CIA trainees learn that there are no “friendly” foreign intelligence services. Other than the British Commonwealth, most countries spy on the United States — adversaries, of course, but allies as well.
Even in the receding twilight of what Henry Luce called the “American Century,” we still extend useful defense guarantees, economic aid, and favorable trade status. So foreign leaders assign their intelligence services to collect information about our policies (and policymakers) and covertly influence us. Yet foreign intelligence services previously understood that their interference in our elections was juice not worth the squeeze — the blowback would be too much.
That understanding changed when Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought derogatory information about Hillary Clinton from Russia. No conspiracy between Trump and Russia was proven by Robert Mueller, and the intelligence community admitted there is no proof Vladimir Putin flipped any votes. But hacked and leaked emails hurt Clinton’s campaign.
The old understanding died last week when a deputy counsel to the president, Patrick Philbin, argued that presidents may lawfully accept derogatory information on U.S. political opponents from foreign governments. Philbin said so even though Federal Election Commission Chairman Ellen Weintraub has stated otherwise.
The Senate effectively concurred with Philbin. Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee argued that although it is proven that Trump inappropriately conditioned aid to Ukraine on Kyiv’s announcement of a faux investigation into Joe Biden’s son, this is insufficient grounds for the president’s removal.
So it has now been normalized to seek foreign intelligence services’ assistance in obtaining opposition research. A candidate may pay a political price for getting caught seeking such aid, including investigation and even impeachment, but not a criminal one. In the future, some ambitious but struggling candidate from either party will think of last week’s precedent and seek derogatory information on their opponent from abroad.
What comes next? Some foreign intelligence services’ chiefs of station in Washington may soon receive enciphered cables from their headquarters, asking how best to take advantage of the new rules. Their answers may give us no comfort.
Most vulnerable will be Senate and especially House candidates. It’s comparatively hard to flip a presidential election through covert action, but far less so a congressional election.
Opposition research will be given by some foreign intelligence services to candidates who seek it—with the incriminating receipt of it, likely mixed with cash, recorded for use as blackmail. For good reasons, the CIA does not extort its sources, but some foreign intelligence services surely do. Classified information will be demanded in return for “derog” on candidates’ opponents.
Even a first-term senator or representative may be appointed to the armed services, homeland security, or judiciary committee with oversight of military, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, and counterintelligence activities, and have access to classified information on those subjects. In subsequent terms, they might be named to an intelligence oversight committee, or a defense appropriations subcommittee, with access to even more sensitive and granular information.
Foreign intelligence services will first help, if necessary blackmail, and finally, control their assets on those committees. They will try to make them take cash, too, to sink the hook deeper. A senator or congressman under hostile control might later get promoted to the Cabinet or even the Oval Office.
Adversaries such as China and Russia will be the most active. But some allies who depend upon U.S. aid, arms, or trade may get involved, too. Israel and the Gulf States, India and Pakistan, South Korea and Taiwan, and Poland, for example, all have sophisticated intelligence services and real national interests to defend in Washington.
A foreign intelligence service may clandestinely support a senator or congressman who sincerely champions that nation’s cause, or neutralize one who is a thorn in their side. Cuban intelligence tried to frame Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez of New Jersey, an advocate for regime change in Havana, on a bogus child prostitution charge. Remember that information proffered by foreign intelligence services won’t necessarily be true.
A nasty part of this is that candidates’ children are now seen as fair game. Hunter Biden is unsympathetic. But under the new rules, candidates’ sons and daughters with addiction problems, messy love lives, or jobs for which they are underqualified are all targets. It will get ugly, especially in an age of convincing deep fakes that can go viral on social media.
Our Founders and Framers deeply feared foreign influence in our elections. Britain and France were far more experienced at and well-resourced for espionage than our nascent Republic, and London and Paris retained significant interests in North America. Quickly, our Federalist Party was accused of having aristocratic British sympathies, and our Democratic-Republican Party was accused of revolutionary French loyalties. The political atmosphere became poisonous.
This fear of foreign interference fed into another of our forefathers’ worst fears, that of “factions” which could tear the U.S. apart. We may soon see how right they were.
Kevin Carroll served as senior counselor to the secretary of Homeland Security and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, and as a CIA and Army officer. He is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog.
