[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.