Alexander Mercouris — Straight out of a spy film: here’s why Obama’s attributions of the Clinton hacks to Russia’s GRU and FSB don’t add up

Backgrounder on Russian intelligence services.

There are four Russian intelligence agencies which are publicly known, though there are certainly others. These are the GRU (“Main Intelligence Directorate”), the FSB (“Federal Security Service”), the SVR (“Foreign Intelligence Service”) and the FSO (“Federal Protective Service”), which incorporates Spetssvyaz (“Special Communications Service”), which is Russia’s equivalent to the NSA.

Contrary to some claims, I am sure all four of these intelligence agencies undertake electronic and signals intelligence, certainly up to the level needed to carry out the DNC and Podesta hacks. However given the large claims that are being made about the hacking – extending all the way to President Putin’s personal involvement – I would have thought that of Russia’s four intelligence agencies the GRU and the FSB are the two least likely to have carried the hacking out.…

The key point about the GRU is however that it is the intelligence agency of the General Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces. It is therefore a military intelligence agency whose personnel are serving officers of the Russian military. Its closest approximate US equivalent is the Defense Intelligence Agency (“DIA”).…

As for the FSB, its primary roles as an intelligence agency are supposed to be counter-espionage and counter-terrorism carried out on the territory of Russia, though it is sometimes claimed to have a foreign intelligence role in the other countries that were formerly part of the USSR such as Ukraine.…

Not only do both the SVR and Spetssvyaz specialise in foreign political intelligence of precisely the sort involved in the DNC and Podesta leaks, but since Russia is accused of electronic hacking, this would seem to fall squarely within Spetssvyaz’s remit...

… I can’t escape the feeling that the reason the Obama administration and the Western media have latched on to the FSB and the GRU as the two agencies they accuse of the hacking is because of all of Russia’s intelligence agencies they are by the far best known and most notorious, having been the subject of countless media stories and spy thrillers, including in the case of the FSB a James Bond film, and in the case of the GRU countless thrillers extending all the way back into the Cold War....

By contrast to the Western public the names SVR and especially Spetssvyaz mean little....

The Duran

Straight out of a spy film: here’s why Obama’s attributions of the Clinton hacks to Russia’s GRU and FSB don’t add up
Alexander Mercouris