The most important, must-read mainstream news story so far this year
Tell me these opening paragraphs don’t get your attention:
Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.
Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race.
But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump.
At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent.
Now that’s how one opens a blockbuster newspaper article.
Friday afternoon, the Washington Post published a substantial and important story online: “Obama’s secret struggle to punish Russia for Putin’s election assault,” written by Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima and Adam Entous,
It is a long, detailed, and intricately sourced read that confirms many of the points that have been made by several Twitterati, most notably British conservative Louise Mensch and former Clinton staffer Claude Taylor, who have themselves been investigating what really happened in the months leading up to last year’s election.
It also provides aa broader and more nuanced analysis of reasons that the Obama Administration did not go public about Russia’s (read: multibillionaire arch-oligarch Vladimir Putin’s) plot to “hack” the 2016 US elections.
