Is sunlight the best counterintelligence technique? the effectiveness of covert operation exposure in blunting the Russian intervention in the 2020 U.S. election

ABSTRACT

In runup to 2020 U.S. elections U.S. intelligence agencies tried to prevent Russian covert operations from affecting the results. Various methods were used including the exposure of detected covert Russian activities. The question of the actual effects of this counterintelligence operation however remains open. This study examines the effects of the exposure strategy on target public using a novel method. I find strong evidence that U.S. intelligence agencies efforts to expose the Russian hand succeeded in blunting the effects of the targeted covert activities. This indicates that the exposure counterintelligence strategy is a potent tool for defanging covert foreign election interference/partisan electoral interventions.

Acknowledgements

For valuable comments and advice, the author wishes to thank Hovannes Abramyan, Haohan Chen, Rory Cormac and Israel Waismel-Manor. The author would also like to thank the Editor of Intelligence and National Security, Stephen Marrin, and the three anonymous reviewers, for all the very helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Sanger and Barnes, ‘U.S. Tried a More Aggressive Cyber Strategy’; Nakashima, ‘Fewer opportunities’.

2. Jamieson, Cyberwar; Ruck, et.al, ‘Internet Research Agency’; Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box.

3. Bush and Prather, ‘Foreign Meddling and Mass Attitudes’; Bush and Prather, Monitors and Meddlers; Goldsmith and Hurichi, ‘Does Russian Election Interference’; Levin, ‘A Vote for Freedom?’; Levin, ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?’; Tomz and Weeks, ‘Public Opinion and Foreign Electoral Interventions’.

4. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box; see also Bubeck and Marinov, Rules and Allies.

5. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box, 229.

6. Duch and Stevenson, The Economic Vote, 81–85.

7. Indeed, intelligence scholars who have studied past covert operations of various types have frequently found variations in the quality of their tradecraft and overall management by the intelligence agencies in question – even within the same intelligence agencies. See, for example, Prados, Safe For Democracy.

8. Barnea, ‘Filling the Void’.

9. For some key exceptions see Godson, Intelligence Requirements; Redmond, ‘The Challenges of Counterintelligence’; Lowenthal, Intelligence, chp.7; Prunckun, Counterintelligence Theory and Practice.

10. Codevilla, Informing Statecraft; Goodman, ‘Espionage and Covert Action’; Daugherty, Executive Secrets; Prados, Safe For Democracy; Johnson, National Security Intelligence; Cormac, Walton and Van Puyvelde, ‘What constitutes successful covert action?’.

11. Barnea, ‘Filling the Void’.

12. Wettering, ‘Counterintelligence: The Broken Triad’; Sibley ‘Soviet industrial espionage’.

13. Wege, ‘Iranian Counterintelligence’.

14. Shapiro, ‘Soviet Espionage in Israel’.

15. Pringle, ‘SMERSH’; Redmond, ‘The Challenges of Counterintelligence’, esp. 549–550.

16. Bury, ‘Finding Needles’.

17. Carnegie and Carson ‘The Spotlight’s Harsh Glare’. See also Nutt and Pauly, ‘Caught Red-Handed’.

18. Lillis, Bertrand and Atwood ‘How the Biden administration’; Zegart ‘The Weapon the West Used’.

19. See for example DOS 1982 ‘Soviet Active measures’; DOS 1986 ‘Active Measures’; DOS 1987, ‘Active Measures’.

20. Cull et.al, ‘Soviet Subversion’ 26–31.

21. ‘Smith Says Soviet Forged Threats’ New York Times August 7, 1984, Cull et.al ‘Soviet Subversion’, 30.

22. Andrew & Mitrokhin, ‘The Sword and The Shield’, 243; Jones, ‘Russian Meddling’.

23. For example, after receiving questions in its regard from some U.S. recipients, the FBI released a statement about one such Soviet forgery in January 1984, a letter by Reagan allegedly showing him to be a strong supporter of McCarthyism, merely declaring it to be fraudulent. However it did so without providing any information to the U.S. public about its foreign source or about its planned use as part of a Soviet covert electoral intervention. William Farrell and Warren Weaver ‘Briefing’ New York Times January 14, 1984. The first exposure of the Soviet hand behind this forgery, and it being part of its electoral intervention in the 1984 U.S. elections, seems to have only come as a brief reference in a wider U.S. government report on Soviet disinformation in general that was released in August 1986 – or a year and a half afterwards. DOS (1986), ‘Active Measures’,31.

24. Cull et.al ‘Soviet Subversion’, 32.

25. Michener, ‘Policy Evaluation’,184; Pozen, ‘Seeing Transparency More Clearly’.

26. Binder and Lee, ‘Making Deals in Congress’,63–64.

27. Pozen, ‘Freedom of Information’.

28. Roberts, ‘WikiLeaks: the illusion of Transparency’;McTague and Rao,‘Leaks’;Mabon, ‘Aiding Revolution?’.

29. For three examples see Ironmonger et.al, ‘An evaluation of the impact’; Anker et.al, Measuring the Effectiveness”; Young, et.al “‘Effectiveness of Mass Media Campaigns”.

30. Snyder et.al. ‘A meta-analysis’.

31. Snyder above, Snyder ‘Health Communication Campaigns’; Wakefield, Loken and Hornik, ‘Use of mass media campaigns’.

32. Hayes & Guardino, ‘The influence of foreign voices’.

33. See for example Saad, ‘Majority of Americans’.

34. For one recent example see Barnes and Sanger, ‘Russian Intelligence Agencies’.

35. Stephanie Murray ‘Putin: I wanted Trump to win the election’ Politico July 16, 2018; ODNI, ‘Assessing Russian Activities’; U.S. District Court v. Internet Research Agency.

36. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box.

37. Most Americans tend to react negatively to politicians who intentionally promote fabricated accusations about their political rivals – which may be one reason why most political candidates in the US (with one special exception) tended to leave the spreading of ‘fake news’ or even claims of dubious veracity to supposedly unaffiliated actors. See Stracqualursi and Sanchez ‘A History’.

38. This sample is significantly larger (by 17 to 34 per cent) then that used in 2016 U.S. election surveys that successfully detected a substantive effect of the 2016 Russian intervention. See Jamieson, Cyberwar; Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box.

39. Coppock and McClellan ‘Validating’.

40. This sample has 39.5 per cent Democrats, 30.5 per cent Republicans and 30 per cent Independents. A 2017 examination by Pew, based upon a survey of confirmed voters from voter files, estimates that in 2016 35 per cent of the electorate were Democrats, 31 per cent Republicans and 34 per cent Independents. Pew Report ‘An examination of the 2016 electorate’.

41. See for example Miller et. al., ‘The Russian 1996 Presidential Election’; Gibson and Long, ‘The presidential and parliamentary elections in Kenya’; Magalhães, ‘After the Bailout’.

42. Similarly, given the potential sensitivity of foreign election interference in the U.S. to American respondents, an IRB approval for all specific questions on it was of course needed.

43. Russia was also caught by U.S. intelligence trying to create fake news websites such as Peace Data, a Russian covert operation also exposed by U.S. intelligence agencies prior to the election (Dwoskin and Timberg, ‘Facebook takes down’). However, these websites were detected and shut down by the U.S. government shortly after their creation and before they gained any significant internet traffic. As a result, the exposure strategy was applied in this case to a method of Russian interference that was highly unlikely to ‘matter’ regardless of whether the shutdown of these websites was also accompanied by exposure or not. It was therefore not analysed here. Similarly, U.S. intelligence agencies caught Iran shortly before the elections trying to intervene against Trump by sending emails allegedly from a far right group (the Proud Boys) to U.S. email addresses. AFP, ‘US intelligence chief’. However, the known magnitude of this intervention at present (25,000 Iranian emails) was too small to plausibly have a significant effect – so the exposure strategy was unlikely to matter as well.

44. Morris and Fonrouge, ‘Smoking-gun email’.

45. Lenthang, ‘Alleged Hunter Biden sex tapes’.

46. Nakashima, ‘Fewer opportunities’.

47. Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box, 234–239.

48. Sides et.al, Identity Crisis, 22–23.

49. Ibid., 25–30.

50. DNI Report 2021, ‘Intelligence Community Assessment’ March 10.

51. 38 per cent very likely to be accurate, 35 per cent somewhat likely to be accurate, 15.4 per cent unlikely to be accurate and 11.6 per cent very unlikely to be accurate.

52. Results are similar when I exclude from the analysis Democratic party respondents, i.e., the most loyal and likely Biden voters (and therefore potentially the most open to information discrediting negative leaks about him). See the Appendix Section 6.

53. For example, according to the final results, had 42,918 votes overall shifted in the U.S. states of Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona towards Trump, the Electoral College would have been a 269–269 deadlock. A shift of another 27,996 votes in Maine’s second congressional district (won by Trump in 2016) would have sufficed for Trump to eke out a narrow 268–270 Electoral College victory.

54. Cowen, ‘Asking for a friend’.

55. Sanger and Barnes, ‘U.S. Tried a More Aggressive Cyber strategy’.

56. Carnegie and Carson, ‘The Spotlight’s Harsh Glare’; Otto and Spaniel, ‘Doubling Down’; Nutt and Pauly, ‘Caught Red-Handed’.

57. See for example Egloff and Smeets, ‘Publicly attributing cyber attacks’.

58. Jamieson, Cyberwar; Levin, Meddling in the Ballot Box.

59. The fact that some of those private actors (such as Crowdstrike) were paid contractors of the DNC probably further reduced the impact of the evidence they provided.

60. Shimer, Rigged, Chp.9.

61. Jamieson, Cyberwar, 154,160,162.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Dov H. Levin

Dov H. Levin is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Hong Kong. He has published extensively on the causes, effects and sources of public support (in the interveners public) for covert and overt foreign election interference/partisan electoral interventions- including a recent 2020 book on this topic in Oxford University Press “Meddling in the Ballot Box: The Causes and Effects of Partisan Electoral Interventions.”