US spies caught a Russian military-intelligence officer bragging about causing chaos in the upcoming US election six months before the vote, according to a new Time magazine cover story by Massimo Calabresi.
"What the officer didn't know, senior intelligence officials tell TIME, was that U.S. spies were listening.
But if the officer's boast seems like a red flag now, at the time U.S. officials didn't know what to make of it.
"We didn't really understand the context of it until much later," says the senior intelligence official.
Investigators now realize that the officer's boast was the first indication U.S. spies had from their sources that Russia wasn't just hacking email accounts to collect intelligence but was also considering interfering in the vote.
Like much of America, many in the U.S. government hadn't imagined the kind of influence operation that Russia was preparing to unleash on the 2016 election.
"Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," the report said. »
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