All language subtitles for Agents.of.Chaos.S01E01.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.en

(CROWD CHANTING)

DONALD TRUMP: You know,
when I first heard that term,

I said "Ugh, that's so hokey."

The hierarchy of power
in Washington D.C.

is who can
raise the money.

and the special interest groups
control the money.

-The lobbyists.
-That's the swamp.

I didn't run to unify
Washington.

-PROTESTER: Asshole!
-Do something!

MATT GAETZ:
I ran to change Washington.

REPORTER: What has President
Trump done to drain the swamp?

CROWD:
Drain the swamp!

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

REPORTER: (SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

-(STATIC CRACKLES)
-(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

-(STATIC CRACKLES)
-(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

-(STATIC CRACKLES)
-(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

Donald Trump.

MARGARITA SIMONYAN: (IN ENGLISH)
My husband woke me up

and said,
"You're not gonna believe it,

but apparently,
Trump is winning."

And I thought, "God,
now they're gonna blame us."

(LAUGHS)

And I even posted that I think
that Russians should go out

on the streets
and carry an American flag.

Because somebody against whom
the whole establishment,

and all of the media,

and all of the deep state,
almost all of them, were,

and he still won
because the people liked him.

As a young person
who still believes in the values

that I was taught by Americans,
in an American school...

to me, it was very optimistic
to see that.

That it can actually
really happen, still.

That is how democracy
is supposed to work.

♪ ("RHAPSODY IN BLUE" BY
GEORGE GERSHWIN PLAYING) ♪

HILLARY CLINTON: I think
we know what we're up against.

We do, don't we?

DONALD TRUMP: She's guilty
of a very, very serious crime.

She should not be allowed
to run.

Hillary Clinton has some
explaining to do.

(REPORTERS CLAMORING)

I'm sick and tired of hearing
about your damn emails!

-Thank you. (LAUGHS)
-(CROWD CHEERING)

BERNIE SANDERS: You know?

REPORTER: Bernie Sanders
leading Hillary Clinton.

CROWD: (CHANTING)
Feel the Bern! Feel the Bern!

Bernie Sanders.
You know, I told him.

I said, "The election's rigged."

It was rigged!

"Here's another ballot!"
Throw it away, throw--

"Oh, here's one I like.
We'll keep that one."

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

You could put half
of Trump's supporters

into what I call
the "basket of deplorables."

TRUMP: Isn't this exciting?
Don't you love it? I love it!

What's more fun
than a Trump rally, right?

(CROWD CHEERING)

I made speeches
to lots of groups.

But did you have to be
paid 675,000 dollars?

That's what they offered.

-So, um...
-(CROWD LAUGHING)

This is the ultimate
reality show.

It's the Presidency
of the United States.

♪ (MUSIC INTENSIFIES) ♪

(CROWD CLAMORING)

-(YIPS)
-(EAGLE SQUAWKS)

...hacked the hell out of us.

-...the DNC hack...
-...hacking the DNC...

-...exposed by WikiLeaks...
-...and posted on WikiLeaks...

-Military and civilian...
-TRUMP: Our country has no idea.

-...agencies, well...
-Yeah, I doubt it. I doubt it.

...he'd rather believe
Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin, he called you
a brilliant leader.

Do you wanna be complimented
by that former KGB officer?

Well, I think
when he calls me brilliant,

I'll take the compliment, okay?

And every time
Russia's brought up, they say,

"Oh, Trump!"
What do I have to do with it?

ALEX GIBNEY: Okay,
I'm not gonna make you relive

the entire 2016 election.

It was too chaotic.
Too crazy. Too much.

But I am interested
in figuring out

this Trump-Russia thing.

What was that all about?

Vladimir Putin's plan to rule
the world?

A Democrat witch hunt
to take down Trump?

A Cold War spy game?

I've been trying for years
to answer those questions,

and every time someone
asked me

what this movie was about,
I'd say...

"Well, how much time
do you have?"

Fear. Money. Corruption.

I can't tell you the one thing
that explains

what Russia did to us
or what we did to ourselves.

All I can tell you
is what happened.

That's hard enough
when you're talking about

the most chaotic election
of our lifetimes.

And maybe for now,
that's one thing I will say.

For some politicians,
in Russia and America,

chaos isn't something to fear.

It's a way to get by.

Sometimes, with a little help
from your friends.

♪ (MUSIC CONTINUES) ♪

♪ (MUSIC TRANSITIONS
INTO ROCK RENDITION) ♪

Thank you very much.

(CROWD CHEERING)

♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪

(CAR HONKING IN DISTANCE)

♪ (MELLOW MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ALEX: The country spent years
telling itself stories

to make sense of 2016.

It started in the final days
of the Obama administration

with a report from
the US Intelligence Community.

REPORTER:
An American intelligence report

finds that Russia used
disinformation warfare

to try to interfere with
the 2016 presidential election.

One of the weapons
in the Kremlin's arsenal

was its state-run
news network, RT.

SIMONYAN: I read that report.

Well, I laughed my guts out.

They mentioned my name there
27 times.

It would be laughable
if it weren't that scary.

If the Intelligence Community...

of the most powerful country
in the world...

is that ignorant,
the world is in much trouble.

REPORTER 1: The FBI has
an open investigation...

REPORTER 2:
The House Intelligence Committee

issued seven subpoenas...

REPORTER 3:
...an active investigation...

REPORTER 2: This is
a pretty broad investigation,

they are following the money...

REPORTER 4: What next
on the Russian investigation?

REPORTER 2: ...so-called
Russian collusion...

REPORTER 4:
It'll now be handled by...

ALEX: There were too many
investigations to count.

The FBI, the Justice Department,
both houses of Congress.

Everyone wanted to know
what Russia had done.

But if anyone was gonna get
the goods,

it would be the team
put together

by the Special Counsel,
Robert Mueller.

ANDREW WEISSMANN:
After the announcement that

Rod Rosenstein had appointed
Bob Mueller,

a friend of mine sent me
an email that said: "Bye, bye!"

He knew that I'd worked with
Director Mueller twice before,

and he just assumed that I would
just go off and work with him.

♪ (MYSTERIOUS MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

People like to think of
the Special Counsel's Office

as a witch hunt,

but this is
just not a partisan issue.

Our report has one key finding.

Clear, unequivocal...

efforts by
the Russian government

to interfere with our election.

The issue that goes to the core
of our democracy is...

are we doing everything we can
to make sure

that Americans will decide
who is running this country?

Oh, so, the DNC knew
of the hack on April 19th.

But it wasn't reported
until The Washington Post...

ALEX: I started working
on the Russia story

at the suggestion
of the legendary reporter

and producer
Lowell Bergman.

We formed a team of reporters
and collaborators

from the US and Russia to take
on different parts of the story.

INTERVIEWER: Uh, did you
get hired by a firm that was--

that had a more
political interest?

No, but thank you.

ALEX:
But what exactly was the story?

We learned a lot of details
about election interference.

The trolling, the hacking,
and the alleged collusion.

What I couldn't figure out was,

how did these pieces
fit together?

Or even if they did.

The first piece of the puzzle
pointed us

toward a cyber trail
on the internet,

where a motley band
of Russian trolls

had been busy
making mischief on social media.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(ELECTRONIC BEEPING)

ALEX: The campaign was riddled
with disinformation,

which travels like quicksilver
on the internet.

So we sought out
Camille François,

who was engaged by the US Senate
to study the activities

of the infamous
Russian troll factory

known as
the Internet Research Agency,

or IRA.

CAMILLE FRANÇOIS: In 2016,
people didn't know

what a Russian troll was.

I was quite fascinated

by this new means
of controlling narratives.

My background is
in human rights,

and I was very concerned
with the way digital technology

was actually creating
new problems in human rights.

What's really interesting
with Russia,

it exemplifies a new trend

in governments using
the internet

to control and repress.

Members of the committee,
thank you

for having me here today.

We're here to discuss
the growing issue

of online imposters
and disinformation.

Targeting specific communities
at the right time

and with the right tactics

can have a catastrophic impact
on society

or on an election.

And I have seen the types
of impacts

that those disinformation
campaigns can have.

The IRA uses
what we call "persona."

A persona is simply an account

that's not who they say
they are.

They're really doing three types
of personas.

Fake people, like,
"Hi, my name is Jenna Abrams.

I am an American conservative."

She doesn't exist.
She's a fake person.

That's a fake persona.

Fake organizations.

"Hi, we are BlackMattersUS.

We are an organization dedicated
to fighting racism in America."

This organization doesn't exist.
It's a fake shop.

And finally,
through doing fake local media.

Like a newspaper that's based
in Baltimore

that has a title that
sounds like it could be real.

But it's not.
It's not a real newspaper.

It doesn't have
real journalists,

and it has zero office
in Baltimore.

They have this army of personas,

and together
they're gonna do campaigns.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

FRANÇOIS: What does all this
social media activity tell us

about what the IRA was doing
in the United States?

What is the story?

Initially, the IRA
was not focused

on the 2016 election.

The first thing that you see

is the IRA's seeking to control

the Russian
domestic conversation.

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

FRANÇOIS:
The first target of the IRA

really is
the Russian people themselves.

The IRA starts in 2013,
in St. Petersburg.

ALEX: To tell the story
of the troll factory,

we compiled hacked
and leaked materials

and spoke to former employees
and journalists

who had gotten inside.

MAN: (SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN
OVER PHONE)

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

ANDREI SOSHNIKOV: (IN ENGLISH)
The troll farm itself

is like, um, a Disneyland
for investigative journalists.

There is always something
going on there.

It's a very evil organization,

but it was very fun
to investigate.

JAVIER: When was the first time
you heard of this,

this thing that we've
come to call the troll factory?

In the year 2013,
I was the first journalist

to report about the troll farm.

(MOUSE CLICKING)

SOSHNIKOV: I've seen a post
on social media.

A woman told
about a very strange job,

and I decided
that I need to check.

So I went undercover.
I bought a new SIM card.

I created
a new social media profile.

And I came up with another name.

They rented this big building
on Savushkina Street 55.

I went to the interview,

and I was asked
just two simple questions:

"What's your attitude
towards Kremlin?"

And "What's your attitude
towards Russian opposition?"

That's how it worked.

(BEEPS)

WOMAN: (IN RUSSIAN)

(DOOR CLOSES)

SOSHNIKOV: I met another
investigative journalist there.

We know each other
since childhood,

and it was very difficult
to hide our laughs.

She said, "Oh, hi, Andrei.
Good to see you here.

You also looking for a job?"

"Yeah! I will write stuff
on the internet about Kremlin

and praise Putin
and stuff like this."

And she said, "Wow,
I will do the same thing."

(MACHINE BEEPS)

SOSHNIKOV: It shows
how unprofessional they were

on their first days

because they had two
investigative journalists...

in the building. Same time.

They had several levels.

Some doors has just a hashtag.

A special department
creating hashtags, maybe.

(WOMAN HUMMING)

They had two types of people,

-simple trolls and analytics.
-(BEEPS)

SOSHNIKOV: The job of analytics
is to create the agenda

for the troll.

You have to use these words
and these phrases

to promote our opinion.

A very short task, we called
them technical assignments.

SOSHNIKOV:
They were really interested

in the comments sections
of media websites.

WOMAN: (SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR: "Putin is good.
Putin is the best president.

If someone had doubts that
Putin is the best president,

then after the..."

SOSHNIKOV: And they had to send
their bosses pages of forums

with examples of their posts.

(WOMAN LAUGHING)

SOSHNIKOV:
I spent one day there.

I literally wrote the story,
uh, in the evening,

and the next morning,
it was online.

A very short story.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

SOSHNIKOV:
I thought they are amateurs.

And how people who were hired
from the streets...

could establish

such a sophisticated
disinformational campaign

against a strong
Western democracy?

Um, absurd.

ALEX:
It seemed absurd back then.

The trolls' skills just
didn't match their ambition

to move fast and break things.

So the people in charge
tried to scale up.

They boosted pay
to attract better employees

and brought in various outside
consultants to train them.

OLEG MATVEYCHEV: (IN RUSSIAN)

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ALEX: The trolls were building
a machine

for influencing conversations
on the web.

So what?
Every PR firm in the world

was doing the same thing
in 2013.

But the trolls wanted to do more
than monetize social media.

They used their network to help
the Russian government

in a war
against another country.

What they really did,
they did with Ukraine,

and Ukraine is the main victim.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

Ukraine is fascinating

because it is caught
between the West and Russia,

both politically and physically.

There's the eastern part,
which is more Russian,

and it's also
the wealthier part.

Russia has enormous
control there

because of oil and gas,
which Ukraine needs.

And so, there's this tug of war
about Ukraine

and whether it's gonna be

a Russian sphere of influence
or not.

FRANÇOIS: Before the IRA did
a major operation in the US,

Ukraine became, frankly, the lab

for all the latest and greatest

from Russia's
information operations.

♪ ("STATE ANTHEM OF UKRAINE"
PLAYING) ♪

(INDISTINCT VOICE
OVER LOUDSPEAKER)

Yanukovych was the pro-Russian,
pro-Putin president.

(SCATTERED APPLAUSE)

WEISSMANN: But he was going
to sign legislation

that would put Ukraine

further in the sphere
of Western influence.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR: "I believe
that we should push on

with our partnership
with the European Union.

It's an imperative."

Originally,
Yanukovych became president

with the promise of signing
an EU Association Agreement.

There was a lot
of political support

'cause it was gonna be good
for Ukrainian business.

It would have given them
freedom of movement

for their citizens, visa-free.

It would have given them,
uh, complete trade preferences.

It would have been a free,
prosperous,

increasingly European Ukraine.

Putin wakes up
in October of 2013

and decides that he has to move
very quickly to end that.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR: "Ukraine
is not our closest neighbor.

It's our fraternal nation."

So he offers Yanukovych
these big loans...

and Yanukovych tells
his citizens,

"We're gonna put this
on the back burner."

This is Ukraine's moment

to meet the aspirations
of its people

or to disappoint them

and risk descending
into chaos and violence.

It was political for Putin.

He was afraid he was losing
Ukraine to Europe

and the next step would be

that his own citizens
would want that, too.

ALEX:
Putin needed to show Russians

that Ukraine's turn
toward Europe was bad news,

a perfect opportunity
for the troll factory.

While the trolls tried to sway
public opinion,

Putin invited Yanukovych
to the Kremlin

for a friendly chat.

WEISSMANN: Rumors are that
Yanukovych was paid

a bloody fortune
under the table.

I mean, he lived this incredibly
opulent life

that you couldn't possibly live
on a government salary.

When he reneged
on the European deal,

there was this huge
popular uprising.

(SHOUTING IN UKRAINIAN)

(PROTESTERS CHEER)

PROTESTER:
(SPEAKING IN UKRAINIAN)

It started as peaceful protests
in December of 2013.

Those protests turned violent
in January of 2014.

(GUNSHOTS)

(PEOPLE SHOUTING IN UKRAINIAN)

Putin was encouraging Yanukovych
throughout this period to do

what he himself would have done
and has done in Russia,

which is to be very heavy-handed
on the street

against protesters, locking up
mass numbers of people.

(SHOUTING IN UKRAINIAN)

PROTESTER:

CROWD:

And he thought that
Yanukovych was a chump

to allow it to go on
as long as he did.

CELESTE WALLANDER:
Ukrainian security services,

possibly with some outside help,

began to shoot
at the protesters.

(GUNSHOT)

(PEOPLE YELLING IN UKRAINIAN)

(INDISTINCT CLAMORING)

WALLANDER: You've probably seen
the films of the bloodbaths

in-- in January of 2014.

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

TIMOTHY SNYDER:
In Ukraine, in 2013 and 2014,

people mobilized
for a very simple thing.

People, especially young people,
wanted to look forward

to a future with predictability

and the rule of law
and Europe in it.

That mattered to them enough

to go out on the street
and take risks.

And in the end, some of them
paid with their lives.

That's the story
of the revolution in Ukraine

which is thought
of as the Maidan.

VICTORIA NULAND:
The whole world is watching.

There is a way out for Ukraine.

It is still possible to save

Ukraine's European future.

EU finally managed to broker
a de-escalation agreement

that would constrain

Yanukovych's authoritarian
trends and power.

But he was
gonna stay in as president.

I have no doubt
after our meeting

that President Yanukovych
knows what he needs to do.

There was actually a plan
for Vice President Biden

to speak to Yanukovych.

I was supposed to be in
on that phone call,

taking notes.

And they said, "We can't find
President Yanukovych."

We all were like,
"Well, that's kind of strange."

We woke up the next morning
to find out

that Yanukovych had actually
fled to Russia.

And then,
the Ukrainians had a vote

to create an interim government.

The Russians were not happy
about this.

On the next day, I got a call
from the Situation Room

saying, "You need to come in
and see something,"

and it was the first movement
of Russian forces

invading Crimea,

which is a strategic part
of Ukraine for Russia.

Within 24 hours of Yanukovych
having run away.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

WALLANDER: And they managed
to cut off Crimea

from the mainland
within a couple days.

-(GUNSHOT)
-(DOG BARKING)

WALLANDER: The whole invasion
was done within a week.

ALEX: The invasion became a war
for Eastern Ukraine

with pro-Russian separatists
receiving support from Moscow.

From the start, the trolls
had a key role to play.

They created fake news websites,

which they used
to drive a wedge into Ukraine

and push the two halves
of the country apart.

Targeting Russian speakers
in Eastern Ukraine,

they portrayed the protestors
in the capital

as neo-Nazis trying
to seize power by coup d'état.

If you were an American
or a European

following the war in Ukraine,

and you were looking
at Facebook,

if you were on the left,
the Russians would be

telling you that Ukraine
was a fascist or a Nazi regime.

With the lack of peace
and stability

and the rise
of neo-Nazi hardliners,

many Jews are considering
fleeing the country.

SNYDER:
If you were on the far right,

the Russians would be
telling you

that this whole Ukrainian thing

was a part of a Jewish
international conspiracy

and the Ukrainian state
was just propped up

by Jewish oligarchs.

And of course, those two stories
don't go very well together,

but it doesn't matter.

People on the left
and people on the far right

are in their own
internet bubbles.

So, they learned
that you can do that.

And you can motivate
and de-motivate

by telling
contradictory falsehoods

that are targeted
to different audiences,

and by doing that,

get the overall result
that you want.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

SOSHNIKOV: They were preparing

the informational background
of these operations.

They created so many fake news
and videos,

like to say that, uh,

Ukrainian soldiers torture
people who speaks Russian,

to cover what was really
going on there.

(IN RUSSIAN)

FIGHTER: (IN RUSSIAN)

WALLANDER: I would watch
these videos

about, you know,
fascists in Ukraine, and Nazis,

and all this sort of
insane stuff,

and be like... (SCOFFS)
"No one could believe that."

And I was wrong.

I was insufficiently attuned
to how those Russian operations

could be persuasive
in the context of social media

if they were properly targeted.

People who worked
on the troll farm,

they changed history.

They really influenced
the situation.

ALEX: When the troll factory
manufactured its campaign

on the US election,

it used tools developed
in Ukraine.

A motive developed there, too.

Before Yanukovych fled,

the Russian government
was furious about the role

played by Americans
on the ground in Kyiv.

NULAND: We had a stream
of Americans

going out to Ukraine

to mediate between Yanukovych
and the protesters.

And the US ambassador
on the ground called me.

It was an open line.

I knew the Russians
were listening.

(OVER PHONE)

And at that point,
I used this barnyard epithet,

never thinking that the Russians
would put this out publicly.

In fact, they hadn't dumped
a phone call on the street

in 25 years.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

NULAND (OVER PHONE):
You know... (BLEEP) ...the EU.

-REPORTER: (SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)
-(BLEEP)

NULAND:
I did a great apologia tour,

called everybody.

It was pretty impressive
tradecraft.

The audio was,
uh, extremely clear.

(OVER PHONE) So, uh...

It sounds like they're playing
a game of chess,

uh, with the opposition leaders

as-- as the pieces
on that chess board.

(SPEAKING IN UKRAINIAN)

ALEX: The hack and release
of the Nuland phone call

was a new kind
of cyberattack

pointed at
the US State Department

and, by extension,
its former secretary,

Hillary Clinton.

Only a few years before,
Clinton had wondered out loud

whether Russia's 2012 election
would be rigged

in favor of Vladimir Putin.

Mr. Putin, like all tyrants,

faces a very challenging
kind of politics every day.

It's not that, you know,
democracy is-- is hard

and tyranny is easy,
or the other way around.

They're-- they're both hard.

They just have different kinds
of challenges.

In 2011 and 2012 in Russia,

there were parliamentary
elections in December,

and then there were
presidential elections

in the spring.

And the parliamentary elections
brought Putin's party

a majority in the parliament,

and the presidential elections
brought Putin back to power.

But in fact, his party only won
about 26 percent of the votes

and, in fact, Mr. Putin himself
didn't win enough votes

in the first round to actually
clear and be president

after one round of voting.
So everything was faked.

And everybody knew it.
And people did protest.

(PROTESTERS CHANTING IN RUSSIAN)

(INDISTINCT SHOUTING)

(PROTESTERS CLAMORING)

SNYDER: There were protests
in 99 Russian cities.

There were hundreds
of thousands of people

simultaneously on the street,

and the message
was a very simple one:

for free elections.

(CHANTING IN RUSSIAN)

(CHANTING)

(SHOUTING)

(CHANTING)

That was a crucial moment,
because it was the last moment

where, if you were Russian,
you could maybe still believe

that voting
might make a difference.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

VOTER: (IN RUSSIAN)

VOTERS: (OVERLAPPING)

ELECTION STAFF: (IN RUSSIAN)

-VOTER:
-STAFF:

VOTER:

STAFF:

-VOTER:
-STAFF:

VOTER:

(IN RUSSIAN)

(PROTESTERS CHANTING IN RUSSIAN)

There are plenty of Russians
who care about democracy.

There are plenty of Russians

who'd like to have
their votes counted.

There are plenty of Russians
who would like to have
the rule of law,

who would
like to have a free press.

Putin could have said,

"Yes, let's have
free elections."

But his reaction instead was
180 degrees the opposite.

-(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)
-(PROTESTERS CLAMORING)

(IN RUSSIAN)

SNYDER:
Putin's reaction was to say,

"All of these protesters
are foreign agents.

They've all been inspired by

the American Secretary of State,
Hillary Clinton."

(HILLARY CLEARS THROAT)

We do have serious concerns

about the conduct
of the elections.

(IN RUSSIAN)

NULAND: Putin was furious,

because he believed that
it couldn't possibly be the case

that the Russian people

didn't like
what he was offering.

It had to be inspired
from the outside.

(IN RUSSIAN)

WALLANDER: He blamed her
publicly for the protests...

and also, her foreign policy
was very tough on Russia.

The Russian foreign policy elite
understood

that if she were elected
president of the United States,

it would be possibly
even tougher,

and they didn't want that.

(IN RUSSIAN)

TRUMP (OVER PHONE): Look, Putin
is a smart, calculating guy,

you know, just, uh-- he's--

we're talking about
a different league of--

I don't know
if it's street smarts

or intelligence or whatever...

ALEX: Even before 2016,

Putin had a big fan
in Donald Trump.

In Ukraine, Putin had done
the unthinkable.

He had annexed the territory
of another country,

something that hadn't been done
in Europe since World War II.

But for Trump, Putin's moves
were a sign of strength.

TRUMP (OVER PHONE):
Ukraine, you know,

it's not our backyard.
And it is his backyard.

Just look at the way
he did Syria.

Look at what's going on
with Iran,

where Russia's backing Iran,
and big-league backing Iran.

I mean, it is absolutely insane
what's happened to this country

over the last four
or five years.

ALEX: Small wonder that,
in Russia,

Trump's announcement that
he was running for president

got rave reviews.

REPORTER: (IN RUSSIAN)

I was over in Moscow
two years ago...

TRANSLATOR:
(TRANSLATING IN RUSSIAN)

I would be willing to bet
I would have

a great relationship with Putin.
It's about leadership.

Based on what?
You're two macho guys? I mean...

ALEX: Trump's attitude
towards Putin

was part of a different kind
of game.

From the beginning,
the only consistent principle

of Trump's presidential campaign

was that you never knew

what would come out
of his mouth next.

(CROWD CHEERS)

No, it's so great.
This Twitter--

This Twitter,
Facebook, is so great

because when they lie
on television,

I type out, you know,
ding, ding, ding---

I'll do it myself.

Ding, ding, dong, doong, ding.
Press.

And they go,
like 12 seconds later,

"We have breaking news
from Donald Trump.

Here's the story--"
It's the craziest thing.

ALEX: Being an agent of chaos
was part of Trump's brand.

The more chaos, the better.

And I said, "Somebody
should run against John McCain."

-FRANK LUNTZ: He's a war hero.
-He is a war hero--

LUNTZ: Five and a half years
in a POW camp.

He's a war hero
'cause he was captured.

I like people
that weren't captured, okay?

-I hate to tell you.
-(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

JOHN PODESTA:
He made the disparaging comments

about John McCain.

For virtually anybody else,

that would have been
a total career ender.

And yet, he seemed to both
be able to absorb that,

bounce off it, uh,

and actually, to some extent,
strengthen from it.

If I didn't have
a big speaker system

in terms of my mouth,

but the people
that listened to it,

and Twitter, at realDonaldTrump,
by the way, but--

(CROWD CHEERING)

FRANÇOIS: You know, people ask,
"Was the IRA pro-Trump?"

I think that's
a tricky question.

The IRA was anti-America.

In general, they were interested

in any message that weakens

the democratic institutions
of the US.

"Create chaos"
was the primary goal.

Weakening Hillary's messages
and position and identity

and amplifying
Donald Trump's campaign

is a good means
to create this chaos.

I think the target is trust.

ALEX: Trust is a funny thing.

So hard to earn,
so easy to lose.

If the US system
depends on trust

in democratic institutions,

who benefits if Americans
lose that trust?

TROLL ACTOR:
Is it Vladimir Putin?

Oh, my gosh, I--
I can't believe it.

ALEX: In Russia, Putin has built
a political system

that depends
on personal loyalty.

Putin can claim that
the trolls didn't work for him.

That's true.

But they do his bidding

because they work for someone
he trusts to serve him.

Literally.

He is Yevgeny Prigozhin,
a former hot dog salesman

who worked his way
up the Kremlin food chain

and earned the nickname
"Putin's Chef."

WALLANDER: It didn't surprise me
that Prigozhin had been

the source of funding for
the Internet Research Agency,

given that
he had been involved in

some other
favored Putin operations.

He was a go-to guy.

REPORTER: This is a very
powerful Russian businessman

who allegedly is very close
to Vladimir Putin.

Behind a troll factory operating
out of St. Petersburg.

(RUSSIAN NEWSCASTERS
OVERLAPPING)

ALEX: Prigozhin is well-known
in Russia

for his close ties to Putin.

But his hidden web
of business relationships

is hard to penetrate.

He wouldn't speak to us
and refuses most interviews.

When he does talk,
he denies any wrongdoing.

To solve the mystery
surrounding the man,

we sought out
the former cop turned journalist

who's been tracking Prigozhin
for years.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER OVER RADIO)

DENIS KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

♪ (UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

JAVIER: Have you ever eaten
at BlinDonald's?

(CHUCKLES)

You should try it.
It's very tasty.

He also had
this famous restaurant

called Russkiy Kitsch.

All the Russian stereotypes
were gathered in one place.

It was just a museum
of Russian stereotypes.

And also he had some
luxury restaurants.

ANDREY ZAKHAROV: (IN ENGLISH)

SOSHNIKOV: Many Western leaders
visited St. Petersburg.

There is one famous picture,
for example,

of Yevgeny Prigozhin
and George Bush.

KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

JAVIER: Have you ever met
Yevgeny Prigozhin?

Yeah. I met him several times.

During dinners with Putin
because he usually serves them.

(CAMERA CLICKS)

JAVIER: What is he like,
out of curiosity?

SIMONYAN: I don't know.

He's the man who serves
nice food,

and you can ask him,
"What is this made of?"

And he says, "It's veal."

JAVIER: Is the food good?

Yeah. The food is good.
The food is good.

ZAKHAROV: (IN ENGLISH)

(IN RUSSIAN)

REPORTER:

ALEX: Prigozhin kept failing up.

After delivering
subpar school lunches,

he was mysteriously awarded

bigger and bigger
government contracts

for services
including construction,

sanitation, and utilities.

Investigators discovered
his ties

to a web
of hundreds of enterprises,

loosely connected
to a holding company

owned by Prigozhin
and his mother, called Concord.

Concord eventually got
lucrative catering contracts

for the Russian armed forces.

(LAUGHTER)

Concord is very sophisticated
and big networks of companies

under control
of Yevgeny Prigozhin.

He receives lots of money
from public procurement

and then he can invest
this money wherever he wants.

He wants to establish
a troll farm? Okay.

He wants to establish
a private military company?

Okay.
There's always money for that.

(IN RUSSIAN)

WALLANDER:
Prigozhin rose with Putin.

Owes his position,
his wealth, his protection,

to his relationship with Putin.

And those are the people
who matter in Putin's Russia.

Someone who really needs
to deliver,

because if you don't deliver,
all that wealth

and all that power

and all that protection
goes away.

It makes perfect sense

in terms
of mitigating vulnerability

and keeping control
of an operation.

NULAND: Putin will use folks
over whom he has influence.

(IN RUSSIAN ACCENT) You do
a little bit of this for me,

and we will do
a little bit of that for you.

(IN NORMAL VOICE)
And particularly, if they're not

part of the formal
intelligence apparat,

then he has deniability
when things go wrong.

Putin has developed
what I would call

-the franchise model.
-(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

That also gives you
a thousand flowers blooming.

You can try lots
of different things,

throw lots of spaghetti
on the wall,

and see what's effective.

-(LAUGHTER)
-ALEX: Some projects,

like the troll factory,
generate political support.

Others take a more
physical approach

to doing the Kremlin's
dirty work.

(INDISTINCT RADIO CHATTER)

KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

(IN RUSSIAN)

(CAMERAMAN CHUCKLING)

KOROTKOV:

SOLDIER: (IN RUSSIAN)

(CHUCKLES)

ZAKHAROV: (IN ENGLISH)

KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

ALEX: It's easy to see
why Prigozhin was so angry.

Korotkov's reporting exposed
how Prigozhin

used disinformation
from the troll factory

to soften the ground
for military operations

carried out by his Wagner forces
in Ukraine.

KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

WOMAN: (IN RUSSIAN)

(MAN SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY)

FRANÇOIS:
The St. Petersburg trolls say,

"What we're really doing here
is geopolitical marketing.

Russia's a brand, and we need
to defend our brand."

So, the fact that the IRA
is focused

on the rest of the world,

and not just Russia,
comes in quite quickly.

VITALY BESPALOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

FRANÇOIS:
Some of the specialists

were pretty funny.

And they were using
pop culture references a lot

to build an audience
and to gather followers.

There were definitely things

that they would steal
and rebrand,

and there's stuff that's
original IRA creation.

(CHUCKLES)

♪ (DRAMATIC MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

Obama chmo.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

BESPALOV:

It's not all overtly political.

Some of it starts
as wacky and fun.

♪ ("SPIDERMAN" BY ALEX WASTEN
PLAYING IN RUSSIAN) ♪

SOSHNIKOV: The guy
in the Spiderman costume,

running around the streets
of St. Petersburg

and harassing people,

saying rude things to people.

And in the end,
it appears he's Barack Obama.

(SPEAKING RUSSIAN)

(PUNCHING SOUND EFFECTS)

♪ (SONG CONCLUDES) ♪

Some people who worked
for the IRA were thinking,

"I signed up for a job

in which I was just basically
doing digital content.

And I woke up in some
James Bond espionage shit."

BESPALOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

(COMPUTER BEEPS)

BESPALOV:

FRANÇOIS: They start
Project Translator,

which is the IRA's department

that's focused on the US.

It's trying to figure out
what types of narratives work

in the US.

♪ ("AMERICA"
BY SIMON & GARFUNKEL PLAYING) ♪

FRANÇOIS: The entire strategy
is to influence

by pretending to be American.

♪ "Kathy," I said as we boarded
A Greyhound in Pittsburgh... ♪

And the program coordinators
took trips

to the US
and to very specific cities.

♪ It took me four days
To hitchhike from Saginaw ♪

♪ I've gone
To look for America ♪

♪ Laughing on the bus
Playing games with the faces ♪

♪ She said the man
In the gabardine suit ♪

♪ Was a spy ♪

♪ I said, "Be careful
His bowtie is really a camera" ♪

FRANÇOIS:
They're not Russian spies,

but they do
intelligence-gathering missions

in order to better tailor
their influence campaign.

Because the IRA starts
with a focus

on controlling the Russian
domestic conversation,

it's really good at VKontakte.

It's kind of the Facebook
of Russia.

They quickly...
(CHUCKLES) ...realize that,

if we're going to bring this
into America,

we're not gonna go very far
with VKontakte.

(BEEPING)

FRANÇOIS: Regarding Facebook,
we know that the IRA had pages,

it had profiles.

We know a lot
of what the IRA did on Twitter.

We know they liked YouTube.

We also know that the IRA
came to love Instagram.

We know that they used Reddit.

We know
that they used Pinterest.

They really were constantly
testing new platforms

and adjusting their strategies.

This is Jenna Abrams.

On the face of it,
she is a woman in her mid-30s

and she claims she lives
on Main Street, USA.

But of course,
she's not a real person.

When Jenna tweets,

it's actually a team
of specialists in St. Petersburg

who are crafting this persona
and thinking,

"What should Jenna
be saying today?

Is it-- Is it a racist tweet,

or is it, like,
a Kim Kardashian joke?"

And they create this sort of
mix of pop culture references

and damaging
political commentary.

She was mostly designed to speak
to conservative audiences.

And she has quite a lot
of followers online.

She has about 70,000 followers
on her Twitter.

So she is in a position

to actually shape
the political discourse

because of how well
she has embedded herself

within the fabric of
American political discussions.

That is also how she managed

to get into actual
mainstream media.

People would say,
"Yes," like, you know,

"Political activist Jenna Abrams
said on the internet..."

Of course, they had no idea

that there was no such person
as Jenna Abrams

and this was not a real
conservative American activist

from Main Street, USA.

They used social media
to talk to people directly

in private messages.

They used social media
to contact campaign officials

that they were having
conversations with.

They also used social media
to talk to activists.

We have this idea
that all the content

that the troll put out was fake
or wrong or bad,

but, you know, the trolls
also amplified content

that they've stolen
from elsewhere,

which is things that people
actually believed in

and resonated with.

Before the election,

they were focused
on specific issues.

And they realized that,

if you wanted to make
those issues divisive

and hurtful for America,

you needed to have a hand
in both sides of the issue.

They're designing conflict

between polarized groups
in America online,

but also offline.

And so, they conduct
protests in the US.

(PROTESTERS CLAMORING)

FRANÇOIS:
When they organize a protest,

they reach out to one group,

and make sure that
on the other side of the street,

there's another group

who's gonna do
the exact opposite position.

All these things are instruments
of white supremacy.

FRANÇOIS: Online, when they talk
about immigration, for instance,

they encourage messages

that are inflammatory
against immigration.

But they also encourage,
in the same stroke,

pro-immigration messages
and campaigns.

And then, they have
an anti-immigration group

do a demonstration,

and a pro-immigration group

do a demonstration
on the very same street,

on the same day.

REPORTER: The anti-Muslim
protesters were responding

to an event called
"Stop Islamization of Texas."

It was organized
by a Facebook group

named Heart of Texas,
generated by Russia.

Posts on the Facebook event page
threatened to, quote,

"Blow this place up."

FRANÇOIS: They're designing
for violence.

They've done their research,

and so the content they curate
and how they behave online

is unfortunately a reflection
of how polarized

the actual online political
conversation was at that time.

Of course they picked
the most egregious parts

of the content
and the most divisive ones,

but they're not injecting
in that bloodstream

anything that
wasn't already there.

They're really holding a mirror
to our face.

ALEX: It's hard to look
in the mirror.

It's even harder when you
don't like what you see.

White power!

ALEX: The trolls had spent years

tracking the divisions
in American society.

They knew that immigration
and race

were two
of our deepest wounds.

PROTESTERS:

Hands up! Don't shoot!
Hands up! Don't shoot!

ALEX: Their fake personas
exploited the very real horror

of police violence
against African Americans.

-ERIC GARNER:
Don't touch me, please.
-(BLEEP)

-Don't touch me.
-(BLEEP)

ALEX: On the anniversary
of the brutal killing

of Eric Garner
by the New York City Police,

the trolls tried to exploit
Garner's memory

to call on Americans not to vote
to reform the system

but to tear it down.

FRANÇOIS: If you take a group
like BlackMattersUS,

it had a page on Facebook,

but also a Twitter account.
It had a website.

They were slowly gaining
influence and traction.

And they became key assets

used to manipulate
American audiences.

When they target
the Black community in the US,

they craft messages saying,
"Hey, we shouldn't vote."

ALEX: There's nothing
more undemocratic

than convincing people
not to vote.

But for the trolls,
voter suppression

was a pragmatic strategy
intended to hurt Clinton.

And it may have worked.

In Detroit, Michigan,

a city dominated
by black Democratic voters,

75,000 people who had turned out
for Obama, stayed home in 2016.

Clinton lost
that key swing state

by only 10,000 votes.

(BEEPING)

JAVIER: In terms of trolling,
was it effective?

You're asking me a question.
"Whether there is life--

If there is life on Mars,
do you think they have babies

after nine months of pregnancy
or 12?"

I don't know
if there's life on Mars.

How can I possibly think of
how they give birth? (CHUCKLES)

I don't know what these kids
thought or didn't think,

or why they worked there,

because I don't know
if they ever did.

(IN RUSSIAN)

BESPALOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

REPORTER: (IN RUSSIAN)

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

(IN RUSSIAN)

(AUDIENCE APPLAUDS)

(IN ENGLISH) I don't know
whether it was done or wasn't.

But, uh, apparently,

even the people
who think it was done

see it as
a hugely ineffective operation.

FRANÇOIS: It's not a simple
answer to just assess the impact

on the result of the vote.

It's not something
you can just compute.

We know the IRA was pleased
with themselves,

but we also know that
they had all the incentives

to celebrate this as a victory.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)
...Donald Trump.

FRANÇOIS: We know
from the Senate report

that when election night
came through,

they uncorked champagne,
and toasted,

saying that they had
"made America great."

How do you evaluate

whether the IRA was a success
or not?

If you ask that, you have to
ask yourself, like,

"Who's the audience of the IRA?"

They also had
internal stakeholders.

The moral panic that unfolded

around Russian trolling
in America

in itself is a strategic win
for the organization.

ALEX: After the election,
a source provided us with chats

from inside
Pregozhin's organization

in which key executives
discussed the best way

to promote the accomplishments
of the trolls' work in the US.

The reports boasted
their numbers state by state.

(REPORTER SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR:
"The Heart of Texas Group,

the largest internet resource
on the theme of secession.

It had an audience
of about 300,000 people.

-(REPORTER SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)
-TRANSLATOR: Atlanta.

African Americans make up
54 percent of its population.

Our Williams and Kalvin resource
had 123,000 subscribers."

(REPORTER SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR:
"BlackMattersUS dot com

had more than
500,000 subscribers."

(REPORTER SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN)

TRANSLATOR: "Company work
influenced the opinions

of citizens in swing states.

Florida, Pennsylvania,
Wisconsin.

Trump received
59 electoral votes."

ZAKHAROV: (IN ENGLISH)

KOROTKOV: (IN RUSSIAN)

♪ ("SUMMER"
BY MIKE NAUMENKO PLAYING) ♪

FRANÇOIS: In 2016,
you still see that the IRA

is a strategic blind spot
in America's understanding

of what really happened
with the election.

We want to think about it
in terms of volume, right?

Like, "How much did they troll?"

The thing
that's more fascinating

is to see them experiment

with different techniques
of trolling.

How does it look like to do this
trolling on different platforms?

How does it look like
to do this trolling hand-in-hand

with hacking information

and more serious
cyber operations?

There's no evidence to suggest
that the IRA

ever did the hacking themselves,
or, frankly, was able to do so.

So it bears the question,
who's doing the hacking

and how closely
does the IRA coordinate

with the hackers
on the other side?

ALEX: The troll operation
was ambitious.

It lasted for years
and had clear goals.

But during the campaign,

the trolling operation
was almost invisible

to those Americans
who were tasked

with protecting the country.

The national security experts
inside the White House

were focused on a different
kind of internet threat.

But instead of being written
in memes,

it was written in code.

(BEEP)

REPORTER 1:
The hacking of Democratic
National Committee emails,

experts say,
by the Russian government...

REPORTER 2: As you know,
somebody hacked
into the DNC computer...

REPORTER 3:
The latest stolen email...

REPORTER 4:
Another batch of stolen emails,

-published today...
-REPORTER 5: Hacked emails

and other information.

REPORTER 6:
...the avalanche of emails

that continue to come out.

REPORTER 7:
We have new details now

on that email hack at the DNC.

REPORTER 8: ...inside look
at the machinations

of the Democratic Party machine
are all online

for the world to see.

(BEEPING)

ALEX: Would you walk me through
the hack into the DNC in 2016?

MICHAEL DANIEL: Sure.

Imagine that you are
Russian intelligence services

trying to get access
to the DNC network.

The first thing you might try
to do is get someone to the DNC

to give you their username
and password,

so you can log into the network
using those stolen credentials.

(BEEPING)

DANIEL: And then,
what you're going to do

is reconnaissance.

What does this network
look like?

What kind of security software
is it running?

And, based on that,
you will customize malware

that you will install
on that system.

They had a--
a particular malware product

we knew as X-Agent.

They could do screenshots
of what you were doing.

They could do keystroking.

You're sitting there,
typing on your computer,

and someone's literally
seeing it.

It's coming up on their screen

as if it's coming up
on your screen.

DANIEL: You're gonna begin
moving through the network

to other machines and servers,
looking for information.

And then you will extract that
from the network

without being detected.

Maybe a network that you're
trying to get into

has a rule on its firewall
that says,

"Yeah, if it's an IP address
from Russia, maybe not."

So then what you might try
to do is connect to...

probably to something here
in the United States.

And then use that to connect
to another server

and maybe to another server,
and from there,

you're gonna move it back

to wherever you are conducting
your operations from.

Most of the advanced actors
out there,

they use a combination
of off-the-shelf

commercial tools that you can
buy from other criminal groups

and custom malware
that they write themselves.

Sometimes these tools,
if they're highly customized,

that's almost like a fingerprint
for, you know, malicious actors,

and it's very hard to fake that.

And in this case,

when we assembled
all of that information up

and you looked at the potential
alternatives and other things...

the most likely result was that
it was in fact the Russians

carrying out those operations.

ALEX: Using warrants
and open source tools,

an FBI cyber unit identified

the fingerprints
of Russian servers

and tracked Russian operators,
in real time,

on their networks
and through social media.

Emails with fake links were sent
by Aleksey Lukashev.

Nikolay Kozachek,
callsign "Cossack,"

rented servers in Illinois
and Arizona.

Artem Malyshev installed
an updated version of X-Agent.

Ivan Yermakov burrowed
into the flimsy security systems

of the Democratic Party
networks,

then built digital tunnels
to exfiltrate troves of data.

All told, they harvested

hundreds of thousands
of documents,

including fundraising records
and opposition research.

But stealing secrets
was nothing new.

DANIEL: Espionage is part
of international relations.

It always has been,
and it always will be.

We conduct espionage as well,
across the world.

We are looking for
and collecting information

and bringing that back.

And so as a government,

you try to prevent as much
espionage from happening,

but you don't really get
your nose out of joint

when-- when it occurs,
because that's the part

of the normal
international relations process.

♪ (SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MAN 1: (IN RUSSIAN)

MAN 2: (IN RUSSIAN)

MAN 1:

ALEX: For years, countries have
silently spied on each other.

Sometimes things got violent,

but that was mostly
in the movies.

(IN RUSSIAN)

ALEX: When the internet
came along,

spy agencies got
into the hacking business,

but the old rules
mostly still applied.

Armed forces fought wars,

while intelligence services
just stole secrets.

DAVID HICKTON: Those of us
who are my age remember the KGB.

Or, if they watch television,

they remember
the parodies of it.

In Maxwell Smart,
it was called KAOS,

and in James Bond,
it was called Spectre.

(ALARM BLARING)

But it's important to talk
about two spy agencies

in Russia today.

♪ (MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

DANIEL: There's the GRU,

which is
the intelligence service

that works
for the Russian military.

And then there's the SVR.

Typically,
the SVR is focused more

on what we would consider
traditional espionage.

INTERVIEWER: More like the CIA?

More like the CIA, correct.

WALLANDER:
The SVR is much more

of a traditional
foreign intelligence service.

It runs its own agents
that serve abroad, undercover,

whether at embassies
or as private citizens.

And it's an intelligence
collection operation.

Its job is more to watch
and collect. Not to act.

The GRU
is military intelligence.

So, to the extent it collects,

it collects more on
American defense capabilities,

on conflicts.

The GRU had been sent in
early in Syria.

The GRU had been one
of the lead agencies

in the intervention in Ukraine.

I was told that the GRU
is a little sloppier

than some of the other
Russian intelligence services.

(SHOUTS IN RUSSIAN)

(CHANTING IN RUSSIAN)

DANIEL: Prior to 2014,

if you discovered the Russians
in a network,

uh, they tended to vanish
like ghosts.

They're very quiet,
they're very stealthy.

They have excellent tradecraft.

Uh, but starting in 2014,

they actually became
much more aggressive.

I think it was a broader shift
in Russian strategic thinking

about how aggressive
they wanted to be with the West,

and the United States
in particular.

And the GRU
is a reflection of that.

And it's the GRU
that carries out

more of the activities
that actually generate

an effect in the physical world.

The GRU used
the Ukraine invasion in 2014

as a cyber playground...

including a power grid attack
in December 2015.

ALEX:
Two days before Christmas,

the lights went out
in Western Ukraine.

In a display
of Russian cyber power,

the GRU hacked
into the control systems

of the Ukrainian power grid
and commanded

distribution centers
to shut themselves down...

CONTROL WORKER 1: (IN RUSSIAN)

CONTROL WORKER 2: (IN RUSSIAN)

ALEX: ...leaving more
than 200,000 people

without electricity.

UKRAINIAN CITIZEN: (IN RUSSIAN)

DANIEL: The GRU obviously felt
like they had a greater

degree of freedom operating
in Ukraine than in other places.

ALEX: Nothing was off limits
for the GRU.

A year earlier, it had caused
chaos by hacking

into voting computer systems
during the election

to replace President Yanukovych.

The Russians actually hacked
into the main server

and, uh, created an outcome
in which a very minor

nationalist candidate
was portrayed as the winner.

And they actually broadcast it
on their evening news.

(IN RUSSIAN)

SNYDER:
Fortunately, the Ukrainian state

caught up with that.

They manually counted,
they got the right result out.

But imagine if that had worked.

(EXPLOSION)

SNYDER: Russia was telling
the West over and over again,

"Ukraine is a bunch of fascists.

We have to intervene
to defend civilization

against all of these Nazis
in Ukraine."

And then you pick out a fascist,
and you claim

that he's won
the presidential election?

I mean, even if that had only
worked for a few days,

imagine how that
would have affected

our impression of Ukraine.

ALEX: The cyberattack
that caught the eye

of US authorities
was an intrusion

into a nuclear reactor
in Ukraine

owned by a Pennsylvania company,
Westinghouse.

Marked by the digital
fingerprints of the GRU

and the potential dangers posed
by a nuclear hack,

the strike attracted
the attention

of federal prosecutor
David Hickton.

Westinghouse...

is the designer
of about 50 percent

of the nuclear reactors
in the world.

So, our larger concern

is how many Chernobyls
do you want to have?

Because someone is stealing
the technology

and building
the nuclear reactor backwards.

ALEX: Along with the FBI,
he started watching

the GRU's activities
very closely.

We opened up a criminal case
in December 2014,

which ultimately became
"Fancy Bear."

-ALEX: Sorry, I-- I'm gonna
interrupt you for a second.
-Sure.

ALEX: From a straightforward
point of view,

who is Fancy Bear?

-(LAPTOP BEEPING)
-(MOUSE CLICKING)

DANIEL: Fancy Bear
is a Russian hacker group.

You know, the dudes from that
intelligence organization.

Cybersecurity experts
will attach a adjective

to the word "Bear"

for any group associated
with the Russian government.

And it's "Kitten" for any group
connected to Iran.

ALEX: Fancy Bear was the name
for hackers from the GRU.

Fancy Bear liked to show off.
It didn't hide its tracks.

Not surprising for a spy group
whose logo is a bat

with its wings across the world.

For the GRU, it's like,
how much effort do you put

into obscuring
what you're doing?

How good is the disguise kit?

Is it just kind of glasses
with the funny nose?

Is it just a bandanna
across the face?

Or is it actually, like,
the full, you know,

Mission Impossible mask?

At the end,
I concluded

they were sort of
an in-your-face group

because they had created
their own website

in the name we had used
for them. (CHUCKLES)

FancyBear dot org.

ALEX:
Fancy wasn't the only Bear.

There was also "Cozy Bear."
Cozy was quiet.

Snug as a bug in a rug.

It haunted networks
like a ghost.

It belonged
to the traditional spy group,

the SVR.

ALEX: In 2015, Cozy Bear hacked
into the Pentagon email system.

Then Cozy sneaked into the
Democratic National Committee

and quietly
set about stealing information.

Gigabyte by gigabyte,
the FBI watched the data flow

-while they tried to contact
the Democrats.
-(PHONE BUZZING)

ANDREW MCCABE: That was
kind of the first interactions

we had with the DNC,

which is basically
the same sort of outreach

that we give
to private corporations

and academic institutions.

Our cyber folks will call
and say,

"Hey, we've seen
some probing activity

coming from
a particular location.

You should go onto your systems
and look through your logs.

If you are seeing
any of these things,

come back and let us know."

ALEX: For six months,

as spies roamed
through the DNC files,

no one seemed too alarmed.

DNC tech support didn't return
calls from the FBI,

and the FBI never bothered
to contact senior officials.

Then, Fancy Bear, the group
of Russian military hackers,

decided to find their own way
into the DNC

by sneaking through
another door.

The two groups
may not have even known

that they were attacking
the same network.

You will often find
multiple Russian agencies

targeting a similar target

to actively encourage
bureaucratic competition.

Probably both of them
had been given the DNC

as a high priority.

In March of 2016,
we learned that Fancy Bear,

which we had an active
criminal investigation into,

had hacked the DNC.

And so, then my next reaction
to that is, "Well, who else?"

I fully expected that we would
learn that they were hacking

the RNC
and the Trump campaign, too.

I later became surprised
to learn that they were not.

And then,
it was the very next day...

and it's John Podesta.

PODESTA:
There's what looks like a prompt

from Google
to change your password,

saying "your account's
being attacked."

We asked one
of our cybersecurity people,

"Should we change?
Is this real?"

Later, he claimed
that it was a typo,

but email went back
saying "yes."

My assistant clicked on it,
changed the password.

The rest is history.

ALEX:
Shortly after the initial theft

of documents from the DNC,

Fancy Bear tried and failed
to register a website

called ElectionLeaks dot com.

They settled for "DCLeaks"
and waited.

-(MOUSE CLICKS)
-ALEX: A month later,

Hillary Clinton
sealed her victory

in the Democratic primaries.

We are on the brink
of a historic...

(CROWD CHEERS)

...historic,
unprecedented moment.

ALEX: The next day,
DCLeaks went live

with its first dump

of the Democrats' documents
and emails.

HICKTON: I first thought,
"Wow, now it's being weaponized,

and it might have an impact."

But I discounted that
because I thought,

"The only people
who are gonna read this

are the people
who read Politico."

ALEX: The first dump was small
and not widely publicized.

But when it came
to the subject of emails,

Hillary Clinton
was particularly vulnerable.

REPORTER 1:
Hillary Clinton is under fire.

This morning's
New York Times reports

that the former
Secretary of State

may have violated federal laws.

REPORTER 2:
Clinton used personal email

to conduct official business
for the State Department

during her time
as the nation's top diplomat.

REPORTER 3: Hillary Clinton's
email controversy

growing by the day.

You could say her inbox is full.

You could.

PODESTA: There was a backdrop
to the email story, obviously,

which was the investigation
of her private use of emails

when she was Secretary of State.

But the hacks and leaking

kind of brought the topic
of emails...

(CHUCKLES)
...back to the campaign.

ALEX: The Clinton campaign knew
Russia was behind DCLeaks.

Their cybersecurity firm,
CrowdStrike, had reached

the same conclusion
as US intelligence.

But despite compelling evidence,

the US government refused
to blame the hack on Russia.

So the campaign took steps
of its own.

JAKE SULLIVAN: What we knew
in the summer of 2016

was that the Russian government
was hacking the DNC,

and now making efforts to hack
the Clinton campaign

and Clinton campaign officials
as well.

We were under attack.

And that was
a hostile foreign power

who was undertaking
this operation.

We tried, as best we could,
in the days that followed

those initial releases
of information,

to raise the alarm,
to make the American press see,

uh, just how dramatic this was.

And so, we went public

in a Washington Post piece
in early June.

♪ (TENSE MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

ALEX: The GRU moved quickly
to try to discredit the story.

Eight hours after
the Washington Post article
went online,

hackers were hard at work trying
to hide the Russian hand.

To distract onlookers,

Fancy Bear had a special card
up its sleeve,

a joker named Guccifer 2.0.

♪ ("ON THE ROAD TO NEPAL"
BY MASHINA VREMENI PLAYING) ♪

ALEX: Guccifer bragged about

outsmarting
the US Intelligence Community,

and even had a Twitter handle.

DANIEL: This persona,
Guccifer 2.0, says, "No, no, no,

the DNC intrusion
was done by me,

I'm a lone hacker in Romania."

♪ (SONG CONTINUES) ♪

This persona had appeared
right out of seemingly nowhere.

You know, when you're in
this kind of environment,

you're like, "Really?

That seems like
an interesting coincidence."

WALLANDER: There probably
was a Romanian platform

involved in the operation,

but it was eventually attributed
back to, uh, Russian origin.

DANIEL: Inside
the National Security Council,

the conclusion came back
pretty quickly

that this was not a lone
Romanian, uh, hacker,

that in fact this was a front
for the GRU.

ALEX: They based their creation
on the original Guccifer,

a Romanian who had hacked
US politicians like Colin Powell

and George W. Bush.

Guccifer offered
just enough deniability

about the origins of the hack.

GLENN GREENWALD: (OVER PHONE)
The claim that

the Russian intelligence
agencies were involved

in the procurement
of these documents,

thus far there's been very
little evidence presented.

REPORTER: Russian officials
are calling Americans paranoid.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov
dismissed the allegations

when he was asked
about them today.

ALEX: The public was still
at sea for some time

in terms of Guccifer 2.0.

We had decided
that we would not, uh...

that we would certainly
not support the idea

that it was a lone hacker,

but that we weren't going
to aggressively sort of try

to debunk that
from the US government.

ALEX: Guccifer was
a flimsy disguise,

but it worked.

The identity of the hackers
became a sideshow.

The story wasn't that Russia
had hacked the Democrats,

but that the Democrats
were falling apart.

(CROWD CHEERING)

REPORTER 1: On the eve
of the Democratic Convention,

a bombshell.

WikiLeaks released thousands

of internal Democratic
National Committee emails...

REPORTER 2: Just when
Hillary Clinton was hoping

to put the whole notion of
an email controversy behind her,

here comes an entirely
different email controversy,

and one that threatens the unity

the Democrats are hoping
to show.

(MESSAGE ALERT PINGS)

REPORTER 3: Seventeen hundred
new stolen emails.

(MESSAGE ALERT)

REPORTER 4:
Thousands of leaked emails

show Democratic party officials

possibly plotting
against Bernie Sanders

in his race
against Hillary Clinton.

REPORTER 5: In one,
a top official wonders,

"Can we get someone
to ask his belief?

Does he believe in a God?"
The response, an "Amen."

(CROWD CHANTING)

REPORTER 6: The idea that
we have heard, of course,
from the Sanders campaign

is that the DNC had a finger
on the scale

to try to help
Secretary Clinton,

and now you see these emails.

Does this not give credence
to their argument?

Does this not validate
their concerns?

REPORTER 7: It has been
a tumultuous 24 hours here,

at the opening of the
Democratic National Convention.

REPORTER 8: This is exactly
the kind of tension

that the party was hoping
to avoid here.

(CROWD CLAMORING)

REPORTER 9: Tonight,
Sanders's supporters
are furious.

(CHANTING)
Walk out! Walk out! Walk out!

(PROTESTORS CLAMORING)

MALE PROTESTOR:

The chair of the DNC,

Congresswoman
Debbie Wasserman Schultz,

has announced her resignation.

REPORTER 10: (OVER PHONE)
She was booed off the stage.

I've never seen anything
like this.

REPORTER 11: Could you talk
about the controversy

around the emails that came out
and then how it suggested

that the DNC was clearly
on the side of Hillary Clinton?

The Democratic Party
does not care about you.

The Democratic Party
does not care about America.

And so we are gonna show
the Democratic Party

that if they will not have us

and they will not welcome us
into their party,

then we will leave,
and they will lose to Trump.

And it will not be our fault.
It will be their fault.

ALEX: I found the content
of the emails pretty damning.

The Democratic Party was clearly
putting its finger on the scale,

favoring Clinton
over Bernie Sanders.

The emails were evidence
that the system was corrupt

and even Sanders couldn't put
a good face on it.

We have got to defeat
Donald Trump!

(CROWD CHEERING)

And we have got to elect
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine!

(CROWD BOOING)

ANCHOR: What's your reaction
to these emails?

Outrage, disappointed.
And it doesn't matter

necessarily that it was
the Russians.

It could have been
the men from Mars.

ALEX: But it didn't come
from Mars.

It came from Russia,
and not with love.

That should have been
an important part of the story.

You always want to know
the source.

But the Russian hand was hidden
by the volume of the data

and the chaos it caused.

That chaos and confusion was fed

by a controversial figure
I knew well.

I had already made one movie
about him.

You were the one who released
these 20,000 emails,

Julian Assange.

Where did you get them?

REPORTER: Can we address
the question at hand,

and that is whether or not
you can say definitively

that Russia had no part
in this hack?

What sort of question is that?

Uh, I am a journalist.
We don't reveal our sources.

I don't like leaked emails,
but in this one case,

God bless you, WikiLeaks,
for proving what we suspected.

-Okay.
-Thank you, WikiLeaks!

Uh, told us that, um,
she doesn't even like Americans.

She hates Americans.

You know, I find WikiLeaks
very refreshing.

This is the Hillary Clinton
I always knew existed.

I just never had proof of it.
(CHUCKLES)

PROTESTERS: Hillary cheats!
Thank you, WikiLeaks!

Hillary cheats!
Thank you, WikiLeaks!

(OVER MEGAPHONE) Hillary cheats!
Thank you, WikiLeaks!

Hillary cheats!
Thank you, WikiLeaks!

WALLANDER: There was a lot
of support for WikiLeaks

in the United States as sort of

this freedom of information
operation...

which I never really understood.

But some people thought that,
so it had that credibility.

That sort of, you know,
heroic credibility.

They were one step ahead of us
by using a platform

that had that kind of aura
of legitimacy.

PUNDIT:
I mean, right now, we have

-a serious, serious allegation!
-ANCHOR: Let-- let's talk
about WikiLeaks.

-Let's talk about WikiLeaks.
-Mm-hmm.

Well, look, we wouldn't have
this information right now,

the American people would
not have this information

if not for this.
I certainly do not condone

cy-- you know,
cybersecurity and hacking,

but this all plays
into the same thing.

Look at what
Hillary Clinton did.

She put an unsecured server
in her home,

-jeopardizing millions--
-Wait, wait. But WikiLeaks--
That's not WikiLeaks.

-That's not WikiLeaks.
What's in WikiLeaks--
-And-- No. No.

A lot of this was,
in terms of the public's mind,

confusing, confused...

It's almost impossible for you

to keep track
of all these emails.

SULLIVAN: We didn't fully
appreciate just how insidious

the releases
of these emails were.

The words "Hillary"
and "email" and "revelation."

It was coming out day
after day after day.

YOCHAI BENKLER:
There's a Gallup poll

that visualized
what word was most associated

in people's minds.

For Clinton,
"email" is this big,

much bigger than anything else.

In people's minds,

there are secret documents
that are authentic and real

'cause they are real emails

that show
that somehow she's bad.

"And I've never read them,

and I don't really know anything
about them.

I just have a gut feeling
that there is concrete evidence

that she's bad."

She is framed by email
the entire campaign.

That makes that particular
vector of attack...

so powerful.

(MACHINERY WHIRRING)

BENKLER: It was such
an intelligent

propaganda operation
by the Russians

to hack the emails
and dump them.

Email is bait.

The professional reporter
comes to them

as a trove of occult knowledge.

REPORTER:
Another batch of stolen emails

published today by WikiLeaks,

offering an even deeper look

at the calibrations
of the Clinton campaign.

It's a drip drip drip
of distraction,

being released
on a daily schedule

by Julian Assange.

BENKLER: Throughout this time,
the journalists make this effort

to be objective
by being negative equally

about both candidates.

For Trump,
it's a focus on his issues,

because they draw people to them
in the same way that things

that are on the verge of obscene
draw people.

With respect to the Muslims,

hey, Maria,
there's something going on.

Go to Brussels.
Go to Paris.

It's like living in a hellhole
right now.

BENKLER:
It's political clickbait.

Clinton's policy agenda
is so much more in line

with the mainstream.

She's basically
a centrist candidate.

The focus to be negative on her
was the implication of scandal.

The private server,
followed by Benghazi.

Nothing about her
substantive agenda.

That's a profound form
of failure of these media

that the majority
of Americans rely on.

(INDISTINCT CHATTER)

As these materials
were being leaked

and washed through the press,
I went out to each

of the major networks
to make a presentation

about what we understood
had happened.

Russian military intelligence

were penetrating various
American campaign organs...

turning that information
over to WikiLeaks,

who would do their bidding.

PROTESTERS: (CHANTING)
Thank you, WikiLeaks!
Hillary cheats!

SULLIVAN: And then WikiLeaks
put it out in the public

for the express purpose
of trying to undermine

Hillary Clinton's campaign
for president.

Their initial reaction was,

"Some of this is pretty
far-fetched,

doesn't seem
like it could happen

here in the United States.

And, by the way,

you also have
a political interest

in pushing this narrative."

Robby Mook,
the campaign manager,

went out on television and said,

"We believe
this is the Russians."

And the pushback from the press,

when Robby did that,
was pretty fierce.

That's a very,
very strong charge

that you're leveling here.
(CLEARS THROAT)

You're basically suggesting

that Russians hacked
into the DNC

and now are releasing
these files through WikiLeaks

to help elect Donald Trump.

Well, this isn't my assertion.

There are a number of experts
that are asserting this.

I think we need to get
to the bottom of these facts.

But that-- that is what experts
are telling us.

Experts have said that
it is the Russians

that in fact went in
and took these emails and--

and then, if-- if--

if they are the ones
who took them,

we have to infer
that they are the ones then--

then releasing them.

REPORTER: From Moscow today,

an epic shocker.

Russian president Vladimir Putin

denied that his government
was behind the hacking

of the Democratic Party's
emails.

PUTIN:
(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN, CHUCKLES)

ALEX: Putin was playing
three-dimensional chess.

He was right,
the content did matter.

But it also mattered
that a foreign power

was stealing and leaking data
from one campaign

while leaving
the other candidate alone.

(SPEAKING IN RUSSIAN,
CLEARS THROAT)

WALLANDER: It was very clear

that the purpose
of this operation

was to harm
the Clinton campaign...

and it was coming from Russia.

At that point,
it was still not clear

at what level
it had been ordered.

Um, but my own... take

and my own advice
at the time was,

the Russian military
doesn't operate rogue.

ALEX: They take orders
from the commander-in-chief.

They absolutely take orders
from the commander-in-chief.

(CHUCKLES)

SNYDER: The way
that oligarchies work...

is that they substitute
a spectacular foreign policy

for the, really,
absent domestic policy.

If you're Russia, you can't
really have domestic policy.

Because a few men have
all the money

and everything is blocked up
by corruption.

How do you get people to think

that the government
in some way is on their side?

You have to generate
a foreign policy

with clear enemies.

(APPLAUSE)

SNYDER: Since Putin came back
to power,

foreign policy for Russia
has been all about

creating these
spectacular enemies.

The big enemy
is the United States.

The United States
is a great enemy to have

for Russia because of prestige.

The Russians think of themselves
as a superpower.

An average Russian might say,

"Well, yes,
my plumbing doesn't work...

you know,
and no one ever clears the snow,

but we're a superpower."

And having America as an enemy,

as it were, proves that
you're a superpower.

So Putin has tried
to persuade his people

that there was a kind of
great American-Russian conflict
going on.

(IN RUSSIAN)

(APPLAUSE)

ALEX: The question that haunted
the 2016 election

was why the White House
refused to reveal

what it knew
about Russian interference.

WALLANDER: The United States
is a really powerful country,

and it's unlikely
that we can be defeated abroad

in a military conflict,

but in the last couple years,
we've seen

that we're actually
pretty vulnerable at home.

It's a privilege to serve
in the government,

but it's also a responsibility,

and you have
to take responsibility.

The American citizens
were counting on us,

and I think you can say
we didn't live up

to the highest standards
of protecting the country.

2016 was-- was pretty awful.
(CHUCKLES)

We were dealing
with the growing horror of Syria

and the helplessness
of our attempts

to get the Russians to help
end the conflict in Syria.

And trying to get the Russians
to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The key to success in government
is being able to distinguish

between the urgent
and the important.

And I think we failed in 2016,

and we allowed ourselves
to be distracted by the urgent.

It prevented us from really
grasping what was important.

The real challenge in 2016
wasn't Syria...

important though that was.

I regret to say this.
It wasn't Ukraine,

compared to Russian
interference in the election.

But it's not like one day,
you think, "Oh my God,

the Russians are interfering
in our election,"

and the next day you go
to the president's desk

and say,
"This is what we need to do."

NULAND: Patterns that you've
seen elsewhere

and that you have
experience with

are clearer
at that level of government

than they might be
at higher levels.

WALLANDER: I was working
with Victoria Nuland.

We would kind of put our heads
together on what was going on.

She pushed a lot.

She sometimes was impatient
with our pace, which was fair.

What I felt at the time was

our Intelligence Community
was too slow to validate

what our experience told us
was happening.

They ultimately did,

but it would have been
far more useful to the president

if they had been able
to validate more quickly.

What we were seeing bore
the hallmarks

of Russian tradecraft
in Ukraine.

And what we were asking for then

was more
US intelligence resources

so that we could give

better information
to leadership.

But it was too early
for the Intelligence Community

to validate with the kind of
certainty a president wants.

The standards have
to be impeccable,

with all strands of
the US Intelligence Community
in agreement

before you can say
to the president,

"We're confident."

JOHN BRENNAN:
If I'm going to talk to the
president of the United States,

I wanted to make sure that
I was intimately familiar

with every detail.

In the summer of 2016,

I became exceptionally, uh...

knowledgeable,
put it that way,

of all the information
that we had access to

and all of the analytic work
that we had done.

ALEX: No one
in the US government

had complete knowledge
of the Russian operation,

but CIA director John Brennan
probably knew more than most.

By mid-summer,
Obama's national security team

decided it was time to send
Russia a warning.

Brennan was tapped to reach out

to one of his
Russian counterparts,

an intelligence official
named Alexander Bortnikov.

BRENNAN: Bortnikov had direct
and immediate access

to Mr. Putin.

I think I was the first
senior US official

to confront them directly.

I must say, Mr. Bortnikov
is a very smooth

and slick individual.

He said, "Oh, no,

we would never do something
like that, Mr. Director.

We are ready to work with

whomever is going
to be elected."

He, uh, lies
with the best of them.

WALLANDER: Brennan calling
Bortnikov on this

was a pretty
extraordinary signal

of how important
this was viewed.

But there wasn't a lot of
credible threats you could make.

Other than, you know...

"Relations between
the United States and Russia

are gonna be really,
really bad."

Well, relations between
the United States and Russia

already are really,
really bad!

And there was
an increasing trend

of Russian intelligence agents
to harass American diplomats,

including a physical assault
outside the American embassy.

He was trying to walk
into the embassy

and he was assaulted
by a Russian security officer,

which was outrageous.

ALEX: She called the American
a diplomat,

but he was actually
a CIA officer

with diplomatic cover.

Even so, the extraordinary
assault

became
an international incident.

BRENNAN: I said
to Mr. Bortnikov,

in no uncertain terms,

that some of the tactics that
the FSB, uh, thugs were using

against US diplomats in Moscow
was intolerable

and that there are limits

to the espionage
and intelligence profession.

ALEX: Those limits
are often flexible.

But between spies,
there is a rough equilibrium,

and when the tacit rules
are broken, spies wonder why.

(SIREN WAILING)

ALEX: In 2016, Russia was
breaking the rules of the game

and stability was giving way
to a kind of chaos.

SNYDER:
You have to think about this

the way that
they think about this.

This is not a legalistic process
or a bureaucratic process.

This is
not a diplomatic process.

This is making a play.
(CHUCKLES)

You make a play,
and sometimes it works

and sometimes it doesn't work,

and then sometimes
it works better than you think.

WALLANDER:
We needed an effective threat.

You deter actions by raising
the costs,

and one of the most effective
ways to raise costs

is to threaten reciprocal
and more costly retaliation.

That's one of the reasons
why I developed options

for steps that could be taken
or things that could be signaled

that could make it
a more effective threat.

One of the steps
one sensibly might consider

would be to release
embarrassing information

about Russian officials.

ALEX: But was it something
that was under consideration?

Those options were explored.

DANIEL: We put together
particularly aggressive options

that we could use to counter
the Russians.

Things like sanctions
on individuals.

Could we identify
Russian operatives

in the United States
and kick them out?

Are there Justice Department
options?

You know, actors that we could
bring legal charges against?

ALEX: The Justice Department
was already investigating

one crime they could charge,
the hacking of the DNC.

In Pittsburgh, David Hickton
wanted to target Fancy Bear

for a federal indictment.

He'd gone after foreign actors
like this before.

Years earlier,
his unit had named

and charged
Chinese government hackers

for stealing industrial secrets.

The hackers never saw the inside
of a courtroom,

but the indictment itself did
curb China's hacking for a time.

I really wanted to bring a case.

But the historical position
of the Department of Justice is,

"You do not get involved
in election litigation."

We weren't even allowed
to appear with candidates...

sixty days before
they were elected.

So, if a case was not brought
two months

before the November election,

it was not gonna be brought
in any form or fashion

till after the election.

But, in simple terms,
the case was not gonna be ready

unless we did something
Herculean to do it.

(KEYBOARD CLACKING)

WALLANDER: After I had
written up that options paper,

Susan Rice,
the National Security Advisor,

discussed it with some
of the principals.

And their reaction was,

"Too risky." Uh...

"Too edgy."
(CHUCKLES) "Too aggressive."

There were options in terms
of what we could do

even in the cybersphere.

Rattle the Russians'
cyber cages.

Very uncertain as
to what the Russians

then might have decided to do
in response.

Would we have then engaged
in some type of escalatory war

with the Russians
in the cyber realm?

There were things
that they could have done

that would have been
even more serious

and potentially more impactful.

And so we didn't wanna make it
a self-fulfilling prophecy

about what the Russians were
trying to achieve.

By escalating, that could be
cathartic on our part,

but really would have, again,
further undermined the election.

There was a-- a reluctance...

to take steps

that would undermine the Syria
negotiations,

supposedly... (CHUCKLES)

...which were
not going well anyway,

uh, undermine the chance
to rescue arms control,

um, or...

take actions that might not
deter Russian interference

but actually escalate
Russian interference.

And those arguments won the day.

HICKTON: It became
pretty clear to me

the election case
was gonna be deferred.

I thought that if we had said,

"Pittsburgh's gonna
do the case,"

surged resources
into Pittsburgh...

we would have been able
to identify

and indict the people.

But what would that have done?

Would that have
changed anything?

(CROWD CHEERING)

HICKTON: The Democratic nominee
for president

was President Obama's
Secretary of State.

It would look like the president
was putting his hand

on the scale of the election,
if he was more active

than precedent had dictated
about this.

The better weight of wisdom
would be

to wait till after the election.

It's not for me to evaluate
his decisions.

He was the president.
(CHUCKLES)

SNYDER:
Traditionally, war is a way

of one sovereign state

making another sovereign state
do what it wants.

War doesn't have to be
carried out

by way of
traditional military force.

I can break your will,

my nation can break
your nation's will,

in other ways.

I try to figure out
what makes you tick.

I try to figure out
your strengths,

and above all, your weaknesses.

And then I appeal
to those weaknesses

to try to get you
to do something

that's not really
in your interest to do.

What Russia did in 2016
was understand

and take advantage of
a new technical environment

faster than anyone else.

They used an instrument
that allowed them to get inside

the will of a country
that they understood

as their enemy.
And they succeeded.

They were also very lucky.

I mean, they were lucky
to have Mr. Trump.

He does things for them
in public

which they can't do themselves.

You know, they can pretend to be
Americans on the internet,

but they can't pretend to be
Americans in real life.

He's got the accent.

He's a white guy.
He can wear a tie.

He gives a good
off-the-cuff speech.

He knows how to work
an audience.

It's pretty clear that
cooperation is taking place.

ALEX: At what point did you
become concerned

or conclude that--

that the Russians had also
reached out

to the Trump campaign?

During the summer of 2016,
we were seeing reports

of Russian officials
claiming contacts

with individuals
in the Trump campaign.

And I was explicitly told

that the White House
cannot be involved in tracking

what Americans are doing,

that it is illegal,
it is not constitutional.

I was told by my leadership
to stand down,

and I took that seriously
and I stopped.

I also remember, um...

walking back
to my office thinking...

feeling helpless.

They did make clear to me

that the proper authorities
were looking into it.

We started immediately
identifying direct connections

between campaign people
and Russians.

Paul Manafort was
an obvious target.

General Michael Flynn,
Carter Page,

George Papadopoulos.

A lot of questions about
their behavior, connections,

network of friends
and associates.

The combination of those things
brought to a head this idea

that we needed to now
investigate potential collusion

between the Trump campaign
and the Russians.

It was just like stepping off
the roller coaster

into the rocket ship.

Is there somebody disturbing
us up here?

-(CROWD CHEERS)
-Where?

ALEX: Once inside
the Trump rocket ship,

it was hard to miss
the crazy way

he seemed to be
steering a course

guided by the Kremlin.

Those who suspected collusion

played one particular clip
from 2016 over and over.

-(MOUSE CLICKS)
-What do I have to get involved
with Putin for?

I have nothing to do with Putin.
I've never spoken to him.

I don't know anything about him
other than he will respect me.

ALEX: See? He starts by saying
he doesn't know Putin.

Trump loves saying this,

almost as much as he loves
saying the opposite.

DAVID LETTERMAN:
Well, there's Vladimir Putin.
Have you ever met the guy?

He's a tough guy.
I met him once.

LETTERMAN: He's -- he stole--

As an example,
I own the Miss Universe.

I was in Russia,
I was in Moscow, recently.

And I spoke indirectly
and directly

with President Putin,
who could not have been nicer.

If it is Russia,
which it's probably not,

nobody knows who it is.

ALEX: He's talking now about
the hacking of the Democrats.

And he's right.

The US government,
at this point,

hadn't publicly attributed
the hacks to Russia.

But this is where it gets
really good.

Now that he's denied Russia
hacked the Democrats,

Trump spins like a top

and openly asks Russia
to hack Hillary Clinton herself.

Russia, if you're listening,
I hope you're able to find

the 30,000 emails
that are missing.

ALEX: Trump said that
this was just a joke.

But less than five hours later,

Russian military intelligence,
a.k.a. Fancy Bear,

was looking for honey
in Clinton's email accounts.

So, was this just
cartoon collusion?

Or a real back and forth
hiding in plain sight?

It's the hottest thing
out there,

this hat, you can't get 'em!

ALEX: That's the crazy beauty
about the politics of chaos.

It's hard to tell a joke
from a crime.

Getting help from the Russians?
Just part of the game.

It doesn't matter how you play,
or who you play with.

As long as you wind up on top,

who cares if the whole
motherfucking system

burns to the ground?

♪ (ROCK MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

♪ (SOMBER MUSIC PLAYING) ♪

MAN: In 2016,
we faced an attack of a new kind

in our democracy.

We now know what the Russians
were actually doing

during the campaign.

Russian interference only worked
because America

was a vulnerable target.

MAN 2: This was not just
a standard set of espionage.

Jared Kushner,
Paul Manafort,

and Don Jr. all there to see
what Russia could give them.

You don't give something
for nothing.

Any customer whose check clears
is a good customer.

The Russians have offered
to assist the campaign

by dumping negative material
on Hillary Clinton.

Of course Russians prefer Trump,

because Trump said
that he preferred Russians.

Trump was adopting Putin's
foreign policy.

These allegations
are absolutely preposterous.

We began to see the intrusions
in the electoral system.

If I didn't tell some people
this story,

and something did happen to me,
it would never get out.

It was all bullshit.

♪ (DRAMATIC OUTRO PLAYS) ♪