For this report is that u. S. Intelligence agencies somehow have access or had access to a source of intelligence that was very, very very close to Vladimir Putin. And that is intriguing just on the surface. Right, just for the pure spy novel pure lurid thrill of it. We have somebody close to putin or something close to putin. The post, to its credit, makes clear how extraordinary that is beyond just the wow factor. How unexpected it is to learn that. Ultimately, how important it is to u. S. Interests. The post today notes that putin is, quote, a former kgb officer who takes extreme precautions to guard against surveillance. He rarely communicates by phone or computer. He always runs sensitive tate business from deep within the confines of the kremlin but nevertheless, the u. S. Somehow got access to intelligence, got access to information that apparently could only have come from very close to him. According post, u. S. Intelligence Agency Sources when it came to attributing author or blame for the russian attack, their sources came from, quote, deep inside of the russian government. Deep enough inside of the russian government that what they had in what they had intelligence about, what they had a report about, was the direct personal individual involvement of Vladimir Putin in directing this campaign. I mean, putin is a guy who is so secretive, russians were not allowed to know the names of his children until recently. Or in fact, that he definitely had them. When he got divorced in 2013, half of russia was like, he was married . But somehow u. S. Intelligence agencies have sourcing inside of the kremlin, about his personal involvement in kremlin covert activities. That is a big freaking deal. I have no idea what that intelligence source is but that is a big deal. And it is remarkable, honestly, that the Washington Post has been able to report that. The nature of the source of the intelligence and the danger of the source of the intelligence must be in, if that source is a human source. That is just palpable, right. How do you think putin reacted to reading this in the Washington Post today . The sensitivity of the United States having the intelligence source so close to putin, that is apparently what drove a lot of the extreme secrecy within the u. S. Government about what the intelligence agencies knew concerning the russian attack, the post had some incredible details on that today including them shutting off all of the monitors, the tv screens around the situation room in the white house when senior officials were meeting to discuss these matters. They hadnt shut down the video monitors in the situation room for anything since the bin laden raid. But they did it for this. Because they consider it to be so sensitive and so secret. The sensitivity of the source of americas intelligence on this subject, the prospect that that source might conceivably be a human being who is in personal contact with putin, i think that drives home for us as americans just the incredible sensitivity and human dangerousness of some of what our intelligence agencies know. Right. Sort of makes you get viscerally why it is so important that that kind of information should never fall into the hands of anyone who, say, is beholden to russia for some reason. So, that is one of the things that the Washington Post unveiled today. Such a sensitive thing. It is almost impossible to believe that we get to read about it in the paper. I should tell you though, the sources for the report, according to them, are quote, more than three dozen current and former u. S. Officials in senior positions in government. So presumably, theyve got this nailed down, right. Three more than three dozen sources. It is a remarkable thing that theyve been able to report out today with that many sources presumably they have nailed it. In addition to the incredible scoop about the source of this intelligence being so close to putin, there is also a bunch of other specific information that we never really knew before that tells us a lot more as citizens about what happened to us last year. They describe, for example, the fbi and the sTate Department noticing and getting alarmed about an unusual spike in requests from russia for temporary visas for officials with Technical Skills, seeking permission to enter the United States for shortterm assignments at russian facilities. That is astonishing, right. How fbi and the sTate Department are alarmed. An unusual spike in request for russians for shortterm project skills right before the election, and i want to know how do they notice that. Do they haval e algorithms that tell them when anything spooky and spy like comes up. And werent they like were there three other guys named sergei applying for the visa. How did they know about the tech skills of the russians trying to get into the country for shortterm assignments right before the election. So that is an incredible detail. The post also reported ominously that the attack was not entirely remote controlled. And i dont know if this is about the russians with tech skills getting in on shortterm visas but the Obama Administration believed that some of the russian attack last year, some of the people who participated, some way in that attack, were russians who were in the no russia. They were russians who were physically located here in the United States when they were helping in the attack. So that obviously previously unreported. I dont understand exactly what that means and how much of a handle the Obama Administration or the Trump Administration had on who the russians are or were. Again, there is a top in this story from the Washington Post. Im very much looking forward to talking with elena nakashima about that in just a moment. It is not just a collection of granular little scoops like what ive been talking about, there is an overarching framework of what the Washington Post has reported today. And basically the big question around what they frame all of this new reporting and it is a question that i think we all have to admit will loom large in history about this time in our country, which is how did russia get away with this . Not just what did russia try to do, but how did they get away with it. Especially now that we know that various parts of the u. S. Government were able to conclude confidently, not only that the attack was underway while it was underway, but they know who was doing it. How did they get away with it . How have they continued to get away with it . I should tell you that nbc news has an exclusive story out just tonight about the Trump Administration and how they have done nothing, how they have taken little meaningful action since trump has been in office to shore up u. S. Defenses against russian hacking, to protect our elections infrastructure in particular, let alone to retaliate in any way against russia for having done what they did in our election last year. Now depending on how you feel about the Trump Campaign and their own special relationship with russia on this issue, the news they are doing nothing from trying to prevent it from happening again in the future and doing nothing to respond, that may or may not be surprising to you. But why did the Obama Administration not do more than they did once they realized what was going on . This big report from the post hints at the u. S. Government having a lot of options. If they really did want to go after russia. If they did really want to retaliate and hit russia in response for what te did. Specifically, there is new and very provocative news in the Washington Post piece where they describe what sounds like rather epic american capacity for hitting russia using cyber tactics. And im being a little vague about this because the post was vague about this but this is new. It is newly reporting that before he left Office President obama approve aid covert measure that, quote, authorized planting Cyber Weapons inside of russias infrastructure. The digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with moscow. Oh that work was started under a covert authorization signed by president obama before he left office. In the five months since he left office that, work apparently has continued on the basis of president obamas authorization. Now, the post does not say exactly what kind of damage this new capacity the u. S. Is developing, what kind of damage it could inflict on russia. Or even what the types of russian infrastructure these things might be targeting. But you know, even before this previously undisclosed Covert Program to develop new ways to hit russia, even before this, the u. S. Has previously been clear that whatever the russians can do to us, in terms of Cyber Attacks or whatever the north koreans could do to us or the chinese or any other state that devotes capacity, the u. S. Has been clear in the past that they believe our nsa, our Cyber Command has more fire power than any other country on earth and whatever any other country could do to us, we could do to them and much worse. There is no lack of the confidence that the us has the power to inflict devastating consequences on russia or any other country if we chose to do so by cyber means. Why didnt they choose to do Something Like that when the Obama Administration recognized what russia was doing with our election . Particularly when they realized it wasnt some freelance operation, it wasnt some criminal operation, it was being deployed directly by the russian government on the orders of the russian president. Again, were going to talk with Ellen Nakashima with the post about this in just a moment. But the way the post lays it out. They give two types of answers to that question. One of them is domestic to the u. S. And it is sort of exasperating to think about a National Security matter like this having domestic political constraints about it but that is the way it is. The other one is not domestic, it is a different kind of constraint, that is the keep you up at night kind of thing. But the domestic political constraint that the post described was about donald trump making it a touch stone in his campaign that the elections were somehow rigged for Hillary Clinton when he was saying that the elections were rigged, the whole thing is rigged, he wasnt saying the russians were rigging our oelection, he was saying that the u. S. Government, the Obama Administration or maybe even the clinton campaign, the democrats were somehow rigging the election to favor Hillary Clinton. And because he was campaigning on that, the political consequence of that in terms of this National Security issue is that the Obama Administration apparently felt con trained in terms of how dramatically they could respond to this attack and how much they could even talk about exactly what they knew the russians were doing. Because with at stage that stage being set by trump, this is all rigged, they want to interfere to help clinton, with that stage being set in terms of our domestic politics, the Obama Administration believes that whoever they said about the russian attack on our election would have been called proof proof of what trump has been saying all along, they have made up this story. This is how theyre going to rig the election and tale the election for clinton and blame it all on this russia thing. So that is the constraint driven by domestic politics. And i think it is not purely craven. The other thing you have to think about when you are the president of the United States, when you are Public Servants and intelligence agencies serving the good of the people of the United States, that you dont want to end up in a situation where a significant portion of the country thinks theyve got great reason to believe that we didnt just have an election. That it was all rigged. That it was stolen and they should turn to some other means to install their leader. Right. If you dont want to mess with that. So they tried not to. And they felt constrained in their response to the russia attack because of that worry. That was the domestic constraint. The other con trant they apparently felt is something that is less sort of exasperating about our politics and just more straight ahead scary. According to the post report, one of the reasons the other main reason the Obama Administration, quote, ruled out any preelection retaliation against moscow is because they feared what putin might do in response about the election. They feared that putin, quote, was prepared to go beyond fake news and email dumps. Quote, the fbi had detected suspected russian attempts to penetrate election systems in 21 states. And at least one senior white house official assumed that moscow would try all 50. Michael daniel, who was Cyber Security coordinator at the white house tells the Washington Post that, quote, we turned to other scenarios that the russians might attempt. Quoting from the post, as brazen as the russian attacks on the election seemed, obama and his top advisers feared that things could get far worse. Moscows meddling to that point was seem at concerning but unlikely to effect the outcome of the election and far more worrisome was the prospect of cyber assault on voting systems before and on election day. Worrisome to the obama team was that prospect. So part of the reason they didnt throw everything they had at the russians, which appears to be a considerable amount of stuff they could have thrown, part of the reason they didnt do anything to russia about this before the election was because of how it would play politically here in the United States. This question, an important question of whether americans would have confidence that our election was not being rigged by the Outgoing Administration in order to install somebody who had been secretary of state in that administration as the next president. There was that domestic concern. But the other part of their reticence to do anything about the election was driven by the fact that they believed that russia could blow up the election if they wanted to. That beyond the bots and the problems ganda and stealing the democrats from the documents from the Democratic Party and beyond all of that, apparently the Obama Administration believed that whatever russia did with the voter rolls and all of the probes of election systems and all of the other poking around they were told they did in counties and in dozens of states before the election, the Obama Administration apparently believed that maybe the russians were capable of melting the whole thing down. On election day. So americans couldnt vote or the votes couldnt be counted or the vote could be disappeared or changes in some catastrophic way. Learning that that fear is part of what constrained the Obama Administrations reaction, honestly, that is the way we learned as a country today that the Obama Administration apparently believed that russia could do that. That russia had that capacity. They could have absolutely blown up our election if they had wanted to. And if they had that capacity last year, presumably, that means they still have it. For whatever they want to use it. So there is a lot that the Washington Post has just broken here. Like i said, it is like they took 10 page onescoops and put them all in one story with that fascinating framing in terms of how the Obama Administration responded. Well be speaking with the reporter about that in just a moment. Before we get to her, i want to share with you that is a little scoop that we just got tonight. At the start of this week, you might remember New York Times ran a story about the cia director mike pompeo and former republican congressman and not every cia director is involved directly in things like the president s daily brief, not every cia director is at the white house every single day. And in this administration, mike pompeo apparently has been and what the times was able to report out at the beginning of the week, when sally yates, acting attorney general came to the white house during the second week no, the first week of the Trump Administration in january to give them that dire historically unprecedented warning that mike flynn the National Security adviser was lying about his contacted with russian government and compromised by russia and vulnerable to blackmail or coercion by russia, the times was able to report out at the beginning of the week that that warning from sally yates, that wasnt something that the Upper Echelon of the department of ju