Russian Election Interference

My Russian is a bit rusty, but I still speak it. It has been a few years - maybe a couple of decades since I followed Russian politics in detail, but I have studied Russian and Soviet history, politics, national security policy, etc. since about 1956. So I know a thing or two about Russia.

I have been deeply involved in American elections and related legal and regulatory matters for the past decade. I have spent my adult life in defense of democracy both here and in allied countries.

I'm not an expert, but I know a thing or two.

I spent the Watergate years in Washington DC. I had friends and colleagues in the Pentagon, the White House, the State Department, the Congress and the press. I was interviewed for a job on the National Security Council Staff, but the incumbent decided to stay, so I went to the Pentagon instead..

I know more about international than domestic affairs, but I know a bit about that, too.

I mention these things to make a point - I know much of what I know not from reading books, but because I was there. And I paid attention. I've been paying attention for more than seven decades.

I read books not necessarily to learn things from scratch, but often to refresh my memory or sometimes to fill in some blanks.

Today I'm reading The Plot To Hack America by Malcolm Nance. What a terrific book.

Nance speaks Russian and Arabic and has been in the intelligence business for more than three decades.

I find him immensely credible.

Plainly Russia tried to steal the 2016 US election for Trump.

Did they actually pull it off?  They got the outcome they hoped for, but did they cause it?

I think they did, but I can't prove it. One must avoid the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.

Other possible factors? Jim Comey's intervention, which may have been triggered by deceptive active measures by the Russians. Hard to prove.

There has been heavy criticism the past few days of Hillary Clinton's explanations.

I say baloney.

After every airplane crash, the site is inundated with investigators. Many participants have conflicting interests at risk.  The airlines hope to show that a pilot or some other crew member was at fault. They would be equally pleased at a finding of some structural or design fault in the aircraft. Pilot error lets the manufacturer off the hook.

You get the idea.

But the airline industry as a whole wants to know what caused the mishap so the problem can be fixed.

Someone needs to do that kind of autopsy with failed campaigns. Not to assign blame, but to know what happened. And to fix it.

We all need to know in case the outcome was the result of an attack on democracy.

That's where I would look first.