[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 51 (Thursday, March 23, 2017)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1961-S1963]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Russia
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the deep and growing
concerns about Russia's interference in the United States' 2016
Presidential election and the implications of Russia's broader malign
activities for our national security.
On Monday, we learned from FBI Director Comey that there is an
investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential
election and whether associates of then-candidate and now-President
Donald Trump were communicating with Moscow. It is absolutely essential
that Congress and the American people get clear and comprehensive
answers on, first, what happened; second, what are Russia's strategic
goals and intentions for further interference in democratic processes
here and in Europe; and third, what we need to do to counter this
threat going forward. That is why I have repeatedly called for an
independent, transparent, special counsel to investigate the legal
aspects of Russian efforts to influence our election and a bipartisan
select committee within the Senate to look at all aspects of Russia's
destabilizing activities here and around the world.
I am concerned that the politicization of the issue of Russia's
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interference in our elections and its hostile actions against Western
institutions and values is diverting our attention from what otherwise
should be recognized as a clear and potent threat to America's
security. We need to focus on what is critical: Russia is attacking
American democracy as part of an even broader assault on our
cornerstone NATO alliance and the post-Cold War international order.
The threat posed by Russia's actions is not merely ``fake news,'' as
serious as that phenomenon may be, but a very real, very strategic
threat to U.S. interests. Russia is testing America and the
transatlantic community across multiple fronts.
Today, I will highlight just how broad and fundamental this threat
from Russia really is.
What should be clear to everyone is that last year Russia engaged in
a systematic and strategic effort to influence the U.S. Presidential
election. While we do not know all the details of Russia's involvement,
we know that in January the U.S. intelligence community--including the
CIA, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence,
or the ODNI--issued its assessment that Russia engaged in bold and
unprecedented efforts to influence and undermine trust in the U.S.
Presidential election.
Among the January intelligence report's findings were the following:
first, that President Putin, in their words, ``ordered an influence
campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.''
The intelligence community also found that ``Russia's goals were to
undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate
Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential
presidency.''
The report further found that Russia's influence campaign was
multifaceted and included covert intelligence operations such as cyber
espionage against U.S. political organizations like the Republican
National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. It combined
the release of hacked information with overt propaganda efforts through
Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party
intermediaries, and paid social media actors, or, as they are referred
to, trolls.
Another key finding was that Russia's influence efforts in the 2016
U.S. Presidential election reflect--in the words of the intelligence
community--``a significant escalation'' compared to previous
information operations.
The intelligence community also warned that these Russian activities,
including ``cyber-enabled disclosure operations'' likely represent a
``New Normal'' in Russian conduct toward the United States and our
allies and partners.
The intelligence community further assessed that Russia will use the
lessons learned from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to influence
future elections in the United States and overseas. We do not have to
look very far for evidence supporting this conclusion.
Russia is alleged to have targeted an April 2016 referendum in the
Netherlands on a partnership agreement between the European Union and
Ukraine, which was overwhelmingly rejected by Dutch voters. This year,
Russia is openly intervening in France's Presidential election to be
held in April. For example, Russia has loaned tens of millions of
dollars to the far-right National Front Party in France, whose leader,
Marine Le Pen, has defended Russia's annexation of Crimea and
criticized international sanctions against Russia.
Germany, which holds parliamentary elections in September, has also
been targeted by Russian hackers and trolls--straight out of the
Kremlin playbook we saw used here last year. Russia is attempting to
steadily erode the integrity and western orientation of multiple
Eastern European countries through a variety of state and state-
controlled or state-influenced activities. These coordinated and
focused Russian operations threaten to undermine the European cohesion
which underpins the post-Cold War international order. This pattern of
Russian interference will only intensify with time if it goes
unchallenged.
Russia's malign activities also threaten our core security
relationships with our transatlantic allies and partners. The NATO
alliance has been the bedrock of our security relationship with our
European allies. Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s,
countries in Central and Eastern Europe have aspired to integrate more
closely with the West, whether militarily through NATO membership or
economically within the European Union, or both. But President Putin
rejects the post-Cold War international order and seeks to reestablish
a Russian sphere of influence over his immediate neighbors by weakening
democracy, collective security, and economic cooperation across the
region.
In pursuit of this strategic goal, Putin has demonstrated a
willingness to use all tools at his disposal, including cyber hacking,
disinformation, propaganda, economic leverage, corruption, and even
military force, to violate the sovereignty of Russia's neighbors and
undermine support for their further integration into Europe.
Since 2008, in neighboring Georgia, Russia has occupied two regions
and recognized their independence, which the international community
widely condemns as a violation of Georgia's territorial integrity.
Georgia's aspirations since the 2008 Bucharest Summit to join the NATO
Alliance have been on hold.
In Ukraine, Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and its continuing
support to Russian-led separatists in eastern Ukraine are part of
Putin's strategy of destabilizing the Kyiv government and blocking
Ukraine's further integration westward. Putin has repeatedly used
influence operations to hide the presence of ``little green men'' on
Ukrainian soil, to spread disinformation about Ukrainian political
leaders, and to influence financially corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs to
support Russia. Putin is also using propaganda and other activities to
try to break western unity in support of the United States and EU
sanctions intended to pressure Russia to comply with its commitments
under the Minsk agreements for ending the conflict in Ukraine. It is
critically important to maintain, and potentially strengthen, these
sanctions to change Russia's aggressive behavior and get to a peaceful
political settlement to end the fighting in Ukraine.
In Montenegro, it appears that Russia has added political
assassination as a potential weapon to block an Eastern European
country from pursuing membership in NATO. Last month, the British press
reported that ``Russian nationalists'' under the direction of Russian
intelligence officials plotted to assassinate then-Prime Minister
Djukanovic during Montenegro's elections in October. According to these
reports, Montenegrin authorities foiled the assassination attempt just
hours before the plot was to be carried out. This attempted coup d'etat
represents a new and dangerous level of interference by Russia to
discourage Montenegro and others from further integrating with the
West.
As some of my colleagues have read in the February 14th New York
Times article, Russia has fielded a missile system that violates the
Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces, or INF, Treaty--a ground-launched
intermediate-range nuclear missile that threatens all of NATO. The INF
Treaty was signed by President Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
This landmark treaty dramatically reduced Cold War nuclear tensions by
eliminating an entire class of ground-launched ballistic and cruise
missiles that could have struck Moscow or Berlin in less than 10
minutes.
Now Russia has moved nuclear-capable, short-range, ground-launched
Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and
Lithuania. The Iskander missile's range threatens German borders--
something not seen since the 1980s. The Iskander deployment runs
counter to a detente that has been in place since 1989, when President
Bush reduced U.S. conventional forces in Europe--and Russia did the
same--in order to relieve destabilizing tension in the region and
lessen the risk of escalation or miscalculation. Furthermore, Russian
aggression goes beyond the violations of the INF Treaty and the
Iskander missile.
During the 2014 invasion of Crimea, Russia practiced snap nuclear
exercises to test the readiness of its Armed Forces to send a signal
that there was
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a nuclear backstop to the invasion. More disturbingly, by invading
Ukraine, Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum, a multilateral
commitment in which Ukraine and three other former Soviet states
pledged to transfer to Russia the nuclear weapons they retained after
the collapse of the Soviet Union in return for Russian recognition of
their sovereignty.
Besides unilaterally reneging on its Budapest commitments, in 2014
Russia has pulled out of the DOD and DOE--Department of Defense and
Department of Energy--Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs, which
secured nuclear materials at storage sites and national borders. Russia
has some of the largest stockpiles of nuclear materials in the world
that are vulnerable to insider threats. In 2016, Russia suspended its
participation in the agreement with the United States to convert 34
metric tons of weapons-grade plutonium for use as fuel for reactors.
Since the very beginning of the Cold War, nonproliferation and arms
control agreements between Russia and the United States have always
received a high priority from both countries, regardless of how
relations in other areas went up or down. Russia's recent actions call
into question whether this can continue.
Russian actions in Syria pose a further challenge to stability in the
Middle East and the broader international community. Russia's military
operations to prop up the murderous Assad regime belies Moscow's claim
that it intervened to fight violent extremists, including ISIS and al-
Qaida. Russia has provided significant political, economic, and
military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, even as he has
slaughtered tens of thousands of Syrian civilians and used chemical
weapons against his own people. Russia has repeatedly exercised its
veto power in the U.N. Security Council on behalf of the Syrian regime
in defiance of international standards and U.S.-led peace efforts, and,
just last month, Russia vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution
seeking to punish Syria for using chemical weapons.
For all of these reasons, we must recognize that Russia's
alarming interference in our election is only one aspect of a much
broader and dangerous threat to our core national security interests.
Russia's malign behavior needs to be investigated fully and in a manner
that is free of political considerations. We need answers to key
questions, including:
What are Russia's overall strategic security goals, and how do
Russian influence activities in Europe and the United States advance
those goals?
What are the tools of Russia's influence? How has Russia used, or
continues to use, those tools in influencing campaigns in Europe? How
do Russian activities in Europe compare to what was evident in the U.S.
Presidential elections last year?
How has Russia used influence activities in concert with other
unconventional warfare tactics and operational activities--for example,
to support proxy forces in Ukraine and elsewhere?
What is the threat these Russian influence activities pose to U.S.
democratic institutions? To NATO? To the European Union? To the post-
Cold War liberal order and value system?
What are the weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the United States and
European countries that Russia is successfully exploiting and
magnifying?
Finally, how can the U.S. Government counter and deter Russia's
influence activities, and what capabilities, structures, and other
resources are needed for these purposes?
An investigation of these questions would best be conducted by an
independent, transparent, outside body appointed in a bipartisan
manner. However, if Congress cannot reach consensus to make that
happen, then, as a ranking member on the Senate Armed Services
Committee, I intend to work with the chairman to undertake the
necessary effort within the committee and across the Senate. I believe
we can work in a bipartisan fashion on this critical threat to our
national security. I look forward to shedding light on this issue and
examining what we need to do as a country to defend ourselves against
and deter Russian malign influence.
As a final point, we are focused, of course, on what happened in
2016--and it is a topic of daily discussions and newspaper articles--
but one of the most sobering factors is that we have an election in
process right now for 2018. If it demonstrates the same interference,
Russia could have an effect on that election. Indeed, there are
indications that they are actually probing State election systems--the
names of voters, how the States calculate and vote. Nothing has been
established that would suggest they attempted to influence that
activity, but the simple probing suggests that we have much to do to
protect ourselves going forward--indeed, as much as looking back and
finding out what went on in the 2016 election.
For these reasons, and many more, we have to work together, as I
suggested and encouraged, in a bipartisan way to get at the answers--
not just to look backward but to protect ourselves going forward.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Blunt). Without objection, it is so
ordered.