Active Measures review: how Trump gave Russia its richest target yet

In divided, chaotic and fearful times, Thomas Rid’s ‘secret history of disinformation and political warfare’ is a must-readThe president-elect arrived in Washington under a cloud manufactured in Moscow and St Petersburg. Less than a month after Donald Trump took office, the national security adviser Michael Flynn was ousted for lying to the vice-president about a conversation with Russia’s ambassador. All that, however, was a prelude to the firing of the FBI director James Comey and years of resulting turmoil. The Kremlin had succeeded beyond its wildest dreams.Under the subtitle The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, Thomas Rid helps remind us how we reached this morass, one with antecedents reaching back to Czarist Russia and the Bolshevik revolution. To be sure, the US can use all the help it can get as it navigates the current election cycle and the lies, rumours and uncertainty that shroud the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.Rid was born in West Germany amid the cold war. The Berlin Wall fell when he was a teenager. He is now a professor at Johns Hopkins.So what are “active measures”? Previously, Rid testified they were “semi-covert or covert intelligence operations to shape an adversary’s political decisions”.“Almost always,” he explained, “active measures conceal or falsify the source.”The special counsel’s report framed them more narrowly as “operations conducted by Russian security services aimed at influencing the course of international affairs”. Add in technology and hacking, and an image of modern asymmetric warfare emerges.Rid travels back to the early years of communist Russia, recounting the efforts of the government to discredit the remnants of the ancien régime and squash attempts to restore the monarchy. The Cheka, the secret police, hatched a plot that involved forged correspondence, a fictitious organization, a fake counter-revolutionary council and a government-approved travelogue.Words and narratives morphed into readily transportable munitions. The émigré community was declawed and the multi-pronged combination deemed “wildly successful”. The project also “served as an inspiration for future active measures”. A template had been set.Fast forward to the cold war and the aftermath of the US supreme court’s landmark school desegregation case. The tension between reality and the text and aspirations of the Declaration of Independence was in the open again. Lunch-counter sit-ins and demands for the vote filled newspapers and TV screens. The fault lines were plainly visible – and the Soviet Union pounced.In 1960, the KGB embarked on a “series of race-baiting disinformation operations” that included mailing Ku Klux Klan leaflets to African and Asian delegations to the United Nations on the eve of a debate on colonialism. At the same time, Russian “operators posed as an African American organization agitating against the KKK”.More than a half-century later, Russia ran an updated version of the play. Twitter came to host the fake accounts of both “John Davis”, ostensibly a gun-toting Texas Christian and family man, and @BlacktoLive”, along with hundreds of others.The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll factory, organized pro-Confederate flag rallies. As detailed by Robert Mueller, the IRA also claimed that the civil war was not “about slavery” and instead was “all about money”, a false trope that continues to gain resonance among Trump supporters and proponents of the “liberate the states” movement. According to Brian Westrate, treasurer of the Wisconsin Republican party, “the Confederacy was more about states’ rights than slavery.”Depicting West Germany as Hitler’s heir was another aim. At the time, “some aging former Nazis still held positions of influence”, Rid writes. In the late 1960s, “encouraging ‘anti-German tendencies in the West’ was very much a priority”.In 1964, with Russian assistance, Czech intelligence mounted Operation Neptun, sinking Nazi wartime documents to the bottom of the ominous sounding Black Lake, near the German border. The cache was then “discovered” – media pandemonium ensued. Four years later the mastermind of the scheme, Ladislav Bittman, defected to the US.Prior to 2016, Russia’s most notable active measure using the US as a foil was the lie that Aids was “made in the USA”. In retaliation for US reports of Soviet use of chemical weapons in Afghanistan, the KGB unfurled Operation Denver, a multi-platformed campaign that falsely claimed “Aids was an American biological weapon developed at Fort Detrick, Maryland”. Central to the effort was the earlier publication of an anonymous letter with a New York byline by an Indian newspaper. The forged missive claimed “Aids may invade India: mystery disease caused by US lab experiments.”Rid writes that the letter was “a masterfully executed disinformation operation”, an amalgam of “20% forgery and 80% fact”. The reality was that the Pentagon and the CIA had tested “new types of biological weapons in densely populated areas of the US and Canada”, and conducted research on disease and psychotropic drugs on an array of human guinea pigs.The KGB doubled down and published a reworked version of the story in an English-language Soviet publication. At the same time and without any apparent nexus to the Soviet campaign, the Amsterdam News, a paper with a readership base in New York’s African American community, opined that Aids was a likely result of US bacteria warfare. Once again, social mistrust helped weaponize a concocted narrative.To be clear, Russian “active measures” did not tip the 2016 election to the Republicans. On that score, the FBI and Comey had a greater impact. Instead, the Russians caused the US to stare into a mirror, red and blue Americans each seeing what they expected.Nor is an end in sight. According to the Senate intelligence committee, “Russian disinformation efforts may be focused on gathering information and data points in support of an active measures campaign targeted at the 2020 US presidential election”, with an emphasis upon “gathering personal information” from “US-based audiences sympathetic to Russian disinformation topics”.America remains mired in a cold civil war. Active Measures is another book for such troubled times.

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Pompeo pushes coronavirus lab origin theory before intelligence community issues final assessment

Members of the Trump administration, including the president, have pushed a theory that the coronavirus originated not in a Wuhan, China, wet market, but a lab. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday there is "significant" evidence that is the case, even though the United States intelligence community has yet to release a formal assessment on the matter.> Very noteworthy: Sec Pompeo, frmr CIA director, is leaning into an outcome *before* the IC has a formal assessment. Last wk ODNI said they cannot yet assess if the outbreak "was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan" or began "through contact with infected animals." https://t.co/X2LncSbL1e> > -- Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) May 3, 2020Pompeo's stances on the location of origin, and China's purported efforts to cover up the epidemic's severity at early stages, were clear, but his responses about whether the virus was man-made waffled.At first, The Guardian notes, he told the host of ABC's This Week, Martha Raddatz, that he has "no reason to disbelieve" experts who think it was genetically modified. But when Raddatz pointed out the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the scientific consensus is that the virus was not man-made, Pompeo agreed with that, too. Raddatz tried to clarify one last time, recalibrating the question a bit to see if Pompeo thinks the virus was intentionally released from the lab. The secretary said he doesn't "have anything to say about that."Critics have pointed out that by leaning into President Trump's rhetoric, Pompeo is setting a potentially worrisome precedent. > This is @SecPompeo saying he wants a particular answer from the IC more than he wants the truth. This creates enormous adverse incentives for people to tell Pompeo and Trump what they want to hear. https://t.co/zxwuqNrCd1> > -- Jeffrey Lewis (@ArmsControlWonk) May 3, 2020More stories from theweek.com 5 scathingly funny cartoons about Mike Pence's unmasked hospital visit 5 scathing cartoons about Democrats' MeToo hypocrisy Oxford scientist says if coronavirus vaccine is effective it will likely be seasonal

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New Yorkers venture outside on sunny Saturday, and so do 1,000 cops

"We encourage people to come out and enjoy this weather," Chief Terence Monahan said, but he warned parkgoers, "You cannot gather; you cannot barbecue."

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Thousands storm California beaches to protest closures

Governor Gavin Newsom decided to close Orange County beaches after 80,000 people flocked to them during a heatwave last weekend.

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US warns Taliban to curb attacks after exit deal calls for 80% cut to violence

Previously secret agreement emerges as spokesmen for US military and Taliban clash on TwitterThe US military has warned the Taliban it must curb attacks inside Afghanistan and revealed that a US troop withdrawal agreement signed in February included an informal commitment for both sides to cut violence by 80%.The previously secret arrangement was revealed in a Twitter spat between the US military spokesman, Col Sonny Leggett, and his Taliban counterpart, Zabihullah Mujahid. It comes after a sharp escalation in militant attacks since the agreement was sealed.In a rare open letter to militants published on Twitter, Leggett warned: “If the violence cannot be reduced – then yes, there will be responses.”The Taliban had “asked for clarity” after the top US commander in Afghanistan, Gen Scott Miller, called for a reduction in violence and warned that “if the Taliban continue to attack” they should expect retaliation.The militants have mounted more than 4,500 attacks across Afghanistan in the 45 days since they signed the agreement for a US troop drawdown, Reuters reported.These have mostly been in rural areas, with no high-profile suicide missions targeting cities or foreign troops. But overall attacks are up 70% from the same period last year. Leggett said that broke the terms of the withdrawal deal.“During those long negotiations, there were written and spoken commitments. Some commitments are being observed, while others are not,” he wrote. “We recognize the reduction of violence against cities and against coalition forces. But we spoke of ALL sides reducing violence by as much as 80% to pave the way for peace talks.”It has been widely reported that the peace deal included secret annexes, but this is the first time the US has provided any details publicly of these side agreements.The 80% figure may have been reached because the Taliban have consistently rejected calling a ceasefire, worrying it could damage their operational ability and the morale of their fighters. If four in five attacks stopped, the Taliban would still fight but Afghans would notice a slower tempo of conflict.The Taliban spokesman attacked the US statement as “pointless and provocative” and said the path to resolving the war lay in the agreement signed in Qatar in February.“We are committed to our end, honor your own obligations,” Mujahid said.The Taliban have claimed attacks have fallen since the signing of the withdrawal deal and accused the US of breaking its commitment to secure the release of 5,000 of Taliban prisoners held by Afghan authorities.Adding to Afghanistan’s troubles, the increase in violence has coincided with the rapid spread of the coronavirus. The four provinces reporting the highest number of cases have also been the ones hit the most by Taliban violence in recent weeks, according to the Reuters report.There are fears that the virus may already be widespread, especially after tests in Kabul appeared to show almost a third of people selected for a random trial were infected, according to New York Times reporters.Afghanistan’s divided government is meant to embark on political talks with the Taliban soon, to pave the way to a negotiated end to the war. Leggett warned that if violence levels did not go down, those peace talks might never begin.“[Gen Miller] urges you to recognize that if all military sides do not act now to reduce violence,” he wrote, “the cycle of violence will continue to escalate and prevent the start of the political process.”The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, who was in Doha for the signing ceremony, seemed more cautious in his assessment of the Taliban’s future behavior.“The agreement will mean nothing – and today’s good feelings will not last – if we don’t take concrete action on commitments stated and promises made,” he said.

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Bomb threat against China Airlines flight closes Anchorage airport

The Anchorage airport, Alaska's largest, temporarily shut on Saturday to inbound traffic because of a bomb threat against a China Airlines cargo flight bound for Asia. The cargo plane diverted to Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport early in the morning after leaving Seattle, airport officials said. No bomb was found and the airport was reopened shortly before noon, officials said. The plane was searched in a secure, remote section of the airport, the airport said in a statement, with the Federal Bureau of Investigations and Anchorage Police Department. "After extensive investigation, no explosive device was located," the airport’s police and fire department said in a statement. "Investigation at the airport has been completed, however, the investigation into the source of the threat continues. The FBI does not believe there is any continuing threat to our community as a result of this incident.” The Anchorage Daily News said the plane was headed to Taipei, Taiwan and the threat had been called into the Port of Seattle, quoting an FBI spokesman who said investigators were still trying to determine the source of the threat. China Airlines, Taiwan's largest carrier, said in a statement the flight had already taken off for Taipei when it was informed of the threat by Seattle airport. The plane was then diverted to Anchorage. The crew were taken to a hotel to rest while police searched the aircraft and determined nothing unusual, it added. The aircraft is expected to land in Taipei late Sunday evening, China Airlines said. Anchorage Airport is one of the world’s top five air-cargo hubs. It ranks second in the nation for weight of landed cargo. It ranks 58th in passenger travel among US airports. While passenger flights have been sharply curtailed during the coronavirus pandemic, air cargo operations are considered by the state to be essential and have continued. Flights that could not land in Anchorage on Saturday morning were advised to consider diverting to the airport in Fairbanks, another cargo hub.

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Biden asks the secretary of the Senate to direct a search for an alleged sexual harassment complaint filed by a former staffer

Biden allows access to his Senate records to see if there are documents to corroborate accusor's claims after previously denying access.

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India's military salutes virus workers with rose petals, flypasts

Helicopters showered masked health workers with rose petals and jets roared across the skies Sunday as India's military paid tribute to frontline workers battling the coronavirus pandemic. In one of the first of several gestures on Sunday, petals fell on to the upturned faces of medical personnel clad in protective gear while an army band played patriotic tunes including "Jai Ho" (May victory prevail) from the popular "Slumdog Millionaire" film. "The entire nation stands united in these challenging times," Defence Minister Rajnath Singh tweeted Sunday.

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Michigan militia puts armed protest in the spotlight

Gun-carrying protesters have been a common sight at some demonstrations calling for coronavirus-related restrictions to be lifted. The “American Patriot Rally” started on the statehouse steps, where members of the Michigan Liberty Militia stood guard with weapons and tactical gear, their faces partially covered.

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North Korea tries to end speculation over supreme leader's health with ribbon cutting pictures

Most ribbon cutting ceremonies are unremarkable affairs, the stuff of local newspaper photographs at most. But this one was different. It involved North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un in his first reported appearance in 20 days, during which there has been intense speculation about his health and even whether he was still alive. The newly released footage of Kim glad-handing at a North Korean fertilizer production plant north of Pyongyang on Friday would appear to have put an end to that. He was even pictured standing in front of a banner reading May 1, to drive home the point, much in the way hostages are forced to hold up that day’s newspaper for the camera as proof of life. The date is also written in the Latin alphabet, in case there were any doubts about which audience this 'proof ' is for (see picture below).

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'It's Devastatingly Worrisome.' Dr. Birx Criticizes Anti-Lockdown Protesters in Michigan

Birx said on "Fox News Sunday" that Michigan protesters were creating an unsafe public health situation

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Fact check: Will Florida order residents to get vaccinated for COVID-19?

An Instagram post says Florida can order people to take a coronavirus vaccination. That is true, but it is false to imply this will happen right away.

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Big Government? For Now, Most Americans Say Bring It On

The White House and some Republican governors are angling toward a cautious reopening of the economy, while Republican leaders in Congress have tried to pump the brakes on future federal stimulus spending.But polling suggests the political winds may be flying against them. The American public remains broadly wary of reopening, and it is looking to the federal government to provide an economic lifeline, according to a range of surveys released over the course of the coronavirus crisis.Public confidence in President Donald Trump's ability to handle the pandemic has taken a considerable hit over the past month, and he lashed out at aides last week after receiving internal polling that showed Joe Biden beating him soundly in several important states.As Trump and fellow Republicans work to win over a fearful and increasingly jobless public in an election year, they are confronting support for government intervention that is far stronger than usual."There's no real public support for ending social distancing, and there's very real public support for more spending, with the sort of top priorities being keeping small businesses open, preventing states and localities from having to cut services, and checks to Americans," Sean McElwee, a founder of the left-wing polling firm Data for Progress, said in an interview.In a Quinnipiac University poll taken just after Trump signed a stimulus bill for more than $2 trillion, 4 in 5 respondents expressed approval of the legislation -- even after being reminded of the price tag. By more than 2 to 1, the respondents said they wanted Congress to follow with another stimulus bill to confront the pandemic.Voters don't want the spending to be unmitigated. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed that by a margin of 48% to 40%, Americans were more likely to say they were concerned about spending too much and driving up the deficit than they were that the government could spend too little and prolong the recession. This is in keeping with a long national history of favoring economic caution.But support for government involvement in the economy has increased noticeably over the past 10 years, according to Gallup data. And this is an extraordinary moment.This week, Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who would typically stay away from advising legislators on policy -- and who would be almost guaranteed not to encourage a huge increase in government spending -- urged Congress to spend liberally in order to keep the economy on life support during this time of enforced dormancy.Jobless claims have surpassed 30 million since the virus began, and independent analyses have suggested that millions more who have not filed claims are also eligible for unemployment benefits. Various recent surveys have found that in half of U.S. households, at least one family member has lost work as a result of the virus.Three in 10 Americans reported struggling to pay for food, rent or other bills as a result of the pandemic, according to a mid-April Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted as some of the March stimulus bill's offerings were starting to take effect.In a previous Kaiser poll, 3 in 5 Americans said they held the federal government, not the states, primarily responsible for confronting the pandemic. Yet it is their state and local officials whom Americans tend to trust to handle the crisis. In an Associated Press/NORC poll in mid-April, 63% of Americans said they approved of how their state and local governments had responded to the crisis, compared with just 40% who approved of the federal government's handling.That sentiment may have contributed to Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision Thursday to aim a proposed $1 trillion bill -- which would be the largest legislation of the crisis to originate in the House -- at funding state and local governments.Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, pushed back last week against the idea of sending any money to the states, saying they should consider filing for bankruptcy. And Robert Cahaly, a Republican pollster, said his research had found that elements of the party's base were growing increasingly impatient for an economic reopening -- even as the rest of the country remains firmly against it."There were a lot of Republicans who in 2010 faced the music on the bailout," Cahaly said, referring to the midterm elections in which Tea Party-aligned challengers won elections across the country on an anti-spending platform after Republican incumbents had voted for a series of large government rescue bills. "So there are Republicans who are going to be frustrated."But this week, McConnell softened his opposition to the notion of sending money to states. He is now pushing to attach language protecting businesses from legal liability if they reopen during the pandemic. Pelosi has rejected that, and it's not clear the public is behind it, either.In the AP/NORC poll, 76% of Americans -- including 7 in 10 Republicans -- favored requiring restaurants and bars to stay closed. And in the most recent Kaiser poll, 4 in 5 Americans -- including 61% of Republicans -- said that shelter-in-place restrictions were worth it to keep people safe.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company

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Nearly 10,000 inmates freed as virus hits Philippine jails

Nearly 10,000 prison inmates have been released in the Philippines as the country races to halt coronavirus infections in its overcrowded jails, a Supreme Court official said Saturday. The move follows a directive to lower courts to release those awaiting trial in prison because they could not afford bail, Associate Supreme Court Justice Mario Victor Leonen told reporters. Covid-19 outbreaks have been reported at some of the country's most overcrowded jails, affecting both inmates as well as corrections personnel.

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Missing Idaho kids: Judge won't lower Lori Vallow's $1 million bond

The defense believes attorney-client conversations are being recorded in jail.

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North Korea's Kim did not have surgery, South says, as shots fired at DMZ

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not undergo surgery during almost three weeks of absence from public life, a South Korean official said on Sunday, as the two Koreas exchanged gunfire at the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two sides. The government official declined to provide reasons, but said speculative reports that Kim had had an operation, citing some differences in his leg movements, were untrue. Multiple gunshots were fired from North Korea towards a guard post in South Korea, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staffs (JCS) said in a statement.

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Coronavirus leaves Washington farmers with a big problem: What do you do with a billion pounds of potatoes?

Washington state has a billion pounds of potatoes -- with no destination

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Coronavirus: Tanzanian president promises to import Madagascar's 'cure'

There is no scientific proof the Madagascan-made tonic is effective in treating the virus.

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Fox News Breaking News Alert

Fox News Breaking News Alert

Trump predicts coronavirus vaccine by ‘end of the year,’ at Fox News virtual town hall

05/03/20 4:52 PM

Australian student, meat plant workers among new virus cases as curbs ease

A school in the Australian city of Sydney was closed on Monday after a student tested positive for the coronavirus, while a testing blitz in neighbouring Victoria state returned 22 new cases, the biggest daily jump in weeks.

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Brazil's Bolsonaro headlines anti-democratic rally amid alarm over handling of coronavirus

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro attacked Congress and the courts in a speech to hundreds of supporters on Sunday as the number of coronavirus cases blew past 100,000 in Brazil, underlining the former army captain's increasing isolation as he downplays the impacts of the pandemic.

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Masks Become a Flash Point in the Virus Culture Wars

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Leaders Are Crying on the Job. Maybe That’s a Good Thing.

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