Русская рулетка

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На днях выходит обещанная книжка Дэвида Корна и Майкла Исикоффа Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump.

Пока что для затравки опубликованы две главы. В одной из них описывается поездка Трампа в Москву в ноябре 2013. Добавляются множество ранее неизвестных деталей, которые дополняют картину.



Если верить книжке, личной встречи с Путиным, о которой мечтал Трамп, в 2013 не состоялось, но был звонок Пескова, а после - загадочное личное письмо от Путина в лакированной шкатулке.

“Is Putin coming?” he kept asking.
With no word from the Kremlin, it was starting to look grim. Then Agalarov conveyed a new message. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s right-hand man and press spokesman, would be calling any moment. Trump was relieved, especially after it was explained to him that few people were closer to Putin than Peskov. If anybody could facilitate a rendezvous with Putin, it was Peskov. “If you get a call from Peskov, it’s like you’re getting a call from Putin,” Rob Goldstone, a British-born publicist who had helped bring the beauty contest to Moscow, told him. But time was running out. The show would be starting soon, and following the broadcast Trump would be departing the city.
Finally, Agalarov’s cellphone rang. It was Peskov, and Agalarov handed the phone to an eager Trump. <...> Peskov conveyed an invitation for Trump to attend the upcoming Olympics, where perhaps he and Putin could then meet. He also told Trump that Putin would be sending a high-level emissary to the evening’s event-Vladimir Kozhin, a senior Putin aide. And, Peskov told Trump, Putin had a gift for him.
It was a crushing disappointment for Trump. But he quickly thought of how to spin it, suggesting to an associate that after the telecast they could spread the word that Putin had dropped by. “No one will know for sure if he came or not,” he said. <...> And shortly after the Miss Universe event, Agalarov’s daughter showed up at the Miss Universe office in New York City bearing a gift for Trump from Putin. It was a black lacquered box. Inside was a sealed letter from the Russian autocrat. What the letter said has never been revealed.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/russian-connection-what-happened-moscow-inside-story-trump-obsession-putin-david-corn-michael-isikoff/



Другая глава рассказывает о том, как в Белом доме администрация Обамы обсуждала, как им следует реагировать на российское вмешательство. Подтверждаются предыдущие рассказы, но добавляются некоторые детали, имена и хронология обсуждений. Сдержанная реакция Обамы и расчёт на то, что его личного предупреждения окажется достаточно, привели к успеху путинской тактики замахнуться топором и пырнуть ножом.

Некоторые предложения по контрмерам, которые готовили Майкл Дэниел, советник Обамы по кибербезопасностм, и Селесте Уоллендер, специалист по России, оказались отвергнуты, как слишком агрессивные и не оставляющие Обаме пространства для маневра.

Daniel and Wallander began drafting options for more aggressive responses beyond anything the Obama administration or the US government had ever before contemplated in response to a cyberattack. One proposal was to unleash the NSA to mount a series of far-reaching cyberattacks: to dismantle the Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks websites that had been leaking the emails and memos stolen from Democratic targets, to bombard Russian news sites with a wave of automated traffic in a denial-of-service attack that would shut the news sites down, and to launch an attack on the Russian intelligence agencies themselves, seeking to disrupt their command and control modes.
Knowing that Putin was notoriously protective of any information about his family, Wallander suggested targeting Putin himself. She proposed leaking snippets of classified intelligence to reveal the secret bank accounts in Latvia held for Putin’s daughters-a direct poke at the Russian president that would be sure to infuriate him. Wallander also brainstormed ideas with Victoria Nuland, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs and a fellow hard-liner. They drafted other proposals: to dump dirt on Russian websites about Putin’s money, about the girlfriends of top Russian officials, about corruption in Putin’s United Russia party-essentially to give Putin a taste of his own medicine. “We wanted to raise the cost in a manner Putin recognized,” Nuland recalled.
One idea Daniel proposed was unusual: The United States and NATO should publicly announce a giant “cyber exercise” against a mythical Eurasian country, demonstrating that Western nations had it within their power to shut down Russia’s entire civil infrastructure and cripple its economy.
“Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand? “
But Wallander and Daniel’s bosses at the White House were not on board. One day in late August, national security adviser Susan Rice called Daniel into her office and demanded he cease and desist from working on the cyber options he was developing. “Don’t get ahead of us,” she warned him. The White House was not prepared to endorse any of these ideas. Daniel and his team in the White House cyber response group were given strict orders: “Stand down.” She told Daniel to “knock it off,” he recalled.
Daniel walked back to his office. “That was one pissed-off national security adviser,” he told one of his aides.
At his morning staff meeting, Daniel matter-of-factly said to his team that it had to stop work on options to counter the Russian attack: “We’ve been told to stand down.” Daniel Prieto, one of Daniel’s top deputies, recalled, “I was incredulous and in disbelief. It took me a moment to process. In my head I was like, ‘Did I hear that correctly?'” Then Prieto spoke up, asking, “Why the hell are we standing down? Michael, can you help us understand?” Daniel informed them that the orders came from both Rice and Monaco. They were concerned that if the options were to leak, it would force Obama to act. “They didn’t want to box the president in,” Prieto subsequently said.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/why-the-hell-are-we-standing-down/