WaPo:
U.S. intelligence agencies are expanding spying operations against Russia on a greater scale than at any time since the end of the Cold War, U.S. officials said.
The mobilization involves clandestine CIA operatives, National Security Agency cyberespionage capabilities, satellite systems and other intelligence assets, officials said, describing a shift in resources across spy services that had previously diverted attention from Russia to focus on terrorist threats and U.S. war zones.
U.S. officials said the moves are part of an effort to rebuild U.S. intelligence capabilities that had continued to atrophy even as Russia sought to reassert itself as a global power. Over the past two years, officials said, the United States was caught flat-footed by Moscow’s aggression, including its annexation of Crimea, its intervention in the war in Syria and its suspected role in hacking operations against the United States and Europe.
U.S. spy agencies “are playing catch-up big time” with Russia, a senior U.S. intelligence official said. Terrorism remains the top concern for American intelligence services, the official said, but recent directives from the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) have moved Russia up the list of intelligence priorities for the first time since the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Though hidden from public view, the escalation in espionage activity is part of a broader renewal of conflict and competition between the United States and Russia after a two-decade lull. Surging tensions now cut across nearly every aspect of the U.S-Russia relationship.
The hack of the Democratic National Committee has raised fears that Russia is seeking to undermine democratic institutions if not influence the outcome of the American presidential race.
U.S. efforts to negotiate a cease-fire in Syria with Russia have divided Obama administration officials and served as a tacit acknowledgment that Moscow’s intervention succeeded in one of its principal aims: ensuring that Russian President Vladimir Putin will be in position to influence any Syria endgame.
Even an encounter between Obama and Putin at a recent summit in China turned, at moments, into an tense staring contest.
U.S. officials stressed that while the need for better intelligence on Russia is considered an urgent priority, there is no intent to return the CIA or other spy agencies to Cold War footings. At the height of that decades-long conflict, former officials said, U.S. spy agencies often devoted 40 percent or more of their personnel and resources to tracking the Soviet Union and its Communist satellites.
U.S. officials said that CIA and other agencies now devote at most 10 percent of their budgets to Russia-related espionage, a percentage that has risen over the past two years.
Critics contend that U.S. intelligence agencies have been too slow to boost collection against Russia and respond to its provocations abroad, repeatedly enabling Putin to gain an upper hand.
“The failure to understand Putin’s plans and intentions has been the largest intelligence failure since 9/11,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Nunes said that despite a now well-established pattern of Russian aggression online, against neighboring states and in Syria, U.S. spy agencies have struggled to anticipate Moscow’s moves.
“These should have been red flags,” Nunes said, “but we continue to get it wrong.”
Timothy Barrett, an ODNI spokesman, said in an emailed statement: “The Intelligence Community continues to maintain its focus and deep expertise on Russia, which has enabled us to understand Putin’s evolving worldview. The IC allocates resources directed against Russia commensurate with this evolving threat.”
Did anybody else catch Donna Brazil throwing everything at the wall in hopes some of it would stick?
She wants you all to know not to open any links to those hacked and leaked emails from the DNC…….they might contain viruses!
And, she wants you to be ladies and gentlemen so as not to use the information in those hacked and leaked emails…..so the Dems can still win.
She also called the hackers and leakers names, like ”thugs.”
She also claimed that, although there was plenty of smoke in those hacked, then leaked emails, there probably was no fire.
Finally she apologized for her part in making it so easy for anyone, even a child, to hack the DNC’s emails.
So… we didn’t already know this? Even if Hillary had correctly translated “Reset” into Russian, we should have been spying enough to know what the Russians were up to. Once again, Obama relied far more on his “charisma” that was wise or warranted.