This paragraph appears on page 6 of the Executive Summary of Volume 1. Page is also page 14 of 448 pages.
July 2016 was also the month WikiLeaks first released emails stolen by the GRU from the DNC. On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks posted thousands of internal DNC documents revealing information about the Clinton Campaign. Within days, there was public reporting that U.S. intelligence agencies had "high confidence" that the Russian government was.behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC. And within a week of the release, a foreign government informed the FBI about its May 2016 interaction with Papadopoulos and his statement that the Russian government could assist the Trump Campaign. On July 31, 2016, based on the foreign government reporting, the FBI opened an investigation into potential coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump Campaign.
The investigation found that the GRU, which is the Russian government, stole emails and documents from the Clinton Campaign. I hope every American realizes the degree to which Russia was intent on defaming Hillary Clinton to end any chance she would be elected President of the United States of America. It is important Americans realize their country is a target of other countries for nefarious reasons.
I want to contrast this to the long established hopes of American diplomacy. It was only within the last half decade that the USA took steps to sanction Russian and remove their president from the G8. The G8 is now the G7. Those are very deep cuts into the very efforts of diplomacy between Russia and the USA. Those diplomatic efforts span decades and multiple USA presidents. No one that believes in peace and mutual goals and hopes wanted that to happen. I was disappointed to say the least when Russia invaded Crimea and then Eastern Ukraine. I thought "that Russia" was dead and buried forever.
Former Presidents of the USSR and then the Russian Federation such as Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev had grown a far better relationship with the USA and Western Democracy in Europe. It was celebrated in this country when they turned their country from a course of mutual destruction and into nuclear non-proliferation. Those decisions opened the door to investment and trade with The West. The long wished for hopes were finally coming true.
When Vladimir Putin became the new president of the Russian Federation it was welcomed with as much anticipation of peace as the previous two presidents of Russia. President Putin was young and it was every American's expectation that he was equal to them and thought about the future in the same way. Americans can be naive that way. Most Americans didn't realize that communism was alive and well, that Russia was an emerging power and there were still profound problems in Russia reflected in longevity and health. The problem with alcoholism saturated Russia. I am not sure of the status of alcoholism today in Russia, but, if longevity hasn't improved much the best assessment is that it is still a sincere problem.
Vladimir Putin was a former KGB agent. He was knowledgeable about the world Russia was a part of and at no point in time did anyone expect Russia to invade Ukraine. That was the old world. But, here we were again with the same paradigm of aggression against innocent and unarmed people that was more than a shadow of the old USSR.
When Russia carried out a mission with their intelligence agencies to effect the elections of 2016, it meant it. Russia wanted someone who would be a president that they could expect cooperation from in the way of removing sanctions and providing whatever information Russia wanted and when it wanted it. Do not underestimate the level of invasion Russia carried out in the 2016 elections. Because we are a country well invested in agencies that protect this country, magnificent women and men that work within those agencies and an American population educated enough and open minded enough to realize the cyber world was not secure; there grew an understanding that Russia did something really wrong to this country.
July 2016 was the month when Russia launched the result of it's plans and it worked beautifully. Americans looked to Wikileaks to realize the extent the USA government might have private information about them when Edward Snowden risked his life and certainly his citizenship to allow the information to flow into the knowledge of Americans.
Again, when Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange used Wikileaks to display information from the USA military about a war in Iraq that didn't end when President Obama walked into the White House.
Of those two instances, Americans were mostly grateful and grew impatient with their government about aspects they never dreamed would touch their lives. Both Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were Americans. They had messages for other Americans that would create a knowledge base that could effect elections.
But, in July 2016, Russia used that level of trust in "open source" information to taint the elections between Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. It was all onesided. It came from a foreign power that was now estranged from USA trust and trade. It came from Russia with threats to the USA people that if Hillary Clinton were elected there would be nuclear war. Because Americans, like Snowden and Manning were accepted at some level by the American people, the same exact naive open mindedness was cast upon the attacks by Russia.
This was different and whether Americans want to accept it or not, it is very dangerous.
continued in next entry
