CIA Says Putin Probably Directing Efforts To Discredit Biden

The Wash­ing­ton Post is report­ing on what is described as top-secret CIA assess­ment that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “prob­a­bly direct­ing” a Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tion direct­ed against the cam­paign of Demo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Joe Biden. Accord­ing to the report:

Sep­tem­ber 22, 2020  Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and his top aides are “prob­a­bly direct­ing” a Russ­ian for­eign influ­ence oper­a­tion to inter­fere in the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion against for­mer vice pres­i­dent Joe Biden, which involves a promi­nent Ukrain­ian law­mak­er con­nect­ed to Pres­i­dent Trump’s per­son­al lawyer Rudolph W. Giu­liani, a top-secret CIA assess­ment con­clud­ed, accord­ing to two sources who reviewed it. On Aug. 31, the CIA pub­lished an assess­ment of Russ­ian efforts to inter­fere in the Novem­ber elec­tion in an inter­nal, high­ly clas­si­fied report called the CIA World­wide Intel­li­gence Review, the sources said. CIA ana­lysts com­piled the assess­ment with input from the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency and the FBI, based on sev­er­al dozen pieces of infor­ma­tion gleaned from pub­lic, unclas­si­fied and clas­si­fied intel­li­gence sources. The assess­ment includes details of the CIA’s analy­sis of the activ­i­ties of Ukrain­ian law­mak­er Andriy Derkach to dis­sem­i­nate dis­parag­ing infor­ma­tion about Biden inside the Unit­ed States through lob­by­ists, Con­gress, the media and con­tacts with fig­ures close to the pres­i­dent. “We assess that Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin and the senior most Russ­ian offi­cials are aware of and prob­a­bly direct­ing Russia’s influ­ence oper­a­tions aimed at den­i­grat­ing the for­mer U.S. Vice Pres­i­dent, sup­port­ing the U.S. pres­i­dent and fuel­ing pub­lic dis­cord ahead of the U.S. elec­tion in Novem­ber,” the first line of the doc­u­ment says, accord­ing to the sources.

Read the rest here.

GIOR report­ing on Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tions direct­ed at the Novem­ber elec­tions include:

• In ear­ly Octo­ber we report­ed that Russia’s Inter­net Research Agency was attempt­ing to use social media accounts to boost the role of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries pro­mot­ed by QAnon.

• In ear­ly Octo­ber we report­ed that Face­book had removed a net­work of accounts tied to the Inter­net Research Agency crit­i­cal of Biden and his run­ning mate, Sen. Kamala D. Harris.

• Yes­ter­day we report­ed on a warn­ing by the US Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty that Russ­ian influ­ence actors are attempt­ing to pro­mote claims by Pres­i­dent Trump that mail-in vot­ing will lead to wide­spread vot­er fraud.