New York Review of Books
Russia: The Conspiracy Trap
Masha Gessen
Thomas Dworzak/Magnum Photos
Moscow, 2016
What's so terrible about Russia? Serious question.
Among the things that unite President Trump and his cabinet picks is their
propensity for lying. ProPublica recently offered a list of lies made by
Trump nominees in confirmation hearings in Congress, mostly under oath.
Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt lied when he claimed not
to have used a private email account as Oklahoma attorney general (Vice
President Mike Pence used one too, as governor of Indiana); Health and Human
Services Secretary Tom Price lied about a suspect stock purchase; Treasury
secretary Steven Mnuchin lied about his firm's history of profiting from the
housing crisis; Education Secretary Betsy DeVos lied that she was not
involved in her family foundation, which has supported anti-LGBT causes and
funded a variety of conservative think tanks and colleges, though tax
filings show she has been its vice president for seventeen years. And, as we
now know, Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied about contacts with the
Russian ambassador.
Lying to Congress is a criminal offense. But Pruitt was confirmed in a 52-46
vote, with two Democrats voting in favor; Price got confirmed 52-47;
Mnuchin's tally was 53-47; and even DeVos, whose utter lack of knowledge
about public education led two Republicans to vote against her, squeaked
through with a 50-50 vote broken by Vice President Pence. These affirming
votes took place despite the fact that it was clear before the decision that
the candidates had misled Congress-and despite the fact that each of them
supports policies that are deeply threatening to large numbers of Americans.
Lies about Russia are a different matter. Trump's national security adviser,
Mike Flynn, was forced to resign less than four weeks into the new
presidency after it emerged that he had lied to Pence about meeting with the
Russian ambassador; and Sessions, under bipartisan fire for having lied to
Congress about the same thing, now faces calls to step down.
I am, of course, merely pretending not to know what makes Russia so special.
For more than six months now, Russia has served as a crutch for the American
imagination. It is used to explain how Trump could have happened to us, and
it is also called upon to give us hope. When the Russian conspiracy behind
Trump is finally fully exposed, our national nightmare will be over.
A great many journalists and pundits have been convinced of the Russia
conspiracy since December, some since October, a few since July. That
conviction helps "connect the dots" as more and more dots seem to appear.
Every new story makes the evidence pile up, even if it later turns out to be
apparently unrelated-as in the case of the cybersecurity experts who were
arrested and charged with treason by Russian authorities in December. In
January The New York Times, Rachel Maddow, and a slew of other outlets
reported on rumors that the charges of treason stemmed from disclosures
about the Russian hacking of the US election. But a month later, when
Reuters reported that the arrests were the result of an unrelated
seven-year-old case, few other publications followed up on the story. The
fact is, the Russian justice system is so opaque and so corrupt that it is
virtually impossible to know why these men were arrested-but the arrests
have long since taken their place in the narrative.
The backbone of the rapidly yet endlessly developing Trump-Putin story is
leaks from intelligence agencies, and this is its most troublesome aspect.
Virtually none of the information can be independently corroborated. The
context, sequence, and timing of the leaks is determined by people unknown
to the public, which is expected to accept anonymous stories on faith; nor
have we yet been given any hard evidence of active collusion by Trump
officials. As a paragraph deep into a New York Times analysis noted on
Friday,
vigorous reporting by multiple news media organizations is turning up
multiple contacts between Trump associates and Russians who serve in or are
close to Mr. Putin's government. There have been courtesy calls, policy
discussions and business contacts, though nothing has emerged publicly
indicating anything more sinister..Former diplomats and Russia specialists
say it would have been absurd and contrary to American interests for the
Trump team to avoid meetings with Russians, either during or since the
campaign.
Given that the story has been driven by the intelligence community and the
media, it is perhaps unsurprising that each subsequent revelation creates
the sense of pieces falling into place. It builds like an old-fashioned
television series, dispensed in weekly episodes with no binge-watching
allowed. What remains from the earliest installments is not so much
information as mood. Take, for example, one of the earliest revelations: in
July an opinion piece in The Washington Post claimed that the Trump campaign
"worked behind the scenes" to block a platform amendment that would have
called for providing lethal aid to Ukraine-including weapon systems,
mortars, grenade launchers, ammunition, and other armaments. The article was
slightly misleading: it made it seem like Trump's people made the party
abandon a plank that would have called for maintaining or increasing
sanctions and lethal aid. In fact, the sanctions part of the plank stayed in
the platform-it was the lethal-aid amendment, a step that had hitherto not
been taken, even during the height of the Ukraine war in 2014, that was
tabled. The issue is far from a clear-cut one: few people in Washington,
whether Republicans or Democrats, are on record as favoring lethal aid.
Now, the Republican convention is back in the news because one of the
conversations the Russian ambassador had with Sessions, who was at the time
an adviser to the Trump campaign, occurred in Cleveland, at a diplomacy
panel timed to run alongside the convention. On March 2, USA Today reported
that two more members of the Trump campaign-J.D. Gordon and Carter
Page-spoke to the Russian ambassador at the same panel. When CNN picked up
the story, it reported that "Gordon said that he was a part of the effort
that was part of the Trump campaign to put some language in the GOP platform
that essentially said that the Republican Party did not advocate arming the
Ukrainians in their battle against pro-Russian separatists." Correspondent
Jim Acosta continued,
Of course, that was a big issue that was flaring up at the time. That effort
was ultimately successful. They were successful in having that language in
the Republican Party platform. I asked J.D. Gordon, 'Well, why is that? Why
did you go ahead and advocate for that language?' He said this is the
language that Donald Trump himself wanted and advocated for back in March at
the meeting at the unfinished Trump Hotel here in Washington, D.C. J.D.
Gordon said then-candidate Trump said he did not want to, quote, 'go to
World War III over Ukraine.' And so, as J.D. Gordon says, at the Republican
convention in Cleveland he advocated for language in that Republican Party
platform that reflected then-candidate Trump's comments.
He then briefly noted that Gordon denied that any inappropriate conversation
had occurred between him and the Russian ambassador.
The report sounded damning-unless one knew, of course, that the "language"
to which Acosta managed to refer four times in the space of thirty seconds
did not exist-no statement on Ukraine was inserted into the Republican
platform by the Trump campaign-and that the sentiment ostensibly ascribed to
candidate Trump falls squarely in the foreign-policy mainstream and was, in
fact, the position held by the Obama administration. The "meetings" that
sounded so sinister were in fact public encounters that occurred during a
panel and, later, a cocktail party-schmoozing, which is both the
ambassador's and campaign advisers' jobs. But all of Friday-evening punditry
on CNN and MSNBC was from that point on occupied with connecting the
imaginary dots of the Russian ambassador-Trump campaign cabal at the
Republican convention. CNN also ran with an unsubstantiated report that the
Russian ambassador is a "spy master," an outrageous assertion that mirrored
Russian propaganda about Obama's Moscow ambassador, Michael McFaul.
A later building block in the story, which has become its virtual
cornerstone, is the joint intelligence report on Russian interference in the
campaign, which was released in December and is, plainly, laughable. Is it
possible that there is a trove of yet-unleaked classified information that
proves that a Russian conspiracy existed, and succeeded in hijacking the
American election? Yes, it is. Is it also possible that a few, or many,
intelligence officials, who feel, understandably, both insulted by Trump,
who has openly and repeatedly denigrated the intelligence establishment, and
terrified of what he might do to the country, are using scant or
inconclusive evidence to try to undermine his credibility? Yes. What is
indisputable is that the protracted national game of connecting the
Trump-Putin dots is an exercise in conspiracy thinking. That does not mean
there was no conspiracy. And yet, a possible conspiracy is a poor excuse for
conspiracy thinking.
The most solid part of the story to date is the hack of the Democratic
National Committee, apparently carried out by people connected to Russian
intelligence. Hacking, releasing email, and spreading disinformation has
been a standard Russian strategy for a number of years. Domestically, these
tactics are used to discredit opponents of the regime. Internationally, they
are used-and have been used repeatedly in numerous European countries as
well as the United States-to disrupt and undermine public trust in Western
democracies. This strategy predates email and the Internet and even
contemporary Russia-it goes back to the cold war, when the Soviet Union
aimed to sow disinformation and build alliances with marginal political
players-perhaps not so much because they were the best possible conduits for
disruption as because they were the only ones Soviet spies could reach.
For most of its history, the strategy was a colossal waste of money and
human resources, probably because Soviet understanding of Western political
systems was exceedingly poor. Judging from the memoirs of Soviet defectors,
their masters imagined the West exactly as it was portrayed in Soviet
propaganda. In a popular 1984 miniseries called "TASS is Authorized to
Declare," for example, a heroic KGB officer exposes an American spy in
Moscow. The spy's handler, an American named John Glabb, not only organizes
pro-American military coups in small African countries but also traffics in
heroin, which he smuggles in the bodies of babies purchased from
impoverished families and killed for CIA purposes. Modern Russian spymasters
get their ideas about the West from the West itself-they are generally
convinced that the American political system is accurately portrayed by
House of Cards. If Russian disruption efforts were more successful during
the 2016 American election, it was not because the Russians have become so
much better at what they do or have finally developed a sophisticated
understanding of American politics-it is because American politics have come
to resemble the TV caricatures.
Trump and his entire campaign team are precisely the kinds of fringe
characters that Russians have traditionally cultivated, to no measurable
effect. Even the insiders on Trump's team were outsiders: Jeff Sessions was
seen by his Senate colleagues as a crank and an extreme outlier on
immigration and other issues; General Mike Flynn had been fired by the Obama
administration for insubordination that stemmed from his penchant for
conspiracy theories. Others, like foreign policy adviser Carter Page, had
never been allowed at the grown-up table before. One-time campaign manager
Paul Manafort, for all his supposed Republican/Washington credentials, was
basically a paid hack for a succession of the world's crooks. And Steve
Bannon, above all, had turned being a fringe character into a profession.
And then this campaign staffed with bottom-feeders won, and talk of Russia's
influence on the outcome-though the Kremlin itself by every indication seems
to have assumed a Clinton presidency-has finally reached the point of
pushing leading members of Congress to call for an investigation by a
special attorney. If a causal relationship between Russian interference and
Trump's 70,000-vote, three-county edge exists, the likelihood that such a
relationship can be proved is vanishingly small. Failing that, what might an
investigation find? Undoubtedly, it can find that Trump's associates lied
about their contacts with Russian officials-as they lie, habitually, about a
great many things. What makes the Russia lies worse than any other?
The answer is intuitive: Republicans in the House and Senate cannot be
compelled to call out the Trump administration's other lies-even when they
break the law. And they will do everything in their power to avoid having
to, since, as terrible as Trump is, his administration is the best chance in
years to push through some of their most far-reaching policy goals, from
dismantling health care to lowering taxes and reversing banking reforms. In
addition, their constituents voted for Trump, who will unleash a Twitter
firestorm in response to any slight, real or imagined. But the fear of being
seen as ignoring a primary threat to national security, indeed, as disloyal
to the country may, if the media buildup continues, force them to respond to
the allegations.
Russia has become the universal rhetorical weapon of American politics.
Calls for the release of Trump's tax returns-which the group Citizens for
Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) hopes to have subpoenaed as a
result of its lawsuit alleging the violation of the Emoluments Clause-are
now framed in terms of the need to reveal Trump's financial ties to Russia.
And the president himself is recapturing the campaign debate's "No, you are
the puppet" moment on Twitter, trying to smear Democratic politicians
Charles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi with Russia.
The dream fueling the Russia frenzy is that it will eventually create a dark
enough cloud of suspicion around Trump that Congress will find the will and
the grounds to impeach him. If that happens, it will have resulted largely
from a media campaign orchestrated by members of the intelligence
community-setting a dangerous political precedent that will have corrupted
the public sphere and promoted paranoia. And that is the best-case outcome.
More likely, the Russia allegations will not bring down Trump. He may
sacrifice more of his people, as he sacrificed Flynn, as further leaks
discredit them. Various investigations may drag on for months, drowning out
other, far more urgent issues. In the end, Congressional Republicans will
likely conclude that their constituents don't care enough about Trump's
Russian ties to warrant trying to impeach the Republican president.
Meanwhile, while Russia continues to dominate the front pages, Trump will
continue waging war on immigrants, cutting funding for everything that's not
the military, assembling his cabinet of deplorables-with six Democrats
voting to confirm Ben Carson for Housing, for example, and ten to confirm
Rick Perry for Energy. According to the Trump plan, each of these seems
intent on destroying the agency he or she is chosen to run-to carry out what
Steve Bannon calls the "deconstruction of the administrative state." As for
Sessions, in his first speech as attorney general he promised to cut back
civil rights enforcement and he has already abandoned a Justice Department
case against a discriminatory Texas voter ID law. But it was his Russia lie
that grabbed the big headlines.
The unrelenting focus on Russia has yielded an unexpected positive result,
however. Following Flynn's resignation, Trump designated Lieutenant General
H.R. McMaster, a thoughtful and highly respected military strategist, as his
national security adviser. And Fiona Hill, probably the most knowledgeable
American scholar of Putin's Russia, is expected to take charge of Russia
policy at the National Security Council. Hill has been a consistent and
perceptive critic of Putin, and a proponent of maintaining sanctions imposed
by the United States following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Both of these
appointments-and the fact that sanctions remain in place six weeks into
Trump's fast-moving presidency-contradict the "Putin's puppet" narrative (as
does the fact that Russian domestic propaganda has already turned against
Trump). But such is the nature of conspiracy thinking that facts can do
nothing to change it.
Imagine if the same kind of attention could be trained and sustained on
other issues-like it has been on the Muslim travel ban. It would not get rid
of Trump, but it might mitigate the damage he is causing. Trump is doing
nothing less than destroying American democratic institutions and principles
by turning the presidency into a profit-making machine for his family, by
poisoning political culture with hateful, mendacious, and subliterate
rhetoric, by undermining the public sphere with attacks on the press and
protesters, and by beginning the real work of dismantling every part of the
federal government that exists for any purpose other than waging war.
Russiagate is helping him-both by distracting from real, documentable, and
documented issues, and by promoting a xenophobic conspiracy theory in the
cause of removing a xenophobic conspiracy theorist from office.
March 6, 2017, 10:16 am
