What worries U.S. officials most is that given Russia’s demonstrated willingness to use covert action against its adversaries, it might secretly intervene just before the November election. That might mean releasing embarrassing Clinton emails, as GOP nominee Donald Trump has urged Moscow to do. It might mean leaking phony news stories, or finding ways to upset financial markets. The American political system is an open and vulnerable target.
Why would Russia target the DNC, in an operation that’s eerily similar to the Nixon White House’s 1972 burglary at the committee’s headquarters at the Watergate? Partly, it was an information-gathering operation, like the reported Chinese intelligence hacks of the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008.
But Moscow may have had a special animus toward Clinton. When she was secretary of state, she endorsed Russian dissenters in the 2011 and 2012 elections. A furious Putin charged back then that she “gave them a signal” and that the dissidents, “with the support of the U.S. State Department, began active work.” In other words, Putin thinks Clinton shot first.
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