JULY 24, 2016

The Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in 2016 was like the halfway point of a brutal marathon, one that only allowed the briefest cooldown in between interviews, and during which I prayed my college-football-weakened knees didn't give way to jelly legs. There was a heat wave, with temperatures climbing well past ninety degrees, and humidity that made my clothes feel like a straitjacket.

It was Sunday, and I was sitting on the edge of my bed at the Westin Hotel, waiting to go to a press conference at Philadelphia's Emergency Operations Center. The police would field questions about security measures they had taken for the convention, which was expected to draw an average of forty thousand protestors a day. I was ready, with my shined shoes at the door and my navy summer blazer steamed and pressed. I didn't really want to move too quickly.

I was, quite frankly, exhausted. I had just driven a rental car from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland to Pittsburgh and had arrived in Philly the day before. It was a nice extended relaxing trip. I had blasted the AC and coasted along I-76 past hills and farms, eventually careening into Heinz Field to eat a burger and watch all the Pirates fans. The next morning, I took my golf clubs to a driving range.

That drive back was euphoric, largely because I was relieved. Covering security for Republican National Convention protests had at first felt like stepping onto streets wired with land mines. We were living through a strange time. Colleagues had shared stories about covering rallies where candidate Donald Trump incited stadium-sized crowds to boo the media. Others had been present when he overtly advocated for violence against protestors.1 Worst-case scenario, some had been expecting something like the anti–Vietnam War protests that occurred at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 in Chicago, at which thirty thousand protestors and police clashed, and even reporters were beaten to the ground. We were bracing for the worst.

Protests had always been a part of my personal history. As a kid, I had often sat at my parents’ dinner table and listened to them share stories with their friends about civil rights activities during the 1960s. They were both raised in Alabama—my mother in Montgomery, my father in Birmingham—and fought hard for equal treatment and for their success. Whether they were talking about marching with Dr. King or getting hauled away by police, they spoke with great pride because they knew they had done what was necessary. That wasn't lost on me. Growing up, I wondered what my contribution would be. I often wondered if I would have the courage to do the same if faced with similar circumstances.

Protests had become a part of my professional life, too. I spent several years interviewing police and protestors around the United States in the aftermath of uprisings such as the one that followed the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Yet the 2016 election had been the closest I had come to covering convention protests on the ground as they occurred.

It turned out that Cleveland was nothing like Chicago in ’68; it was nothing like Birmingham or Selma. The police deliberately underplayed their hand so that the protestors didn't feel defensive. A maze of barricades and checkpoints was set up at the Quicken Loans Arena, where the convention was being held. Across the street at the Public Square near the Renaissance Cleveland Hotel, ordinary police on bicycles circled the protestors like herders, separating the two factions. I had also seen the officers in full gear—with riot shields and pepper ball guns—who had been instructed to stay out of the protestors’ line of sight.

The police strategy worked. There were a few flare-ups, but the streets in Cleveland remained relatively peaceful. We'd dodged a bullet.

It wasn't clear whether we would be so lucky at the Democratic National Convention. The heat alone, which was also breaking historic records, was enough to set people off. I had already interviewed law enforcement officials and learned about the hostage negotiators, SWAT teams, and sharpshooters. They had been running through drills all week long, practicing things like how to respond to a lone-wolf attack on a motorcade. I was always hungry for breaking news, but it had already been a long year for reporters. I could have done without getting caught in the crossfire of another uprising.

It was certainly one of the most surreal and volatile periods for the country that my generation had seen. People were caught in a hotbed of collective emotions: anxiety, anger, terror and outrage. We were all heavily distracted. Few of us saw the real culprit or threat to our freedom.

In my hotel room, I stood up and looked in the mirror. There were slight bags under my eyes from exhaustion, and I was happy it was just a press conference. It had been an easy Sunday so far.

I sat on the bed and ran down the news I had heard from a friend in the lobby of the convention hall. I had been on I-76 on July 22, the day WikiLeaks placed an announcement on Twitter inviting readers to visit its page to “Search the DNC email database.”2 When readers clicked they gained access to over nineteen thousand emails plucked by hackers from Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers.

These included details of perks for party donors attending the convention, and emails from DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, which included notes about her appearing to favor Hillary Clinton over Vermont senator Bernie Sanders as candidate for president.

Later, the number of leaked emails from the DNC grew to sixty thousand. Someone named Guccifer 2.0 claimed ownership over the hacks, which were distributed through WikiLeaks, DCLeaks, and a conference event. This persona denied any ties to Russia.³

Having had enough noise for one day, I embraced the peace and quiet of a room without a television on or the radio blaring in the background. I pulled the hospital corners off the bed and lay down on my back with my feet crossed.

My iPhone was vibrating, indicating that a producer was trying to reach me with breaking news. I picked it up and saw an email from a CBSN producer, our streaming network. He wanted to know if I had enough information to go on the air to talk about the FBI investigation into the DNC hack.

“We'll take you as soon as possible,” he said.

He wanted me to come on Josh Elliott's TV show and discuss whether Russia was behind a hack to the DNC servers. They would broadcast from a skybox overlooking the convention floor. I deliberated. The show was in a couple of hours, and I had mixed feelings about doing it.

On the one hand, I was always grateful to be brought in as an expert on subjects related to my Homeland Security and Justice beat. It would be an easy in-studio gig that wouldn't require me to swelter outside in my suit. But I just didn't have a lot of information on the hacks at that time. Most people, including those at the FBI, didn't have a lot of information. The Washington Post had released a report the previous month suggesting that Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the DNC and obtained access to their database.4 The hacking was obviously embarrassing the Democrats and undermining the convention.

I was so consumed with trying to stay on top of the protestors at the convention that I didn't at that point stop to consider what we were witnessing with the hacks. The weight of it all had not yet hit me.

Distortion had become the norm since the campaign had started. All our platforms had devolved. The internet was buzzing with provocative tweets from candidate Trump and counter tweets from candidate Clinton. Then there was the almost minute-by-minute smackdown on cable television. The candidates’ campaign chairpersons, managers, and supporters argued. Cable news anchors stoked the discussion with the latest accusations. The volume of the discourse had reached an unprecedented decibel level that drowned out just about everything else going on.

No wonder we didn't see it coming.

I thought about what I already knew. It wasn't much.

The month before, the DNC disclosed that Russian hackers had accessed their servers and leaked information to WikiLeaks.5 The cyber security firm CrowdStrike had nicknamed the hackers Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear. Hackers leave a kind of digital fingerprint behind—some biometrics pattern that experts can discern.⁶

In May, James Clapper, director of national intelligence, informed both the Trump campaign and the Clinton campaign that they were being targeted for cyberattacks.⁷ It was amazing that the Democrats didn't do something sooner to prevent this from happening.

A few days later I'd be in Baltimore, covering the hearings of the police officers who shot Freddie Gray. I was mildly disappointed that I wouldn't be able to rest before hitting the road again. I had gone live on television with much less information. I decided to do it.

When I agreed to race over to the Wells Fargo Center that afternoon, I turned a corner on terrain I never knew existed. The next month an intelligence source whom I knew well and trusted became my cartographer—drawing a metaphorical map and guiding me toward a beat based almost exclusively on stories about Russia.