The "Release the memo" rallying cry on social media for a memo produced by Rep. Devin Nunes is the leading message now being pushed by Russian intelligence forces, former CIA chief Michael Hayden told a New Albany audience Thursday.
Nunes, a California Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has produced a controversial memo that critics say is intended to cast doubt on the FBI and the U.S. Justice Department and discredit an investigation into whether the campaign of Donald Trump cooperated with Russia in the 2016 presidential election. Trump is expected to clear the way for the memo’s release on Friday over the objections of those agencies.
U.S. intelligence services say that one of the ways that Russian intelligence meddled in the election was by using "bot farms" to amplify social media claims that were helpful to Trump and harmful to his opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Through that amplification, those stories would be listed as "trending" on such platforms as Twitter and YouTube, Hayden said.
While current CIA chief Mike Pompeo has said he fully expects Russia to meddle in the November election, Hayden said the interference has never stopped.
"The most trending hashtag on Kremlin-controlled botnets as we speak is ‘Release the memo,’" Hayden said, eliciting some gasps from the audience at the Jefferson Series lecture, which was sponsored by the New Albany Community Foundation near Columbus.
Foreign policy observer Fareed Zakaria moderated the discussion between Hayden, who is also a retired four-star Air Force General and director of the National Security Agency; retired four-star Army General Stanley McChrystal; and retired four-star Marine General Peter Pace, who also served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Zakaria said Republicans have undergone a remarkable transformation during the Trump presidency. He called it "the extraordinary reality of a Republican Party that appeases Russia and attacks the FBI."
While not as pointed in their remarks as Hayden, the other two generals also criticized the path Trump and his administration are traveling in the world.
Pace described Russian President Vladimir Putin as presiding autocratically over a declining power.
"You’ve got Putin, who is basically the latest Czar," Pace said. "He’s cold enough and crafty enough to do that."
He and Zakaria said Putin finds it in his interest to sew confusion in democracies and undermine citizens’ faith in their systems.
McChrystal implicitly criticized Trump’s penchant for making unilateral declarations regarding American allies. Fostering long-term relationships is really the key to security and stability, he said.
"I know it’s not sexy," McChrystal said. "They don’t make movies about that."
All of the panelists agreed that it’s not realistic to expect North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un to give up his county’s nuclear weapons, as Trump has promised to force him to do. They said Kim has absorbed the fact that all leaders of regimes that have given up nukes have been quickly killed themselves.
"He is not irrational," Hayden said. "He is coldly calculating."
McChrystal said that North Korea has so much conventional artillery pointed at Seoul that even in a short war "there would potentially be millions of casualties."
mschladen@dispatch.com
@martyschladen