Brown Trey - Facts and fears: hard truths from a life in intelligence

As one of more than 40 million Americans whod already cast an absentee ballot for the 2016 presidential election, I was in Muscat, Omanon almost certainly my last whirlwind trip to meet with Middle East leaders as US director of national intelligencewhen the electorate went to the polls on November 8. Oman is nine hours ahead of Washington, and before I went to bed that night, about 2:00 A.M. in Oman and 5:00 P.M. on the US East Coast, election analysts and pundits were discussing how the Republican candidate for president, Donald Trump, had a narrow path to win the election, but only if a long list of specific states improbably broke his way. They predicted that as soon as Florida or Ohio was called for former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, the election would effectively be over. I slept four or five hours, rose, and turned on the TV, discovering that the narrative had flipped: The media analysts had called Ohio for Trump and said Clinton needed massive turnouts in all the left-leaning cities in Florida that hadnt reported yet for her to have a chance of taking the states twenty-nine Electoral College votes. I was surprised, but didnt really have time to think about it.

I read the overnight intelligence reports and continued getting ready for the day. An hour later, the media called Florida for Trump and laid out a very specific list of states that would now all have to swing to Clinton for her to win. As the morning progressed, I worked through the back-to-back meetings that were typical of foreign trips. In the short breaks between, my staff updated me on how things stood with the election. As we broke for lunch, at 2:31 A.M. on the US East Coast, the Associated Press declared Trump to be the US president-elect.

I was shocked. Everyone was shocked, including Mr. Trump, whod continued on Election Day to cast doubt on whether he would accept the election results as legitimate. Having a few minutes alone, I kept thinking of just how out of touch I was with the people who lived in Middle America. Id been stationed in heartland states repeatedly during my military career, particularly Texas, and I had traveled extensively as an agency director in the early 2000s and again during the past six and a half years as DNI, meeting with Intelligence Community employees outside of St. Louis, speaking at the University of Texas at Austin and with the Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio, and visiting many other places. Id joked to audiences about just how out of touch people in Washington were, and Id never failed to draw a laugh, sometimes applause. Working down in the engine room of our national security enterpriseshoveling intelligence coal, as I liked to sayI never recognized just how much frustration with and resentment toward Washington those communities had, and just how deep the roots of their anger went. But Donald Trump had, and hed appealed to them more than Id realized or liked.

I also thought about the warning on Russian interference in the election that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and I had issued to the American public a month earlier. Wed agonized over the precise wording of the press release and whether naming Russian president Vladimir Putin as the mastermind and puppeteer of the Russian influence operation would cause an international incident, drawing Jehs department and the Intelligence Community into the political fray. Reading responses to exit polls, I realized that our release and public statements simply hadnt mattered. I wasnt sure if people were oblivious to the seriousness of the threat wed described or if they just didnt care what the Russians were doing. Either way, I saw that our efforts ended up having all the impact of another raindrop in a storm at sea.

I wondered what President Obama was thinking and if he regretted his reticence to put his thumb on the scale of the electionas he put itby not publicly calling out the Russian interference while Putin was effectively standing on the other end of that scale. At the same time, I was no longer sure it would have mattered to the people in Middle America if the president had presented everything we knew about Russias massive cyber and propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy, disparage former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, and promote Donald Trump. Despite the public narrative that Edward Snowden had disingenuously started in 2013, alleging we were spying on everyday US citizens, the IC had no authority and no capability to evaluate how Americans were receiving the Russian propaganda or what they were thinking and doing when they entered polling booths. In a lot of ways, our capabilities were like the physical infrastructure at the signals intelligence facilities in Ukraine Id visited in 1991 after the Iron Curtain fell. Just like the former Soviet antenna arrays had been, our capabilities were oriented outward toward the threat and largely incapable of looking inward, even if we wanted to. It simply wasnt our job. Wed been watching how the Russians were trying to influence US voters, not what impact they may have been having. We had no empirical evidence to assess whether the Russian influence campaign was working, and on Election Day, I was disturbed to recognize it probably had.

I didnt realize it then, but the Russians were just as shocked as we were. Theyd succeeded beyond their wildest imagination and were completely unprepared for their own success. The Russian propaganda network in the United States, formerly known as Russia Today and since rebranded as just RT, was jubilant in calling the election for Mr. Trump: Thats what this is, a defining moment in global history, that America is willing to turn the page and possibly isolate itself from the rest of the world. They declared, The next speech that Donald Trump gives to the world will be one of the most important speeches in the history of the world. As the anchors reveled in Trumps victory, the crawl at the bottom of the screen continued running lines intended to delegitimize Clintons win, such as SEVERAL STA TES REPORT BROKEN VO TING MACHINES . The Russian internet troll factory scrambled to stop its #DemocracyRIP social media campaign, set to run from its fake accounts on Twitter and Facebook. In the middle of all this, Putin lost the chance to return the favor of challenging Clintons victory, as shed challenged the results of the 2011 Russian election when shed been US secretary of state. I dont believe he mindedat all.