Thread by @The_War_Economy

"How We Identified the D.N.C. Hack's 'Patient Zero'"

Eric Lipton, The New York Times, December 20, 2016

nytimes.com/2016/12/20/ins…

"As David Sanger, Scott Shane and I set out in late November to reconstruct the events surrounding the hacking of the Democratic Party during the 2016 election campaign, we too wanted to understand, among all factors, how and where this story started."

"The Times had extensively covered the remarkable story of Russia's effort to influence the election - with David Sanger and our colleague Eric Schmitt first breaking the news back in late July that the hack was almost certainly the work of Russian operatives."

This takes you to the article "Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.", published on July 26, 2016, a few days before Crossfire Hurricane opened, written by David Sanger and Eric Schmitt, with contributions from Amy Chozick.

nytimes.com/2016/07/27/us/…

Following on from the previous tweet before that article link: "(after David and Nicole Perlroth had explored how the Russians were casting the Democratic convention into chaos)".

This takes you to "As Democrats Gather, a Russian Subplot Raises Intrigue", written by David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, with contributions from Nick Corasaniti.

nytimes.com/2016/07/25/us/…

In that "As Democrats Gather" article:

"Is Putin trying to meddle in the American election?"

"Until Friday, that charge, with its eerie suggestion of a Kremlin conspiracy to aid Donald J Trump, has been only whispered.

But the release on Friday of some 20,000 stolen emails..."

Back to the other "How We Identified" article:

"That was followed in August with an article about suspicions that the N.S.A. itself was hacked by the Russians and in October with the analysis of President Obama's options for retaliation".

Moving on slightly.

"We then set out to interview every major figure involved in the episode: the executives and staffers at the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign; ..."

"... the private sector investigator at CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm, and Perkins Coie, a law firm, both of which were hired by the D.N.C. and the D.C.C.C.; the government investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation..."

"... the director of National Intelligence and the White House officials who advised President Obama on how to respond. We talked to members of Congress and other congressional candidates, and to intelligence officials who, of course, would not speak on the record."

"We also reached out to WikiLeaks - and its editor in chief, Julian Assange - and tried, though without much success, to engage individuals in the Russian government, as well as Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, the Russian-linked websites that dumped many of the Democrats' documents."

"It was while doing all these interviews that we first heard the story of Yared Tamene, the tech-services consultant at the D.N.C. who had fielded a call in September 2015 from an F.B.I. special agent named Adrian Hawkins."

"Mr. Tamene never agreed to speak with us, although we happened to run into him during one of our visits to DNC headquarters. But based on documents we reviewed - including an internal DNC account of his dealings with the F.B.I. - we were confident we had found our patient zero."

"While I was focused on the DNC, David was busy pressing Obama administration officials to explain how they responded to the cyberattacks - a time consuming process because of the difficulty of getting access to them and, in some cases, because of their reluctance to talk."

"While David worked, Scott Shane, one of the top intelligence reporters in Washington, focused on the FBI and on a group we called 'the facilitators,' which included players like WikiLeaks that posted the hacked emails in a public place."

"He also spent a large chunk of time examining the evidence investigators had gathered as proof that the Russian state was involved in the hack."