What Happens to Our Democracy If Russia Hacks the 2020 Vote?
Three events occurring in rapid succession on October 7, 2016, stand out in Robby Mook's memory.
The first came at about 3:30 pm. The Obama Administration issued a statement that publicly blamed Russia for hacking the Democratic National Committee and orchestrating the release of the thousands of emails roiling the Democratic Party, which, it said, were "intended to interfere with the US election process." In the day's crazy news cycle, that highly-unusual announcement never had a chance.
At 4 pm, The Washington Post unveiled the infamous Access Hollywood Tape, on which then-candidate Donald Trump was recorded boasting about his own sexual harassment of women. "When you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything."
Within the hour, yet another media bomb dropped. Wikileaks released another trove of emails—the first 20,000 pages of 50,000 hacked emails stolen from the account of Hillary Clinton's Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
"It was so clear what was happening," recalls Mook, who at the time was a 35-year-old political operative running the Clinton campaign. In time, reporters would dig out old transcripts of paid speeches to Wall Street banks, controversial comments about Catholic voters and other documents that turned out to be damaging to the Clinton campaign. U.S. intelligence has since linked the Podesta trove to the Russian military.
Three years later, as the U.S. gears up for a new presidential election, Mook and other experts expect the Russians to strike again. They'll continue using their modern version of "agitprop" (a mashup of agitation and propaganda) that KGB officers—including a young recruit posing as a translator in Dresden, East Germany named Vladimir Putin—perfected during the Cold War.
The overall intent of the Russians, most intelligence officials and Russia experts agree, has always been to "to spin us up, pit us against each other, sow divisiveness and discord, undermine Americans' faith in democracy," in the words of FBI Director Christopher Wray. Or as Richard Clarke, a former member of the State Department and the National Security Council and a seasoned Cold Warrior, puts it: what the Russians really want is for "the American people to give up
