New Report Shows How 2016 ‘DNC Hacked Itself’ Story Was Fabricated Garbage And The Nation Ran With It Anyway

Back in 2015, you might recall how the Russian Government was caught hacking into the DNC. It wasn't particularly subtle; a Russian intelligence officer pretending to be a Romanian hacker made the dumb mistake of forgetting to turn on his VPN, revealing his Russian intelligence agency IP address to the world. The data he obtained concerning ongoing squabbling within the DNC was later leaked to the press to influence the 2016 election, and the rest is well documented history.

In the wake of the attack, a baseless rumor began to mysteriously make the rounds, suggesting that the DNC had, for some reason, hacked itself. The claim popped up everywhere, but its most notable traction came courtesy of an article over at The Nation, which took the claim and ran with it without doing even the most basic of fact checking. The claim then popped up all over the Internet, from Bloomberg opinion columns and Breitbart, to out of Donald Trump's own mouth.

The problem: it was all absolute, unrefined, 100% bullshit.

What actually happened? Seven years after the fact, and journalist Duncan Campbell has finally published a story examining The Nation's odd editorial history of stifling criticism of Russia internally. It also rips apart the Nation's article, written by Patrick Lawrence, who, Campbell claims, repeated baseless claims made by pro-Trump trolls and hackers pretending to be intelligence analysts:

Lawrence invented situations and people, got facts wrong, and made far-reaching claims without substantiation. Information that Lawrence described as hard evidence" had, in reality, been manufactured by members of a Trump-supporting website, Disobedient Media, founded in 2017 by William Craddick, a former law student who claimed to have started the Pizzagate" conspiracy theory. The primary source in Lawrence's story, cited eighteen times, was an anonymous figure, a supposed forensic expert known as Forensicator." That name was created by Disobedient Media in consultation with Tim Leonard, a British hacker, as an identity through which to present the Forensicator report," the document purporting to substantiate the inside job" theory.

At the time, we pointed out how one of the key claims, that the speed at which the files had been transferred were too fast to have been done remotely over broadband, were absolute bullshit any actual intelligence expert or fact checker would have noticed. That resulted in an anti-Techdirt temper tantrum by the fake news troll in question over at his since-dismantled website.

Another cornerstone of The Nation's story, the claim that a group of intelligence professionals like William Binney (dubbed the VIPS") had reviewed Forensicator's" evidence and corroborated its claims, also proved to be bullshit. Later on, Binney would admit to Campbell the entire thing was a fabrication":

When I met with Binney the next month, however, he told me that, when the Lawrence piece was published, the VIPS had not actually checked the evidence or reasoning in the Forensicator report. When Binney eventually looked into one of its key claims-that the stolen data could be proven to have been copied directly at a computer on the east coast-he changed his mind. There was no evidence to prove where the copy was done", he told me. The data Forensicator" had given to VIPS had been manipulated", Binney said, and was a fabrication".

At that point, the pile on was afoot, and numerous outlets had security experts who also noted that The Nation story was bullshit. Instead of pulling the story, Campbell states that after significant pressure, The Nation co-owner and former editor Katrina vanden Heuvel finally affixed a we were just asking questions" pre-amble to the head of piece, which was only quietly pulled offline last year (copy here).

Both vanden Huevel and new Nation editorial boss D.D. Guttenplan downplay the monumental fuck up in conversations with Campbell, at one point urging him to get a life":

When I ask Guttenplan about the controversy surrounding the Lawrence piece, he replies, Water has gone under the bridge. I am comfortable." He adds, The Nation is a beacon for progressive ideas, democratic politics, women's rights, racial and economic justice, and open debate between liberals and radicals." Any damage done to the reputation of the magazine is minor, he argues, compared to all of the good it has done. What about the objections of his staff? I don't see the point of obsessing about it," Guttenplan concludes. Get a life!"

In 2018, a DOJ indictment against nearly a dozen Russian hackers would lay out in detail how Russian intelligence compromised the DNC, stole data, then carefully leaked that data to outlets like The Intercept to divide Democrats and improve Trump's chance of winning the 2016 election (the author of said piece has since enjoyed a lucrative career spreading authoritarian apologia).

Fast forward seven years later, and there's no shortage of supposed progressive journalists (some regulars at the Nation) with a strange affection for parroting Russian propaganda, and downplaying every and any instance of Russian authoritarian aggression, whether it's denying the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons on civilians, denying the idea that a Russian-government linked group shot down a civilian airliner over Ukraine, or pretending that Ukraine is to blame for the war.

Campbell notes that Lawrence was allowed to write fifteen more features for The Nation in the year after the story was published, and there's been no shortage of similar stories at the outlet written since by other authors with a tendency to downplay Russian authoritarianism. Some even referencing the DNC hacked itself" theory as established fact.

Originally slated to appear in 2018, Campbell claims that his story was killed by Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) and then new editor Kyle Pope. Pope this week denied the story was killed, claiming it wasn't run because it was late. Campbell has since written a second story outlining his experiences with CJR killing his story, claiming CJR had previously undisclosed business relationships with The Nation they didn't want to jeopardize, and the story was slow-walked to dismissal" after a year-long editing process.

Ultimately the whole dumb thing remains a cautionary tale of propaganda's effective reach and U.S. journalism's ongoing failure to counter or even recognize it, whether it's coming from the U.S. or Russian government or a basement-dwelling troll half a world away. To this day, the lie that the DNC hacked itself remains a stone-cold fact in the brains of many right wingers and conspiracy theorists, and The Nation still, the better part of a decade later, hasn't meaningfully owned the error" heard 'round the world.