Rage

by Bob Woodward

In late July 2018, just weeks after the Trump-Putin meeting, Coats gathered the intelligence chiefs—FBI director Christopher Wray, NSA director General Paul Nakasone, CIA director Gina Haspel—in the Situation Room for a classified briefing to President Trump on election security and foreign power interference in the upcoming 2018 midterm elections. Haspel had replaced Pompeo at the CIA in May. Though Coats knew Russian interference was a sore subject with the president, he charged ahead with the briefing. We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States, he said. Russia is the chief culprit, but other countries are potentially involved—China, Iran. We will assure the American people that their vote will be counted accurately and won’t be manipulated. I like that, Trump said. The NSA and CIA had evidence, highly classified, that the Russians had placed malware in the election registration system in at least two counties in Florida—St. Lucie County and Washington County. There was no evidence yet that the malware had been activated. It was sitting there to be used. The voting system vendor used by Florida was used by state election registration systems all around the country. The Russian malware was sophisticated and could be activated in counties with particular demographics. For instance, in areas with higher percentages of Black residents, the malware could erase every tenth voter, almost certainly reducing the tota...