Less than five weeks later, Trump won the election and everything changed. Inside the Obama administration there was a growing realization about the true scope of what Russia had done — and how little they had done to combat it. On Dec. 9, President Barack Obama announced an intelligence review to make clear just what Moscow’s role in the election had been. One month later, the public version of that assessment from the 17 intelligence agencies was released, concluding that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election.”

The story of the Obama administration’s cautious response to the Russian campaign has been widely told, but the question of how and why the administration chose to downplay and downgrade Russian aggression has remained largely mysterious, shadowed by self-justifying public statements by the administration and strident accusations from their enemies.

This account of the response to Russia’s meddling in the US election comes from interviews with ten former Obama administration officials, most of whom were deeply involved in deliberations. Almost all requested anonymity to speak freely about those internal debates.

It reveals the administration’s almost myopic focus on two goals — preventing Russia from directly tampering with votes on Election Day and ensuring that the White House not be seen as wading into presidential politics, its internal divisions, and its efforts to balance foreign policy and domestic politics.