CIA in the dark about Putin’s midterm plans
U.S. officials say Kremlin sources have gone to ground
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.
Technology companies and political campaigns recent lyhave detected a plethora of political interference efforts originating overseas, including hacks of Republican think tanks and fake liberal grassroots organizations created on Facebook. 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 spokesperson for the CIA declined to comment.
To determine what the Russian government is up to, the United States employs multiple forms of intelligence, including intercepted communications and penetrated computer networks.
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, further from Moscow’s counter-intelligence apparatus.
But people inside the Kremlin are critical to divining whether there is a strategy behind seemingly scattershot efforts to undermine U.S. institutions.
Spies and informants overseas also give U.S. intelligence agencies early warning about influence campaigns, interference operations or other attempts to compromise the United States. That information, in turn, can improve the ability of domestic agencies, such as the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, to quickly identify and attempt to stop those efforts.
Because clandestine meetings can take months to , a lengthy lag can pass before the CIA realizes a key source has gone silent, according to former officials. It is rare for the agency to discover immediately that informants have eroded or are running scared. Only after several missed meetings might CIA officers and analysts conclude that a source has decided it is too dangerous to pass information.
In 2016, U.S. intelligence officials began to realize the scope of Russia’s efforts when they gathered intelligence suggesting that Moscow wanted to use Trump campaign officials, wittingly or not, to help sow chaos. John Brennan, the former director of the CIA, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in May 2017 about a tense period a year earlier when he came to believe that Putin was trying to steer the outcome toward a victory for Trump.
Brennan described the broad outlines of the intelligence in his congressional testimony, and his disclosures backed up the accounts of the information provided by the current and former officials. “I was convinced in the summer that the Russians were trying to interfere in the election. And they were very aggressive,” Brennan told lawmakers.
This year, Coats issued a series of warnings saying the Russian government, and Putin in particular, is intent on undermining U.S. democratic systems.
At an appearance this month at the White House, Coats said intelligence agencies “continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try and weaken and divide the United States.” He added those efforts “cover issues relevant to the elections.”