The Putin Files: John Brennan

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MICHAEL KIRK - Let’s start with something a lot of people have told us. We’ll also go even further back in just a moment, but just to go through the gears one time, let’s talk a little bit about Ukraine. A lot of people say this was a road test for Putin, and lots of other reasons why he did what he did in Crimea and Ukraine across the hybrid war scheme. What did you see was happening there, from your perspective? JOHN BRENNAN - I think it really reflected Mr. Putin’s interest in trying to correct a historical wrong in his mind, as far as Russia giving up part of what Putin considered the Motherland that he wanted to reclaim, the place where the Russian Orthodox Church was born, and he’d never felt as though Ukraine and Crimea should have left the Russian—even earlier, the Soviet orbit. Therefore, I think Mr. Putin wanted to stop also what he thought was an eastern march on the part of the Western powers, NATO, EU. Therefore, I think he felt as though he needed to act, because he tends to see things in zero-sum fashion. I also believe that he felt that he could do this with relative impunity, in terms of not having a military response from the West or the United States. Therefore, the move was quick. But also, I think it reflected a broader strategic interest on the part of Mr. Putin to secure his near abroad, as it’s said, and do it in a way that I think he felt confident was not going to beget a Western military reaction. MICHAEL KIRK - When you look back on it from our vantage point now, watching and thinking about what happened in the summer of 2016 in the fall, there are also all kinds of just tactical things he does, they do, that resonate: a lot of fake news, a lot of information war, a lot of lying about things that happened. From your perch at the CIA, what were you watching, and what were you learning? Or what felt new? JOHN BRENNAN - Mr. Putin is a creature of his past and of his intelligence experience, and I do believe that he sees, and at that time saw, the Russian intelligence services as being a tremendous instrument of influence, so that he could do things insidiously within countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, even inside of Europe, that he could try to exploit situations that was going to advantage Russia. When we were getting closer to the 2016 presidential election, I think some of the things that we were seeing early on were just symptoms and indicators of Russia’s interest in trying to manipulate foreign events to Russia’s advantage. Any type of political process or election I think Mr. Putin sees as ripe for Russian intelligence-service engagement and also as a fair amount of, I think, competition among Russian intelligence services. They try to please the boss, and they do things, both in terms of collecting information as well as their active measures, whether it be propaganda or even getting people to get on the Russian payroll. I think certainly CIA and intelligence professionals had a good understanding about Mr. Putin’s overarching strategic objectives, what he was trying to accomplish, and therefore we had our antenna up, looking for signs that Mr. Putin was pursuing these objectives, whether it be in the near abroad, whether it be in Western Europe, or whether it be here in the United States. MICHAEL KIRK - So in things like sending in [into Ukraine] uniformed soldiers with no insignias on the uniforms, what did you make of that? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, in some respects, he does things surreptitiously with his intelligence services, but also, I think he likes to try to intimidate his foes. So it was no secret to people that individuals with military uniforms with no insignia, who happened to show up in the eastern part of Ukraine, fighting against the government forces, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind where they came from and that they were sent there by Mr. Putin. I think it was Mr. Putin’s way to, again, try to bully others and to show that Russia is there and is going to use its influence, as well as its capabilities and its power, to achieve its objectives. MICHAEL KIRK - There were many arguments inside the United States government about lethal arming of the Ukrainian forces. What did you believe? Maybe you can't say what you’d advise the president, but the idea that we should push back at him, we should in some way let him know he’s not going to get away with this, more robustly than we did. JOHN BRENNAN - Mr. Putin is, I think, a very cunning individual, and he really takes the measure of his adversaries and opponents. When he moved into Ukraine, I do believe he felt as though, if he did it with great emphasis and force, that it was not going to engender a military response on the part of the West. I do think he felt that, certainly toward the last four years of the Obama administration, that there was a predictability as far as Washington’s reaction, and I think he recognized that President Obama was reluctant to engage in military conflicts, and therefore, would use other instruments of U.S. power—sanctions, for example. But I do think Mr. Putin’s decisions to move into Ukraine, his decision to move into Syria with military forces, was based on the premise that there was not going to be a symmetric Western military response. I felt as though, in some instances, we should have made our reactions less predictable to Mr. Putin. I felt as though there were things that we could have done that wouldn’t have got us into a proxy war. I remember being on the schoolyards of New Jersey, when I grew up, and bullies try to intimidate, and they keep moving forward unless they get their nose bloodied a little bit. I felt as though Mr. Putin really needed to get his nose bloodied. I think it would have caused him to back off, because like most bullies, he knows that he can't stand up to others. It’s a lot of bluster. His willingness to use that type of intimidating tactics, I think, could have been slowed, if not reversed, if he encountered pushback. MICHAEL KIRK - Does he feel, in any way, as the ergo attached to that, a kind of boldness to begin to probe our election process, to step forward in even a more robust way in 2015, in the initial sort of probes that Mr. Clapper talked about back in ’15, and the summer of 2016, which you know and lived through vividly? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, there is truth to the narrative that Mr. Putin has—and Russians, the Soviets before them, tried to engage in interference in elections for many, many years, in the European theater in particular, but also here in the United States. However, over time, there are new means and new techniques and new technologies that make engagement in the election process more available, I guess, to manipulation by Russian intelligence services. With the emergence of the digital domain and the cybersphere and the ability to hack into email servers, I think there are just new attack vectors and avenues for the Russian intelligence services to take advantage of. I do think that they had the direction to collect as much as they could, as they usually do, about political processes. But also, there was a decision made on the part of the Russians and Mr. Putin in particular to authorize the leveraging of that intelligence that was collected, information that was collected. MICHAEL KIRK - … You said they’d been in our election process all the way back into the Soviet Union times. But things, because of technology and other things, have improved and enhanced their process. JOHN BRENNAN - The U.S. Intelligence Community and the CIA were quite mindful of our responsibilities to monitor and to assess Russian activities that were trying to undermine U.S. national security, especially in a presidential election year. So we, CIA, worked very closely with FBI and NSA and director of national intelligence to make sure that we had our radar tuned and that we were going to be very vigilant for any type of Russian interference. We have a lot of experience and expertise at CIA and at the other agencies in terms of Russian tactics and techniques. We have some of the world’s greatest experts. And so we were, I think, well prepared to pick up signs. As 2015 and 2016 rolled on, we did have clear indications that the Russians were going to try to maybe reprise, in a much more intense and pervasive manner, some of their earlier efforts to interfere in elections. MICHAEL KIRK - When Mr. Clapper is talking in Aspen in 2015, he is clearly concerned. He’s raising alarm bells, because he anticipated something even worse than ever before, or the sort of generalized call to arms in 2015. JOHN BRENNAN - Well, we saw a pattern over the last several years, certainly in the second half of the Obama administration, when relations between Washington and Moscow were declining as a result of a number of factors. The effort to reset the relationship between Russia and the United States had faltered. We had the Russian SVR [Russia's External Intelligence Service] illegals that were rounded up here in the United States, and it was a clear indication that the Russians were continuing on their usual course of trying to undermine U.S. national security. Then we saw what Russia did in Ukraine, and there was an aggressiveness, I think, across the board. We saw things happening in Europe in elections there, in the 2012-2013-2014 time period. So there was, in some respects, a building crescendo, I guess, as we were entering the presidential election campaign season, of Russian aggressiveness. Therefore, we were very concerned that we might be seeing Russian efforts to undermine the integrity and credibility of the U.S. presidential election of 2016. MICHAEL KIRK - People in the government high up in the Obama administration say that they expected espionage, but that was a sort of standard-operating-procedure game that’s played by us and by them and by everybody in the world around elections, but that the fear was the weaponization of that information, the way that it had been used in Ukraine and even in Estonia; that they had a new toy to play with, and that that was releasing that information, and that they’d seen a little bit of it around the [then-Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs] Toria Nuland wiretapped phone call, when they released it and made political points out of something like that. Do I have that about right? JOHN BRENNAN - The Russians and the Soviets before them were very proficient, let me put it that way, in the use of active measures on the propaganda front. For many, many years they would try to put into the Western media circles stories that advanced Russian interests and tried to harm U.S. and Western interests. The real distinction over the last several years, again, is this digital environment, where now you have so many new opportunities to apply your intelligence wares. First of all, social media has given intelligence services, especially the Russians, a lot of opportunity to put things out into that social media environment, information that purports to be real, but is part of their active measures influenced propaganda effort. At the same time, Russian espionage activities, in terms of collecting intelligence that would be used in the past to inform Russian active measures, now in and of itself can become a weapon, be weaponized, so that you can take emails and information that you collect from that digital environment, from servers and networks and email servers, and put it out in an effort to try to embarrass your targets. What the Russian services did, and what they are very capable of doing now, is reaching into that cybersphere, collecting a lot of information, as we saw from the Democratic National Committee, DCCC [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee], and then taking judicious and selective use of information in emails to be able to put out as a way to again advance their interests by embarrassing individuals that they see as their targets. MICHAEL KIRK - Before we go much further, let’s go backward, just one more time, for a little back story. Let’s go to 2011-2012, the protests in Moscow. The way the story goes, social media invigorated people who would otherwise not have come out, would not have come out in nearly the numbers that they came out at those times, with a sort of angry response to Putin, saying, “Medvedev is gone; I'm going to take it [the presidency] again,” and lots of other reasons ; people using cell phones to verify it and run it on the Web and people hitting the streets, confirming, I suppose, because it happens at the same time that Arab Spring is happening, Putin’s paranoia, or his view that the hand of America is all over all of this. And he doesn’t apparently—according to people we talked to over there, he’s not at the time very conversant with what is the Web and how is the West using the Web, and [he] is shocked and amazed at everything, from Hillary Clinton’s statements being broadcast all over the Internet to everything else that’s happening to him. He has to ascribe it to something. He ascribes it to us and our use of social media. Help me understand your perspective on that. JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I think Mr. Putin has an affliction like, unfortunately, many world leaders have, which is an innate sense of insecurity as well as paranoia. I think Mr. Putin looked at developments around the world, as well as inside of Russia, as being carried out, in many respects, by Western intelligence services. Over the years, I was quite frankly shocked when I would see so many things ascribed to CIA that CIA had no engagement in whatsoever. And I think Mr. Putin would look at developments, particularly inside of Moscow, if there was opposition activity, or if there were protests, or any type of actions that were counter to what he wanted, he saw CIA’s hand behind it and saw the U.S.’s hand behind it. Therefore, I think he had this innate sense of almost persecution. Also, I think he felt as though not only he was being persecuted, but the Russian people were, and he felt as though he had to stand up for them. But I must tell you that a lot of things that Mr. Putin thought were a direct result of CIA efforts absolutely were not. MICHAEL KIRK - It’s an interesting thing. Here is a guy who’s a KGB officer, and we’re now back in 1987-88, who’s a counterintelligence guy, right? He’s supposed to be paranoid. He’s supposed to anticipate bad things coming in his direction. Talk to me a little bit about Putin, from what you know, from Putin—profile Putin the KGB officer in Dresden and at the end of the Soviet Union. JOHN BRENNAN - I think Mr. Putin was always a hardworking, diligent intelligence officer. But he joined Russian intelligence, I think during their waning days, in the latter years of the Cold War, when they really felt aggrieved and the much lesser power than the United States, so I think that just reinforced some of his feelings of insecurity, and I think that carried over to him when he then entered public office in Russia. I really feel as though he looked upon the United States as being this enormous power that, in his mind, I think unfairly used its power to subjugate Soviet Union Russian people. I do think Mr. Putin had a real sense of this second-class status, that was a bit of a chip on his shoulder, that he always had to prove himself. You know, partly that was also the way he was brought up in the period of time, and again felt as though he was being targeted by others. I think he always felt an urge to fight back. Therefore, when he rose up the ladder of the Russian political system, he was doing it as a sense of competition. He was doing it in a sense that he was trying to, I think, gain favor at the expense of others. Again, I think it just reflects the prism that he looked at the world with, but also he looked at his country with. Again, I think in many respects, he’s a loner. He looks out for himself, but recognizes that he is dependent on other support in order to continue to pursue his goals and objectives. MICHAEL KIRK - He must be an amazing actor in some ways, to go from Dresden to St. Petersburg, sign up with a democrat, [Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of St. Petersburg], rise up in the ranks, and then find himself, six years later, the head of the newly created FSB [Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation] and soon prime minister and then president. JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I think he has this very strong survival instinct, so when the Soviet Union was collapsing, I think he was looking for, how is he going to survive this traumatic experience? Also, then when you had Mr. Yeltsin emerge as the president, I think Mr. Putin’s effort was to try to ensure that he was going to be able to flourish professionally during that time. I think he had some chameleon qualities that he could adapt to the realities around him. But I think he was always driven by a sense that he wanted to be at the top of the heap. In that respect, I think, again, he is a cunning individual from the standpoint of being able to navigate some of the political shoals inside of Russia, but also in some respects he’s a very astute observer of the international environment, and that’s why I think he takes the measure of his opponents and adversaries and counterparts around the world, and he tries to find their weaknesses or their soft spots, and takes full advantage of it. I think he has been able to get the better of a number of individuals. MICHAEL KIRK - When he was appointed president, you're at the agency. What was the consensus about him? Was there a consensus about what was going to happen? Was he going to be a soft authoritarian? Was he going to be a continuation of the democratic principles that Yeltsin was trying to bring? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, it certainly was a break from the Yeltsin years, and especially in the latter Yeltsin years, when people were really concerned that this individual, President Yeltsin, was in a state of decline in terms of physical health as well as mental health. Putin arrived with the reputation of being a serious person, with intelligence background, somebody that the CIA certainly was looking at very, very closely. But he, in some respects, from our perspective—and I wasn’t following Russia in depth at the time—[was] a bit of an enigma, because I don’t think we knew enough about him and what his ultimate aspirations and worldview were. That emerged over time. But I think people saw him as somebody who was going to become immersed in his position. But still, Russia was climbing out of the Soviet era still, and there was a fair amount of jockeying among a number of Russian political luminaries. We didn’t know whether or not Mr. Putin was going to be a passing phase or if he was going to be an enduring individual from the standpoint of Russia’s political future. MICHAEL KIRK - He gives an amazing speech in 2007 in Munich, where he essentially declares war on the world in some—a hell of a far piece from where he was when he first took over in 1999. JOHN BRENNAN - What we saw was an increasing assertiveness on the part of Mr. Putin, and I think it was smart of him to start out rather slowly. I think he cut his political teeth when he was the vice mayor of St. Petersburg. He was, again, a pretty good student, a good intelligence officer from the standpoint of collecting intelligence, taking a book on people, and finding out where the seams might be, where the opportunities might be. Therefore, by the time he had several years under his belt and then came back into the presidency, I think he had much greater self-confidence and a much greater sense of what he not just wanted to do, but what he needed to do, in his mind, in order to solidify his political base in Russia. When he became president for a second time, I think it was at that point that he decided he was going to be president for life, and he was not going to give up power. He was going to amass power not just on the political scene in Moscow, but also on the world stage, because I do think he understands that time is not on Russia’s side. When you look at the demographics, you look at the lack of diversity in the economy, you look at the brain drain, the loss of entrepreneurial and technical talent, I think he sees that he needs to seize the moment and try to be as assertive as possible, because over time, Russia’s influence, I think, he sees would wane, because if you look at the Russian prospectus—and I think he did look at it—he saw that he needed to do things maybe sooner rather than later, protect his flanks that he thought were under assault by encroachment from the West, but also demonstrate to others and potential client states that Russia was a force that was going to reassert itself on the world stage, because I think he does view the superpower competition between the United States and Russia in zero-sum fashion. Therefore, when he sees that the United States is weakened or diminished in any way, to include on the domestic political front in Washington, it only redounds to Russia’s interests, and that’s where I think Mr. Putin really tries to, again, bloody the United States’ nose, because he feels as though, if that happens, it just accrues to his benefit. MICHAEL KIRK - One of the things we watched develop in this film is his creation of cyber- and other weapons, so that he can fight above his weight in a kind of asymmetrical way. We see the first instance of this is Estonia, when they shut the place down. What did you make of what they were doing in Estonia? What was the meaning of that to you? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, intelligence services, including the Russians, recognized that modern-day warfare and modern-day political influence has a lot more avenues of pursuit than it did in the last century, again, because there are ways to manipulate the cyber realm and to either send signals or to actually disable or cripple others. In places like Estonia and places like Georgia, as well as in Ukraine, I think Mr. Putin and his services recognized that they can do things without having to assert, at least in a physical way, Russia’s military capabilities. You can do things that are more insidious, maybe a bit more subtle, but yet as impactful, because you can do things in the cyber realm that [are] going to bring down infrastructure, bring down capabilities of other countries. Again, as part of the bullying tactics and intimidation, it’s a way to send a full broadside against either adversaries or potential adversaries, or ones who might be getting out of line a bit. When Mr. Putin looks at the Baltic states, he recognizes a number of things. One is that he feels a certain obligation to some of the Russian-speaking peoples that are there. He also is very concerned that these states that were once under the yoke of the Soviets should not venture too far to the West. I do think Mr. Putin is willing to pull some levers, and it’s obvious and known to everybody that Russia is pulling the levers. But he’s able to, again, send the message that he wants. But he also, I think, has a good sense of brinksmanship as far as what he can do without a response against him that he would prefer to avoid. MICHAEL KIRK - Just purely from a mechanical perspective, your observation on—is he, in a place like Estonia, in a place like Ukraine, is he pushing the “go” button, or is he like the head of a movie studio, where he’s got a lot of independent producers who do things? You mentioned earlier that they want to appeal to him by doing great things that he acknowledges and really appreciates. So in places like Ukraine, in the hacking that they used, even in Georgia and Ukraine, but also Estonia, is it individuals and kind of—he calls them patriotic hackers. Or is it the GRU [military intelligence] general [who] says, “Go,” or the FSB general [who] says, “Go”? JOHN BRENNAN - I think Mr. Putin has given his intelligence services a fair amount of authority to move forward and implement some of his policy objectives. That said, I am also confident that any Russian action that has potential strategic consequence, such as taking down cybersystems, digital systems, infrastructure in other countries, whether it be in Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine areas, that’s something that he would have given his personal authorization for. I don’t think Russian intelligence chiefs want to go beyond their ski tips, as far as what it is that they are doing that could escalate and spiral. So I do think things such as that, or to engage in an election that could have some real significant repercussions, I am confident, very confident, that they would have run those things by Mr. Putin. The actual details of how it would be implemented is something that I think Mr. Putin would leave to his intelligence chiefs, but the “go” signal, the green light would have come from Mr. Putin. MICHAEL KIRK - So when Cozy Bear jumps inside the State Department in ’15 and the White House and other places, you're alerted? You're alerted to this? And you assume it’s Putin saying, “Let’s go over there and see what we can clean out of the closet”? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, there's a real distinction between what intelligence services collect and then what they actually do with that collection. I don’t think the intelligence services need to get Mr. Putin’s authorization to collect against their principal targets, whether it be against the intelligence community of the United States or State Department or even the White House. That intelligence collection is just part of the M.O. of intelligence services. But to take information that is collected maybe against those targets and then to release it, I guess it depends on the specificity as well as on the potential backlash. So I think some of these things are sui generis from the standpoint of depending on what it is that they're doing, they will go up and seek Mr. Putin’s approval. But the mere collection of intelligence is something that I think the GRU and SVR and FSB do on a regular basis. Taking some of that information and seeding it into maybe some other propaganda, I think that also is part of the Russian M.O. But to do something that is going to be potentially explosive as well as disruptive, I do think that those intelligence chiefs in Russia, the ones that have been able to survive over the course of many years, they know, I think, the limits of their prerogatives and their authorizations. That’s where they go to Mr. Putin and say, “We plan to do this or this,” to make sure you get his head nod. MICHAEL KIRK - So in 2016, …When you first get an inclination of the thing that is going to occupy all of our minds last summer, the first I can find in the press of you really talking about it is late June or early July. But you must have known much earlier that Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear and other things were happening with the DNC. Were you aware of things earlier? Tell me when you were aware of what was happening, and that it was kind of different in some kind. JOHN BRENNAN - CIA always has its counterintelligence radar up for Soviet efforts to harm our national security, and there are things that we see that give us indications about the Russians going down a particular path or trying to exploit a certain opportunity. It’s our responsibility and obligation to make sure that we keep our senior officials in the White House informed, that we keep our FBI brethren informed. So, through the course of 2015 and 2016, CIA was fulfilling its responsibilities to monitor, to collect and to inform. I am loath to give any particular timeframe or dates or reasons because that’s part of the intelligence business. We look at the situation, we identify certain bits and pieces of data, and we correlate them. It’s like people who, I think, observe the weather. You see certain barometric conditions that are starting to form, and you say, “You know, this seems as though it’s ripe for a tornado to develop.” What you try to do is to track it and to see whether or not those early indicators are true indicators of a rising storm. MICHAEL KIRK - We start to hear about it in some ways in late June/early July of 2016. What made it suddenly come on our radar screens? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, during the summer of 2016, there was a fair amount of press attention to various efforts on the part of hackers to get into the systems. Obviously, the media spotlight was quite heavy on the presidential election and the campaign season and the contenders for the presidency. There was a lot that was in the air, and there was a lot of interest on the part of folks downtown to see what the Russians might be up to. Again, we were looking very carefully. We had our sensors out. We had our ears attuned and our eyes directed on the places that we thought the Russians might be working on. Things started to emerge, and as good intelligence officers, we were looking for indicators that might come through many different collections systems, whether they be CIA, NSA, FBI. But also, we were putting many, many years of expertise, overlaying that over those indicators; also touching base with our foreign counterparts, some of those European services that had up-close and direct experience with some of the Russian activities. So this all was part of the effort to discern exactly what Russia was doing. MICHAEL KIRK - There must have been a moment where you said, “This is different in kind in some way, and I know,” and your alarm bells as an experienced person were ringing pretty loudly that a tornado was on the horizon. When was that? JOHN BRENNAN - It was in the summer of 2016. I don’t want to be more specific than that because I do want to be, again, mindful of the need to continue to be able to track and monitor some of the things that Russia is doing. But in the summer it was quite clear to me that we were seeing a campaign on the part of the Russians, that this was not just sort of the usual stuff that we’d seen before; that it was a much more aggressive, much more intense, and much more worrisome effort, because the exploitation of the cyber environment gave us real concern that the Russians could be up to things that we hadn’t seen before, and we didn’t know what they were going to try to do. We had seen, over the course of years, what they had done in Europe, to include financial payments and, again, intimidation efforts, even blackmail of political parties and political officials. In some respects, they stoop to whatever tactic they can. But this storm was brewing in the summer, which is why I decided that I was going to raise this issue with one of my principal counterparts, [FSB Director] Mr. Alexander Bortnikov, on the 4th of August. MICHAEL KIRK - Before we get to Mr. Bortnikov’s—the phone call, you're worried enough, from what I gather, that you want to hold this really closely. This is not something that’s in the PDB [President’s Daily Brief] in the morning, with the president. This is not something that you're spreading around for the month of July at least. JOHN BRENNAN - In my intelligence career, I've been involved in many, many sensitive intelligence programs and activities. Getting bin Laden was one of the most sensitive. It was held to a very few people. But I must say that counterintelligence cases are the ones that the CIA and the FBI hold most tightly for a variety of reasons. One is that sometimes it involves U.S. persons who have been recruited by the Russians, and you want to make sure that you protect that information for the privacy of individuals who may be suspected but not actually guilty. In addition, though, it’s an ongoing case. And what you're trying to do is uncover what the Russians are involved in. In order to do that, you have to make sure that you keep that information very tightly held, because any exposure, any leak could be devastating, in terms of shutting down a counterintelligence investigation, because your leads will go dry. Therefore, when we saw that the Russians were actively and aggressively trying to interfere in our election, during the election period, we needed to make sure that we did everything possible to aggressively pursue that, to uncover and discover what they were doing, but at the same time protect that information. So we briefed a very small number of people at the highest levels of government in the executive branch, as well as in the Congress, to make sure that they were aware that CIA, along with our intelligence partners, were actively and aggressively seeking to uncover, and then as directed and as needed, to thwart these Russian efforts. MICHAEL KIRK - In those early days, who knows? Before you send the sealed letter over to the White House in early August, as it’s been reported, how small is the circle that you draw? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, first of all, I met with my people at CIA who were uncovering this information, and I wanted to really understand what it is that we knew, what our gaps were, our confidence level. We had some very intense and long meetings at CIA headquarters about this. Once it was apparent to me that we were encountering something that was unlike what we had seen before, I reached out to the White House and wanted to have a meeting with the president. So I had a phone conversation with one of my close colleagues down at the White House, and I said, “I need to see the president.” I was able to get in and see the president very quickly and walked him through it and told him and the national security adviser and one or two other people from the White House, what we were encountering, what we had to deal with, and how we were going to handle it. I talked through some of the mechanisms that we would keep them informed in consultation with the president and the others at the White House. We agreed that I needed to reach out immediately to the Gang of Eight—that’s the leadership in the Senate and the House of Representatives—and to make sure that they were aware of this, because we thought that it was most important for our senior legislators to know what the Russians were up to, but also how were we going to handle it. MICHAEL KIRK - When you go in and see the president, can you put a date on it for us, or do you want to keep that? JOHN BRENNAN - It was in the summer, early summer. It was certainly before I spoke— MICHAEL KIRK - Really? JOHN BRENNAN - It was certainly before I spoke to Mr. Bortnikov. MICHAEL KIRK - Yeah, so before that, of course. JOHN BRENNAN - Absolutely. MICHAEL KIRK - So sometime in July. How do you say it to the president, Mr. Brennan? And how does he react? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I've had some experience over the years in briefing presidents and making sure that they understood exactly what it is that we know, how we know it. I wanted to not over-brief it and to make sure the president understood the foundations of our understanding, and also make sure the president understood how we would be able to collect further on this, what the limitations were as well as the sensitivity of it. That’s one of the things that I wanted to make sure that I underscored, the sensitivity of this type of information. MICHAEL KIRK - What do you mean, sensitivity? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, again, in any counterintelligence investigation, there are an array of collection capabilities that you try to leverage, and you try to protect those sources of methods. So I want to make sure that I was able to share the substance of the information, but also wanted to make sure they understood how it is that we acquire the information and why is it that we have the confidence in it. MICHAEL KIRK - So you can be specific with the president. You can say whatever it is, “We have somebody in there, we have technology; we have”— JOHN BRENNAN - I was specific with the president. I was specific with the Gang of Eight in terms of how we knew it. And I wanted to make sure that I highlighted the sensitivity. The president, national security adviser, the Gang of Eight and some of the other senior members of the National Security Council were fully aware of the information we had. Now, not every bit in detail I shared because there was no need to, but they needed to have a good understanding and grasp of the foundations of this information. MICHAEL KIRK - The president’s reaction in that initial conversation? JOHN BRENNAN - The president, in the summer of 2016, was already well aware and I think appreciative of the intelligence community’s capabilities, and also was well aware of Russian activities around the globe, too, including elections. So I think what he— MICHAEL KIRK - You mean from the PDB, the briefing. JOHN BRENNAN - Yeah. Over the years, we've been briefing him on what the Russians were doing in a lot of other elections and the Russian cyber capabilities or whatever. So it was not shocking or surprising, but it was something that was, I think, worrying to all of us, particularly since we didn’t know the extent of what it is that the Russians were engaged in, and we didn’t know how far they would go to really threaten the integrity of the election. MICHAEL KIRK - They hadn’t yet done the Wiki dump? JOHN BRENNAN - No, there were still things that the Russians were—ultimately did. MICHAEL KIRK - That they hadn’t done yet when you have this conversation. JOHN BRENNAN - Mm-hmm. MICHAEL KIRK - But people have described him as grave at that, kind of countenance of gravity was really—yes? JOHN BRENNAN - The president was very concerned about what the Russians were doing. The president was very focused on what it is we needed to do in order to uncover and to stop them from doing it. But the president also, I think, was rightly concerned about doing something in the middle of a presidential election season, to thwart the Russians but at the same time not assist the Russians by doing something that was going to raise even more questions about the credibility and integrity of the election. The president was fixated on this. He told us to do everything we could, from a collection standpoint, to make sure that we kept him informed, which we did. But also, he was, I think, at that point then really thinking about what course of action he should take in terms of public statements, actions, as well as private actions. He was thinking about it as the president of the United States and wanting to make sure that the 2016 presidential election could be carried out in the most fair, free and uninterrupted manner as possible. MICHAEL KIRK - You had said earlier, John, that you knew Putin, and you know how it works. You know how the vertical power works there to get something done. When you finally are convinced by your guys, and it doesn’t sound like it took a long time for them to convince you that this was happening, are you saying: “This is a Putin operation. This is a direct-line Putin operation”? Is Putin your guy from almost from the beginning? And do you tell the president that? JOHN BRENNAN - From the very beginning, I made it clear to the president that it was—certainly CIA’s considered view that this was an activity and a campaign that was authorized by Mr. Putin. MICHAEL KIRK - Did he want to pull [then-Director of National Intelligence James] Clapper and [then-FBI Director James] Comey in on this? Are they already part of this by then? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, after I met with my people at the agency, I made a number of phone calls and spoke to the White House to get on the president’s calendar. I also, right away, spoke to Jim Clapper. Jim was not available to come down to the White House with me at the time when I met with the president, but I wanted to make sure that Jim was fully apprised of what it was that we had come to understand, and what I was going to brief the president about. Right after I briefed the president, as I recall, I spoke with Jim Comey and let him know exactly what it is that we needed to do together and had a conversation shortly thereafter with Mike Rogers from NSA, because the president recognized that for any type of counterintelligence effort that needs to be undertaken by the U.S. government, the CIA, the FBI and NSA are the three principal agencies that really need to take this and do everything possible to understand it better. MICHAEL KIRK - Did you guys know that Guccifer and [Julian] Assange from WikiLeaks were waiting in the wings right before the DNC dump, or did that come as a surprise? JOHN BRENNAN - We were looking at what the Russians were doing. We were working through what options the Russians were considering in terms of taking advantage of some of their espionage exploits and their cyberhacking activities. We were looking at the various mechanisms and distribution systems that they could take advantage of. Again, our experts CIA, and FBI and NSA’s experts, identified the more likely culprits in this. Again, we have a lot of expertise that we were able to take advantage of, so when things started to show up and come out, we were able to put together some bits and pieces of information and intelligence, as well as look at it against the backdrop of things that had happened previously. MICHAEL KIRK - The meaning of Wiki’s release right before the Democratic National Convention, to you: What was the importance of that to you? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, we were following with great interest the timing of some of these activities in terms of when something would be released, and did it happen on the eve of a certain development or event such as the Democratic National Convention? By looking at the timing and the action, one could then have a good sense of motivation, and it also would help to validate some of the things that we had come already to understand or to believe. So we were tracking that. I think that’s a very important part of the intelligence business. You look at actions, you look at developments, you look at statements, and you look at things along a timeline, and then do some correlations, because it frequently will give you a sense of motivation and objectives. MICHAEL KIRK - So by now, the press is going basically crazy about this story, and everybody is pushing, I would assume the Clinton campaign is also saying, “Oh, my God,” right, because they know. Was it at this early stage, did you know the Russians favored Trump and were after Mrs. Clinton? JOHN BRENNAN - The Intelligence Community assessment that ultimately was published and released to the public in early January, it had, you know, three principal conclusions: one, to undermine the integrity of the election and interfere in that electoral process; two, to denigrate Hillary Clinton, either if she won or to stop her or to muddy her when she emerged as president; and then for Mr. Trump to be advantaged by these Russian efforts. And looking back, it was CIA’s judgment—I think the judgment of the other agencies as well, early on, that the Russian strategy was designed to promote the prospects for Mr. Trump. In the summer of 2016, it was our assessment that the Russians were trying to enhance Mr. Trump’s prospects for electoral victory. Even though it was our assessment that the Russians didn’t see him as the likely winner, but they had a multipronged campaign strategy. So yes, early on, in 2016, it was our view that the Russians were trying to improve Mr. Putin’s [sic] prospects, which they thought were unlikely. MICHAEL KIRK - You mean Mr. Trump’s prospects. JOHN BRENNAN - Mr. Trump’s prospects. In 2016 they were trying to enhance Mr. Trump’s prospects to emerge victorious in the election, even though they thought it was a bit of a long shot. MICHAEL KIRK - And Mr. Trump’s response must have been fascinating to you: “Hey! Go find Hillary’s—hey, Russia, if you're breaking in, go find it,” he treats it frivolously almost, yeah? JOHN BRENNAN - Mr. Trump’s comments about Mr. Putin and Russia and Russian intelligence have been baffling to me for quite some time. During the election campaign, when he encouraged the Russians to release emails, to his favorable comments about Mr. Putin, these are things that I still am very, very puzzled about. MICHAEL KIRK - The [Washington] Post writes a story about a letter you send over in early August to the White House for the eyes of four people, the president and three other people. Did such a letter actually go to the White House? And what was it about, if you’ve already had a conversation with the president and others? JOHN BRENNAN - On the morning of the day that I briefed the president, I sent over a very short note, cryptic note, that was for the president, the national security adviser, and a couple of other folks down there, that gave the topic, the subject of the briefing that I was going to provide to the president. I wanted to make sure that they understood the gravity of what it was that I needed to brief, and therefore getting on the president’s schedule. And I said I needed some time to basically walk him through this. I wanted to make sure that they knew it, so I gave them a very, very brief heads-up in a very short note that I sent over there in the morning. MICHAEL KIRK - Do you remember what you said? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I talked about: this deals with Russia and interference in the election. I think I had a few other lines in there, but I wanted to reserve the substance of the brief, given the sensitivity of it, for my oral briefing that I gave to the president. MICHAEL KIRK - And is it true the report that it was to be in he hands of only four people, and it was to be returned? JOHN BRENNAN - There were four people that were in the briefing for the president. It was the president, national security adviser, deputy national security adviser, and the president’s chief of staff and myself. That was it. MICHAEL KIRK - It feels like an unbelievably historic moment. JOHN BRENNAN - It was one that certainly I’ll remember. I understood the gravity of the issue. I understood the importance of what it was that I was going to tell the president, not because it was a one-time briefing; it was because we had our work cut out for us in the coming months. It was going to be a very, very challenging intelligence effort. It was going to be a very challenging policy effort as well, from the standpoint of what to do. And this was uncharted territory in many respects. I certainly had never been involved in something like this. We had to be thinking constantly about what we needed to do on the collection side; what do we need to do in terms of informing policymakers, coming up with options, informing Congress, what to say publicly? These were all things that we had to make decisions about. And I didn’t have a playbook for this. I had to deal with it based on my experience and based on my counterintelligence experience. We were navigating shoals that I had never encountered before. And I must say, looking back on it, I think we did a pretty good job of, again, working with our partners, FBI and NSA and DNI, keeping the White House informed and national security officials informed, as well as the Congress. I very much hope that, as the Senate and the House Intelligence Committees continue to do their work, that they will come up with some legislation that will mandate certain things to happen prior to a presidential congressional election. For example, maybe coming out with a public statement on the part of the director of national intelligence and director of FBI, 120 days before such election, to let the American people know what's the state of the electoral system, what type of hacking efforts have we seen. And then maybe reserving for the congressional leadership and the White House officials a classified briefing about the types of things that we’re seeing so that there would be a bit of a legislatedly mandated playbook, so that the future intelligence and law enforcement officials can really be able to deal with this—such a situation in the future in the best way possible. MICHAEL KIRK - For those of us who are trying to read tea leaves and connect dots from way outside up in the atmosphere somewhere, it looks early on in July and August, like the FBI hasn’t really signed on yet to the magnitude that you're talking about. Even Clapper seems a little behind the curve. We’re going to talk to him next week, so we’ll hear his side of that. But I don’t see, from right away, a kind of unanimity like you had. Was that your sense, too? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, before I briefed the president, and I had extended discussions with individuals inside of CIA, inside of CIA we have FBI agents who are working cheek-to-jowl as part of the counterintelligence effort. These are people who really look at every bit of information, every bit of data. I think that they had confidence, first, before anybody, because they were swimming in the data. Then, when I started to dip into it as well, I became more confident. That data, which was multifaceted, had to, again, be protected. Then we started to bring others into it. And that’s why I decided, early on, that having experienced the run-up to 9/11, where data from one organization was not shared with the others, and so intelligence dots were not connected, I decided that we were going to establish a fusion cell inside of CIA that was going to have NSA and FBI there, and I wanted people to be able to share as much as they could among each other. That fusion cell, that kept me very much informed and was used to inform others. Gradually, as more people became familiar with the intelligence that we had, the understandings that we had, the expertise that we had, the experience of other Russian activities and elections, I think that picture started to emerge for many people. Over time there was greater confidence on the part of those who might not have been swimming in the data early on. But I saw that as growing over time. Certainly Jim Clapper and Jim Comey I think were aligned, exactly aligned with me, as far as where we were in our estimates about the Russian activities. MICHAEL KIRK - So talk to me about Gen. Bortnikov, the phone call. This is a regularly scheduled phone call that you would normally have anyway, but you decided, with the president’s permission, to add this to the agenda. JOHN BRENNAN - Over the course of my tenure at CIA, I became, I guess, much closer or had much more engagement with the head of the FSB, Alexander Bortnikov, with basically the head of their FBI, than I did with Mikhail Fradkov, the head of the SVR, the CIA equivalent. I did a lot with Bortnikov on counterterrorism information, engaged with him quite a bit, met with him a number of times. He, in fact, came to visit me at CIA headquarters, and I had ongoing conversations with him about what was going on in Afghanistan as well as Syria. And so on Aug. 4, it was a scheduled call that I had with Mr. Bortnikov, at his request, to talk about the situation in Syria. I said to myself first, and then to the White House: “There's no way I can have a conversation with Mr. Bortnikov at this time, given our confidence level about what the Russians were doing against our election, and not say a word about it to him. I just think that that would not have been appropriate.” So I spoke to the White House, and I said: “I'm speaking to Mr. Bortnikov. We’re going to talk about Syria, but there are two other things I want to talk to him about. One is I want to make sure that I hit him upside the head once again about some of the harassing and even violent actions that the FSB was responsible for in Russia, in Moscow in particular, against U.S. diplomats.” Time and time again, [then-Secretary of State] John Kerry and I spoke about the need to push the Russians on this issue of the regular harassment that U.S. diplomats and families faced in Moscow, so that was usually a part of my ongoing talking points. But I also told the White House I wanted to tell him about the Russian interference in our election, and I said—because there were a lot of things that were public at that time, I said, “I've been watching very carefully all of these reports about Russian interference in the election.” I told him that if they were doing this, this would be a grave mistake; that it was going to roil the relations between the United States and Russia for many years to come; that all Americans would be outraged over it, even if the Russians were trying to advance the prospects of candidates that some Americans were in favor of, because the American people take very seriously the importance of the integrity and the freedom of our election system. Mr. Bortnikov denied it. I then came back to it and said, “This is something that you need to take very seriously,” and he said he would relay it to Mr. Putin. And I know that Mr. Bortnikov, who works very closely with Mr. Putin, would relay that to him immediately, because in past conversations, I asked Mr. Bortnikov to pass messages to Mr. Putin, and I got a response within an hour, so he would have immediate access to him. Mr. Bortnikov promised to do that. I didn’t hear back from him with Mr. Putin’s reaction and response. But Mr. Bortnikov said they’d be willing to work with either candidate who emerged victorious in the election. MICHAEL KIRK - But is it a surprise that you didn’t hear back? That tells you something, doesn’t it? JOHN BRENNAN - Yeah. And when I spoke to him, I presumed he was going to deny any interference. I presumed he was going to tell Mr. Putin, but this was the first time that I think a senior U.S. official confronted the Russians. And when the director of CIA says very clearly to the director of the FSB, “Cut it out,” I think that that certainly has resonance then in the Kremlin. Then there were subsequent engagements between the United States and Russia; President Obama confronted Mr. Putin; and then there were the public statements. I ask myself now, as a result of those direct engagements with them, did it give the Russians pause? Did they decide not to do some of the things that they could have done? They continued to map the architecture of the electoral infrastructure, looking at state systems. But we put them on notice. And did they then decide, “Hmm, let’s not go all the way”? Yes, there were subsequent releases that we saw from WikiLeaks, but some of the things that they could have done they didn’t do. And there's a part of me that says, yeah, those brushback pitches sent a clear signal to them, and I think they recognized that this was a very important issue to the Obama administration. Maybe they didn’t have the same predictability in terms of what our reaction would be. MICHAEL KIRK - Or appetite for whatever was going to happen if they kept on staying at the banquet. It’s late August through September, where it feels like inside the White House, and obviously you're involved in this, there's a lot of talk about, so what should we do? How should we respond? … What was the range of —I don’t expect you to be really, really specific, but what were the range of options available for the president, and what did he finally decide to do? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, the options looked at a variety of paths. One is, what do you do, and what do you say directly to the Russians? That’s one. The second one is, what do you do and say publicly, in terms of acknowledging to the American people what is going on? Third, what are some of the things that you could do to try to rattle the Russians’ cage, maybe take some tangible steps, whether it be symmetric or asymmetric? But then, I think overriding all of this was the president—President Obama’s concern about not doing anything that was going to become a self-fulfilling prophecy for the Russians, which was to call into question the integrity of the election, particularly since Mr. Trump quite blatantly said that he was unsure if he was going to accept the results of the election. He was asked by journalist newscasters, and I think he said something like, “We’ll see.” So the president, as president of the United States, but also as the head of the Democratic Party, he insisted that we not do anything that is going to, either in reality or in perception, be a thumb on the scale of the November election. So we were very mindful of the responsibilities to do everything possible to prevent the Russians from being successful in what they were trying to do, but at the same time not to do anything that is even going to call further into question the integrity of the election, because I could view some scenarios where there would be this escalating concern, and then people would start to really wonder whether or not their vote was going to count, and why would they vote, whatever? It was a very, very delicate line to walk. CIA and the intelligence community, law enforcement, FBI, I think we recognized that we needed to be particularly careful in terms of not doing anything that could cause there to be a greater disruption of the election. These were weighty decisions and long deliberations and discussions, and we tossed things around. The statement that Jim Clapper and [then-Secretary of Homeland Security] Jeh Johnson put out went through an arduous review process, including the White House Situation Room, just trying to get the tone right, make sure the message was right. Again, not having had a template that came before us, we had to try to do the best we could. I think the president wanted to hear the full range of options, which was the correct thing to do, and we looked at what those options were. We looked at the potential efficacy of them as well as the potential disruptive impact, and I think the decisions that were made are now history. MICHAEL KIRK - …During this month, the FBI, at least the way the press reports it, has uncovered in some way that the Russians are also interested in the mechanics of the election. That feels like something that's of a different magnitude than propaganda or Infowars or whatever it is, that this is really serious. Does it affect the debate inside the White House in September and late August? And in your own mind, does it change the magnitude of how important this is, or did you already know that it was happening? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, the Russians will map the architecture and the environment of their targets. It’s called operational preparation of the environment, OPE. They do it for military purposes so that they understand exactly what they can do, so when we saw them starting to look at state electoral systems, I think the sense was that this gives them the opportunity to digest what those systems look like and then to formulate options or opportunities that they might be able to take advantage of if they wanted to actually do something against those voting electoral systems. That’s where it’s very important for the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to understand what they were doing. I had a number of conversations, including one-on-ones with Jeh Johnson as he was doing what he could to work with state officials and to lend assistance to those who were trying to protect their electoral processes. MICHAEL KIRK - The way the story goes, he calls lots of states. Many of them rebuff him, not interested. Keep the federal government out of our election problem, whatever they say. Is that a surprise to you? JOHN BRENNAN - No. I think we understood that there was going to be some resistance on the part of states. Again, I didn’t deal with any of the states. That’s not CIA’s mandate. I sought, in two ways, one gets back to the Hamilton-Jefferson division about states’ rights and national rights. Secondly, some of those states were concerned not just about the federal government’s interference in what they see as an inalienable right of states, but also partisan politics I think started to swirl about, and wondering whether or not an administration that is a Democratic administration trying to come into states’ voting systems, electoral systems, whether there could be something up with that. MICHAEL KIRK - Was Johnson free to tell them the magnitude of what the worry was? JOHN BRENNAN - Jeh Johnson tried to be as clear as possible about the nature of the threat and the risks that were out there. But also, there was just so much in the public domain at that point that anybody who thought that the Russians were not actively involved in trying to interfere in the election was not reading the paper, watching television, or using their common sense. MICHAEL KIRK - Well, the way the story goes, you had had a similar experience up with Congress in your initial trek up there to talk to Gang of Eight and others, that you were met with some partisan response and even serious doubt. JOHN BRENNAN - In those briefings of Congress, some of the individuals expressed concern that this was motivated by partisan interests on the part of the administration. I took offense to that and told them that this is an intelligence assessment; this is an intelligence matter, and I wanted to make sure that they were informed, because the Gang of Eight responsibilities required them to take this seriously. I told them that this in no way reflected any type of partisan effort, so they understood that I was serious about it, certainly. MICHAEL KIRK - Even after you shared the intelligence? JOHN BRENNAN - I shared the intelligence with the—yes. MICHAEL KIRK - So even after that, they still think of it as a partisan issue? JOHN BRENNAN - Even though I had served in intelligence for several decades, I think some people still saw me as the CIA director appointed by a Democratic president, even though I had served six presidents, three Democrat, three Republican. I reminded some of that fact that I take this very seriously. I take my responsibilities seriously, and I am very concerned about what the Russians are doing with the election. MICHAEL KIRK - You talked about the Oct. 7 release of Mr. Clapper’s—the DNI’s report, the three or four paragraphs. There was once a paragraph about Putin specifically that gets dropped by the time it’s publicly issued. Do you know why? JOHN BRENNAN - We wanted to make sure that the statement that came out was going to reflect as accurately as possible what it is that we knew and what we assessed, but at the same time to make sure that we were able to protect sources and methods. There were decisions made in terms of what should be included and what should not be included, that reflected those dual concerns: [be] accurate, but at the same time protect sources and methods. MICHAEL KIRK - So you were worried about a source in some way, or a method in some way, being revealed if you tagged Putin with it. JOHN BRENNAN - I think the editing of that statement reflected a shared interest in being as forthcoming as possible while at the same time not jeopardizing our ability to continue to have insight into what the Russians might be doing. MICHAEL KIRK - What a day that was. You know, that statement comes out at 3:30 in the afternoon, and within a half hour, the Access Hollywood crude remarks from the president appear. And a half hour after that, there's a WikiLeaks dump of the John Podesta emails. What was happening that day for you, when it went out, and then you watched all of that follow on? JOHN BRENNAN - The run-up to the election, it seemed like every day there was breaking news. And yes, I was mindful of the other things that were happening on that day, but as intelligence professionals, as the head of the CIA, needed to make sure that you keep a trained eye on what it is that you need to do. Russian interference in the election was not the only issue I was dealing with. I was dealing with a lot of other things on the terrorism front and the Middle East front, North Korea. It’s just in some respects a typical day, where there are a lot of things on the intelligence-national security front that are burning. But, at the same time, there are a lot of other things that are maybe on the sidelines that distract the attention and focus of some people from some of those national security matters. But I must say that I really felt that the National Security Council of the Obama administration, at the highest levels, remained fixated on this issue of Russian interference in the election, irrespective of the other news that might be coming out. MICHAEL KIRK - … The other event that happens in September, of course, the president goes to the G-20 and pulls President Putin aside. Obviously you were part of the briefing of the president, of all the dimensions of all the things he’d have to talk to Putin about if the occasion presented itself. What happened there? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I think a picture tells a thousand words. When you look at the image of Mr. Putin and President Obama on the sidelines of that summit, I think President Obama’s face really conveys a sense of deep concern and sending a message to Mr. Putin. We had talked about the importance of making sure that President Obama seized that opportunity so that Mr. Putin had no misunderstanding whatsoever. We were confident that Mr. Bortnikov relayed the information that I did to Mr. Putin, but similarly, just the way I didn’t want to pass up an opportunity with occasion with Bortnikov, I think the president wanted to make sure that Mr. Putin understood the gravity of this, the seriousness with which President Obama viewed it, and the need to cease and desist. MICHAEL KIRK - … On Oct. 7, when the statement is finally released, there's been a lot of talk and back-and-forth about the American people need to know. They need to know something, some details. They need to know that you guys are all in agreement about it. And at that moment, there it is, finally the release, the justification, and it gets subsumed and carried into the vortex of the Donald Trump—let’s not even characterize—crude behavior tape. Big loss from your point of view that it was sort of taken over by that event? JOHN BRENNAN - You know, you can never predict what's going to happen when you release something like that. The news of the day continues to unfold. We wanted to make sure we got it out as quickly as we could after the deliberation took place. And whether or not people took it seriously, by then all the press, the media were covering the interference in the election, there was a debate back and forth about whether or not it was needed or necessary to go out with a statement like that. Or should it be harder-hitting or less, or whatever? MICHAEL KIRK - There was a lot of back-and-forth about the statement and about how strong the statement should be. JOHN BRENNAN - Once we decided on the language of the statement, we wanted to make sure we were able to get it out quickly, so it was released. We knew that it was going to get pickup in the media, obviously. People were anticipating, I think, that the administration was going to be saying something publicly. But then, when it was—it seemed to be overtaken, in some respects, by the video and the audio of Mr. Trump’s comments, it—I don’t know. I don’t want to say it was disappointing, but it is a fact of life. That’s what happens in—certainly in Washington. You can never predict what other newsworthy stories are going to be coming out at a time when you release a statement. But I think by then we were all convinced that the American people were aware of this Russian interference. But we thought it was very, very important to get on the record that this was certainly the considered judgment—in fact, unanimous judgment about those activities. MICHAEL KIRK - It also felt to me, feels to me as I look back on it, like the White House had pretty much decided, by Oct. 7: “Look, we’ll deal with this after the election. Whatever we do, however forcefully we respond, that response will follow Hillary Clinton’s election,” because almost everybody believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win. JOHN BRENNAN - Well, in the run-up to the election, I think the president always felt as though, if he needed to take more aggressive action against Russia, he could. And he saw that there was going to be opportunities before to do something if necessary, but as well afterward. It was, I think, determined that we didn’t want to get into an escalatory cyber battle with the Russians, because there were options that were considered, as far as the things that we could do in the cyber realm. But there is a question about, then, what would the Russians have done to counter that, and if they were going to counter it, how that could have further interfered in the election or undermined the credibility. MICHAEL KIRK - Is that in the realm of what we were worried about, about the states and about getting actually inside the process, the technical, the vote-gathering process? JOHN BRENNAN - Yeah. By October, the middle of October, we were aware of what Russia was trying to do vis-à-vis the state systems. We knew that there were capabilities that the Russians could have exercised, that would have raised even greater questions about the credibility and integrity of the election. What we didn’t want to do was to take some type of action that would have negligible or marginal impact on the Russians, but yet trigger some type of Russian counteraction, which would have I think been quite disruptive of the electoral system, and I think raised questions about the validity of the outcome. At this time, as everybody was watching the polls, I think everybody was pretty convinced that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election. I think the Russians were convinced of that, [as were] I think most political observers, as well as officials in Washington. Looking back on it now, when I think if people in Washington and the White House felt that there was a closer race, would they have done things differently? I don’t know. That’s something that I think President Obama would have to answer. I do think that the president tried to do it in a manner that was going to be as unbiased and least disruptive as possible. When I saw the options that were available, even if he thought that Mr. Trump was going to emerge the winner, I don’t think the president would have opted for any of the scenarios that would have involved a U.S. cyber response against Russia prior to the election. I just don’t think he would have done it. MICHAEL KIRK - Were all of you who held things fairly closely and were getting lots of different kinds of intelligence, were you also aware of the appearance of collusion by the Trump family, by [Jared] Kushner, by young Don Jr., the Russian banker, the Russian lawyer, the other things that seemed to be going on, Roger Stone talking to Guccifer, and saying, you know, “Watch out, Podesta is next”? All of that, were you in on all of that as well? JOHN BRENNAN - There were things that happened, meetings that took place between individuals on the Russian side and on the U.S. side that raised my concerns about collaboration related to the election. I didn’t know what was motivating some people, but I certainly was concerned. And anything that we had that involved U.S. persons, anything that the CIA collected or had information about involving U.S. persons, we immediately shared it with the FBI, because it’s their responsibility to pull those investigative threads. So I was aware, contemporaneously, of some things that were going on, which again caused me to furrow my brow and say, “What's this all about?” But I didn’t follow it up. I was confident that the FBI would be able to do its job. MICHAEL KIRK - Were there things that we don’t—did you know things, and do you know things that we didn’t know? JOHN BRENNAN - CIA director always knows things that others don’t know. MICHAEL KIRK - So there were more of these events than we know now? JOHN BRENNAN - Anything that we uncovered, that was relevant to the election and Russian interference, and anything especially that involved U.S. persons or individuals associated with the Trump campaign, that information was made available to the FBI. And it was FBI’s job then to follow up on it. A lot of those investigative leads, if you will, I don’t know what happened as a result, because that’s the FBI’s responsibility and not CIA’s responsibility. MICHAEL KIRK - OK, so when we get to the day of the election, what are you worrying about as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency and the guy who’s read in on basically everything that’s happening? What are you watching for? What are you worried about? I'm not talking about in winners and losers, but the process. JOHN BRENNAN - Well, in the days before the election, there was constant interaction between the experts at CIA, FBI and NSA, making sure that we shared with each other the latest insight into what might be happening and what the Russians might be doing. We were monitoring and using our collection capabilities to understand what the Russians might have up their sleeve at the 11th hour. I was kept informed by my people, and we were very focused on making sure that any indicator of some type of disruptive activity on Election Day was going to be uncovered, and therefore—and consequently shared. Again, in the life of a CIA director, you have a dozen things that you're focusing on, because the world doesn’t allow you just to focus on one, so I was confident that my people would tell me if we saw anything that the Russians might be doing on Election Day. MICHAEL KIRK - Was there any one single thing, the hacking of the states, something like that, that really concerned you as we got up to the zero hour? JOHN BRENNAN - There were concerns about could the Russians do something with the voter registration rolls, make names disappear, replace some things, and prevent some people from voting? Didn’t have to be the vote tallies itself. I was, as I was watching some of the returns come in, I know that some of those returns are sent from the precincts to the state centers, and they're sent over the Internet. Is there going to be some type of action that the Russians might take to prevent those tallies from being delivered? I didn’t know if the Russians were going to do anything at all. I thought if they did that, it clearly would be a sign that Putin had authorized an exceptionally, an unprecedented, aggressive assault against this country that to me would have been tantamount to war, actually doing something against the voters or the votes on Election Day. So I was wondering whether or not we’d see that. MICHAEL KIRK - We’ve talked to lots of people in Russia about what it was like in Moscow that day, what Putin’s response was. What was your response, Mr. Brennan, to the election results? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, speaking as an individual U.S. citizen, U.S. voter, I was surprised at the election results. But then, you know, it's a momentary bit of surprise, and then we kick in, as we always do, to make sure that we fulfill our responsibilities. I was then-President-elect Obama’s lead for the intelligence transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration, and I was so, so impressed by just what a great job the Bush administration did in terms of welcoming us and making sure we were as well prepared as possible when the Obama administration took over reins of government in January of 2009. President Obama had previously told us that he wanted our transition effort to be as good, if not better, as the Bush team. So we had already worked up some things to provide to the new incoming team, and the day after election met with the folks and said, “OK, let’s be ready to give the individuals who are going to be anointed as the part of the new administration the briefings that they needed, so at the meetings.” We had some of our best people pull together materials, books, briefings for that. And we waited, and we waited, and we waited. No one really came knocking at our door, which concerned me, because I knew that this was going to be an enormous, enormous climb for the Trump team, because I really felt that they were probably more surprised than anybody that they were elected. They were ill prepared for it. They were not ready. There was very, very sparse and limited interaction between the incoming team and the outgoing team, particularly on the intelligence front. All the materials, all the briefings, all the readiness that we had trying to emulate what the Bush administration did to such a great extent, it really was not utilized by the new team, which was disappointing, because I understand just how complex the role is for the incoming team, and how complex and complicated and dangerous the world is, so I was very concerned that they were going to take over on the 20th of January without the preparation that was needed. And I think that’s exactly what happened. MICHAEL KIRK - Did you, in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s victory, worry that something untoward had happened to give him the victory? JOHN BRENNAN - I was very concerned that Mr. Trump was, again, ill prepared for the job; that he didn’t have a good grasp of international affairs, the domestic policy scene, the legislative process, U.S. law, intelligence capabilities. I had already engaged in some back-and-forth publicly with Mr. Trump because of his disparaging remarks about the intelligence community. … I was very much hoping and believing that Mr. Trump was going to learn on the job and grow into the position. But then, a couple days after he was inaugurated, he showed up at CIA headquarters, and in front of our hallowed Memorial Wall, started to talk politics, which I thought was very inappropriate and disgraceful in many ways. So yes, I was very concerned that we were going to be in for a different type of administration, a different type of presidency. Maybe I was spoiled by the eight years of President Obama, who I thought had the utmost integrity, utmost decency, as far as how he treated other people, and also a tremendous intellect and understanding of the world and our Constitution and our laws. … But I will say that, you know, I have talked with many people in the Obama administration. We want the administration, the Trump administration, to succeed. We want this president to be successful. We want this country to be strong. But I must say that our institutions of governance are being tested. And Mr. Trump still doesn’t, in my view, understand the solemn, the sacred obligations of being president of the United States. It’s not all about him; it’s about this country, and he needs to, I think, adjust his mindset if he’s going to do what he needs to do for the American people. MICHAEL KIRK - Let me go back one more thought about the Election Day, post-Election Day. Did you believe, as a law enforcement, as a national security expert, do you believe there was any possibility that the Trump team colluded with the Russians on the election results? JOHN BRENNAN - I don’t know whether or not there was any collaboration, collusion or conspiracy that took place between U.S. persons and Russians related to the election, and I think it would be unfair for me to speculate about individuals doing that. But I will say there were things that were taking place that I believe required the FBI to investigate, to ensure that there was no such collusion, collaboration or conspiracy between U.S. persons, including those associated with the campaign, and Russia. The American people deserve to know. MICHAEL KIRK - Do you think they're investigating those things? JOHN BRENNAN - I have great confidence in the FBI’s ability to carry out these investigations, and they are particularly adept and adroit at pulling threads, especially on the financial front. I've been involved in many counterterrorism investigations and counterintelligence investigations over the years, and pulling on those financial threads frequently reveals very interesting relationships and acts of a criminal nature. That’s what the FBI’s job is, and that’s what they're very adroit at doing. So I have great confidence in their abilities. MICHAEL KIRK - During that period, from the end of the thing until—from the Election Day to Thanksgiving, the way people in the White House tell us, they were sort of reeling. But there was a sort of sense from the president, “Let’s get all the ducks in a row about what to do about the hacking, about what to do about Russia, about what the signals are.” We’ve heard John Kerry’s position. We’ve heard others’ positions. “Let’s get really strong. Let’s go after these guys. Let’s punish them. Let’s release his bank accounts.” Let’s do whatever the thoughts were at the time. It eventually comes down to, on the 29th of December, the sanctions, the expelling of 35 people, and the seizing or whatever of the two houses as announced by the president from Hawaii. Were they strong enough? Were those sanctions strong enough, given the magnitude of the incursion and the crime? JOHN BRENNAN - You know, those 10 weeks between Election Day and Inauguration Day go very quickly. There's just a lot to do. The president and others wanted to make sure that we were able to take some actions against the Russians. This was long in coming, because we wanted to take actions against the Russians for a lot of their harassment of U.S. officials, so this was sort of a culmination of concerns along those lines. We knew that we were going to be out of office on the 20th of January, and we knew that the next administration, the Trump administration could undo some of the things that we did. The White House I think was keeping the Trump team informed about the steps that we were considering, ongoing engagements with their team. Were they strong enough? I don’t know. For things that would have been much more strategic in impact and broader in scope, I think would have taken longer to implement and would have required the incoming team to continue that effort, and we were very uncertain whether or not the incoming team would do that. There was focus on what it is that we could do in the short term that was going to send a clear signal, going to hurt. I can remember vividly the discussions that we had in the Situation Room about how many Russian intelligence officers should be PNG’d [persona non grata’d] and whether it should be just a small number or a larger number or whatever. There was a pretty strong consensus that we wanted to do as much as we could, because it was the right thing to do. And we didn’t know what the Trump administration was going to do. Again, we were still puzzled by a lot of the comments that Mr. Trump and others were making about Russia. They didn’t seem to be taking this concern seriously. They didn’t seem to want to understand a lot of the details of what it is that we knew, and they were a bit dismissive of the conclusions. We knew that we had to take action, so we said, “Well, this is what is appropriate now.” One of the things that I think we took some comfort in was we had a lot of engagement with the Congress during this period of time. I had a number of calls from senior members of Congress who wanted to ensure that we did everything possible, first of all, to preserve the information on the intelligence that we had about the interference, because they wanted to take up this mantle in the new year. I said to a number of them that the institutions of governance are really going to require the Congress and the congressional committees to do what is right here. I said: “I don’t know what the Trump administration is going to do when they come in.” I said: “I have my concerns about some of the attitudes toward Russia and Mr. Putin. But I have confidence, even with all my battles with Congress over the years, this is what Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, really has an obligation to do: Do what is right for the American people, irrespective of political party affiliation, irrespective of the views of an individual who happens to be inhabiting the Oval Office.” So in my conversations with members of Congress from both sides of the aisle, I had growing confidence that this was not going to end with the end of the Obama administration, that this was going to continue. And I knew that Jim Comey was not going to be out of office on Jan. 20. I have tremendous respect for Jim Comey, and I knew that the FBI was going to do its work so that this would not be covered up. I think we see now, many months afterward, this continues to percolate. The American people deserve answers, and Congress, the FBI, Department of Justice will get us those answers, whether or not Mr. Trump wants to hear those answers or deal with them or not. MICHAEL KIRK - The president makes the announcement from Hawaii on the 29th. Were you sort of holding your breath about which one of the people who worked for you, or how many people you worked for, were about to be expelled from Russia, or worse? JOHN BRENNAN - I voted—well, I was very supportive of throwing out as many Russians, even more if we could, as possible, because I came to know what the Russians are up to, and I wanted as many Russian intelligence officers out of this country as possible. There were people in CIA who were concerned about that and advocated for fewer, because they were concerned that there was going to be retaliatory steps taken against our diplomats in Moscow. I was of the view that the Russians were not going to retaliate in kind. It was based on my assessment that they were looking forward to the Trump administration taking over in Washington and that they didn’t want to take these actions that would be disruptive in their minds, because they, I think, had great hopes for a rapprochement of sorts between Moscow and Washington come Jan 20. MICHAEL KIRK - Little did you know that from the Dominican Republic beach, Mike Flynn is making a call to Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak, assuring him of that actual fact, that he didn’t have to worry about the sanctions and that Mr. Putin should hold his fire. JOHN BRENNAN - Again, I was not encouraged by what I was seeing and hearing from the Trump team about their views toward Russia. I was not of a mind that they were going to follow through with additional pressure on Russia once they came into office, and I think that was borne out by the facts. MICHAEL KIRK - … We have to talk about the Trump Tower meeting, where you guys go and talk to the president-elect, show him the evidence, talk to him, talk turkey to him about what it really was. Can you take me there? Talk about at least what you were trying to convey, and how that went. JOHN BRENNAN - We had a meeting with Mr. Trump at Trump Tower. It was several hours long. We talked to him about what it is that we knew and assessed. We talked about what the Russian objectives were, what the capabilities are. It was a back-and-forth. But I'm not going to get into details of that meeting. MICHAEL KIRK - Can you tell me how he was? What was he like when you went in? Was he different when it was over? JOHN BRENNAN - Mr. Trump was gracious. He welcomed us. He thanked us for our service. He listened. I would say that his graciousness and his demeanor did not change from the beginning to the end of the conversation. So he was—I think he was at home in the Trump Tower, and just, you know—he listened, because I think he felt as though he should. MICHAEL KIRK - But you don’t feel you changed his mind? JOHN BRENNAN - From his public comments that he made before the meeting at Trump Tower to the comments he made subsequent to that briefing, I don’t think he changed his mind, or at least he didn’t change his public attitude and his statements. What he says publicly, which tends to be rather skeptical of the intelligence, and what he believes in his heart of hearts may be two very different things. I think sometimes he talks because he feels as though he has to say certain things in order to appeal to maybe his base or to others, but I don’t know what he truly believes, or if he is truly dismissive of the intelligence. But he is obviously a rather deft politician, who continues to do and say and tweet things because he believes that that’s a way to convey messages that he wants conveyed to the American people. MICHAEL KIRK - Did you give him the full monty? Was it all that everything was at the hard stuff? JOHN BRENNAN - We provided to him the briefing that, as president-elect, he deserved to get. MICHAEL KIRK - Yeah? What does that mean? JOHN BRENNAN - It means there were a number of other people in that room, so it wasn’t just the president-elect. There was members of his team, so therefore, I had to take that into account. MICHAEL KIRK - I see. JOHN BRENNAN - And I made sure that he understood the strength of our confidence in our assessments. But again, I was mindful of the environment and the people there. But he should have come away with a very clear understanding of just where James Clapper, Jim Comey, Mike Rogers and John Brennan came out on these issues. There was no equivocation in our language, and we were very direct and very, very clear in terms of what it is that we knew and assessed. MICHAEL KIRK - Of course Comey privately gives him the Steele dossier information or talks about it or shows it to him. You obviously have seen the Steele dossier. What do you make of it? JOHN BRENNAN - The Intelligence Community assessment did not take into account anything that was included in that dossier. That dossier had been circulating for quite some time. It was certainly not a secret among Washington journalists and reporters, but it was still unclear to us, and I think to Jim Comey, about how much the president-elect was aware of this. Again, I defer to Jim Comey to explain and describe exactly what he did in terms of any discussions he might have had with the president-elect. MICHAEL KIRK - … So we started with Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. We went backward to Vladimir Putin as a KGB officer in Dresden. We watched him grow up and become a man who, out of a sense of grievance and probably revenge, exercises the full power of his office, apparently to muck around in the American election. Why did he do it? In your mind, why did he do that? JOHN BRENNAN - I think he interfered in the election because he could, and because he was determined to hurt Hillary Clinton, who he believed was going to become president. I believe he wanted her to be inaugurated at a time when she was going to be bloodied a bit by these exposures. I do think that he probably had other things planned, as far as if she were elected, both before the inauguration and afterward. One of his principal objectives has been to drive a wedge between the United States and Europe as a way to get sanctions relief, because those sanctions are hurting the Russian economy, and it’s one of Mr. Putin’s highest priorities. I do believe that he was going to try to use Russian intelligence services to further sow suspicion between European capitals and Washington under a Hillary Clinton presidency, and I am pretty confident that the Russians probably had a few things up their sleeves that would be used to try to discredit the Clinton presidency. Again, he sees things in zero-sum fashion. If the U.S. president or the U.S. is diminished in the eyes of the world in any way, or it’s hurt, it just benefits Russia. That’s why, when I think about how Mr. Putin feels now about developments in the United States, when he sees that Mr. Trump has been hobbled in many respects by this investigation, and it has hurt Mr. Trump’s ability to legislate, to focus on a lot of national security and domestic policy matters and that there is growing tension in Washington over this issue, to me, I think Mr. Putin sees this as a tremendous success, because if the United States is not able to exercise the full weight of its capabilities internationally, Russia benefits. And also, given Mr. Trump’s view about the U.S. role in the world, and from his inaugural address to other comments about the U.S. is first, first, first, I think it has raised questions in the minds of a number of our allies and partners as well as in the minds of our adversaries about U.S. taking a step back from that world stage, which is, I think, unnerving to a lot of our partners around the world, which again, Mr. Putin sees as beneficial to Moscow. I don’t know whether or not Russian interference on our election had influence on a single vote. I have no idea. That was not our responsibility to do, and I don’t know. But when I look at the aftermath, I think Mr. Putin is fairly—is very content in terms of the deleterious impact it’s had on the U.S. politically and internationally. Now, the U.S.-Russian relationship has not gotten on a better track after the election. So from that perspective, I think Mr. Putin has been frustrated. But I think overall he sees it as a net plus in terms of what he did in an election and how it has consumed U.S. politics and the U.S. public in many respects. Given that this is a story that’s still playing out, I think Mr. Putin is very comfortable with his decision to authorize this interference. JIM GILMORE - … Following up on the Flynn story, you tell the beginning of the story. Are there lessons learned from how that came down, the fact that he was eventually fired, but not until it came out in The Washington Post the way the White House, the Obama White House viewed that story. Anything that you came away from on the Flynn story that helps sum it up and sort of lessons learned? JOHN BRENNAN - I think one of the real lessons learned is that, for any incoming administration, the initial team you put together, even before you take office, you really need to make sure that these are individuals of tremendous integrity and individuals that the president-elect is comfortable with sharing the most sensitive national security information. Even though some people may have served previously in government, or even in the military, there needs to be a very, very thorough vetting process. The Obama team had a very thorough vetting process. Everybody had to meet the standards so that you would have access to top-secret information, but also that you didn’t have any conflicts of interest or ethical issues that would be disqualifying. That’s why I think that the Trump team was a bit of a pickup game, quite frankly. It’s—again, understandably, because they were surprised. They didn’t think they were going to win. Then, when all of a sudden they were faced with the daunting task of putting together a team, things happened very quickly and rapidly, and I think there was a looseness there that hurt us. There were people who came in and went very quickly, that there should have been greater scrutiny and greater effort to ensure that the people that were going to be brought in to the tent early on were going to be able to stay there, and that they met the requirements of such high office. DAVID HOFFMAN - When you think back about the aggressive efforts that were made in 2016, is the adversary here the opposing intelligence services, in other words, the SVR and GRU? Or was there any evidence or did you have a theory that also essentially there are non-state actors, maybe under the direction of the state? You’ve been very clear that you felt Mr. Putin would have approved this, but how clear do you feel is the chain of the actual actors who carried it out? Does it go to the other services, or is it a little more ambiguous? JOHN BRENNAN - Well, I think right now, in the cyber realm, a lot of intelligence services are building up indigenous capabilities, and they’re quite formidable, especially when you're talking about the Russians and the Chinese. But increasingly, these intelligence services contract out a lot of the work, for a variety of reasons. One is that there's just tremendous capabilities of these pop-up companies and firms and groups that can deploy malware and ransomware and whatever else. There's tremendous expertise and capability in the private sector, including in the Russian private sector, that the Russian intelligence services take advantage of. But secondly, intelligence services, nation-states, want to try to cover their tracks, and from a forensic standpoint, they want to have some distance between the actual forensics of some type of attack and the nation-state. Therefore, contracting out some of these activities allows them to take advantage of the expertise that resides out there, but also to make it more difficult for attribution to be made and to see a nation-state behind these actions. JIM GILMORE - Let me ask one more thing. MICHAEL KIRK - (I’m not sure.) The Comey firing. What was your reaction to the Comey firing? JOHN BRENNAN - When I heard that Jim Comey was summarily dismissed, first of all, I thought it was done in an exceptionally disrespectful way. Jim Comey has given much of his life to keep this country safe and strong, did an outstanding job as the director of the FBI, and to be treated that way I think really sent shockwaves to a number of people, and especially at the FBI. I think it showed the disdain that Mr. Trump has for professionals and the FBI. I was also very disturbed, because it was clear that Mr. Trump was dismayed and upset over Mr. Comey’s relentless pursuit of the truth. And I wonder why Mr. Trump is concerned about the uncovering of the truth if there's nothing to hide there. The FBI does a great job. It’s diligent. It’s patient. But it finds the truth. So I was concerned about what does this really reflect on the part of Mr. Trump? Why is he trying to prevent the truth from coming out? Why is he trying to prevent the FBI from doing its duty? But I am confident that the FBI will continue to do its work with even greater focused momentum as a result of this firing.
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Channel: FRONTLINE PBS | Official
Views: 2,380,517
Rating: undefined out of 5
Keywords: journalism, ioffe, brenna, kara-murza, interviews, transparency, lizza, gessen, glasser, putin, bush, investigation, russia, pbs, kirk, nuland, hoffman, albats, putin files, podesta, yeltsin, frontline, baker, wgbh. documentary, clapper, obama
Id: 1iWbvJhbPaA
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 121min 22sec (7282 seconds)
Published: Thu Oct 26 2017
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