government into positions of power in your targeted country, luck essentially bring down that country s government, rights. that country can fall before your intelligence operation. that s the worst case scenario if operations are ever so successful that they reach their highest objectives. the fbi now has a public facing website about the russian spy ring. they headline it operation ghost stories because that was the fbi code name for that investigation. they called it ghost stories because the spies used the identities of dead people to start building their legends in north america. the fbi says these deep cover russian spies may not have an cleaned their objective but they were not idle. they elected information and transmitsed back to russia. they were actively engaged in what is known in the spy business as spotting and assessing. they identified colleagues friends and other who s might be vulnerable targets.
provides them information, is a spy? this is just ludicrous propaganda for the base. is it when the president uses the term spy jonathan, is it ludicrous propaganda? or is it just pain to his base? it s a lie for his base. which we get about ten times a day. alex, if i might here, first of all it s really important for the public to understand and have a context. the fbi does not use spies, they use informants. the c.i.a. is in the spy business, so let s clear up the terms. again this is president trump distracting, throwing out bombs and doing things to keep our eyes off the ball. which are many things that we need to really be talking about as a country right now. but at the end of the day, it s really important that the public understands, the fbi uses informants, people that give them information. they may or may not be paid informants, that is standard protocol. but spy sgt purview of the central intelligence agency.
for the federal bureau of investigation going into a u.s. election, pretty serious time out we have some clarity here. let me take you inside of this spy business. let me take you inside of the spy business. two elements here. number one if you have an individual investigating the trump campaign like what is your campaign strategy against hillary clinton that is a national security problem and a bigger problem for the democracy. number two, you have an individual, an american citizen who spoke to an australian diplomat will inappropriate contacts with russians and you ask an informant can you determine whether that inappropriate connection was illegal or what evidence you find. we re talking about spy like there is no difference between investigating your campaign strategy and investigating phil explain the i m not going to explain it you are are a spy and i wasn t. i m not going to be so bold. but this is this is could be
left to delay or resist trump nominees, that s what this is really about. so a lot of the time was spent to try to get her to say that it was immoral. here is a sound bite from 2013. and john brennan s hearing. you receive the daily updates from the time of his capture throughout the interrogation, including the analysis and unlawfulness of the techniques putting you in a position to express any concerns you had about the program. but what steps did you have to take it from the cia from moving this techniques that you saw at the time? i did not stop the use of those techniques. what about this hearing today? a lot of posturing about morality and the spy business. and they are forcing gina
david korn, and malcolm nance. i will go around the horn. navid, what do you glean as somebody who has been in the spy business, what do you glean from the idea that this early in the investigation we already have a sealed indictment? i think it s telling. it s incredibly fast. i worked under bob mueller. everything i know about bob mueller, speaking to people who know him closely, this is someone who is an introvert. he will not be pushed by public opinion if he s doing this, there s probably something serious. i think we can infer this is the beginning of a larger process. let me stay with you for one second. the question of how this would have gotten out. all of the news organizations, including nbc, are trying to confirm it. the idea of who would need to know necessarily. i know you on occasion do brief people on ap kcapitol hill aboue