In February 2014, the Obama administration was embarrassed when a secretly recorded phone conversation between the U.S. ambassador in Ukraine and Victoria Nuland, a senior State Department official, was posted on …
(Alexei Nikolsky / Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via Associated Press)
In February 2014, the Obama administration
was embarrassed when a secretly recorded phone conversation between the
U.S. ambassador in Ukraine and Victoria Nuland, a senior State Department official, was posted on YouTube.
The
two officials could be heard privately picking who should be in the new
government in Kiev, and at one point, Nuland used a four-letter word to
dismiss slow-moving diplomats at the European Union.
The
intercepted call, which U.S. officials traced to Russian intelligence,
created friction between U.S. and EU envoys. But its real significance
is only now clear — Russia was publicly willing to use the fruits of
espionage to upend U.S. foreign policy.
“Instead of using their
capability to write secret memos, they decided, ‘Well, let’s see what
happens if we release it,’” said Stewart Baker, former general council
to the National Security Agency.
Russia’s government, he added, has “decided that getting fingered isn’t all that bad.”
That analysis helps explain Russia’s apparent efforts to influence the U.S. presidential campaign: under Vladimir Putin, a former Soviet-era KGB officer, spying once done in secret is increasingly public.
Brian Bennett
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