Linda and I met again at the hotel restaurant.1 President-Elect Trump was weeks away from his inauguration. I tried to stay in contact with Linda as much as possible. Intelligence and law enforcement sources were typically more forthcoming when discussing information face-to-face. They were much more reluctant to reveal information over email or in a phone call. These days you just never know when your emails or text messages might turn up in a subpoena. Once again, I wanted to press Linda for more information on what she was hearing and seeing in connection with the Russia investigation. Once we were settled, I asked her what was going on.

“We are on the verge of something here,” she said. “A constitutional crisis.”

Something about the phrase resonated with me. I wasn't sure exactly what she was saying, but didn't want to push her away. She was more direct than she usually was. She was also being braver, perhaps because there was more at stake.

“People are afraid that the Trump administration will try to suppress the truth from getting out.” She inhaled deeply. “So, they're leaking the information. The information about what his campaign did.”

“The truth about what specifically? Involvement with Russian diplomats, government officials?”

She nodded. Her face was pinched slightly, as if she was trying to control her temper.

“Who is leaking it? And to whom?”

“I can't say. Everyone.”

“Former Obama administration officials, law enforcement, intelligence folks?”

She nodded.

“The reason why it's happening is that people see it as their patriotic duty to get this information out. It's treason,” she said.

“What are they leaking?”

“I can't say any more,” she said.

Most Americans were still unaware of what was going on and how the Russia investigation was intensifying. Perhaps they were confused about the whole thing. They didn't know what to believe. Or maybe they believed the president's denials and his constant dismissal of the investigation as fake news. “Of course, people who voted for Trump are going to buy into that narrative,” I prompted.

I will never forget how unnerved Linda seemed when we spoke. Her unease with what she had been hearing and what she was seeing in the investigation notes kept returning to me. She would often talk about how the Trump campaign was undermining the Obama administration during the transition of power. Linda didn't let on what she meant by that so as not to reveal too much, but it was clear that the intelligence community had human intelligence of electronic intercepts as evidence that there had been contacts between the Russians and the Trump campaign—contacts that appeared to Obama officials to be undermining their response to the Russians’ influence campaign. The Obama administration wanted to somehow scold Putin without triggering a cyberwar or some other form of potentially dangerous conflict. But because the Trump campaign's approach to Putin was drastically different, the public messages were in conflict, creating tension between an incoming administration and an outgoing one. In recent memory past Democratic and Republican administrations had not seen this level of discord. Publicly, Obama officials would say that “there's only one President at a time,”2 almost cryptically something that Linda would say to me—even then—early on in the Russia investigation, sending signals that something just wasn't right. The implication being that the Trump team was working on side deals with the Russians and others.³

History was unfolding. I was interested in how Russian interference affected the election. Michael Hayden, the former CIA and NSA director, had mentioned we didn't push back enough, but so far nobody was proposing any alternatives.4

To learn more about what caution may have cost the United States, I spoke with Jim Lewis, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Over the years at CBS, I have come to trust his insight on a range of cyber-related issues, and early on in the Russia investigation I began leaning on him. He has a way of simplifying complicated issues and making them understandable in a ten-second sound bite.

He spoke about the Russian hackers embedded in our systems.

This is a country filled with really good mathematicians. They're willing to put a lot of money into this, and they're willing to put years into it. You put that all together and it's very hard to keep them out. In some instances, in the past, there had only been indirect evidence that the Russians were in our network because they're very good at hiding their tracks. We found the noisy ones; if we're lucky, that's all of it. But we don't want to be too sure about all of that.⁵

Once the hackers get into a network, it can take seconds before they've sifted through computer systems. For example, in 2016, CBS News correspondent David Martin reported on how Russian hackers struck at the heart of the US military.⁶ The hackers seized the email system used by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Former Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey told Martin that the attack proceeded at an alarming speed. Within an hour the hackers had taken control of the unclassified email system. Lewis also discussed the swiftness of the attack.

Usually, it takes months to prepare for this, and so it's a phased attack. There [are] actions to set it up, to do the reconnaissance, but the moment of execution is really quick. One of the things you hear sometimes is, why didn't the DNC take action? The answer is that by the time they found out, it was too late. The Russians had been in, done what they needed to do, and were out. They're fast, and they are good.⁷

Lewis explained several strategies the United States may use to respond, including overt actions like the sanctions, covert actions like leaking Russian information, or something a little more aggressive. I asked him what kind of activities of ours may be considered more aggressive, such as messing with military computers, which is a riskier prospect.

Pegues: I've talked to people just over the last couple of months who have said, essentially, that the Russians have been hacking the hell out of us, and we're not doing anything to stop it.

Lewis: Yes, we've known it was them; we've known what they're up to. One thing we've learned in cybersecurity is that if you don't take action back, it's a green light for the other side.

Pegues: What type of action do you think is going to make a difference to Vladimir Putin?

Lewis: Well, Vlad is a bit of a tough guy, and so telling him you're going to send him a very angry letter probably won't do it. You need to do things that create political risk for him, and in Russia, political risk comes from relationships and from money—his relationships with other powerful people in Russia, his relationships with the Russian oligarchs, his bank accounts, his money. We have to do something that sends a political message.

Pegues: Does that mean sanctions?

Lewis: Sanctions are good because the Russians hate them. Second, they send a very public signal that's impossible for anyone to ignore. Third, they do have some effect. Some people always argue about how much effect sanctions have. Having talked to Russians, Chinese, [and] others who have been the targets of sanctions, they really don't like them. That makes sanctions a good option.

Pegues: The problem with engaging in a cyber confrontation with Russia and having it escalate is that no one knows where it ends. Right? Especially when you're talking about responding to a cyberattack by using your own offensive cyber, where does that end?

Lewis: One of the reasons you've seen people be cautious is that there's a rough rule in cyberattack: don't do anything that causes physical damage or human casualties. If you stay within that rule, it doesn't justify a violent response. If you go beyond that, you risk war. That's the only rule.

That's not a big rule book for these folks to know. So what happens in this gray area of violence and coercion? No one knows. It's unexplored, unchartered territory, and we're making it up as we go along. That's why there has been some delay. The Russians are not a democracy: they don't have the rule of law. They can be quicker and nimbler than the United States. Putin is willing to take risks that a democracy would never take. You saw that in Ukraine. So Putin has an advantage.