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

1 " The 2016 cyberattack was not just another case of simple Kompromat - meddling in the political affairs of a satellite nation or an individual dissenter. It was a direct attempt to hijack and derail the traditional processes and norms that held the United States together for more than 240 years. The attempt was even more brazen due to the apparent belief that Putin assumed that he and his oligarchy could charm, groom and select a candidate, then with the right amount of cybercrime and enough organized propaganda they could actually choose a president of the United States to do their bidding. "

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

2 " Former acting Director and former Deputy Director of the CIA, Michael Morell has served six presidents—three from each party—and has voted for both Democrats and Republicans. He has kept his politics to himself throughout his thirty-three year intelligence career, until now. He takes a dim view of the entire Russian constellation of “coincidences” that surrounds Donald Trump. We may recall the U.S. intelligence community’s observation that “coincidences take a lot of planning.” The Trump coincidences seemed to bear the hallmarks of the sword and the shield of the FSB. "

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

3 " The 2016 presidential election was already surreal—a former reality TV host fueled by white backlash had completed a hostile takeover of the Republican Party—before the bears emerged. "

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

4 " Due to their meddling, activities which were considered routine politics in America are now suspect. "

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

5 " There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel. —Vladimir Ilyich Lenin "

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

6 " President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated . . . In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.62 "

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

7 " Always remember: cyber or kinetic, your adversaries prefer your silence, apathy and inaction. Be the consequence, not the victim.” —ANTHONY COUCHENOUR, HOPLITE CYBER SECURITY T "

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

8 " 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. "

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

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

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

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

11 " Nance’s Law of Intelligence Kismet: “Coincidence takes a lot of planning. "

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

12 " All of these were drops in the bucket that could easily have been overlooked, but on August 17, 2016 the London Times released a bombshell report from Ukrainian prosecutors that Manafort had been paid by pro-Russian parties in the Ukraine to organize anti-NATO protests in Crimea, leading to the withdrawal of forces for a planned NATO exercise. The prosecutors wrote, "

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

13 " Carter Page joined Trump’s campaign in March 2016. In July 2016, Page went to Moscow and delivered a series of speeches on establishing a better relationship with Russia. His recommendations included easing of economic sanctions imposed after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. As the Trump campaign talks about ending TPP and other trade deals, the unelected candidate’s spokespeople are out inviting business with Russian partners especially in industries that are known to have crime bosses and Russian mafia ties. "

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

14 " Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham were staunch advocates of arming the government of Ukraine in their fight with Russian separatists and Putin. During the Republican National Convention, the party platform committee proposed language to the effect that Ukraine needed U.S. weapons and NATO support to defend itself, in support of a long-held Republican position. Carter Page, now on the Trump campaign team, used to work in the Merrill Lynch’s Moscow office, has personal investments in Gazprom, a Russian state oil conglomerate. He told Bloomberg that his investments have been hurt by the sanctions policy against Russia over Ukraine.39 He has characterized the U.S. policy toward Russia as chattel slavery. "

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

15 " Attributing culpability for cyberattacks is difficult. Competent spy agencies labor to make it nigh-impossible. But it didn’t take long before Obama administration and congressional leaders started expressing with unusual certainty—off the record, of course—that Russia was behind the assault. A theory emerged. The Russians were putting a digital thumb on the scale of the US election to help the aforementioned reality-TV host—who just happened to be running on the most pro-Russia platform in GOP history. "

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

16 " After being turned away by American banks due to bankruptcies, Trump has been getting considerable investments from Russian sources, including many with known criminal ties. At "

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

17 " Russia is changing Russia’s face and not towards democracy. Karen Dawisha, a Professor at Miami University, told PBS Frontline that “Instead of seeing Russia as a democracy in the process of failing, see it as an authoritarian system that’s in the process of succeeding.”22 Putin is that authoritarian. For him to succeed at the mission of damaging the United States he will use all tools of the Russian statecraft such as forging alliances, but also including blackmail, propaganda, and cyberwarfare. To Putin, the best of all possible worlds would be an economically crippled America, withdrawn from military adventurism and NATO, and with leadership friendly to Russia. Could he make this happen by backing the right horse? As former director of the KGB, now in control of Russia’s economic, intelligence and nuclear arsenal, he could certainly try. "

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

18 " After the fall of the Soviet Union the KGB became known as the FSB. In the last ten years Russian intelligence melded all of its offensive techniques to create a new kind of war: Hybrid Warfare—a melange of hostile cyber, political, and psychological operations in support of their national objectives, whether during peacetime or in open war. It is now standard operating procedure. "

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

19 " All of the old lessons of identifying Russian mantraps started to come back to me as the stolen DNC data was revealed. It had a pattern that was familiar and that virtually every other intelligence officer could recognize. The pattern showed that someone was playing 3 Dimensional chess with our democracy. "

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

20 " It was well known that Paul Manafort is the lawyer who led what is known as the “Torturer’s Lobby.”4 "

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