All week, The Cipher Brief has been covering the news that Russia not only interfered in the U.S. presidential election, but according to CIA analysts, apparently did so with the intent of influencing the outcome in support of Donald Trump. The Cipher Brief wanted to know what U.S. allies, with similar concerns vis-à-vis Russia, think about the revelations and Mr. Trump’s response. The Cipher Brief’s National Security Reporter Kaitlin Lavinder spoke with the British Secret Intelligence Service’s former Assistant Chief and Director of Operations and Intelligence, Nigel Inkster, about his take on the situation.
The Cipher Brief: U.S. allies, like Germany and France, have expressed concern that Russia may attempt to interfere in their elections. How does this news about Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election change the game?
Nigel Inkster: For France and Germany, the fact of Russian interference in internal politics and elections is nothing new. It has for some time been common knowledge that Russia has provided financial assistance to parties on the extreme left and extreme right in a number of European states. For Russia, this is seen as payback for western efforts at democratization in Russia through the activities of NGOs (non-governmental organization).
It is not necessarily the case that Russia has a preferred candidate: It is more about eroding the credibility of the democratic electoral process and seeking to suggest that there is essentially no difference between the Russian system and that of the western liberal democracies. Notwithstanding what the CIA has said about Russian efforts to promote Trump by leaking material stolen from the Democratic National Committee, it is far from clear that this was a decisive factor in the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. If any intervention here was decisive, it was arguably that of the FBI director reactivating the issue of Hillary Clinton's e-mails, which seems to have eroded what up to that point looked like a winning campaign. But the underlying national malaise which led many to vote for Trump cannot be underestimated here.
TCB: What steps can be taken to guard against such interference? Are the Europeans doing enough?
NI: It is hard to guarantee against interference of this kind. Authoritarian regimes find it relatively easy to exploit the freedoms that exist in liberal democracies for their own ends. Good counterintelligence is crucial and promoting greater public awareness of the threat is important, as is rigorously policing rules on limiting or conditioning foreign campaign contributions. But ultimately the best defense is to trust in the fundamental integrity of the electoral process and the aversion to extremism, which has so far kept France's National Front (a populist right-wing party) out of office. Russian meddling can only do so much to affect outcomes.
TCB: How do our NATO allies feel about the fact that our President-elect seemingly has no confidence in his own intelligence services?
NI: Inevitably there will be widespread disquiet about Trump's disposition to disparage the findings of the U.S. intelligence community – though it is important to emphasize that there appears to be no consensus within the U.S. intelligence community as a whole that the fact of Russian meddling, which is not disputed, was to achieve a particular outcome rather than simply to call into question the integrity of the process. It is not clear on what basis CIA analysts have reached their judgment. If they had specific intelligence from one or more covert human sources, for example, it is questionable if they would wish to jeopardize those sources by making public their intelligence. Many Republican politicians are demanding to see a detailed assessment of the intelligence case and are not inclined to dismiss U.S. intelligence allegations.
TCB: How will this – that is, Trump’s comments and apparent disdain for the U.S. Intelligence community – affect stability in the transatlantic alliance and intelligence sharing moving forward?
NI: It remains to be seen how this will all play out within the U.S. and with key intelligence allies. It would not be the first time that CIA intelligence has been dismissed by those in power within the U.S. In the run-up to Iraq, the Pentagon sought to develop its own sources to make up for perceived CIA deficiencies – in effect not reporting what people wanted to hear – and following the invasion, policy-makers were dismissive of CIA reporting that things were going poorly. The same thing happened during the Vietnam War, when the CIA was regularly castigated for overly pessimistic assessments which ultimately proved to be right. In today's world, where so much pseudo-information is available, it arguably becomes harder for the U.S. intelligence community to make its voice heard. But it is also true that politicians tend quite quickly to learn that knowledge – real, not fabricated – is power and at that point tend to listen more to what their intelligence services have to say.
