The Plot to Hack America

Despite Assange straying off the deep end of conspiracy theory, the most significant aspect of the WikiLeaks dump was a surprise that the CYBER BEARs had given the stir-crazy Assange and his gullible supporters: The Russians had infected the downloadable package of DNC emails with a wide variety of hacking malware. Tens of thousands of people who would download the emails from their WikiLeaks’ Global Intelligence Files would find their computers filled with malware and open their lives to exploitation by the CYBER BEARS. It was quickly noticed and warnings went out across the cyber security community to beware of malware embedded in emails from WikiLeaks.²⁸

Fomenting a crisis between the two competing candidates of the Democratic Party was the objective and it looked like it could succeed, if not for Donald Trump himself. During the convention the family of U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan, a soldier killed in Iraq by a suicide bomber, came to the stage to give a speech. The Khans were Gold Star parents—parents who have lost their children in war. His father Khzir Khan gave a stirring patriotic speech attacking Trump’s knowledge of sacrifice and of the U.S. Constitution. Captain Khan’s mother, Ghazala stood next to her husband, devastated in grief under a 20-foot high photo of her son. She was struck speechless. Trump could not resist the opportunity to insult the family and in an instant the fury over the DNC leaks essentially ended in a plume of Trump-initiated radioactivity.²⁹

Though the protests did slowly calm down or were repressed and the persistent interruption of speakers ceased, tensions remained during the convention throughout the entire week. While the Republican Party spent the election season plagued by internal factions, the hacked emails were enough to make internal disputes within the Democratic Party the focus of political media. During President Obama’s address to the convention, a shout-out to Senator Sanders met with the televised image of a prickly-looking Sanders.

Ignoring the implications that Russia might be trying to influence the outcomes of this election by taking attention off of Trump and discrediting Clinton, Sanders supporters expressed outrage that the Democratic Party bigwigs had picked a candidate before primary voters had. The doubts about Clinton, amplified by release of the stolen emails, called into question her own campaign’s involvement in the election. Though the tensions waned, and the Democratic party did not suffer a split, a secondary desired effect was that many Sanders supporters now had a hard time supporting Clinton.

For the CYBER BEAR hackers this effect was well on track for what the operation had intended to produce, though a Democratic Party split would have been optimal.

To paraphrase J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, the mischief had been managed, but the attack was not yet finished. The CYBER BEARs were going to systematically waltz their way through the remaining arms of the Democratic Party’s machine and steal, reveal, discredit, and attack anyone who stood against Donald Trump, and by extension, Russia.

Team Trump Tips its Hand?

The first two days of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia had been chaotic. The forces between Clinton and Sanders where engaged in tit-for-tat taunts and accusations of divisiveness. If the hacks were designed to damage the convention it was performing nominally. The entire pathway of Kompromat from surveillance, planning, and hacking, to establishing a legend in Guccifer 2.0 and gaining international credibility by channeling the release through WikiLeaks was happening within planning parameters and with only minor hitches. Even the international media was buying into the belief that it was absolutely unimportant how the information from the hacks was acquired, but that the content was critical. So long as the CYBER BEARs could infuse doubt as to their participation, there was little chance for repercussion. Julian Assange hinted at future releases though the Guccifer 2.0 legend and the ever-compliant WikiLeaks. There also remained perfect opportunites to prepare and introduce Black Propaganda—false documents that could be taken from a clean source and modified ever so slightly to make it malicious. Science and Technology Directorate of the FSB’s SVR could easily fabricate such documents if the mission required letters, money, deeds, titles, or any other falsely impugning evidence. Working with the SVR political warfare specialists, the cyber warriors of the FSB could also seamlessly change a word or two in an email without a trace and reintroduce it into a flood of legitimate documents. But then that plan was suddenly spoiled.