret.
I have a lot of trouble believing that it wasn’t classified, according to the classification that the Kremlin uses, at the equivalent of what we would refer to as a fully compartmented classification at the highest level of classification.
Another issue I have is they don’t post the entire document, only two screen grabs extracts. Nor do they indicate the chain of transmission to them. They sort of intimate or suggest they got it from a western intelligence source, but the way they write the article, it could also be inferred it came from a Kremlin source.
One thing that is clear, is that if a western intelligence agency, one of our Five Eyes partners or one of our other intelligence partners, has had this for a while, they certainly did not share it with the US prior to, at least, late 2019. As both Matt Tait aka Pwn All The Things and Marcy Wheeler note.
Perhaps you might suppose the IC did have it for far longer than months. But we know they didn't have it at least by January 2017 because of this paragraph in the 2017 IC assessment: pic.twitter.com/aXdECPMJtK
— Pwn All The Things (@pwnallthethings) July 15, 2021
We know they didn't have it when HPSCI and SSCI reviewed that assessment either, so 2019?https://t.co/CZxtTdWOz1
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) July 15, 2021
I would also like to know which, if any, other major news organizations were offered this and refused to run it because they couldn’t vet it to their satisfaction.
Finally, Ivan Tchakev, who is the economics editor at RBC and writes as an expert at Riddle, is asserting that language errors indicate this is most certainly a forgery.
What is the most preferable and scientific way to distinguish between fake and authentic text? Language. @guardian has posted small extract from the Kremlin document presumed to be authentic. I have counted 4 linguistic errors and a couple of dubious instances of word usage. /1 https://t.co/Z5vWrjErww pic.twitter.com/S5QVMG4ovz
— Иван Ткачев (@IvanTkachev1) July 15, 2021
So, with a considerable degree of confidence I can assume this is either “Google-translated” text from foreign language to Russian or a text composed with help from an unschooled Russian speaker, or both. It would be interesting to look at other original “documents”. /3
— Иван Ткачев (@IvanTkachev1) July 15, 2021
Since I don’t speak Russian other than the names of some foods, some place names, several curses, and the names of hockey players and some authors, composers, and dancers, I asked our own in house Russian language and Russian studies subject matter expert about Tchakev’s analysis and got this reply:
I don’t think you can really draw conclusions based on a linguistic analysis. Bureaucratic language is terrible everywhere, including in Russia.
Based on the language, it kind of looks fake to me but I could not swear to that in court! I’m not all that familiar with these kinds of documents. I just get a whiff of somebody playacting.
So hopefully everything is now clear as mud!
Updated at 2:00 PM EDT on 16 July 2021:
Marcy Wheeler makes the excellent, and if you’ve been following along as Cheryl and I have covered this stuff here and as Wheeler and others have covered it on their sites and feeds, obvious point that Putin’s active measures and low intensity political warfare operation precedes January 2016.
That is, it seems like the story you'd tell if you wanted to shift the timeline for some reason. "Hey! Let's make pretend it happened at that Moldova meeting!"
— emptywheel (@emptywheel) July 15, 2021
Click across and read the whole thread.
As we’ve discussed here numerous times, we can actually see the disinformation and agitprop operation begin in the spring of 2014. It was at this point in May of 2014 that the first story intended to dirty up potential presidential candidates was placed in Russian state news RIA Novosti. That disinformation and agitprop drop was targeted at President Biden, Ambassador Kerry, and Vice President Cheney by targeting their children as engaged in unethical and potentially illegal activities in Ukraine and other places. All three of them were being touted in 2014 as potential presidential candidates for 2016, though none of them ultimately ran.
The Jade Helm conspiracy theory of 2015, intended to stir up discontent among Texas against both the Obama administration and US Special Operations Forces, was also part of Russia’s active measures campaign. It was tied to Russia’s promotion of the Texas secessionist movement during President Obama’s second term, as well as support for a variety of American neo-NAZI and white supremacist groups. The plot to infiltrate and influence the National Rifle Association actually begins even father back. Torshin attended his first NRA national convention in 2012 and by 2014 he had Maria Butina in place and active in the US. Similarly, Russia has targeted the National Prayer Breakfast for years as a line of entry into the Republican Party and conservative organizations. Russia has also targeted a number of American evangelical groups. One of the key players in this is Jay Sekulow, who just happened to be Trump’s personal attorney for the Mueller investigation and both impeachments. This much coincidence takes a lot of work. The idea that suddenly, in January 2016, Putin convenes the equivalent of a National Security Council Principal’s meeting to plan and coordinate efforts in his active measures and low intensity political war against the US just doesn’t line up.
As I wrote yesterday, what I want to know now is where the document came from, which, if any of our ally’s intelligence services had it and provided it to The Guardian‘s reporting team. Or, if it wasn’t provided, what’s the chain of transmission in it leaking to them. And I want to see the whole document, with the appropriate redactions that would be necessary to protect anyone who leaked it out. Without all of that, this is interesting. It rings true. But it is clearly disinformation and agitprop intended to further wreak havoc on American society and politics.
Open thread!
HinTN
As always, Adam, lucid and informative. Marcy is a treasure in this field.
Spanky
2014ETA: Touted in 2014 as 2016 candidates, yes?
jl
I don’t know much about this stuff, so maybe a dumb question. But there isn’t much in this that hasn’t been reported for years, at least in terms of enough evidence for one of the likely and plausible scenarios if not solid documented evidence.
So, I don’t understand how this poorly sourced reporting will sow much discord, or who will be discorded, or who would get much benefit from releasing it.
Maybe, Putin wants to project a general image of a big man who can effectively disrupt and punish, and get away with bad stuff, while keeping plausible deniability? Like, throwing down a dozen martial arts experts, and punking a dozen expert hockey players, and riding shirtless on galloping horses in promo videos is not enough?
jl
Maybe a distraction by alt-righters and Trumpsters from their latest scam of selling smart phones made by PRC state corporations at 2 or 3 hundred percent markup? Which is awkward for lunatic China hawks.
Yes, I am that desperate in trying to figure out who benefits from this story. Why do you ask?
Edit: attempt to rile up more of the frog and toad fight in the very tiny pond of maniac reactionary lefty internet fights? Something to rile up Jimmy Dore and Michael Tracey? Like a twig falling over very deep in the forest?
zhena gogolia
The analogy with the GWB Dan Rather story seems apt to me. If this report gets discredited, it’s more fuel for the “RussiaRussiaRussia” story, that somehow it’s a hysterical exaggeration when in fact it’s the truth.
L85NJGT
@jl:
Inquissima haec bellorum condicio est: prospera omnes sibi indicant, aduersa uni imputantu
Cmorenc
Why might the russians plant a shakily grounded story seemingly confirming true events? See, for example, how karl rove undermined the truth about george w bush’s disgracefully slacker air force national guard service record by planting seeming confirmative evidence that fell apart on closer examination
sab
@zhena gogolia: So the point is to have fake document with mostly accurate content, but with details that can be successfully challenged, so that the whole thing ends up looking bogus?
Hoodie
I get a whiff of W’s air national guard memo ratfuck from this, except probably done by the Russians themselves. Released to get anti-Trump forces all ginned up and then shot down when revealed to be a forgery. The press loses interest, whole issue effectively laundered. If no one takes it seriously, that has a similar, but perhaps reduced, effect.
Could be a precursor for a new campaign to support Trump in 2024, now that the GOP has not flushed him down the memory hole and he appears interested in running again. Looking at things like vaccine noncompliance and no unanimity on what to do about 1/6, Putin sees a great opportunity to destabilize significant parts of the US. Could be particularly aimed at the Liz Cheneys and other unreformed Cold Warriors from the anti-Russia wing of the GOP. It doesn’t seem like anyone is taking the bait, however.
Adam L Silverman
@Spanky: Yes.
Adam L Silverman
@Spanky: I tweaked the sentence to avoid any further confusion.
New Deal democrat
Also, the reference to the Kompromat material very specifically at “appendix p. 5, paragraph 5” (going from memory on the cite, so might be wrong), is the kind of very specific information I would include if I wanted to spin a tale to the gullible – especially since the tantalizing material itself is – of course! – not supplied.
OTOH, as you point out, the characterization of Trump in the document might be *exactly* what the Kremlin actually believed. Thus laughing in the US’s face right in the middle of a disinformation document.
zhena gogolia
@sab: Sounds plausible to me.
dm
I think the fact that this document doesn’t mention anything we don’t already know about makes it look suspicious. All that list of actions they plan to take, but no tantalyzing loose ends that suggest new lines of inquiry.
Roger Moore
@jl:
A common theory is that it’s a repeat of the Dan Rather/George W Bush story. The basic story they’re trying to engineer is something like:
Even if they can’t get anyone to fall for it, the existence of fake evidence will give people who want to disbelieve the theory a reason to dismiss future genuine evidence.
jl
@L85NJGT: Google translate finds several errors in your comment, I think even by the standards of BJ comment grammar and orthography, therefore I deduce that it is fake.
Adam L Silverman
@sab: Yes. This is also how the Russians freaked Jim Comey into assuming the authority of Attorney General Lynch in regard to the Clinton email server investigation. They’d included a doctored email into the WikiLeaks document dumps, which is why Lynch recused from the Clinton email server investigation. Part of the push for that was Comey went to her, explained what they had determined through the investigation, and advised her to recuse, which she did. Unfortunately, then, rather than follow chain of command, which would have put Sally Yates in as the senior appointee to oversee the investigation, Comey just took it upon himself. I don’t think the Russians expected him to do that, but it turned into a huge win for them because he did.
Tony Jay
It would be blackly funny if one result of Democratic and affiliated groups not losing their shit over this was the mainstream media turning to the actual experts for something, anything, to print about it and accidentally doing the world a solid by reporting the likely truth – this is a faked up document full of mostly accurate information about Russia’s opinion of Trump, designed to mislead credulous readers about the timeframe during which Putin went to war with Western Democracy.
That would amuse me.
jl
@Adam L Silverman: So, Russian social engineering of high placed goofballs in US government?
I’m still lost on the who and why and how of this stunt.
different-church-lady
Congrats on your sucessful conquest over the bounds of spacetime!
Hob
Maybe I’m reading incorrectly but I feel like there’s some unacknowledged contradiction between the various theories mentioned here.
If the incorrect use of Russian words is evidence that it’s not legit– then either this wasn’t created by Russians, or it was created by Russians who want to make it look fake. Adam and Wheeler both seem to be saying it was created by Russians. Wheeler seems to be saying that it was created by Russians who wanted to create a certain impression about “the timeline”, which would imply that they don’t want it to look fake.
I also don’t understand the idea that Putin would want to simultaneously set this up to be debunked and use it to “take credit”. It’s already widely believed that Putin was responsible for these things. The only way it could be more widely believed is if there’s specific evidence that can’t be debunked.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The CCP would. China has ambitions in Central Asia that Russia views that region as their turf and it would be harder for Russia to push back against China with the US on their back.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: Which stunt?
Adam L Silverman
@different-church-lady: Decisions were made. Actions were taken. No one was spared.
JDM
That’s a nice sentence, and I’ll bet it’s one that’s used a lot in the spy biz.
jl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Thanks, much better than what I could come up with.
Spanky
@Adam L Silverman: Danke.
RepubAnon
@zhena gogolia: That was my thought as well.
It also has other benefits: distracting from things such as the current Republican campaign against vaccination to make Biden look bad. As one of the German generals portrayed in The Longest Day said: “If you create a diversion, it’s for a reason.”
jl
@Adam L Silverman: By ‘this stunt’ I mean this news story, with the dodgy provenance of the documents.
I don’t understand how it will sow discord among whom about what, and who thinks they’d gain much of anything from it.
Matt McIrvin
@Cmorenc: Exactly.
jl
@RepubAnon: I just don’t see enough new and unexpected it in to rile up anyone except the raving bizarros in the alt-right and alt-left fever swamps.
JWR
On yesterday’s Background Briefing, Ian Masters spoke with Scott Horton about a likely source for this being Oleg Smelenkov, who was exfiltrated by the CIA because they didn’t trust TFG not to reveal the guy’s identity.
Another possibility they spoke of was that this could have come from U.S. intel itself, which sorta makes sense if you believe U.S. intel might be willing to see the ongoing danger to the country presented by TFG and are finally, actually trying to do something about him.
So anyway, should it turn out that TFG is a real, honest to goodness traitorous mobster conman, how many R’s will stick by his side should this story become a really big and provable thing? (I know. All of ’em, Katie.)
Adding that I don’t know sh*t about this stuff. ;)
artem1s
@zhena gogolia:
The benefit will be for the next candidate Putin wants to protect from scrutiny. Who was part of helping with the 2016 election plan? Who is not part of this agitprop reveal or who was involved before the establishment of this new timeline for when the plan was approved and launched? Who does Putin want to protect so he can line him up as his next asset? Might be someone already in Congress. Might be someone Putin wants to put into position for 2022 or 2024.
The other thing to consider is this reveal also focuses on TFG. No way in hell did Putin have all his eggs in one basket. I’ve always thought that the timing of Jeb Bush’s decision to release his emails from when he was governor of FL was fishy. JEB’s dump occurred in Feb 2015. The FYNYTs article reporting Hillary used a private server came out in March 2015. Was Jeb’s campaign given advance notice that use of a private email server was going to become scandalous in the 2016 election? Honestly the GWB comparison seems apt because this BS document reeks of Karl Rove work.
Who else in the GOP primary field in 2016 was compromised? Putin would have preferred almost any of them over Clinton. We know he was trying to influence members of the GOP to lift that embargo. Rick Perry? Cruz? Lindsey? All of them were assets then and assets that Putin wants to protect. He can deflect attention from them by adding fuel to TFG’s Hindenburg flameout. The more spectacular the fire, the easier it will be to keep the MSM’s attention away from the next handpicked asset.
jl
@JWR: You know what ‘TFG’ means, so you’re far ahead of me.
Morzer
We don’t know whether this is a final version of the document or a draft version. We also don’t know anything about the person(s) writing it. I’d be very cautious about assuming that certain phrases were incorrect and therefore evidence of inauthenticity. Poorly-educated people abound in every walk of life. There’s also the issue of global English affecting other languages syntactically and lexically. The thing that makes me wonder most about the document’s authenticity is the assessment of Trump. It seems a little too good to be true, almost as if it was aimed at a segment of the American political audience.
Another Scott
@Hob: Something something floor polish and desert topping!
:-/
Yesterday I pointed to Christopher Andrews’ book about the KGB Archives. I don’t have the time or experience, but someone could look at those documents and figure out whether the “lexical analysis” approach makes sense or is disqualifying. I dunno.
Presumably if the “5 Eyes” folks think it is important then they’ve already looked at it by now.
WaPo analysis (use Private Browsing):
Hmm…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Low Key Swagger
Sometimes the only way to win the game is not to play it.
germy
@jl:
Biden referred to trump as “The former guy” and the nickname stuck, at least here.
TFG
NotMax
The nub: Red (pun intended) herring.
geg6
So, since this merely would be confirmation of what we all know to be true, how would it be disruptive or wreak any havoc? Is it just throwing shit at the wall and hoping that the MAGAts freak out for some reason? I don’t get the point.
jl
@germy: Thanks.
sdhays
@Tony Jay: I think they may have fucked up a bit because there wasn’t actually anything interesting in the document, at least to me. Pretty much everything that was reported is essentially common knowledge at this point. We know for a fact that Russia preferred Dump and Republicans and have been infiltrating the conservative movement. We’ve seen the actual operations taking place almost in real time. We literally have espionage convictions in the past few years establishing this.
It’s inconceivable that Putin didn’t authorize and direct this policy. At this point, everything in the story is pretty yawn-inducing for the general non-lunatic public.
The claim of existence of kompromat is also nothing new and both almost certainly exists (just knowing how Dump comports himself in general and how many times he’s been to Russia over the past several decades virtually guarantees it), but similarly knowing how awful we all know Dump is, who can begin to guess if it would be bad enough to actually be damaging to someone like him?
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@jl: “The Former Guy”, as President Biden called the guy squatting in the Oval Office before him. Or, “That Effing Guy”, as I prefer.
zhena gogolia
@geg6:
The presumed reaction by our side would then be discredited when the documents are discredited. It’s not the info in the report, it’s the expected reaction to the info. See 60 Minutes Dan Rather, etc.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Incidentally, this could also be a distraction aimd at the Russian public, since they are quite unhappy about Covid and the Sputnik vaccine. This way Putin claims to have POWNed those Americans and get those Americans to confirm it for him. Not everything in this world is about the US.
sdhays
I do need to take issue with one of the points made by @pwnallthethings in his (her?) thread:
It’s true that the media and political elites were in denial about Dump’s chances at winning the nomination, but not everyone was. It was pretty clear that support for all of the rest of those jokers was pretty soft in the Republican primary electorate. It’s not crazy that Russian intelligence could see that while our pundidiots couldn’t.
JWR
@jl: TFG – The former guy. (Or what germy said.)
jl
@Roger Moore: Thanks. A lot of bank shots though. Like a drunk Rube Goldberg designing a carom billiards game.
gvg
@Hob:
You are thinking as ONE logical person. I think this is aimed at large numbers of people who will not all react the same, thus more than one result in different peoples heads.
Also we are all kind of subject to a news flood. There is always (not just with Trump) a huge amount going on that are hard to keep track of and get barely digested before more things happen. This mean even fake news that we know is fake, can adjust our overall impressions.
Roger Moore
@geg6:
One thing it does is to get the issue back into the public eye where people can argue about it. I don’t know how important that is, but it is an effect of something like this coming out.
NotMax
@zhena gogolia
This. Just enough of a veneer of credibility so that when (or if) indisputable/first-hand/confirmed documentation should come out the reaction will be “That’s old news, and has already been debunked.”
Frankly, the whole Guardian titillation foofaraw has consumed way more time than it’s worth.
Ruckus
@jl:
I think that you have to look at the overall person to really distill the actions of someone like Putin. His career, his operational process, his goals.
He’s reported to be one of the wealthiest humans and he didn’t get there by playing nice with others. He has a long background in getting things done, no matter how or who, of rising to the top of a country/system that requires not being squeamish about much of any process that gets you there. And given that I’d guess that his goals are bigger than just where he is. Far bigger. And if you wonder what/where I’m going with this, who/what would have been his biggest resistance to getting far bigger? Wanna bet the US? So how do you fix that? Militarily? Given the last 75-85 yrs, I’d say, likely not. So that leaves what, not trying? Yeah, that’s going to happen. So what’s left is to destroy the US from the inside and how best to do that? With politics, US politics. Destroy half or more of that, make the government unworkable for most people and what happens? He no longer needs to be far stronger militarily, just bigger/more evil than anyone else – and he’s got that covered. How to politically destroy the US? Well you have two almost completely opposite in every respect political parties but one is losing support. Fix that and what does that get him? Well if one thing in the US is a dividing/pivot point it’s racism. And who better to ruin a political party (and country) than SFB? A malleable, racist, narcissistic, fuck up, with international financial connections and control points willing/eager to be used because he won’t/can’t understand being taken advantage of.
Thing about vlad is that he takes the long view, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone/anything but vlad and has no qualms about destroying anyone/anything else but vlad, as long as it gets him ahead. Seems to have worked pretty well for him so far.
Adam L Silverman
@jl: It gives Trump and his surrogates refreshed material to rile up the base. It gives GG, Taibbi, Tracey, etc refreshed material to continue their efforts as useful idiots obscuring what actually happened. The whole point of what Putin does both at home and internationally is try to make it is that nothing is true, therefore anything and everything is possible.
jl
OK, here’s an idea. I think another source of Russian leverage on Trump was, or is(?), a long history of massive oligarch financing of various Trump operations, which is also very opaque.
Where is the money flowing now? Maybe an attempt to distract from that?
As a commenter noted above, plenty of long standing public evidence of Russian government involvement in various social media operations. Netherlands tracked very key stroke in some operations, and someone else was involved who could track and video the keyboard jockeys getting up and walking down the hall for coffee and a piss break.
So, maybe people running the money channel, (which may well also be Putin) want to get attention on the spy stuff?
Adam L Silverman
@sdhays: He’s a he. His name is Matt Taite.
jl
Thanks to comments for ideas. I’ll check back later to see what others come up with.
sdhays
@Adam L Silverman: Ah, yes. You mentioned that above.
Craig
@JDM: Dolly Parton likes it too.
geg6
@zhena gogolia:
But that’s not happening. And I don’t expect it will unless other media outlets can confirm what The Guardian is reporting. I’m still pretty skeptical that this will affect anything. I just don’t see it.
ETA: For instance, I posted the Guardian article on my FB page and almost no one paid attention to it. Normies are done with this shit and really don’t care anymore.
gvg
@geg6: I speculate that whomever did this expected things to go like they did with the Rather Bush story, but because so many of us got burned by that, we aren’t repeating the pattern. Just because we got burned once though is no reason to assume we would have learned. A lot of times crowds don’t learn and repeat stupid patterns. I would have predicted people would believe confirmation bias story as more likely as opposed to what is actually happening with a wait and see doubt.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
There are two potential targets for discrediting. Yes, the people who embrace faked documents will be discredited when the documents are. But for some of people, the underlying claims will also be discredited; they’ll associate the the claim that Russia helped Trump with the discredited documents and say the whole Trump/Russia story has been disproved. It’s a variant on the fallacy of denying the antecedent.
Martin
So, tl;dr, what you and Cheryl are saying is that the pee tape is real. Got it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@geg6:
they never really did. I remember when the trump tower meeting was revealed, I thought, “Okay, finally! here we go!” and… nothing.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The high turnout on our side and TFG’s consistently underwater approval rating indicates that the normies cared about something (or things).
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I think a lot of normies hated the drama with Trump. They want to be able to go back to mostly ignoring the government rather than having to hang on the president’s every word wondering what’s going to happen next.
...now I try to be amused
@Roger Moore:
(Emphasis mine.) I’ve seen the practice called “inoculation”. It was a Karl Rove specialty.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
That feeling wasn’t just with the normies though.
It’s an interesting question, however, whether normies were more exposed to news under Trump than usual. The whole idea behind normies is that they don’t pay attention to the chatter.
Mary G
When this came out, idiots I don’t follow on Twitter were “finally the smoking gun, TFG will be arrested immediately!!!!” while people I do follow, like Cheryl, were “take with many grains of salt.” So I didn’t even read the articles about it, just waited for G&T and ZG and you, Adam, and Cheryl to provide analysis. Saved a lot of time!
Or, as @NotMax: put it so well:
Bill Arnold
First, google engineers would be able to assess the probability that it is google translate output.
Second, a cheesy method of disguising text from stylometric methods is to feed the text through a small chain of randomly chosen intermediate languages using machine translation (google translate these days) and back to the source language. (I have disguised text this way a few times.)
Not a comment on analysis by actual readers of Russian, though.
Mary G
LUV HUR!
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t know. All Putin ever does is say there’s no proof. Why would he go to the trouble of faking a release of a secret document?
Morzer
Anyone who doubts that native speakers frequently produce semi-literate nonsense and get technical terms wrong might find this court filing by a MAGAmoron enlightening in a grim sort of way:
https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1416048727702130691
debbie
@Mary G:
Doocy was douchier than ever. I was hoping to see the expression on his face. Alas.
Ninerdave
Whenever I read about Russia trying to influence things, it’s always the GOP or conservative related. Do they not also target Dems or liberals?
J R in WV
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
But Boris! “Effing” doesn’t start with “F”, it starts with “E”…
Shouldn’t you use the proper Anglo-Saxon “Fuckin'” as used so eloquently by the late and beloved E F Goldman??
“That Fuckin’ Guy” to be precise!
debbie
@Morzer:
That fingerprint automatically disqualifies that Vessel, that Woman, from any serious consideration. I hate this sovereign citizen bullshit.
Tony Jay
@sdhays:
To be brutally honest I think the phrase “we know” is doing industrial level haulage in your assessment. We know all this stuff because we’re interested in it, got daily updates on what evidence there was of it and discussed it amongst ourselves relentlessly for over four years. Nothing in the document is a surprise to us because it’s says things we’ve known to be true for a long time.
The vast majority of people won’t know much about this at all. Anyone getting their information from the mainstream media will ‘know’ that Democrats accused Trump of links to Russia and Republicans accused Democrats of making stories up because they hate Trump. Depending on which stories they noticed they’ll ‘know’ that Trump survived/won two impeachment trials so there must not be that much evidence. They’ll ‘know’ that the Mueller Report found no evidence that Trump himself did anything wrong, though people around him were corrupt and were fired/went to jail. They ‘know’ a lot of stuff that isn’t true and haven’t heard squat about things we know are true because the media simply didn’t cover it much.
If what they hear of this document is “lefty newspaper says Russians backed Trump” followed by “lefty newspaper claims about Trump debunked as coming from fake document” then they’ll ‘know’ the accusations about Trump being a Russian asset were fake, because that’s the shallow reading most people would take from a story like this.
I’m constantly amazed at how little interest the vast majority of people have in politics, but it’s a hard fact of life that most things people ‘know’ come from a headline they half read and whatever gloss a TV News anchor put on a story they half listened to.
If the story becomes “Democrats convinced lefty newspaper exclusive is failed misinformation attempt by Kremlin to cloud Trump/Putin links”, that would be news to a lot of people and change what they ‘know’ quite radically.
YMMV, but that’s my tuppenceworth.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
sure, but with half a million dead, babies in cages, Ruth Bader Ginsburg replaced by Aunt Lydia, he increased his absolute numbers and lost the EC by, IIRC, fewer votes than in ’16.
I’m not a total pessimist, I don’t think we’re doomed. But this (^) is the electorate we’re dealing with. We have to accept that that’s the battlefield.
and, specifically and on topic, the various foreign corruption schemes– Russia, Ukraine, John Bolton’s reports that he tried to get China to help him more directly, and I’m sure I’m forgetting other examples– with regard to elections, normies don’t seem to care. I don’t get it, I’m kind of baffled by it, but I don’t see much evidence otherwise.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Both sides increased their turnout. Obviously, the GOP-leaning normies care about things that are different than our normies care about, and you are correct that this is the electorate we have to deal with.
Sister Golden Bear
@jl: TFG = “The former guy” i.e. 45, or as I prefer “That fucking guy”
Morzer
@Ninerdave: Well, there was that fiery Communist agitator Jill Stein…
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the vast majority of our normies will never join us in Outrage City, unless it happens to be an issue that triggers them on an individual level. We have to figure out another way to relate to them.
sab
@Tony Jay: I am (or used to be) amazed at how often The Guardian falls for this stuff. At this point in my life I don’t believe they are innocent chumps.
What their actual motivation is, I don’t know, but so glad I never donated a dime to their bad journalism.
You guys have a dearth of real journalism these days. We suck at it, but is anyone in the Anglosphere east of the Atlantic even trying?
ETA: Local journalists are still out there doing amazing work. I don’t want to disparage your locals or mine.
Morzer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The EC margin was pretty much the same in 2016 and 2020, but Biden crushed TFG in the popular vote by 7 million votes as opposed to HRC’s just under 3 million.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Morzer: and I’ll always be curious about Tad Devine, Paul Manafort’s one time partner, going from working for John Corzine, alumnus of (prepare Dramatic Squirrel) Goldman Sachs! to the Sanders campaign.
Morzer
@sab: The Guardian also regularly publishes Hard Left imbeciles like Owen Jones, which makes their political coverage a lot less valuable.
J R in WV
Having read a shit-ton of government (rules, regulations, laws regarding my career) and industry publications (IBM documentation, Oracle documentation, etc) I have to say that the English language has never been so tormented and mis-used as it can be in formal settings.
So the fact that the tiny bits of Russian text released in association with these reports are odd grammatically and in word choice is fairly meaningless because that’s present in all languages where people in power have the ability to change documents, but no ability to use grammar at all.
I used to write memos to notify the user community of pending changes to how their software used to do their jobs was going to change next Monday. Then I would run the memo past the boss, Charley, who was a good guy, but not an English major. He would mark my simple and to the point memo with lots of grammatical errors and confusing language. Then I would rewrite my memo, fixing the grammar errors and clearing up the confusion, while trying to stay close to his mark-up.
That version flew OK, always. But imagine if I didn’t rewrite the memo, but entered Charley’s changes exactly as the boss wrote them!!??! That happens a whole lot. Then turn a committee loose on it, as the EPA does. Disasters.
So reading for grammar and usage seems like not that great a tool to me, especially in a relatively short document.
Note that I’m not criticizing anyone’s expertise in Russian, far to the contrary. I’m just saying that the people talking in a meeting, transcribing that meeting, their Russian might not be so precise as we would hope. Imagine a Trump-led meeting !??!!
Morzer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I guess he had a Devine revelation somewhere along his lonely road to the bank.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
well put
ETA: We should tell them about burgeoning foodie scene
Morzer
@J R in WV: Right. If this document is authentic, we should be considering whether it’s a draft – which might also explain why it’s got a relatively low “secret” classification. One thing that argues somewhat for its possible authenticity to me is that I would expect a forger to slap the highest, most dramatic classification on it to make it more sellable.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think when this story goes stale some reporter or news personality will leap up an start doing articles about how the “Lefties fell for fake news again because they are the real haters!” and who that news personality is in thick with will be the tell on who created this “leak”
Sister Golden Bear
@jl: TFG = “The former guy” i.e. 45, or as I prefer “That fucking guy”
@sdhays: The Russians may not have know Trump would win the presidency, but 1) they were undoubtedly placing multiple bets,* 2) Trump’s presidential campaign alone was an opportunity to create chaos — especially if became the nominee. And once he was the nominee, there’d be chaos whether he won or lost. If he’d lost to Hillary it would’ve been four years of Republican investigations and sabotage, loudly encouraged by Trump. Witness all the sturm und drang around Obama’s birth certificate which Trump helped promote and keep alive.
*IIRC, it was a low-cost operation for the Russians (at least initially) so why not throw some money toward even long-shot possibilities.
Tony Jay
@sab:
I defer to no one in the Olympus Mons scale mountain of contempt I have for the Guardian. It wants to be the UK version of the ‘even the liberal’ New York Times and operates accordingly.
So, yeah, I can quite believe they’d publish blatant lies from ‘trusted sources’ in order to push a narrative. That’s just what they do.
Cmorenc
@JDM: your quote about how much work it takes to make something look coincidental reminds me of dolly parton’s immortal quip: “ it costs a lot of money to look this cheap”
Martin
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Should always be ‘Individual 1’.
Immanentize
Disinformation is easy to fight look at France — pretty soon you cannot get a baguette or a cafe au lait without a vaccine. Suddenly, everyone is getting one!
Of course, we live in the land of liberte (but certainly NOT egalite) so that can’t happen here. But pretty soon, insurance companies will stop covering hospital costs for those not vaccinated unless pre-approved for non-vaccination. Then, everything can change for the better.
J R in WV
@Morzer:
Hilarious, actually. The red fingerprint by the word (seal) is especially great.
Baud
@Immanentize:
Yeah, I’m interested in seeing what happens when the vaccine is officially approved and not in emergency use. Both in terms of voluntarily compliance and more coercive measures.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: I remember during a general strike (’96, I think?) somebody said the French overdose on liberté (in that case, taking to the streets) to compensate for the total fiction that are egalité and fraternité
Chris Johnson
@gvg: All of this. I think it’s Russian and made to suggest a later involvement than reality, AND set up to implode upon close scrutiny, and one more little detail nobody seems to have mentioned…
Trump is more valuable to them dead, as a martyr, now. The stuff about how they didn’t respect him and thought he was a useless lunatic loser is both the truth and an attempt to get Trump to absolutely flip the hell out. They’ve got others who are much more disciplined, they don’t need that particular wrecking ball anymore, and they might be able to get a BIG explosion out of him by making all the news stories about how Putin thinks he is an asshole.
To the extent that anything is predictable, Trump would react to that framing poorly. It’s not an accident, and he’s important in certain ways to them. Right now it’s important that he blow the hell up and become the biggest martyr ever.
They never thought he’d WIN. He was always meant to be the standard bearer for the lunatic fringe. It just worked so well that now they can really gain from making him freak out. Lots of the domestic terrorists ONLY trust him and QAnon.
I would add that all this is in line with Putin’s chaos politics. It doesn’t worry him to throw in chaos without knowing exactly what will happen. His whole deal is to maximize the chaos, and this is quite good at attempting just that. (also, woot, post #100)
jl
@Ninerdave: ” Whenever I read about Russia trying to influence things, it’s always the GOP or conservative related. Do they not also target Dems or liberals? ”
The Russians are smart, but not smart enough to consistently fool normal people. They did try to target BLM, Antifa, some social democratic organizations, but those groups caught on immediately or after getting burned once, because they were led by people of normal intelligence. I think Russians stopped after some of those groups turned the Russian phishing into spoofs that messed up the alt-righter’s and Trumpster’s antics.
But, as a commenter noted above, there was Jill Stein to try to take up the slack.
Patricia Kayden
Open thread:
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: 24 and 25 years old
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Honestly, I’m sorry for the people who have been waiting but now will not get those lungs.
Uncle Cosmo
@jl: What, it doesn’t mean “Trump, Feckless Goniff”?
VeniceRiley
When people reference “Florida Man” this is who they mean. The mugshot is *chef kiss*
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/ny-florida-man-attacked-gator-teach-lesson-daytona-beach-shores-20210716-5r3ibucx5fa6vcpnkjtswodyza-story.html
dmsilev
@VeniceRiley:
Oh my. If nothing else, it’s clear that water hazards at Florida mini golf courses are to be avoided.
Morzer
@VeniceRiley: And of course his name is… Bubba.
trollhattan
@VeniceRiley: Headline alone is gold, Jerry, gold!
MisterForkbeard
@dmsilev:
Fixed that for you.
zhena gogolia
Roger Moore
@Bill Arnold:
It’s also possible the mistakes are deliberately put there as part of a canary trap. In that scenario, each recipient of the document would be given a version with a different set of “errors”. If the Russian government ever saw a verbatim copy of the leaked document, the set of errors would reveal the source of the leak.
Roger Moore
@Ninerdave:
I think they target leftists rather than liberals. While I hate to admit it, the Republicans aren’t completely wrong when they talk about people who want to blame America for everything. There’s still a group on the left who will interpret anything bad as being the result of Americans doing something wrong, and the Russians have been plenty successful at propagandizing them, too.
ETA: I think a lot of Beristas fall into this category, and it’s pretty clear the Russians were effective against them. Some of the stuff Bernie himself has said makes me think he was a believer in the everything is America’s fault theory earlier in his career, and he still believes some of that stuff today.
Frank Wilhoit
So, Adam, what happened to REvil?
Morzer
Julia Ioffe has an interesting take on the question of the leaked (?) document:
https://ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8h8md7z
Chris Johnson
They absolutely do, though I’m sure they’ve got a way into liberals as well (I suspect some of the super-anti-progressives are Russian-driven). Specifically, there are signs that the ‘dirtbag left’ people, like Chapo Trap House and Jimmy Dore, are run out of Russia.
I know this ‘cos I fell for Chapo, for a time. But, there started to be a stronger and stronger propaganda push for ‘Russiagate’ being a scam, and I’d seen stuff to suggest it was anything but a scam. Eventually it became very obvious to me that my ‘comrades’ were answering to Putin, and I was out of there. I don’t think Bernie was directly run out of Russia… but I think Tad Devine was, and I think some of Bernie’s team was. Dude only wanted to hear the cheering and didn’t care enough about who was doing that cheering. He was being pushed, he was being made a useful idiot. Probably why he’s fallen in line behind Biden so hard: I think someone showed him what he had done.
Roger Moore
@Chris Johnson:
I wasn’t intending to suggest Bernie was a Russian asset, just that he had been a useful idiot earlier in his life and still believes some of that stuff. I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if a lot of his top advisors beyond just Devine were taking Russian money.
Caphilldcne
@Ruckus: I’d also say there are a lot of american oligarchs who are perfectly happy to divide the country to keep their nest eggs. Reading “Dark Money” really pointed out to me just how much dissension money can buy in this country. Keep everyone distracted and you can get away with a lot. Plus if you eventually need to break the democracy because it’s starting to get in your business, you can do it while laughing all the way to the bank. The Kocks and their fellow traveler Bircher billionaires have a lot to answer for (and they won’t cause David is dead snd Charles is secure and the gay one provides cover by funding the arts). By all accounts they’re also true believers in a Randisn society that looks nothing like what most of us think the US should be.
debbie
@VeniceRiley:
Do FL mini-golf places all employ live gators?
NotMax
@Immanentize
And yet –
Countries reporting the most total cases of COVID:
1) U.S.
2) India
3) Brazil
4) France
5) Russia*
6) Turkey
7) U.K.
8) Argentina
9) Colombia
10) Italy
.
*We can all question its placement, but the officially released numbers are what we have to go on. And even with shaky reporting, Russia and France are poised to flip spots any day now.
J R in WV
So many people being so stupid… amazing. Unbelievable. Stupid!
Pax
Russia has a long history of trying to weaken the U.S. president by disinformation. During elections, they try to pound the frontrunner, often by echoing the opponent’s dirt.