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Treasury Department’s Senior Leaders Were Targeted by Hacking
Treasury Department’s Senior Leaders Were Targeted by Hacking
The disclosure was the first acknowledgment of a specific intrusion in the vast cyberattack. At the White House, national security leaders met to assess how to deal with the situation.
Dec. 21, 2020, 8:36 p.m. ET
BREAKING
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, was one of the attendees at the White House meeting on Monday on the source of the cyberattack.Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Russian hackers who penetrated United States government agencies broke into the email system used by the Treasury Department’s most senior leadership, a Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee said on Monday, the first detail of how deeply Moscow burrowed into the Trump administration’s networks.
In a statement after a briefing for committee staff members, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has often been among the sharpest critics of the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, said that the Treasury Department had acknowledged that “the agency suffered a serious breach, beginning in July, the full depth of which isn’t known.”
The Treasury Department ranks among the most highly protected corners of the government because of its responsibility for market-moving economic decisions, communications with the Federal Reserve and economic sanctions against adversaries. Mr. Wyden said the hackers had gained access to the email system by manipulating internal software keys.
The department learned of the breach not from any of the government agencies whose job is to protect against cyberattacks, but from Microsoft, which runs much of Treasury’s communications software, Mr. Wyden said. He said that “dozens of email accounts were compromised,” apparently including in what is called the departmental offices division, where the most senior officials operate.
“Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen,” he said.
The newest disclosures underscored the administration’s conflicting messages about the source of the attacks and the extent of the damage as more reports about the targets leak out. A Treasury Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin addressed the hacking earlier on Monday and said the department’s classified systems had not been breached.
“At this point, we do not see any break-in into our classified systems,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “Our unclassified systems did have some access.”
Mr. Mnuchin said that the hacking was related to third-party software. He added that there had been no damage or large amounts of information displaced as a result of the attack and that the agency had robust resources to protect the financial industry.
“I can assure you, we are completely on top of this,” he said. He did not explain how the Russian presence was not detected in the system for more than four months.
Cooking: Daily inspiration, delicious recipes and other updates from Sam Sifton and NYT Cooking.
His statement came on the same day that Attorney General William P. Barr, at his final news conference before stepping down, sided with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in saying that Moscow was almost certainly behind the hacking. The intrusion went through a commercial network management software package made by SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas, and allowed the hackers broad access to government and corporate systems.
“I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment: It certainly appears to be the Russians,” Mr. Barr said, further undercutting President Trump’s effort to cast doubt on whether the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was behind the attack. Mr. Trump appears to be alone in the administration in his contention that China might have been the source of the hacking.
Mr. Mnuchin was among several top officials in the government who met with national security officials for the first time at the White House on Monday to assess the damage and discuss how to deal with it.
The meeting was a principals committee session led by Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser. It was held two days after Mr. Trump said the attack on federal networks was “under control,” was being exaggerated by the news media and might have been carried out by China rather than Russia, which has been identified by intelligence agencies, other government officials and cybersecurity firms as the almost certain source of the hacking.
The session was classified, but if it was like the briefings to Congress in recent days, the intelligence officials expressed little doubt that the attack was most likely carried out by hackers associated with the S.V.R., Russia’s premier intelligence agency.
But on Monday there was no public declaration attributing the hacking to Russia, perhaps reflecting Mr. Trump’s reluctance to confront Moscow over the issue and the doubts he has expressed about the seriousness of the attack.
The meeting, according to one senior administration official, was intended to “take stock of the intelligence, the investigation and the actions being taken to remediate” the attack. Absent from that description was any preparation for imposing a cost on the attacker. Mr. Trump did not attend the meeting.
Both President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, have said in recent days that the response once Mr. Biden was in officewould go beyond sanctions to disabling the attacker’s abilities. But he will probably find the government’s response options are limited because of fear of escalation.
The list of attendees at the meeting was notable because it provided some indication of which parts of the government might have been affected. White House officials said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the acting homeland security secretary Chad F. Wolf and Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette were present. All of those agencies were previously identified by news organizations as targets of the hacking.
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, participated in the meeting; so did Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, and Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of the United States Cyber Command. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the first high-ranking administration official to acknowledge that Russia was the most likely source of the attack before he was undercut by Mr. Trump, did not attend. His deputy, Stephen E. Biegun, stood in for him.
General Nakasone, an experienced cyberwarrior who is responsible for the defense of national security systems, has been silent since the hacking was revealed. At the N.S.A. and Cyber Command, officials said, there was extraordinary embarrassment that a private company, FireEye, had been the first to alert the government that it had been hacked.
According to the details released by Mr. Wyden, once the Russian hackers used the SolarWinds software update to get inside Treasury’s systems, they performed a complex step inside Microsoft’s Office 365 system to create an encrypted “token” that identifies a computer to the larger network.
That counterfeiting enabled them to fool the system into thinking they were legitimate users — and to sign on without trying to guess user names and passwords. Microsoft said last week that it had fixed the flaw that the Russians had exploited, but that did not answer the question of whether the hackers used their access to bore through other channels into the Treasury Department or other systems.
Formally determining who was responsible for a hacking like this one can be time-consuming work, though the administration did so twice in Mr. Trump’s first year in office, pointing to North Korea for the so-called WannaCry attack on the British health care system and Russia for the “NotPetya” attack that cost Maersk, Federal Express and other major corporations hundreds of millions of dollars.
In this case, officials say, a formal declaration of who was responsible for the attack — which is needed to start any form of retaliation — may not come until after Mr. Biden is inaugurated. That would leave the Trump administration to focus on damage control but skip the hard questions of how to deter Moscow from future attacks.
Capt. Katrina J. Cheesman, a spokeswoman for Cyber Command, said that so far the military had found “no evidence of compromises” in the Pentagon’s network. She said that parts of the Defense Department’s “software supply chain source have disclosed a vulnerability within their systems, but we have no indication the D.O.D. network has been compromised.”
Treasury Department’s Senior Leaders Were Targeted by Hacking
The disclosure was the first acknowledgment of a specific intrusion in the vast cyberattack. At the White House, national security leaders met to assess how to deal with the situation.
Dec. 21, 2020, 8:36 p.m. ET
BREAKING
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, was one of the attendees at the White House meeting on Monday on the source of the cyberattack.Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — The Russian hackers who penetrated United States government agencies broke into the email system used by the Treasury Department’s most senior leadership, a Democratic member of the Senate Finance Committee said on Monday, the first detail of how deeply Moscow burrowed into the Trump administration’s networks.
In a statement after a briefing for committee staff members, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who has often been among the sharpest critics of the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies, said that the Treasury Department had acknowledged that “the agency suffered a serious breach, beginning in July, the full depth of which isn’t known.”
The Treasury Department ranks among the most highly protected corners of the government because of its responsibility for market-moving economic decisions, communications with the Federal Reserve and economic sanctions against adversaries. Mr. Wyden said the hackers had gained access to the email system by manipulating internal software keys.
The department learned of the breach not from any of the government agencies whose job is to protect against cyberattacks, but from Microsoft, which runs much of Treasury’s communications software, Mr. Wyden said. He said that “dozens of email accounts were compromised,” apparently including in what is called the departmental offices division, where the most senior officials operate.
“Treasury still does not know all of the actions taken by hackers, or precisely what information was stolen,” he said.
The newest disclosures underscored the administration’s conflicting messages about the source of the attacks and the extent of the damage as more reports about the targets leak out. A Treasury Department spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin addressed the hacking earlier on Monday and said the department’s classified systems had not been breached.
“At this point, we do not see any break-in into our classified systems,” he said in an interview with CNBC. “Our unclassified systems did have some access.”
Mr. Mnuchin said that the hacking was related to third-party software. He added that there had been no damage or large amounts of information displaced as a result of the attack and that the agency had robust resources to protect the financial industry.
“I can assure you, we are completely on top of this,” he said. He did not explain how the Russian presence was not detected in the system for more than four months.
Cooking: Daily inspiration, delicious recipes and other updates from Sam Sifton and NYT Cooking.
His statement came on the same day that Attorney General William P. Barr, at his final news conference before stepping down, sided with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in saying that Moscow was almost certainly behind the hacking. The intrusion went through a commercial network management software package made by SolarWinds, a company based in Austin, Texas, and allowed the hackers broad access to government and corporate systems.
“I agree with Secretary Pompeo’s assessment: It certainly appears to be the Russians,” Mr. Barr said, further undercutting President Trump’s effort to cast doubt on whether the government of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was behind the attack. Mr. Trump appears to be alone in the administration in his contention that China might have been the source of the hacking.
Mr. Mnuchin was among several top officials in the government who met with national security officials for the first time at the White House on Monday to assess the damage and discuss how to deal with it.
The meeting was a principals committee session led by Robert C. O’Brien, the national security adviser. It was held two days after Mr. Trump said the attack on federal networks was “under control,” was being exaggerated by the news media and might have been carried out by China rather than Russia, which has been identified by intelligence agencies, other government officials and cybersecurity firms as the almost certain source of the hacking.
The session was classified, but if it was like the briefings to Congress in recent days, the intelligence officials expressed little doubt that the attack was most likely carried out by hackers associated with the S.V.R., Russia’s premier intelligence agency.
But on Monday there was no public declaration attributing the hacking to Russia, perhaps reflecting Mr. Trump’s reluctance to confront Moscow over the issue and the doubts he has expressed about the seriousness of the attack.
The meeting, according to one senior administration official, was intended to “take stock of the intelligence, the investigation and the actions being taken to remediate” the attack. Absent from that description was any preparation for imposing a cost on the attacker. Mr. Trump did not attend the meeting.
Both President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his incoming chief of staff, Ron Klain, have said in recent days that the response once Mr. Biden was in officewould go beyond sanctions to disabling the attacker’s abilities. But he will probably find the government’s response options are limited because of fear of escalation.
The list of attendees at the meeting was notable because it provided some indication of which parts of the government might have been affected. White House officials said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, the acting homeland security secretary Chad F. Wolf and Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette were present. All of those agencies were previously identified by news organizations as targets of the hacking.
John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, participated in the meeting; so did Gina Haspel, the C.I.A. director, and Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of the United States Cyber Command. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was the first high-ranking administration official to acknowledge that Russia was the most likely source of the attack before he was undercut by Mr. Trump, did not attend. His deputy, Stephen E. Biegun, stood in for him.
General Nakasone, an experienced cyberwarrior who is responsible for the defense of national security systems, has been silent since the hacking was revealed. At the N.S.A. and Cyber Command, officials said, there was extraordinary embarrassment that a private company, FireEye, had been the first to alert the government that it had been hacked.
According to the details released by Mr. Wyden, once the Russian hackers used the SolarWinds software update to get inside Treasury’s systems, they performed a complex step inside Microsoft’s Office 365 system to create an encrypted “token” that identifies a computer to the larger network.
That counterfeiting enabled them to fool the system into thinking they were legitimate users — and to sign on without trying to guess user names and passwords. Microsoft said last week that it had fixed the flaw that the Russians had exploited, but that did not answer the question of whether the hackers used their access to bore through other channels into the Treasury Department or other systems.
Formally determining who was responsible for a hacking like this one can be time-consuming work, though the administration did so twice in Mr. Trump’s first year in office, pointing to North Korea for the so-called WannaCry attack on the British health care system and Russia for the “NotPetya” attack that cost Maersk, Federal Express and other major corporations hundreds of millions of dollars.
In this case, officials say, a formal declaration of who was responsible for the attack — which is needed to start any form of retaliation — may not come until after Mr. Biden is inaugurated. That would leave the Trump administration to focus on damage control but skip the hard questions of how to deter Moscow from future attacks.
Capt. Katrina J. Cheesman, a spokeswoman for Cyber Command, said that so far the military had found “no evidence of compromises” in the Pentagon’s network. She said that parts of the Defense Department’s “software supply chain source have disclosed a vulnerability within their systems, but we have no indication the D.O.D. network has been compromised.”
washingtonpost.com
Biden administration to seek five-year extension on key nuclear arms treaty in first foray with Russia
John Hudson
7-9 minutes
President Biden is seeking a five-year extension with Russia on the only remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals just days before it expires, said two senior U.S. officials.
At the same time, his administration is preparing to impose new costs on Russia pending a newly requested intelligence assessment of its recent activities. The officials said Biden is ruling out a “reset” in bilateral relations with Moscow as many new U.S. presidents have done since the end of the Cold War.
“As we work with Russia, so, too, will we work to hold Russia accountable for their reckless and aggressive actions that we’ve seen in recent months and years,” said a senior U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
The decision to seek a five-year treaty extension, which Russia supports but the Biden administration hadn’t settled on until now, reflects the rapidly approaching deadline for Washington to renew the New START pact Feb. 5, the officials said.
President Donald Trump tried to conclude a shorter extension with Moscow in the final months of his presidency, but he failed to reach an agreement after his nuclear envoy spent months trying to persuade China to join the accord before dropping that demand.
Letting the treaty expire would allow Moscow and Washington to deploy an unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and missiles in what many experts fear could spark a nuclear arms race and further exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.
“New START is manifestly in the national security interest of the United States and makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial,” the senior U.S. official said.
As the Biden administration informs Moscow of its terms for an extension, the president will order Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide him a full intelligence assessment of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2020 election, use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, officials said.
Biden is also asking Haines for an assessment of the massive cyberattack on federal agencies and departments related to the SolarWinds software breach, which many analysts and government officials have blamed on Russia. The request for the intelligence assessments will go out this week, said the officials.
“We will use these assessments to inform our response to Russian aggression in the coming weeks,” another senior official said.
Biden’s plans for potential punitive actions toward Russia at the outset of the administration is unique among his recent predecessors, all of whom attempted to turn a new page with the Kremlin in the hopes of encouraging a more productive relationship.
“This will be the first post-Soviet U.S. administration that has not come into office vowing to forge a warmer relationship with Russia,” said Angela Stent, a senior intelligence official on Russia during the George W. Bush administration.
Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told lawmakers Tuesday that sanctions passed by Congress to target Moscow will be “extremely helpful in being able to impose . . . costs and consequences” on Russia.
Blinken said New START, which restricts the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 and deployed strategic delivery systems to 700, provides the United States “tremendous access to data and inspections” and is “certainly in the national interest to extend.”
Not all of Biden’s aides have supported the idea of a five-year extension for the treaty.
Victoria Nuland, a longtime Russia hawk whom Biden will nominate to be the No. 3 official at the State Department, wrote in Foreign Affairs over the summer that the United States should only seek a one- or two-year renewal in the hopes of retaining leverage over the Kremlin.
“Washington should not grant Moscow what it wants most: a free rollover of New START without any negotiations to address Russia’s recent investments in short- and medium-range nuclear weapons systems and new conventional weapons,” she wrote.
But U.S. officials noted that Trump’s special envoy, Marshall Billingslea, tried to secure a shorter extension with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, but failed to make a deal, leaving a critical agreement dangerously close to expiration.
“We’re aware that the last administration engaged in negotiations on an extension of a New START for months but was unable to come with an agreement,” said a senior U.S. official. “We also understand there have been various proposals exchanged during those negations, but we’ve not seen anything to suggest that at any point an agreement on the terms that have been reported was in place.”
Arms control advocates have also opposed holding out for a shorter extension.
“There is no evidence that Russia is desperate to extend the treaty or that a shorter-term extension would make Russia more likely to negotiate a follow-on agreement,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
“A straightforward five-year extension would provide the new president with an early win and positive momentum, help restore U.S. credibility on arms control issues, and create the potential for more ambitious steps to reduce the nuclear danger and move us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.”
U.S. officials said they hoped a quick renewal of New START could provide a foundation for new arms control arrangements, potentially including China.
“We believe it’s absolutely urgent for China to take on greater responsibility, transparency and restraint for its nuclear weapons arsenal,” said a senior U.S. official.
The Biden administration is not interested in holding an extension of New START hostage to China, however, the U.S. official said, especially given that Moscow’s arsenal “is at least 10 times the size of China’s.”
In October, Russia expressed a willingness to freeze its overall number of nuclear warheads during talks with Billingslea — a move Biden officials said was a “positive development” they hoped to build on even though details on verification had not been hammered out.
The Biden administration’s ability to work with Russia on arms control while confronting it on a range of other issues will be tested almost immediately.
On Sunday, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for the immediate release of Navalny, the Russian opposition leader detained in Moscow. Navalny had just returned home after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poisoning attack this summer. Russian authorities put out a warrant for his arrest, claiming he had violated the terms of a previous sentence related to embezzlement charges.
“Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.”
Biden administration to seek five-year extension on key nuclear arms treaty in first foray with Russia
John Hudson
7-9 minutes
President Biden is seeking a five-year extension with Russia on the only remaining treaty limiting the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals just days before it expires, said two senior U.S. officials.
At the same time, his administration is preparing to impose new costs on Russia pending a newly requested intelligence assessment of its recent activities. The officials said Biden is ruling out a “reset” in bilateral relations with Moscow as many new U.S. presidents have done since the end of the Cold War.
“As we work with Russia, so, too, will we work to hold Russia accountable for their reckless and aggressive actions that we’ve seen in recent months and years,” said a senior U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter.
The decision to seek a five-year treaty extension, which Russia supports but the Biden administration hadn’t settled on until now, reflects the rapidly approaching deadline for Washington to renew the New START pact Feb. 5, the officials said.
President Donald Trump tried to conclude a shorter extension with Moscow in the final months of his presidency, but he failed to reach an agreement after his nuclear envoy spent months trying to persuade China to join the accord before dropping that demand.
Letting the treaty expire would allow Moscow and Washington to deploy an unlimited number of nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and missiles in what many experts fear could spark a nuclear arms race and further exacerbate U.S.-Russia relations.
“New START is manifestly in the national security interest of the United States and makes even more sense when the relationship with Russia is adversarial,” the senior U.S. official said.
As the Biden administration informs Moscow of its terms for an extension, the president will order Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to provide him a full intelligence assessment of Russia’s alleged interference in the 2020 election, use of chemical weapons against opposition leader Alexei Navalny and bounties on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, officials said.
Biden is also asking Haines for an assessment of the massive cyberattack on federal agencies and departments related to the SolarWinds software breach, which many analysts and government officials have blamed on Russia. The request for the intelligence assessments will go out this week, said the officials.
“We will use these assessments to inform our response to Russian aggression in the coming weeks,” another senior official said.
Biden’s plans for potential punitive actions toward Russia at the outset of the administration is unique among his recent predecessors, all of whom attempted to turn a new page with the Kremlin in the hopes of encouraging a more productive relationship.
“This will be the first post-Soviet U.S. administration that has not come into office vowing to forge a warmer relationship with Russia,” said Angela Stent, a senior intelligence official on Russia during the George W. Bush administration.
Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told lawmakers Tuesday that sanctions passed by Congress to target Moscow will be “extremely helpful in being able to impose . . . costs and consequences” on Russia.
Blinken said New START, which restricts the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads to 1,550 and deployed strategic delivery systems to 700, provides the United States “tremendous access to data and inspections” and is “certainly in the national interest to extend.”
Not all of Biden’s aides have supported the idea of a five-year extension for the treaty.
Victoria Nuland, a longtime Russia hawk whom Biden will nominate to be the No. 3 official at the State Department, wrote in Foreign Affairs over the summer that the United States should only seek a one- or two-year renewal in the hopes of retaining leverage over the Kremlin.
“Washington should not grant Moscow what it wants most: a free rollover of New START without any negotiations to address Russia’s recent investments in short- and medium-range nuclear weapons systems and new conventional weapons,” she wrote.
But U.S. officials noted that Trump’s special envoy, Marshall Billingslea, tried to secure a shorter extension with his Russian counterpart, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, but failed to make a deal, leaving a critical agreement dangerously close to expiration.
“We’re aware that the last administration engaged in negotiations on an extension of a New START for months but was unable to come with an agreement,” said a senior U.S. official. “We also understand there have been various proposals exchanged during those negations, but we’ve not seen anything to suggest that at any point an agreement on the terms that have been reported was in place.”
Arms control advocates have also opposed holding out for a shorter extension.
“There is no evidence that Russia is desperate to extend the treaty or that a shorter-term extension would make Russia more likely to negotiate a follow-on agreement,” said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association.
“A straightforward five-year extension would provide the new president with an early win and positive momentum, help restore U.S. credibility on arms control issues, and create the potential for more ambitious steps to reduce the nuclear danger and move us closer to a world without nuclear weapons.”
U.S. officials said they hoped a quick renewal of New START could provide a foundation for new arms control arrangements, potentially including China.
“We believe it’s absolutely urgent for China to take on greater responsibility, transparency and restraint for its nuclear weapons arsenal,” said a senior U.S. official.
The Biden administration is not interested in holding an extension of New START hostage to China, however, the U.S. official said, especially given that Moscow’s arsenal “is at least 10 times the size of China’s.”
In October, Russia expressed a willingness to freeze its overall number of nuclear warheads during talks with Billingslea — a move Biden officials said was a “positive development” they hoped to build on even though details on verification had not been hammered out.
The Biden administration’s ability to work with Russia on arms control while confronting it on a range of other issues will be tested almost immediately.
On Sunday, Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, called for the immediate release of Navalny, the Russian opposition leader detained in Moscow. Navalny had just returned home after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poisoning attack this summer. Russian authorities put out a warrant for his arrest, claiming he had violated the terms of a previous sentence related to embezzlement charges.
“Mr. Navalny should be immediately released, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter. “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices heard.”
DJ Paul's Arm
Veteran
FYI, I only read Tom Rogan fo International policy perspectives, but its seems Putin is pushing Biden on Ukraine with recent escalations.
Time to follow through.
Time to follow through.
WSJ News Exclusive | Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say
Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say
Websites linked to Russian intelligence services publish false information questioning vaccines’ safety, efficacy
By and
March 7, 2021 10:00 am ET
The Russians have used online publications to question the safety of Western Covid-19 vaccines, including Pfizer’s.
Photo: julia rendleman/Reuters
Listen to this article
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WASHINGTON—Russian intelligence agencies have mounted a campaign to undermine confidence in Pfizer Inc.’s and other Western vaccines, using online publications that in recent months have questioned the vaccines’ development and safety, U.S. officials said.
An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said have served as fronts for Russian intelligence.
The websites played up the vaccines’ risk of side effects, questioned their efficacy, and said the U.S. had rushed the Pfizer vaccine through the approval process, among other false or misleading claims.
Though the outlets’ readership is small, U.S. officials say they inject false narratives that can be amplified by other Russian and international media.
The Sputnik V vaccine being administered at a site in Saint Petersburg, Russia, last month.
Photo: anton vaganov/Reuters
“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” the Global Engagement Center official said of the sites behind the disinformation campaign. “They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem.”
In addition, Russian state media and Russian government Twitter accounts have made overt efforts to raise concerns about the cost and safety of the Pfizer vaccine in what experts outside the U.S. government say is an effort to promote the sale of Russia’s rival Sputnik V vaccine.
“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance,” says a forthcoming report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on the danger that authoritarian governments pose to democracies and that is part of the German Marshall Fund, a U.S. think tank.
The foreign efforts to sow doubts about the vaccine exploit deep-seated anxieties about the efficacy and side effects of vaccines that were already prevalent in some communities in the U.S. and internationally. Concern about side effects is a major reason for vaccine hesitancy, according to U.S. Census Bureau data made public last month.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russian intelligence agencies were orchestrating articles against Western vaccines and said U.S. officials were mischaracterizing the broad international debate over vaccines as a Russian plot.
“It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines,” Mr. Peskov said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”
The State Department GEC official said that four publications had direct links to Russian intelligence and were used by the Russian government to mislead international opinion on a range of issues.
New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, the official said, are directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia’s foreign intelligence service. They present themselves as academic publications and are aimed at the Middle East, Asia and Africa, offering comment on the U.S.’s role in the world. The State Department said in an August report that New Eastern Outlook was linked to “state-funded institutions” in Russia.
Another publication, News Front, is guided by the FSB, a security service that succeeded the KGB, the official said. It is based in Crimea, produces information in 10 languages, and had nearly nine million page visits between February and April 2020, the official added. In August, the State Department was less explicit, saying that News Front reportedly had ties to Russia security services and Kremlin funding.
Russia Fights Skepticism of Its Covid-19 Vaccine With Global Campaign
0:00 / 5:58
4:25
Russia Fights Skepticism of Its Covid-19 Vaccine With Global Campaign
To counter skepticism over its Covid-19 vaccine, Russia has built a big public-relations effort at home and abroad. WSJ’s Georgi Kantchev explains why the success of Sputnik V is so important for the Kremlin. Photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images
Rebel Inside, the fourth publication, has been controlled by the GRU, which is an intelligence directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. It covered riots and protests and now appears dormant, the GEC official said.
The State Department had previously not gone so far as to say that these outlets were controlled or guided by Russian intelligence agencies—an assertion that generally relies on U.S. classified intelligence.
A State Department spokesman didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence but said the assessment was “a result of a joint interagency conclusion.”
“Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies,” the spokesman said. “From the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, we have seen Russia’s disinformation ecosystem develop and spread false narratives around the crisis.”
News Front, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Social-media accounts affiliated with the four websites have largely been removed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, though some non-English-language accounts remained active earlier this year.
Highlighting reports in the international media, a January article in News Front played up the risk that a person who receives the Pfizer or Moderna Inc. vaccines could contract Bell’s palsy, in which facial muscles are paralyzed, while a February article focused on a man in California that it said tested positive for Covid-19 after receiving the Pfizer vaccination.
In each case, the Russian outlets were repeating actual news reports but overlooking contrary information about the general safety of the vaccine. Numerous studies and real-world data have shown the Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines to be safe and effective, and hospitalizations and deaths have begun to plummet in places like Israel where shots have been widely administered, though a small number of side effects have been reported.
“To date, millions of people have been vaccinated with our vaccine following the endorsement of regulators in multiple countries,” said Pamela Eisele, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, who added that individuals who have questions should consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website or their healthcare provider.
A spokeswoman for Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A November article in New Eastern Outlook said that the Pfizer vaccine’s use of mRNA gene editing was “radical experimental technology” that lacked “precision” and said it was rushed through the approval process with the help of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the Covid-19 pandemic, both of whom the article accused of “playing fast and loose with human lives in their rush to get these experimental vaccines into our bodies.”
Some New Eastern Outlook articles have been republished by blogs and purported international news sites. One article from January alleged that the U.S. has biological labs around the world that may lead to outbreaks of infectious disease. The article was republished in full or part by websites in Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, France, Iran, Cuba and Sweden, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. has long accused Moscow of carrying out disinformation on medical issues. Judy Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who is an expert on global health issues, said that the Soviet KGB had accused the CIA of spreading dengue fever in Cuba and malaria in Pakistan.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you encountered any disinformation on the Covid-19 vaccines? What did it look like? Join the conversation below.
“A persistent KGB campaign claimed that the U.S. Army’s former biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick had unleashed the AIDS epidemic,” she said. Soviet officials denied responsibility for this disinformation.
Thomas Rid, an expert on Russian disinformation at Johns Hopkins University who reviewed the websites cited by the State Department, said the articles were generally in line with Russia’s “rich history” of using communications technology to deceive both international and domestic audiences. He urged the U.S. government to do more to publicly explain how it has concluded the websites are controlled by specific Russian intelligence agencies.
With Russia and China seeking to sell their vaccines abroad, overt efforts to denigrate Pfizer have been well documented. The forthcoming German Marshall Fund report, which was reviewed by the Journal and is to be issued Monday, analyzed more than 35,000 Russian, Chinese and Iranian government and state media tweets on vaccine themes from early November to early February. “Russia provided by far the most negative coverage of Western vaccines.” it states, “with a remarkable 86% of surveyed Russian tweets mentioning Pfizer and 76% mentioning Moderna coded as negative.”
—Ann Simmons contributed to this article.
Investigating the Origin of Covid-19
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
Russian Disinformation Campaign Aims to Undermine Confidence in Pfizer, Other Covid-19 Vaccines, U.S. Officials Say
Websites linked to Russian intelligence services publish false information questioning vaccines’ safety, efficacy
By and
March 7, 2021 10:00 am ET
The Russians have used online publications to question the safety of Western Covid-19 vaccines, including Pfizer’s.
Photo: julia rendleman/Reuters
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WASHINGTON—Russian intelligence agencies have mounted a campaign to undermine confidence in Pfizer Inc.’s and other Western vaccines, using online publications that in recent months have questioned the vaccines’ development and safety, U.S. officials said.
An official with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which monitors foreign disinformation efforts, identified four publications that he said have served as fronts for Russian intelligence.
The websites played up the vaccines’ risk of side effects, questioned their efficacy, and said the U.S. had rushed the Pfizer vaccine through the approval process, among other false or misleading claims.
Though the outlets’ readership is small, U.S. officials say they inject false narratives that can be amplified by other Russian and international media.
The Sputnik V vaccine being administered at a site in Saint Petersburg, Russia, last month.
Photo: anton vaganov/Reuters
“We can say these outlets are directly linked to Russian intelligence services,” the Global Engagement Center official said of the sites behind the disinformation campaign. “They’re all foreign-owned, based outside of the United States. They vary a lot in their reach, their tone, their audience, but they’re all part of the Russian propaganda and disinformation ecosystem.”
In addition, Russian state media and Russian government Twitter accounts have made overt efforts to raise concerns about the cost and safety of the Pfizer vaccine in what experts outside the U.S. government say is an effort to promote the sale of Russia’s rival Sputnik V vaccine.
“The emphasis on denigrating Pfizer is likely due to its status as the first vaccine besides Sputnik V to see mass use, resulting in a greater potential threat to Sputnik’s market dominance,” says a forthcoming report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a nongovernmental organization that focuses on the danger that authoritarian governments pose to democracies and that is part of the German Marshall Fund, a U.S. think tank.
The foreign efforts to sow doubts about the vaccine exploit deep-seated anxieties about the efficacy and side effects of vaccines that were already prevalent in some communities in the U.S. and internationally. Concern about side effects is a major reason for vaccine hesitancy, according to U.S. Census Bureau data made public last month.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Russian intelligence agencies were orchestrating articles against Western vaccines and said U.S. officials were mischaracterizing the broad international debate over vaccines as a Russian plot.
“It’s nonsense. Russian special services have nothing to do with any criticism against vaccines,” Mr. Peskov said in a telephone interview from Moscow. “If we treat every negative publication against the Sputnik V vaccine as a result of efforts by American special services, then we will go crazy because we see it every day, every hour and in every Anglo-Saxon media.”
The State Department GEC official said that four publications had direct links to Russian intelligence and were used by the Russian government to mislead international opinion on a range of issues.
New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review, the official said, are directed and controlled by the SVR, or Russia’s foreign intelligence service. They present themselves as academic publications and are aimed at the Middle East, Asia and Africa, offering comment on the U.S.’s role in the world. The State Department said in an August report that New Eastern Outlook was linked to “state-funded institutions” in Russia.
Another publication, News Front, is guided by the FSB, a security service that succeeded the KGB, the official said. It is based in Crimea, produces information in 10 languages, and had nearly nine million page visits between February and April 2020, the official added. In August, the State Department was less explicit, saying that News Front reportedly had ties to Russia security services and Kremlin funding.
Russia Fights Skepticism of Its Covid-19 Vaccine With Global Campaign
0:00 / 5:58
4:25
Russia Fights Skepticism of Its Covid-19 Vaccine With Global Campaign
To counter skepticism over its Covid-19 vaccine, Russia has built a big public-relations effort at home and abroad. WSJ’s Georgi Kantchev explains why the success of Sputnik V is so important for the Kremlin. Photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images
Rebel Inside, the fourth publication, has been controlled by the GRU, which is an intelligence directorate of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff. It covered riots and protests and now appears dormant, the GEC official said.
The State Department had previously not gone so far as to say that these outlets were controlled or guided by Russian intelligence agencies—an assertion that generally relies on U.S. classified intelligence.
A State Department spokesman didn’t provide specific evidence linking the publications to Russian intelligence but said the assessment was “a result of a joint interagency conclusion.”
“Russian intelligence services bear direct responsibility for using these four platforms to spread propaganda and lies,” the spokesman said. “From the very beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic last year, we have seen Russia’s disinformation ecosystem develop and spread false narratives around the crisis.”
News Front, New Eastern Outlook and Oriental Review didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Social-media accounts affiliated with the four websites have largely been removed from Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest, though some non-English-language accounts remained active earlier this year.
Highlighting reports in the international media, a January article in News Front played up the risk that a person who receives the Pfizer or Moderna Inc. vaccines could contract Bell’s palsy, in which facial muscles are paralyzed, while a February article focused on a man in California that it said tested positive for Covid-19 after receiving the Pfizer vaccination.
In each case, the Russian outlets were repeating actual news reports but overlooking contrary information about the general safety of the vaccine. Numerous studies and real-world data have shown the Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines to be safe and effective, and hospitalizations and deaths have begun to plummet in places like Israel where shots have been widely administered, though a small number of side effects have been reported.
“To date, millions of people have been vaccinated with our vaccine following the endorsement of regulators in multiple countries,” said Pamela Eisele, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, who added that individuals who have questions should consult the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website or their healthcare provider.
A spokeswoman for Moderna didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
A November article in New Eastern Outlook said that the Pfizer vaccine’s use of mRNA gene editing was “radical experimental technology” that lacked “precision” and said it was rushed through the approval process with the help of billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the Covid-19 pandemic, both of whom the article accused of “playing fast and loose with human lives in their rush to get these experimental vaccines into our bodies.”
Some New Eastern Outlook articles have been republished by blogs and purported international news sites. One article from January alleged that the U.S. has biological labs around the world that may lead to outbreaks of infectious disease. The article was republished in full or part by websites in Bangladesh, Italy, Spain, France, Iran, Cuba and Sweden, which were reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The U.S. has long accused Moscow of carrying out disinformation on medical issues. Judy Twigg, a professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who is an expert on global health issues, said that the Soviet KGB had accused the CIA of spreading dengue fever in Cuba and malaria in Pakistan.
SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
Have you encountered any disinformation on the Covid-19 vaccines? What did it look like? Join the conversation below.
“A persistent KGB campaign claimed that the U.S. Army’s former biological weapons labs at Fort Detrick had unleashed the AIDS epidemic,” she said. Soviet officials denied responsibility for this disinformation.
Thomas Rid, an expert on Russian disinformation at Johns Hopkins University who reviewed the websites cited by the State Department, said the articles were generally in line with Russia’s “rich history” of using communications technology to deceive both international and domestic audiences. He urged the U.S. government to do more to publicly explain how it has concluded the websites are controlled by specific Russian intelligence agencies.
With Russia and China seeking to sell their vaccines abroad, overt efforts to denigrate Pfizer have been well documented. The forthcoming German Marshall Fund report, which was reviewed by the Journal and is to be issued Monday, analyzed more than 35,000 Russian, Chinese and Iranian government and state media tweets on vaccine themes from early November to early February. “Russia provided by far the most negative coverage of Western vaccines.” it states, “with a remarkable 86% of surveyed Russian tweets mentioning Pfizer and 76% mentioning Moderna coded as negative.”
—Ann Simmons contributed to this article.
Investigating the Origin of Covid-19
Write to Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at dustin.volz@wsj.com
themoscowtimes.com
Italy Expels Russians After Spies 'Caught Red-Handed' - The Moscow Times
Alvise Armellini for AFP
4-5 minutes
Italy expelled two Russian officials on Wednesday after an Italian navy captain was caught red-handed by police selling secret documents to the Russians.
The Italian frigate captain was arrested on spying charges after officers tailing him saw him late Tuesday in Rome in a "clandestine meeting" with a Russian military officer, according to a police statement.
The two men met in a car park, according to media reports. Special operations police stopped them both but arrested only the navy officer, accusing him of passing on "confidential documents" in exchange for money.
The Russian, an embassy official, avoided custody thanks to diplomatic immunity, police said.
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio summoned Russian ambassador Sergey Razov on Wednesday morning to lodge a formal protest.
The diplomat was notified of "the immediate expulsion of the two Russian officials involved in this very serious affair," Di Maio said.
Eleonora Tafuro, a Russia expert at the ISPI think tank in Milan, said such incidents in Italy were rare.
"It is very serious ... and really takes us back to the Cold War period," she told AFP.
NATO dossiers
The ANSA news agency, quoting investigative sources, named the navy officer as Walter Biot, and said he worked in the military policy unit within the office of the Chief of the Defense Staff.
That unit handled "all confidential and classified documents," including NATO dossiers, the Corriere della Sera newspaper said.
It also reported that Biot received 5,000 euros ($5,860) in cash from his Russian contact.
A NATO official referred queries to Italian authorities, saying: "We don't comment on intelligence issues."
The navy captain took pictures of secret documents on his computer screen and passed the files onto a pen drive which police confiscated, according to the AGI news agency.
In London, Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab expressed "solidarity" with Italy and condemned "Russia's malign and destabilising activity that is designed to undermine our NATO ally."
Embassy 'regret'
Police said the suspected spy was discovered after long investigations led by Italy's domestic intelligence agency AISI, with support from the Chief of the Defense Staff.
Moscow is currently embroiled in a series of rows with the West, most recently over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, a move that triggered EU sanctions against senior Russian officials.
But Italy is one of the countries within the European Union and NATO with the warmest relations with Russia. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he hoped that "the very positive and constructive nature of Russian-Italian relations will continue and will be preserved."
The Russian Embassy in Rome confirmed that a member of the office of its military attache was stopped by police on Tuesday, but said it was "inappropriate to comment" in detail.
In a later statement, the embassy expressed "regret" for the expulsion of two members of its military attache office, but made no mention of possible retaliatory moves.
Tafuro suggested that Moscow might play down the affair to avoid antagonizing an ally while it is trying to get the bloc to approve the use of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
"Russia is pushing hard [for this]" and "Italy has often spoken up for this Russian request," so ruining relations with Rome "could be a counterproductive move," the analyst said.
Bulgaria, an EU and NATO member like Italy, expelled two Russian diplomats last week after six people were arrested, including several defense ministry officials, on suspicion of spying for Russia.
Also last week, the Kremlin issued a statement in which Putin bemoaned "the unsatisfactory state of Russia-EU ties," which he blamed on the "unconstructive, often confrontational policies of our partners."
Earlier this month, relations between Moscow and Washington sank to a new low after U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian president a "killer," leading Putin to say: "It takes one to know one."
Italy Expels Russians After Spies 'Caught Red-Handed' - The Moscow Times
Alvise Armellini for AFP
4-5 minutes
Italy expelled two Russian officials on Wednesday after an Italian navy captain was caught red-handed by police selling secret documents to the Russians.
The Italian frigate captain was arrested on spying charges after officers tailing him saw him late Tuesday in Rome in a "clandestine meeting" with a Russian military officer, according to a police statement.
The two men met in a car park, according to media reports. Special operations police stopped them both but arrested only the navy officer, accusing him of passing on "confidential documents" in exchange for money.
The Russian, an embassy official, avoided custody thanks to diplomatic immunity, police said.
Italian Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio summoned Russian ambassador Sergey Razov on Wednesday morning to lodge a formal protest.
The diplomat was notified of "the immediate expulsion of the two Russian officials involved in this very serious affair," Di Maio said.
Eleonora Tafuro, a Russia expert at the ISPI think tank in Milan, said such incidents in Italy were rare.
"It is very serious ... and really takes us back to the Cold War period," she told AFP.
NATO dossiers
The ANSA news agency, quoting investigative sources, named the navy officer as Walter Biot, and said he worked in the military policy unit within the office of the Chief of the Defense Staff.
That unit handled "all confidential and classified documents," including NATO dossiers, the Corriere della Sera newspaper said.
It also reported that Biot received 5,000 euros ($5,860) in cash from his Russian contact.
A NATO official referred queries to Italian authorities, saying: "We don't comment on intelligence issues."
The navy captain took pictures of secret documents on his computer screen and passed the files onto a pen drive which police confiscated, according to the AGI news agency.
In London, Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab expressed "solidarity" with Italy and condemned "Russia's malign and destabilising activity that is designed to undermine our NATO ally."
Embassy 'regret'
Police said the suspected spy was discovered after long investigations led by Italy's domestic intelligence agency AISI, with support from the Chief of the Defense Staff.
Moscow is currently embroiled in a series of rows with the West, most recently over the jailing of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, a move that triggered EU sanctions against senior Russian officials.
But Italy is one of the countries within the European Union and NATO with the warmest relations with Russia. Former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he hoped that "the very positive and constructive nature of Russian-Italian relations will continue and will be preserved."
The Russian Embassy in Rome confirmed that a member of the office of its military attache was stopped by police on Tuesday, but said it was "inappropriate to comment" in detail.
In a later statement, the embassy expressed "regret" for the expulsion of two members of its military attache office, but made no mention of possible retaliatory moves.
Tafuro suggested that Moscow might play down the affair to avoid antagonizing an ally while it is trying to get the bloc to approve the use of the Russian Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine.
"Russia is pushing hard [for this]" and "Italy has often spoken up for this Russian request," so ruining relations with Rome "could be a counterproductive move," the analyst said.
Bulgaria, an EU and NATO member like Italy, expelled two Russian diplomats last week after six people were arrested, including several defense ministry officials, on suspicion of spying for Russia.
Also last week, the Kremlin issued a statement in which Putin bemoaned "the unsatisfactory state of Russia-EU ties," which he blamed on the "unconstructive, often confrontational policies of our partners."
Earlier this month, relations between Moscow and Washington sank to a new low after U.S. President Joe Biden called the Russian president a "killer," leading Putin to say: "It takes one to know one."
Basically Schindler is saying white people are going to start turning towards russia because they're so white...
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