CIA’s sources in Kremlin go incommunicado

Vital informants quiet, leaving U.S. in dark on Putin’s midterm plans

WASHINGTON — In 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies delivered urgent and explicit warnings about Russia’s intentions to try to tip the U.S. presidential election — and a detailed assessment of the operation afterward — thanks in large part to informants close to President Vladimir Putin and in the Kremlin who provided crucial details.

But two years later, the vital Kremlin informants have largely gone silent, leaving the CIA and other spy agencies in the dark about precisely what Putin’s intentions are for November’s midterm elections, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intelligence.

The officials do not believe the sources have been compromised or killed. Instead, they have concluded they have gone to ground amid more aggressive counterintelligence by Moscow, including efforts to kill spies, like the poisoning in March in Britain of a former Russian intelligence officer that utilized a rare Russian-made nerve agent.

Current and former officials also said the expulsion of U.S. intelligence officers from Moscow has hurt collection efforts. And officials also raised the possibility that the outing of an FBI informant under scrutiny by the House intelligence committee — an examination encouraged by President Donald Trump — has had a chilling effect on intelligence collection.

Senior intelligence officials, including Dan Coats, director of national intelligence, have warned that Russians are intent on subverting U.S. democratic institutions.

But U.S. intelligence agencies have not been able to say precisely what are Putin’s intentions: He could be trying to tilt the midterm elections, simply sow chaos or generally undermine trust in the democratic process.

The officials, seeking to protect methods of collection from Russia, would not provide details about lost sources, but acknowledged the degradation in the information collected from Russia. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to reveal classified information. A spokesman for the CIA declined to comment.

The United States continues to intercept Russian communication, and the flow of that intelligence remains strong, said current and former officials. And Russian informants could still meet their CIA handlers outside Russia, farther from Moscow’s counterintelligence apparatus.

But people inside or close to the Kremlin remain critical to divining whether there is a strategy behind the efforts to undermine U.S. institutions.