The controversy surrounding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election shows no sign of waning, dominating the conversation during The Cipher Brief’s Georgetown Salon Series event with former CIA Acting Director Michael Morell on Wednesday night.
“I think that the Russian interference in the election is a much bigger issue than the attention it has gotten—the attention it has gotten from the media, the attention it has gotten from Congress, the attention it got from the Obama White House, and obviously, the attention it is getting from this White House,” Morell explained to the moderator of the conversation, The Cipher Brief’s CEO and Publisher Suzanne Kelly.
He said the CIA placed “high confidence” that Russia did three things during the election: hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and then subsequently leaked materials damaging to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton; used social media to “create and amplify fake news;” and attempted – but failed – to access American voting machines.
“This is a huge deal,” Morell said. “Somebody tampering with our democracy. Somebody tampering with our very way of life.”
When asked what the appropriate U.S. response should be, Morell told the audience he was a supporter of a commission to review the events of the election.
“Those three things that I talked about were the tip of the iceberg that we see,” he warned.
Morell criticized the responses of both the Trump and Obama administrations for not coming down harder on the Russian government, who U.S. intelligence agencies determined to have directed the campaign against the DNC.
“(Russian President) Putin did not pay any price whatsoever for this. None. Zero. There was nothing that the Obama administration did and there was nothing that the Trump administration has done to deter this guy from doing it again,” he said, adding that he supported broad-based sanctions against Russia as punishment for the alleged interference.
However, he cautioned against concluding the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in order to win the election. “There’s smoke, but there is no fire. There’s no little campfire, there’s no little candle, there is no spark.”
The conversation also included discussion about the controversial dossier prepared by former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele that indicated Russia compiled compromising information on Trump during a trip he made to the country in 2013.
When asked his personal thoughts on the veracity of the dossier, Morell carefully explained why he had some concerns about its content.
Because Steele reportedly used intermediaries between himself and his Russian sources – sources which were also purportedly paid, “that kind of worries me a little bit, because if you are paying somebody, particularly former FSB officers, they are going to tell you truth and innuendo and rumor, and they are going to call you up and say, ‘Hey, let’s have another meeting. I have some more information for you’, because they want to get paid some more.”
Morell added, “unless you know the sources, and unless you know how a particular source acquired a particular piece of information, you can’t judge the credibility of the information.”
Besides Russia, Morell was asked by Kelly what else really worries him.
“There is no way that the North Koreans are going to negotiate away their nuclear weapons or their long-range missiles. They are just not going to do that, because for them, it’s the ultimate deterrence against a U.S. attack.”
He feels future talks with North Korea should be centered on convincing them not to use their nuclear weapons, rather than asking them to do away with them altogether.
Morell capped off the evening by assuring the Georgetown Salon audience that despite all of the problems he had just outlined, he feels the United States is secure. Why? The future of the country, in his mind, is in the capable hands of its innovators and its young people.
While he was a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago last fall, Morell said “Kids poured in (to my office). Every single one wanted to know ‘How can I get a job at the Central Intelligence Agency?’ That made me feel very good.”
Verdi Tzou is a national security web editor at The Cipher Brief.
