Russian Agents Sought Secret US Treasury Records On Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/russian-agents-sought-us-treasury-records-on-clinton-backers

By Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporters
December 20, 2018

US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the 
Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information 
on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents 
reviewed by BuzzFeed News.

The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year 
of the Obama administration -- in the midst of what multiple US 
intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to 
interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track 
ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial 
documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private 
investigators, and American citizens.

Most startlingly, Russia requested sensitive documents on Dirk, Edward, 
and Daniel Ziff, billionaire investors who had run afoul of the Kremlin. 
That request was made weeks before a Russian lawyer showed up at Trump 
Tower offering top campaign aides "dirt" on Hillary Clinton -- including 
her supposed connection to the Ziff brothers.

Russia's financial crimes agency, whose second-in-command is a former KGB 
officer and schoolmate of President Vladimir Putin, also asked the 
Americans for documents on executives from two prominent Jewish groups, 
the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Jewish Women, as 
well as Kremlin opponents living abroad in London and Kiev.

In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same 
time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their 
government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network 
of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than 
communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange 
information with other countries.

Analysts at an elite agency within Treasury first warned supervisors in 
2016 that the Russians were "manipulating the system" to conduct "fishing 
expeditions." And they raised fears that the Treasury's internal systems 
could be compromised by viruses contained in emails from the unofficial 
Russian accounts. But staff continued using the Gmail back channel into 
2017, despite repeated internal warnings that Russia could be trawling for 
sensitive financial records -- including Social Security and bank account 
numbers -- to spy on, endanger, or recruit targets in the West.

[...]



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