The Plot to Hack America: How Putin's Cyberspies and WikiLeaks Tried to Steal the 2016 Election

How to Organize an Election Theft

To help elect Donald J. Trump to President of the United States, the Russians would need to draw from their experience in the art of compromising the integrity of a selected person or political party that they wanted to influence or deter through the Russian strategy of Kompromat. If Vladimir Putin, the Russian intelligence apparatus, and its underground global hacking wings sought to destabilize the West, break up NATO, and reestablish the global order, they would need to lay out a strategic hybrid warfare plan.

Hybrid warfare is the new Russian model to harness the strength of all aspects of Russian intelligence, propaganda, cyber operations, and Kompromat to support battlefield preparations before ordering terrorism, special operations, and full-scale military warfare. In this case, the FSB would be tasked to plan a cyberspace-based strategic political warfare operation to influence the U.S. elections though the theft of emails and materials from the Democratic party and make selective releases through a third party surrogate, called a cutout, that does not know or care that the source is the FSB.

With this election, Vladimir Putin, the former director of Russia’s intelligence agency, sees the election of Donald Trump as the fastest way to destabilize the United States, damage its economy, as well as fracture both the European Union and NATO. These events, which start with the election of Trump, would allow Russia to become the strongest of the world’s three Superpowers and reorder the globe with a dominant Russia at the helm.

Operation Plan LUCKY-7 (Operatzia Paveslo Sem—Операция Повезло Семь)

For the purposes of this analysis we will refer to the Russian operation as LUCKY-7. Seven is the international calling code for Russia. To pull off such an enormous political warfare operation successfully would require at least seven phases. The number is not only a universal symbol of luck, but it is also consistent with Russian superstition and harnesses the iconography of the seven sacraments in the Russian Orthodox Church.

To conduct an operation at this level would require a level of organization far greater than any had been done before anywhere in the world. A political and cyber mission of this magnitude would require every component of the Russian cyber and intelligence arsenal. The mission would seem daunting at first, until one recognizes that it would simply resemble a Kompromat-style political warfare operation, but with far greater delicacy.

The 2011 treatment of Trump by President Obama at the White House correspondents’ dinner sent him out in humiliation. A powerful man like Trump would need to be handled carefully, like all of those old East German academics Putin recruited to infiltrate West Germany. They were all the same: Full of themselves and possessing an unquenchable thirst for recognition and fortune. For the Spymaster-in-Chief it must surely have flickered across Putin’s mind that this was an asset that could be recruited, groomed, and handled. To what end originally, we may never know. But it would not hurt to have a powerful, rich, American blow-hard who could inspire the common man in one’s pocket. This was a man who enjoyed being a showman on the wrestling entertainment circuit, who had a wildly-popular show in which he behaved exactly like a Russian oligarch. To the FSB spies it must have been especially enticing to use their skills for the spy-in-chief to bring this man into a position of favor; a man like this in the White House could be very helpful indeed. But that would take a great measure of work, care, and feeding. Trump would need to first feel at home with Russia. The runway for this approach would require the first word of the MICE recruitment strategy be dangled before his eyes, and to which he was particularly susceptible: Money. The FSB could easily arrange for a billionaire wanting to earn money in Russia to meet the Kremlin’s own mutli-billionaires. Like all intelligence operations, it comes down to a Go-No Go decision by a top spy. It would involve so little effort that Putin would have to think, why not?

The Strategic Objectives of the Kremlin for LUCKY-7

The first objective for the covert operations officers of the FSB’s SVR division to meet the goals initiated by Vladimir Putin would be to bring the selected candidate into a position of favor in the American media. With almost minimal effort the Russian state could harness its own global media machine and collect strategic intelligence, in an effort to determine faults in the opponent’s policies in advance. Additionally, acquisition of the Clinton opposition research would be the highest priority. This research would not only give insight into the candidate from the opponent’s perspective, but would also be able to contribute to the overall assessment as to the suitability of the preferred candidate to meet Moscow’s goals. For an old spy, all information is good information. Information from other Republicans or Democrats could help LUCKY-7 adjust their strategy and deploy new tactics as needed. All dimensions of political and intelligence knowledge that could help meet the Kremlin’s goals would be of value, when the stakes for Russia are so high. The effusive praise that Donald Trump heaps upon Putin and the Kremlin may have been seemingly innocent in his eyes, but to the spymaster and the LUCKY-7 operations team, every utterance, every positive commentary, would put Russian objectives in a position of dominance over current and potentially future US policy.

Objective: Damage Hillary Clinton & Obama If Possible, See Her Lose the Election

Putin would have a clear motive to push for Trump to be the vessel to attack their mutual enemy: Hillary Clinton, and by extension, President Barack Obama’s policies. Trump’s spy General Flynn himself noted how he perceived that Putin does not respect American leadership and apparently changed his policy to suit that disdain. It would be well within Putin’s interest to take advantage of his now well-honed political and information warfare apparatus to show his preference and steer Trump to do his bidding.

Applying the Russian global media and information warfare structure to attack the critics of his campaign would be the first step, and there is no greater threat to Putin’s policies than Hillary Clinton. The objectives of LUCKY-7 would be to focus all efforts of the Russian cyberwarfare information operations directorates to damage her election by stealing as much internal information as possible and smacking her with a full scale Kompromat operation. If the materials existed, they would be judiciously released. If not, then the forgery masters of the FSB would be able to produce whatever dirt would be necessary.

The deep personal animosity between Clinton and Putin is long and sordid, but a few events between them are noteworthy. In March 2014, former Secretary Clinton gave a speech at the Boys and Girls Club annual fundraiser where she compared Putin’s actions seizing Crimea to the actions of Hitler and the Nazi party:

Putin responded to these comments to French TV March 4, 2014, dripping with sexism and disdain he claimed her comments was not befitting a woman.

Clinton was having none of it. She apparently had Putin’s number and understood what CNN Masha Gessen noted when she said “[Putin] sees himself as someone who doesn’t mince words and who gets into verbal fights, as well as knife fights. And in fact Russians see him like that.”³

So Clinton gave him a knife fight but using a verbal putdown that even Russian women could understand.

“He is very difficult to read personally,” she said. “He is always looking for advantage. So he will try to put you ill at ease. He will even throw an insult your way. He will look bored and dismissive. He’ll do all of that.”

“I have a lot of experience with people acting like that,” she said. “Go back to elementary school. I’ve seen all of that, so I’m not impressed by it.”⁴

Objective: Candidate Should Damage NATO Alliance and Push for its Realignment

Leon Arron, writing in Foreign Affairs, believes that the Putin Doctrine is to reestablish the Soviet state with modern Russian norms instead of communist doctrine.⁵ Aron believes that the Russian state after Putin’s election in 2000 has accepted the overarching goal of remaining a global superpower that will harness all aspects of military, political, and economic power to maintain hegemony and dominance in Eastern Europe.

Every six years Russia creates a strategy document to assess and guide its strategic policy. At the end of 2015 they submitted the National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2020. This document is multidimensional in that it reflects not only the risks Russia faces in defense, foreign affairs, and geopolitical challenges but also internal security, cultural, and economic risks. The first major takeaway was that above all, Russia views the United States and NATO as a threat to their global position.⁶

The security of Putin’s Russia is not just a matter of military prowess, it reflects on Putin himself and the position he sought to carve out in the post-Soviet world. Putin views Russia as a nation that must acquire and maintain a newfound respect from its opponents. National prestige and deep pride in the new Russian nation has been a consistent theme since he became President. Anything that challenges this is a security threat, be it loss of economic status, the impression that its defenses are weak, or that Russia is not in control of its own destiny.

If one watches how Putin has ruled since 2000, almost every move has been to gain international status and to impress Russia’s rising dominance upon the world. Anything that can be done to bolster that prestige is quickly adopted. Putin sought aggressiveness in foreign policy, economic negotiations, and military affairs, particularly if it helped the Russian public see Putin as steering the ship of state to its destined greatness.

When Russia flies relatively obsolete Tu-22m BACKFIRE jet bombers from its military base at Engels in Southern Russia to drop unguided gravity bombs indiscriminately on Aleppo, it meets the strategic goals of impressing its allies, adversaries, and the Russian people. Even if militarily such a strike mission has little to no effect on the war effort except killing innocent civilians, it looks good on Russia Television.

The nationalistic Russia-goes-it-alone fever wasn’t always a cornerstone of their defense policy. Until the invasion of Georgia in 2004, Russia was integrating its national defense goals into NATO via various sub-organizations. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established in April 1949, is a military alliance between twenty-eight states to create a system of collective defense for member nations.^-125 Russia leaned towards the alliance when it joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991, and the Partnership for Peace program in 1994. This culminated in the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act, providing a formal basis for relations. In 2002, the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) emerged as consultation on security issues, leading to more direct cooperation. Formal NRC meetings and cooperation in a few areas were suspended because of Russia’s military action in Georgia in August 2008.^-132 Talk show host Charlie Rose summed it up this way:

Anna Vassilieva noted that Russia under Putin was fundamentally changing. “Russians feel that they have the right to an equivalent of the Monroe doctrine and the right of foreign political noninterference in their domestic politics.”⁸ At the St. Petersburg international Economic Forum in 2015, Putin blamed NATO for the crisis in Crimea, and by extension Georgia and Ukraine, due to its insistence on expanding into territory he views as his domain. Putin said,

Senator Lindsey Graham and John McCain were some of the loudest Republican voices opposed to Russia’s aggressive dominance of territories. All cooperation, military and civilian, under the NRC was suspended in April 2014 following the Russia-Ukraine conflict. NATO’s stance: “The Allies continue to call on Russia to reverse its recognition of the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states.”¹⁰

In September 2014 at the Wales Summit in September 2014, NATO leaders condemned Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine, demanding that the nation comply with international law and end its illegal ‘annexation’ of Crimea. Russia effectively ignored President Barack Obama’s warnings, invaded Crimea, and annexed it within thirty days under armed occupation. Under Putin, Russia also backed separatist groups.^-130 NATO was keeping a close eye on Russia’s increasing military activities along NATO’s borders, realizing that the new aggressive growls by the bear would threaten Euro-Atlantic security and stability.

Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea, President Obama announced economic sanctions on Russia and Crimea in March and December 2014. According to the BBC, the President said “The executive order is intended to provide clarity to US corporations doing business in the region and reaffirm that the United States will not accept Russia’s occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea.”¹¹ The European Union soon followed suit.¹² In response to the various sanctions Russia called the actions “meaningless, shameful, and disgusting.” Russia imposed its own sanctions by halting the export of agricultural products to North America, Norway, Australia, and the European Union. In July 2015 he extended the sanctions.

Trump was having none of it. As far as he was concerned, if the policy affected Russia, and was implemented by President Obama—or any President since 1947 for that matter—then he wanted to be rid of it. Trump gave the New York Times a wide-ranging interview in which he remarked that he saw a major change for the seventy-year old NATO alliance. He said that if Russia attacked any NATO nation, he would first consult and determine if they had “fulfilled their obligations to us” before coming to their aid.¹³ Trump set forth a policy of extortion never before heard or seen in American politics:

The statements rang alarms all across Europe and instantly damaged credibility of the US nominee worldwide… except in Russia.

Objective: Advocate for and/or Repatriate Ethnic Russian Regions

Like Hitler, Putin uses a form of Post-Soviet appeal to a virulent Russian ethno-nationalism in former Soviet states. With his stoking of the nationalist fever he and his intelligence agencies fund and direct ethnic Russian populations to agitate to the point where Russian military forces can seize territory that was lost. To effect this, it is necessary for the SVR and GRU to covertly fund and mobilize popular political support in the affected areas and build a public outcry to “defend” ethnic Russian populations. It is particularly acute in nations that were former Soviet satellite states, but are now closely aligned with NATO.

Hitler carried out a similar strategy in 1938 when he exhorted Germans to validate his annexation of the Sudetenland, the ethnic German-speaking region of what was then Czechoslovakia. Hitler saw the immense power of rallying the German people to repatriate those he characterized as poor ethnic Germans to the greater Reich. Putin has adopted this strategy of ethnic “rescue” to justify political operations in Eastern Europe. Usually this was a slow process of creating Russian political parties, infusing them with cash and illicit weapons. Waiting for them to form a popular uprising with the help of the SVR and then diplomatically protesting greatly that ethnic Russians were in danger. Hillary Clinton noted this when she said Putin was a man “who believes his mission is to restore Russia’s greatness… When he looks at Ukraine, he sees a place that he believes is by its very nature part of Mother Russia.”¹⁵

Trump himself was aware of Putin’s designs, but unlike most Americans, he applauded. In his 2011 book Time to Get Tough he wrote, “Putin has big plans for Russia. He wants to edge out its neighbors so that Russia can dominate oil supplies to all of Europe,” Elaborating, Trump wrote “I respect Putin and Russians but cannot believe our leader (Obama) allows them to get away with so much… Hats off to the Russians.”¹⁶

Objective: Keep America Out of the Ukraine in Particular

To meet his goals for hegemony in the Ukraine and the Baltics, Putin would require a total realignment of the priorities of NATO. It would also be most favorable to Russia if the United States could be convinced that it was not in their interest to respond to Baltic States’ requests for article 5 of the NATO Charter. Article 5, which requires all member states to respond militarily if one nation is attacked, has only been invoked once, by the United States after the 9/11 attacks. How would the Americans ever abandon NATO? They created it. Only a President that shared the same viewpoint or who was in league with Putin’s desires would ever even consider such treachery. Certainly not a nominee from the conservative American Republican party led by Senator John McCain and Lindsey Graham; they were the war hawks.

It is widely believed that the issue of the Ukraine is a solid Red line for Moscow. This may explain why he and his surrogates made serious efforts to hire and put in place Americans who could advance their interests. Veteran journalist Marvin Kalb notes that the entirety of the national security elites in the West hold the view that to Putin, Eastern Europe is a Russian sphere of influence or “Russian backyard.”¹⁷ Anna Vassilieva, of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey told NBC News that “Ukraine is a big issue… a red line that Putin is not going to compromise.”¹⁸

Hillary Clinton’s own words must have struck fear into Putin’s heart because it encapsulates the Western school of thought on how to deal with him in the future:

Such pronouncements would give Putin every impetus to find alternatives to her worldview. And surprisingly, seemingly out of nowhere, Putin managed to find and ally himself with the one man in the United States who believed precisely as himself: Donald J. Trump. Trump himself believed that NATO was obsolete and should be disbanded, that Crimea should be given to Russia, and that America should adopt an isolationist foreign policy. In the interim, NATO member states that didn’t pay their full share of the alliance financial commitments would be ignored if they had a military crisis. Who would have ever thought that Russia could be so lucky to find that a major party nominee in America would align himself so closely with the new Russian worldview? Who could have dreamed that a potential American President would imply that the United States would corrupt NATO’s mission to a protection racket that essentially extorts its members? Forty percent of the American electorate indirectly approved this high-stakes international racketeering.

Trump’s positions on NATO would also meet the strategic political objectives of the Kremlin simply by mainstreaming ideas and concepts that were far afield of hawkish Republican positions since the beginning of the Cold War. To the Republican Party, NATO was the United States. Until the rise of Trump there had never been any discussion as to the viability, militarily or financially, of the United States position in that alliance. It was unthinkable for the potential United States President to actually enunciate a position in which the necessity of the alliance was questioned.

It was bad enough that Trump was essentially giving assurances to Putin that Crimea was off the table, but he also appeared to not be the best surrogate, since he did not seem to understand the timeline of Ukraine’s crisis, either. In an interview with George Stephanopoulos Trump said, “he’s not going into Ukraine, OK, just so you understand. He’s not going to go into Ukraine, all right? You can mark it down. You can put it down. You can take it anywhere you want.”

“Well, he’s already there, isn’t he?” Stephanopoulos responded, in a reference to Crimea, which Putin took from Ukraine in early 2014.

Trump replied, “OK—well, he’s there in a certain way. But I’m not there.”²⁰

If NATO wasn’t coming to the rescue in Georgia, Ukraine, or Crimea, then a Donald Trump administration could almost be relied upon to validate or even explain away a Moscow invasion of the NATO Baltic republics. For Putin, it must surely be a dream come true to put a major party candidate espousing these policies into the White House.

LUCKY-7: The Information Warfare Management Cell (IWMC)

Russia would need to task out the Kremlin staff, the SVR, GRU, FSB and all aspects of the State propaganda organs to meet the Spymaster-in-Chief’s goals. We may never know the actual discussions of how an operation like LUCKY-7 started, but it must have developed in a circumstance where Vladimir Putin used his instincts and information from his acolytes and spies to see something in Donald Trump that virtually no one was seeing in 2012.

Once the candidate was positively handled by the office of the President and his allies in the oligarchy, the intelligence community would form an information warfare management cell (IWMC). The LUCKY-7 joint task organization would be needed to directly respond and advise the Kremlin on how to best support a mission of this sensitivity. Though each agencies’ staffs would be compartmented from the rest of the FSB and GRU, such an operation would absolutely require a joint information operations office.

Centered in a secret location the IWMC would be a hub where the specialties of each agency could be brought to bear. The collection of data and its dissemination would be necessary to quickly influence the news cycles, be supported by State media and send tips and advice to their candidate though direct, official comment by Putin or indirectly through specially tasked senior SVR case officers.

Putin, his chief of staff, and the Director of the SVR would be the only senior staff to be aware of what outcome the President desired. Based on past strategic intelligence missions, only a few—perhaps no more than five or six case officers—would be assigned to manage a mission of this political magnitude. By virtue of the clandestine nature of their work, these would be the most trusted intelligence officers in the FSB; officers who work for Putin personally.

An overall IWMC Commander would be the controller for the entire mission. He would have a subordinate executive officer from the Special Communications and Information Service of Russia (SCISR), Russia’s version of the National Security Agency, to ensure the fusion of HUMINT and CYBER into the operation went smoothly. For the FSB side, there would be a senior manager to oversee the SVR contribution to the IWMC. An FSB-SCISR cyberwarfare officer would manage the SVR’s FANCY BEARS cyber hacking team and a second officer would control the GRU’s COZY BEARS cyber commandoes as an alternate, sometimes parallel collections team. A third cyberwarfare officer from the Scientific & Technology directorate would be the operations manager to run a black propaganda support team. When necessary, a fourth liaison officer could task and collect from the Russian mafia-run CRIMINAL BEARS. At the Kremlin level, all liaison with state media and statements by the President himself would be handled by the Russian Foreign Ministry.

To advise the President on the behaviors and opportunities to manage their candidate, the SVR’s political activities branch would assign perhaps three or four of the best field officers in the SVR and GRU. They would be read into the program and isolated at the IWMC. These officers would have to possess a proven track record on turning the unwitting into active spies, whether they wanted to be or not. Due to the nature of the mission, the officers would need to be fluent in American English with experience working as “illegals,”—deep cover covert operations officers—who served in the United States and understand both business and the political process. Perhaps one political warfare advisor would be allowed to know the full scope of this mission, remotely evaluate the target of the mission, and advise the cell operations managers as to the day to day effects of the entire process. If events required other officers to be brought in, they would be assigned compartmented tasks from the pool of the IWMC staff.

Phases of Operation LUCKY-7

Until a friendly American administration was elected all of these goals would be pies in the sky. Nothing could be effected without risk and the launch of this operation would be the least risky of all operations. The right man was running for President, he was managed by a close ally, and his foreign policy/intelligence chief was literally on the Kremlin Payroll of Russia Today.

PHASE 1: Make Contact, Befriend, and Encourage the Asset

PHASE 2: Make Asset Feel Indebted to Russia

PHASE 3: Conduct Covert Cyber-Intelligence Preparation of the Battle Space

PHASE 4: Prepare the Political Battle Space

PHASE 5: Develop and Sustain Supporting Political/Propaganda

PHASE 6: Fund and Manipulate a Cut-Out Asset to Disperse Kompromat information.

PHASE 7: Execute Kompromat Operations

Phases 1 through 4 had already been put in place. Phase 5 would be the easiest. By using Russia Today TV to blast Hilary Clinton on an international scale and tacitly express support for Trump, Putin has been able to get Donald to tout his connections to Russia as a positive for America.

Trump and his surrogates have helped the Kremlin as well by making exclamations that Putin doesn’t respect Obama, and that Russia doesn’t like “crooked” Hilary because she helped spark political protests in Russia in 2011 and 2013, and by convincing formerly anti-Russian Americans that Putin is an ally to be assisted in the war against ISIS. It was a master stroke that would require considerable planning and precision to execute if it had been done by spies. However, it was executed by a carnival barker. To his followers, Trump has successfully spun the line that “Putin respects me and would work with me, he won’t work with Hilary,” and they love it.

Launching the CYBER BEARS

The FSB CYBER BEARS strategy was to steal critical political intelligence data from all wings of the U.S. Democratic Party, the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Hillary Clinton Campaign, and donors and supporters. Republican Party enemies of Russian defense policy would also need to be hacked in case they became too opposed to the operation. A little side activity to guarantee the silence of the risk-adverse politicians would generally be found in the hidden corners of a laptop or nude photos that were deleted from the hard drive but still recoverable by one or more of the CYBER BEARS.

For old-school officers trained under the KGB, conducting a political and cyberwarfare operation would be a lifelong dream. It would create the space and environment to realign Russia as the preeminent power in the world. Even though most Russians who know Putin believe that this would be a very long shot, the fortunate emergence of a self-absorbed and servile Donald Trump coupled with Putin’s long hatred of Hillary Clinton meddling in his Eastern European plans would make this a tempting opportunity to severely damage the United States. Winning battles in Cyberspace are a matter of influencing the global perception thought output of “opinions” and “voices” to “trend” a perception that the producer wishes. Whether it’s the number of hits on the latest trending kitty playing with yarn video or the location of a Pokémon GO character, if an organization with a large enough computing system and secret operatives so wishes they can steal, smear, influence and quite possibly select a U.S. President with little pushback from the media. This is apparently the terminal mission objective of Operation Lucky-7: Direct the CYBER BEARS to collect enough damaging information on Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Democratic Party to damage them in the mind of the American public.

Russian intelligence would spare no effort to elect Donald J. Trump President of the United States. However, the IWMC needed to disseminate the information publically. A cut-out could be found, but the group needed its own “legend”—espionage terminology for a false backstory to protect the identities of the case officers. The Cyberspies decided to create their own legend and to honor a hacker that was already well known: Guccifer.

The original and only Guccifer was the Romanian eccentric Marcel Lehel Lazar who was arrested and extradited from Romania to the U.S. after breaking into dozens of emails that belonged to officials like both George Bush Sr. , George W. Bush, Colin Powell, and Sidney Blumenthal, long time friend of Hillary Clinton. He used the name Guccifer as his handle for his attacks. He had claimed that he successfully hacked a private server belonging to Hillary Clinton, but during the House hearing on the FBI decision not to prosecute Clinton for use of private server or other crimes, Representative Blake Farenthold asked FBI Director James Comey if there was any truth to the claims made by Guccifer that he breached the server. Comey stated unequivocally that Guccifer lied about the breach and there was no indication that any such breach ever occurred, even if the concerns or threat may have existed.

What better way to cause mayhem, confusion and mischief than to release the stolen emails under the same name? Google searches would only add to the confusion as the original Guccifer would always come up first. Since this was a new entity, a second generation, it was only fitting that he be version 2.0. Hence, Guccifer 2.0 was born.