TOP

Jeh Johnson

Chapters

The FRONTLINE Interviews

Jeh Johnson

Secretary of Homeland Security, 2013-17

Jeh Johnson was the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security from December 2013 to January 2017.

This is the transcript of an interview with FRONTLINE's Jim Gilmore conducted on Aug. 10, 2017. It has been edited in parts for clarity and length.

This interview appears in:

Putin’s Road to War

The Putin Files

Text Interview:

Highlight text to share it

The U.S. Response to Russian Measures

The first question, asking Mr. Johnson about the events of October 7, 2016, was not recorded.

Friday, Oct. 7, was a big day.It was the day that Jim Clapper and I made our public statement of attribution, pointing the finger at the Russian government and accusing the Russian government, in very blunt terms, of attempting to interfere in our democracy, our election season. …¹

… OK, so 3:30, you guys release the statement.Take me from that.What were the goals?What were your expectations of how it would be received?

I thought our statement was going to be really, really big news.²

It was unprecedented that the U.S. government was accusing another superpower of effectively putting their thumb on the scale of our democracy and attempting to influence our election in the middle of the election.We issued the statement at around 3:30, and it ended up being below-the-fold news that day, because that was the same day as the release of that Access Hollywood video.³

So you look at the Times and the Post the next day, our statement was literally below-the-fold news.And frankly, it wasn’t until December when the national media started paying attention to what we had been saying for two months.

It’s also the same day as the [John] Podesta emails are released.⁴

Correct.

So you guys released your statement at 3:30; the Access Hollywood tapes come out at 4:00; and at 4:30 the Podesta emails.I mean, when you're looking at that, how strange a coincidence is that?

… Friday, Oct. 7, 2016, was a very crowded [day].We had Hurricane Matthew.And I actually spoke to both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump within the space of about an hour about the relief effort for Hurricane Matthew.Part of the Department of Homeland Security is FEMA, and the Clinton campaign asked for a briefing to her from me about the relief effort.I did that at 12:15 on Friday, and then I spoke to Mr. Trump at 1:00, same day, 45 minutes later.Gave them both basically the same information.And when I got off the phone with both of them, I thought to myself, neither one of them has any idea of the statement Jim Clapper and I are about to release.I felt kind of bad that I didn’t give either one of them a heads-up, but we were not in a position to do that.

… The statement was released at 3:30.And of course, that was the same day as the Access Hollywood video.So all the media are like cattle on the pasture.They all went off to the other end of the pasture to cover this 11-year-old video, and our statement was literally below-the-fold news that day in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

… The administration gets some blowback about the fact that it didn’t come out earlier with this, didn’t make it public earlier.What's your feeling about that?By October, was it too late?Should it have come out a lot earlier?

Throughout the summer of 2016, there was an emerging picture of what the Russians were doing, and by late summer it was pretty apparent.It was a gathering picture; it was becoming clearer and clearer.At that point, I became very concerned about our election infrastructure, and one of my folks at Homeland Security said to me, “You know, you have the authority to designate election infrastructure as critical infrastructure.”That began a conversation I had in August of 2016.I first floated the idea at a media event, and I actually spoke to every [state] secretary of state on a conference call on August 15, 2016.

Surprisingly, we got a lot of pushback from them.They perceived a critical infrastructure designation as somehow a federal takeover, or federal regulations.And I spent a lot of time telling them, that’s not what this is.It just simply is prioritizing our assistance if they ask for it.But throughout late summer, there was an emerging picture that was becoming clearer and clearer of interference, attempts to interfere in our democracy, voter opinion.And it became clearer and clearer that the Russian government, Vladimir Putin himself, had directed this.

Then the question became what to do about it.A number of us felt very strongly that we had to tell the American public what we knew and that it would be unforgiveable, post-election, if we had not.The analogy I used in our situation room discussions was—and this is from my corporate-lawyer background—if I'm the issuer of a public stock, and I see that there is a very powerful actor trying to manipulate the price of that stock, I have an obligation to tell the investing public what we know is happening with our stock.

People accepted the notion that we had to tell the American voting public.Now, this was something we also consulted Congress about.We were hoping to get a bipartisan statement from the congressional leadership encouraging the state election officials to come to us and seek our cybersecurity assistance at DHS [Department of Homeland Security].That took longer than it should, frankly.But along the way, we were also having this internal discussion about making attribution.And eventually, Jim Clapper and I looked at each other, basically, and said, “Let’s do a joint statement.”We were thinking about having separate statements where Jim would declassify the intel and tell the public what we knew, and I was going to make a statement myself about what DHS is doing and what state election officials can do to seek our help.We decided to basically merge those two statements into one statement.The first paragraph is basically his, and the remaining two paragraphs are basically mine.

Was there a feeling that by Oct. 7 it was a little bit too late, that you’d wished gone earlier?

I would not say that.This was a front-burner item for me and lots of others, particularly those in the intelligence community.It was a big deal.This is not something that you just wake up one Saturday morning at 6:00 a.m. and issue a tweet about.It was unprecedented.We were dealing with a lot of crosscurrents in the election.This was a time when Donald Trump was saying, “The election is going to be rigged.”⁵

And in national security, there is naturally a great hesitancy about injecting ourselves into an ongoing political campaign.

We were very concerned that we would be perceived as taking sides.We were very concerned that we would be playing into Mr. Trump’s narrative that the election was going to be rigged: “See there? The Obama administration is trying to hijack the election by making these accusations.”And we were also concerned that we might be playing into the Russian playbook of undermining our election integrity, the integrity of our elections, by making these accusations.But in the end, we felt obliged to tell the American public what we knew so that they had a sense for where these hacks and where these leaks were coming from.

As you said, it was below-the-fold news that day.Why? Why did it not then become, in the days, the weeks that came after that, before the election, why do you think it did not take fire at a later point?

The Access Hollywood video came out the same day, and the media all were like cattle.They went off and grazed in the other end of the pasture.So for days after that, there was all this speculation about Trump dropping out.He was going to finally crash and burn because of this; he couldn’t withstand this.So in the immediate aftermath of the statement, all the talk was about Trump’s going to drop out; this is the end; he can't possibly withstand this.The speaker of the House [Paul Ryan] was denouncing what he had done.So that’s where the attention was for the remaining couple of days and weeks in the campaign, frankly.

… Why were you so sure that it was the Russian government, that it was Putin specifically, that was involved in this attempt?

This was, for a lot of reasons, this was an instance where the intelligence community was certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, in my lawyer’s judgment, the evidence, the intel that we looked at, was beyond a reasonable doubt that the Russian government was behind the hacking, and that Vladimir Putin himself had directed it.On Oct. 7, we were not yet in a position to say that the Russian government was behind the effort to infiltrate voter registration databases, but I felt strongly that we had to say something about that, because there had been these media reports about efforts to infiltrate voter registration databases.⁶

But we were not then in a position to say it was the Russian government.Eventually we did.On Oct. 7, we said that it looks like it’s coming from Russia, but we couldn’t attribute it to the Russian government.

… Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak is brought to the White House on Oct. 7 as well, one more thing that happened, and he’s given a letter to bring to the powers that be in Russia.What was that all about? Was that connected?

I never saw the letter, but I suspect that it was a warning to President Putin that we know what he’s up to, and he’d better cut it out.But at the same time, we were effectively outing him by telling the American public, the American voting public, who was behind this and who it was that was putting their thumb on the scale of our democracy.

Intervention in the U.S. Election

… Before the 2016 election, when does the hacking, the Russian government involvement, when does that come onto your radar screen, and what does it mean to you?

There was an emerging picture throughout the summer of 2016.I began seeing intelligence reports that the Russians may be behind this.And I’ll never forget one day, I was in the situation room, and there was a lot of urgency about this issue.And John Brennan said to me, “I'm going to come brief you.”Now, it was not often that the CIA director, by himself, came to DHS to meet with me by myself, to share intelligence.

Naturally my staff was very curious about this one-on-one meeting between the CIA director and the secretary of Homeland Security.There was no topic on my schedule.And John came up to Nebraska Avenue, to our headquarters, and we sat down together in my SCIF [Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility], one-on-one.He walked through everything we knew and how we knew it, and it was a very compelling picture.At that moment, it was clear to me that the Russian government was behind this effort and that we had to do something about it.And we did, obviously.

… By the time of the days before the convention, all of a sudden WikiLeaks drops all these DNC emails.How are you looking at it?You’ve written that you were somewhat concerned because DNC didn’t ask for help from DHS, that you were concerned that they were not taking it seriously enough.

Part of my daily intelligence briefing, I saw a report about infiltration of the DNC systems.Fresh off the experience of the theft of a lot of very sensitive background information from the Office of Personnel Management, I said to my staff: “OK, are we in there? What are we doing about this? I want to be proactive.⁷

Let’s make sure we’re doing everything we can, because experience teaches that the earlier we’re in there to help those managing the system root out the bad actors, the better chance we have of minimizing the theft, minimizing the loss.”

I recall being told that the FBI had contacted or had been contacted by the DNC months before and that they effectively didn’t want DHS’s help at the time.They had the private security firm CrowdStrike, and that was it. And I continued to ask, “OK, what are we doing? What do we know? Are we in there yet?,” and was concerned that our folks were not in the DNC working with them to try to root out what had happened.

Looking back at it now, it seems like a bit of a cock-up that people didn’t understand the dangerous nature of the attacks that were happening.

Well, very often, a cyberattack is an unfolding picture.You see an infiltration.Sometimes you even think that you’ve rooted the bad actor out of your system, but he’s lurking somewhere in the system, waiting to strike, waiting to walk out the gate with the jewelry.So the earlier Homeland Security and the FBI is in there to work hand-in-hand with the victim, the better, and the better opportunity there is to try to minimize the theft.

And so when, just before the convention, WikiLeaks drops all these emails, what are you thinking?

Well, obviously, that was at a time when it was not crystal clear that the Russian government was behind the theft.That was an emerging picture.But I was concerned that all of these emails, all of a sudden, were showing up in public. …

As the summer goes on, you're becoming more and more troubled.There's also a pattern of propaganda that is being seen.When do we understand it’s from Russia?I mean, this disinformation that’s happening more and more, the fake stories, specifically happening more about Hillary Clinton than Trump.

I’d have to say that the propaganda element of this became clearer later.The focus was, in the summer of 2016, late summer 2016, the cyberhacks, the intrusions, the exfiltrations of data, and the probing and scanning that we saw around voter registration databases, we kept seeing this happening, state by state.And it was a growing list of states.Obviously there was great concern.We didn’t know where that was going.We didn’t know where that was going to end up on Election Day.

So my focus was getting the states to come in, ask for our assistance, help them identify vulnerabilities in their election infrastructure.And I'm pleased that, at the end of the day, by Election Day, 33 states and some 36 cities and counties had actually signed up for our help, and we did identify a number of vulnerabilities. …

… As of August or late July, the FBI is detecting attempts to penetrate the election systems.Originally it was reported 21 states, whatever it is; you can tell me.What were you seeing?What did it mean?And what did you think at that point that the purpose of it was?

Well, we saw efforts at scanning and probing around various state election systems.It was a growing list, but it seemed to be a random list.It wasn’t the key swing states; it was a list that seemed rather haphazard, and we didn’t know where it was going.We didn’t know how long the list was going to get by Election Day.But it was a growing list.But it seemed to be a very random set of states.

The big concern, my concern was that voter registration data could be exfiltrated, could be erased, such that a voter shows up on Election Day in a key precinct, in a key state, and the poll watchers say, “Sorry, you're not registered to vote.”That was my concern, and that was why I repeatedly made overtures to state election officials and city and county election officials to come in and seek our cybersecurity assistance. …

Did it seem to be targeted, for instance, on states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, states that would show that there was sophisticated analysis of an attempt to really sow discord in the election?

Well, actually, that's the thing.The list, at least initially, was pretty random.It wasn’t apparent that it was targeted at key swing states, and we didn’t know where it was going.The list kept getting longer.But in many cases [these] were states that were clearly red, clearly blue, and we had to sort of scratch our heads and ask, “Hey, what is going on?”But it was clearly very, very concerning, because it was a growing list.

And your assumption on why this would be happening?And at that point, was it pretty well understood that it was the Russians?

First answer first.The concern that I had was that this could be an effort to deprive voters of their ability to vote, because they’d no longer be registered, or it was an effort at getting at certain private information about voters or an effort to intimidate voters so that they wouldn’t show up.We weren’t sure where it was going.

As of Oct. 7, we were not clear yet that it was the Russian government behind this particular effort at infiltrating voter registration data.I thought, however, it was important because there had been public reports about this effort to say something about it, so in the statement we issued on Oct. 7, we said: “We see this activity.It looks like it's coming from a Russian platform, but we don’t know that it’s the Russian government.”Later in the year, we were in a position to make that accusation.

The U.S. Response to Russian Measures

… You're concerned that voting systems are being affected.You go to the states, and you sort of start trying to convince everybody of stipulating, agreeing to the fact that the voter system was a critical infrastructure.Just tell us that story in whole.

In August 2016, I had a conference call with every state secretary of state responsible for voting in those states, to tell them about what we were seeing, to express concern about the cybersecurity environment, given the coming election.I floated this idea of designating election infrastructure as critical infrastructure.Got a lot of pushback on that.There was a misperception that this was the beginning of some effort at a federal takeover of the election.

Rather than push that specific idea, we reached the conclusion that we should focus our efforts in the run-up to the election at getting these states, bringing the horses to the water effectively, and getting these states to come in and seek our cybersecurity assistance.Had we made the designation in August or September, my fear was that they were going to be driven in the opposite direction.

Throughout August, September, October, I issued public statement after public statement about the threat environment we were seeing, encouraging the states to come in.⁸

So after, for example, the congressional leadership issued their statement on Sept. 28, I issued an immediate follow-up statement saying: “Happy to have the statement from the congressional leadership. This is the environment.”⁹

I think I issued another statement a week later and another statement the week after that, continuing to beat this drum about the cybersecurity environment that we see, the concern that I have, and encouraging the states to come in and seek our cybersecurity assistance.For the most part they did.At the end of the day, 33 states and some 36 cities and counties came in.They sought our assistance.We identified a number of vulnerabilities that presumably they patched.

Great. So in the end you had a lot of success, even though it wasn’t done in the initial way that you had attempted to do it.

Well, we put aside the critical infrastructure designation, and my judgment was that was going to be a radioactive issue in the run-up to the election, given the pushback I was hearing.I thought then, and I thought later, and I still think that designating election infrastructure, alongside financial infrastructure, utilities, agriculture, defense, should be regarded as critical infrastructure in this country.Eventually, toward the end of the Obama administration, my last few days in office, I said to my folks: “All right, let me have one more call with these folks to hear them out about why they are resisting this.Let me hear if there's anything new.”I had one more call with them, and it was one of those few instances where, over the objections of a lot of people, I said, “We just have to do this,” and we went ahead and did it, because it was simply the right thing to do. …

Putin and Hybrid Warfare

One of the things that some people bring up is the fact that undermining the confidence of Americans in their electoral system undermines democracy, which indeed seems to be one of the things that Vladimir Putin wants to do.

Well, again, it depends on where we are in the election season.There were points where it looked as if Hillary’s victory was inevitable, so you look at it that way, you think, this is an effort to undermine our democracy, to undermine her effectiveness as president, because if Trump loses, he’s going to be out there saying, “It was rigged; I should have won.”Then at other points, perhaps when the polls were closer, the Russians may have thought, we can actually put our thumb on the scale here and affect the outcome.

… Are there places that you were concerned about, where cyberweapons could be used to infiltrate the system so that votes could be stolen?

For the most part, election reporting, vote counting, ballot machines exist off the Internet.The reporting mechanisms exist off the Internet, off of email, for the most part.So there was a concern that this might be a larger effort to influence vote counting, election outcomes.But for the most part, the systems themselves exist off the Internet.But there's still the process of reporting through the media to the public on the election night, which is something that we thought a lot about.Is there a single point of failure in election night reporting?That’s when the Associated Press came to me, because we all know that on election night, everyone depends upon the Associated Press to report from states to the media, to the public, the election results.That prompted me to then have a conversation with the head of the Associated Press to say, “Hey, are you a single point of failure, or do you have enough redundancies in your election night reporting so that, if there is a failure, you have other ways to report the results?”¹⁰

The U.S. Response to Russian Measures

Then there's the very famous meeting between President Obama and Vladimir Putin at Hangzhou.… Basically what he told him was that “Cut it out. We know what you're doing. This specific area is red-hot, and you’d better back off.”Explain to me, from whatever you can, about what happened in that situation and why it’s important to understand.What was the president doing?

Well, none of us knew exactly where this was headed.We didn’t know, and we could not be certain that what we were seeing, in various different random states, that all of this random scanning and probing may have been the lead-up to a much larger-scale grand attack on our election systems in a number of states.When you think about voter registration databases, the thing that immediately has to come to you is, hey, somebody might be trying to eliminate from the rolls voters in key states, in key precincts.Frankly, the way our elections work in this country, given the Electoral College, the results very often come down to swing precincts in swing states, swing voters in swing precincts in swing states.Election outcomes can depend upon turnout in these key places.

You're talking actually about a very small percentage of voters nationwide who affect the outcome of a presidential election.Through a very targeted, careful effort at an attack of some sort, on precincts in key swing states, you could really do a lot of damage, and that was my concern and a lot of other concerns people had about voter registration databases in particular.

And is that what you were seeing?

Well, we were seeing scanning and probing at the state level, and the identity of the states was pretty random, but it was a growing list.You know, if I had seen, off the bat, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, that obviously would have been a very, very big concern.But the list we were seeing, which was a growing list, looked pretty random.But again, we didn’t know where all of this was heading.We didn’t know where this was going to lead, so obviously that was a great concern.

All right.

I'm going to come back to a point to make sure I've stated it clearly.

Sure.

The question of what was Vladimir Putin’s motive, probably, because there have been different reports about this, probably depends upon the point at time in which you ask the question.There were points in time, obviously, where Hillary was so far ahead in the polls that her election looked inevitable, and if you're Vladimir Putin with a great personal animus toward Hillary, you might look at it and say: “Well, her election is inevitable.I'm going to do everything I can to undermine her election and undermine her presidency.”When the polls were closer, perhaps the motive changed.Perhaps the activity was the same, but the motive changed to say, “Hey, maybe I have an opportunity to put my thumb on the scale and influence the outcome, tilt it away from her, in favor of him.” …

During August-September, the intelligence community is becoming more and more convinced that it’s the Russian government is behind the hacks.You want to go public with it.There's meetings taking place at the White House, extremely secret meetings is the way it’s been defined by The Washington Post, to discuss what to do.During that period of time, what's the major concern at the White House?Is this idea of getting into the election system key?Is the propaganda, at this point, understood?What are you all talking about?What are you worried about?

There were twin concerns.One was a concern about the leaked emails and what else was coming.It was pretty clear that the leaks, the hacks were an effort to hurt the Clinton campaign.And then also, the scanning and probing we saw around the state election system.So there was a twin concern.None of us knew where it was headed.The debate inside the situation room was, do we make attribution?

I think it was pretty clear that we all recognized that we needed to.Can we get bipartisan congressional support for our efforts?And then, what more to do about it?Should we respond?Should we respond before the election?Should we respond after the election?If you respond before the election, then there's a concern that, hey, you're really trying to put your thumb on the scale in reaction to Vladimir Putin trying to put his thumb on the scale.Then, if you wait until after the election, it looks like you might not be happy with the result.

… In August, Trump is predicting the election would be rigged, making it difficult, more difficult for what you all were doing, what the White House wanted to do, because all of a sudden it plays into his game.

There was a period in early fall, late summer, when Donald Trump was pretty far behind in the polls, when he began saying: “The election is rigged. The outcome is going to be rigged.”We were concerned that if we make attribution, that’s going to play right into his narrative.It was one of the very difficult competing factors that we had to weigh, though it was pretty clear to me and a lot of other people that we had to tell the American public what we knew.

And then the other thing that happens, as you mentioned was one of the priorities, was the president especially wanted buy-in by the Republicans in Congress.I guess Brennan went up and was talking to folks on Capitol Hill.You wanted a letter to come out that condemned Moscow, and this was a no-go.What happened with that?

There was a session on Capitol Hill in their SCIF, in their classified briefing room.It was me, [Homeland Security Advisor to the President] Lisa Monaco and [FBI Director] Jim Comey.And they were all there, the speaker, leader [Nancy] Pelosi, leader [Mitch] McConnell, leader [Harry] Reid, the chair[s] in ranking of the Foreign Affairs Committees, the Intel Committees, and the Homeland Security Committees.They were all there, and we briefed them again on what we knew.What was interesting was to watch the reactions in the room, the Democrats, the Republicans.The Democrats, [Rep.] Adam Schiff, [Sen.] Dianne Feinstein, [both of California], were pretty emphatic that “Hey, we’ve got to make attribution. We’ve got to tell the public what we know about what's going on.”The Republicans on the other hand were: “Well, not so sure. Be careful.”It was interesting watching that debate among them play out.But by then, in my mind, it seemed pretty clear that we had to tell the public what we knew.

The way that the story has been reported is that the Republicans, and McConnell eventually says, “I don’t see the evidence.”

I've seen public reports of that.I'm not so sure that was his position.

From the end results of the meeting that you just talked about—

I think everyone in the room accepted the intelligence and embraced it.I think that was pretty clear.I don’t think anybody in the room was a skeptic about what the intelligence community was telling us.The question was how to deal with it; now that we've been handed this very hot potato, in the midst of a very hot, overheated election season, how to deal with it.

And the Republicans’ position on that was what?

They urged caution.No one in the room outright said, “Say nothing.” They were urging caution.And Schiff and Feinstein were pretty emphatic that we had to say something. …

… The way it’s been told to us is they [Republicans] saw this as somewhat of a partisan issue and that Obama folks were basically going to use this to batter Trump and the Republicans.

I can only tell you what I was thinking.My concern, which was not a partisan concern, and it wasn’t a concern as a Democrat; it wasn’t a concern of an Obama Cabinet official—as a National Security Homeland Security official, my concern was that there was a very powerful foreign actor trying to put his thumb on the scale of our democracy, and it would be inexcusable if we did not tell the American public, the American voting public, what we saw going on.That was my concern. That was my overriding concern.And that’s why I and a number of others pushed to make this statement on Oct. 7.We would have obviously preferred if the congressional leadership had acted a little quicker.But we knew eventually, well before Nov. 8, we had to tell the public what we knew.

Terrific. And we’ve covered all the October stuff.One last thing, and then we’ll jump to Election Day.Late September, the way it’s been reported, is the White House had basically ruled out retaliation against the Russians, that Obama’s philosophy was, “Let’s not make it worse,” and that’s why we end up with the sanctions and everything coming out in late December.Is that the situation?

We considered taking action before the election, but here again, the concern was it would look like we’re trying to influence the outcome.Or, most certainly, that accusation was going to come if we did anything pre-election.Of course if you wait until after the election, and you don’t like the result, then you get accused of retaliating because they influenced the election in a way we don’t like.

Either way was not going to be perfect; it was not going to be clean.But in the end, we waited until after the election at a time when we had an opportunity to collect even more intelligence so that we were crystal clear about what happened, the full scope of what happened, and what we could do about it.

But meanwhile, Election Day happens, and the results are pretty surprising to all, certainly in the White House, certainly in the Trump campaign, certainly in Russia, from what everybody says.People have talked about the fact that there was some debate at that point about: “Maybe we should have done more.Did this influence the election whatsoever?”From your point of view, on Election Day, what were you thinking?And was there a debate?

I am satisfied that, at the time, this was a front-burner item.We carefully considered all of the dimensions of formally accusing a foreign superpower of trying to influence our democracy in the midst of an election, and we came out with the right result, at the right time.With every difficult National Security decision that we have to make, there's always going to be somebody who says: “Why did you do it? Why did you do it that way? Why didn’t you do it sooner? Why didn’t you wait?”At the end of the day, you make your best judgments with the information you have, and you act.And I'm convinced that we did that in this situation.

Putin and Trump

… The president makes the announcement from Hawaii on the 29th.¹¹

Just tell us a little bit about how that led up to that and how it came about.

We looked at a number of different options for responding to what the Russians had done, some very aggressive, some less aggressive, some not so aggressive.There was a whole menu of things we looked at.My preference was that, however we responded, we respond with some things that were cybersecurity-related, so that part of our steps should be effectively unmasking the bad actors so that they couldn’t do it again—outing them, effectively.That was part of what we did.

But it’s also important to know that the actions we took, we took within the last month of our administration, and it’s now up to President Trump and his administration to carry forward with ensuring that the Russians don’t attack our cybersecurity again.

Were there concerns over that because of the rhetoric that Trump had been throwing out there about Russia constantly?

Yes, there was.There were concerns that the incoming administration was not going to take this seriously; they were going to push it aside.Now that the Trump administration, President Trump owns this effectively, it’s up to him to protect the American people from another cyberattack like this.

Were you happy to see the moves by Congress?

I'm happy to see that Congress, overwhelmingly bipartisan, recognizes what the Russian government did and sanctioned them in a veto-proof vote.¹²

And the reaction of the president?

Rather than continually deflect and try to cast blame on others, he now owns this.He owns our Homeland Security.He owns our cybersecurity for the American people, Democrats, Republicans, independents, and it’s up to him to do what he can to protect this nation from another foreign power doing what the Russians did last year.

Optimistic?

I'm an eternal optimist.

After the sanctions hit, after the president made the statements from Hawaii on what was going to happen, there were certain conclusions or thoughts about what would happen next, but Putin doesn’t react in the way that we think.Explain what happened and your thoughts on the White House.

Well, I don’t know, but I suspect that a lot of Putin’s reaction had to do with the fact that we were packing our bags and walking out, and there was a new crowd walking in.I think since that time—I hope since that time—President Trump and his administration have seen that the Russians are simply not to be trusted in this area.

The whole conversation and the controversy over Trump’s nominated, or appointed, national security adviser, Gen. [Michael] Flynn, on the same day that President Obama makes the statement about what the sanctions are on the 29th of December, he [Flynn] has a conversation with Ambassador Kislyak—actually, he’s in the Dominican Republic.¹³

When you heard that, and the results of what that was all about, and the fact that the sanctions had been discussed, what are your thoughts about that?Why is it important to understand why that was a real problem?

What are my thoughts about that? The Logan Act.The Logan Act prohibits private citizens from undertaking to negotiate on behalf of the U.S. government without the permission and the sanction of the U.S. government.¹⁴

That is why incoming transition officials have to be—and I've been part of three presidential transitions—incoming transition officials have to be exceedingly careful when they deal with foreign government officials.The foreign government official wants to curry favor with the incoming ruling crowd, and those of us who are in private life, who are part of a transition team, have legal prohibitions not to speak on behalf of the U.S. government that we are about to become in the next couple days or weeks.

… On Jan. 6, 2017, they brief the to-be president.His reaction is—he has a press conference six days later, I think, on the 11th, where he gives a lukewarm acceptance of the issue.Just define that moment and how you viewed it.

Well, I was hoping that, as the president-elect learned more and more about the conclusions of the intelligence community, he was going to have to accept the obvious.There was no plausible way in which you could deny what was playing in front of your face.I listened very carefully to his rhetoric during the transition period, and by that press conference, it seemed that he had heard the intelligence community, and he was not going to deny the undeniable at that point.¹⁵

But, you know, there have been various moments since then where he has sort of grabbed onto the possibility that, hey, maybe it wasn’t the Russian government. …

To conclude all this, how successful was Putin in his attempts to influence this election?

How successful was Vladimir Putin? That’s a very good question.It depends upon what the goal is.If the goal was to see Hillary Clinton lose the presidency and Donald Trump win, to the surprise of many, mission accomplished.If the goal was to create chaos, create weeks and months of investigations to distract the new president from doing the things he said he was going to do, mission accomplished.While I and a number of others have said we see no actual successful effort at changing votes or suppressing votes by the Russian government, this has created a lot of chaos and a lot of distraction in our democracy, notwithstanding that.

I'm not a social scientist. I'm not a political scientist. I can't tell you whether the emails that were hacked influenced the outcome of the election. You need a pollster for that.But this has created a lot of dissension, a lot of distraction.The new president is very plainly preoccupied with the Russian investigation, so the Russians have to be sitting back and looking at what they did and saying to themselves, “This was pretty effective.” …

Is there anything we’ve missed?You lived [through] this whole historic episode that we’ve been going through as a country.Any other points or any other stories from that period of time you think is important for the American public to understand about what we've gone through since 2015, basically?

This whole episode is a reflection of how the global cyberthreat is evolving, and the experience last year exposed a lot of the vulnerabilities that exist around political organizations, political figures and election infrastructure.It’s now up to this president to defend all these networks, all these systems and all these people from another cyberattack in the future.And it’s not necessarily just Russia.It could be other global powers.It could be other cybercriminals, bad actors.This episode reveals a lot, and hopefully we learned from it.My concern is that we don’t.

And your concern that we don’t because why?

Because my concern is that people now in power, people in a position to do something about what happened, need to be motivated to do so.And the statements coming from the current administration, to me, do not evidence sufficient alarm about what happened last year and the vulnerabilities that exist.That’s it.

One last thought I had.During the transition, did you have a very productive handoff to the incoming administration?

No.The incoming administration did not accept a lot of my recommendations about political appointees who should be kept on.These were people who were not “Political,” uppercase P.They happened to be political appointees, but they held vital jobs in National Security.Like the head of TSA, like, you know, the travel director for the secretary of Homeland Security, he was kept on, but not for very long.This transition—and I've been through three of them—was not as smooth as I had hoped it would be.

Some people have complained that there was a disinterest in a lot of ways in learning anything from the Obama administration about where situations lay and sort of what concerns had been.

I've been through three transitions.Through every transition, there's a certain amount of hubris with the incoming team.This one, 300 electoral votes, 360 electoral votes, I got this.So there's a certain amount of hubris, to a certain degree, the election is a repudiation of the outgoing administration.There was probably some of that in 2008-2009 when we were coming in.But I can tell you that there were a number of instances where, if somebody had a good idea in the outgoing administration, or there was a political appointee in the outgoing administration who had a particularly valuable job or said, “Hey, give me a chance,” we kept that person on, and it was definitely value-added.

With this incoming group, there seemed to be just basically a paranoia about doing any of that.And I think that that has actually hurt the flow and discourse of government.

Great. Thank you very much.

Latest Interviews

Get our Newsletter

Stay Connected

Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation

Koo and Patricia Yuen

Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding is provided by the Abrams Foundation; Park Foundation; the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Koo and Patricia Yuen. FRONTLINE is a registered trademark of WGBH Educational Foundation. Web Site Copyright ©1995-2025 WGBH Educational Foundation. PBS is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization.