Experts Give a Close Look at Russian Election Interference

ANDREW MCCABE, FORMER FBI DEPUTY DIRECTOR: Well, what surprised me the most, I think, in reviewing the film is how much Alex and his colleagues have uncovered. It’s incredibly detailed, particularly on the lead-up to the election, all of the activity we saw in Russia as early as the end of 2014 and then through 2015. So, to answer your question, we did see Russian-maligned cyber activity, activity that we thought was focused at government institutions, political institutions, academic institutions doing the sorts of things that Russian intelligence, cyber actors typically do. Probing systems, looking for data, sometimes getting into cyber systems and actually exfiltrating data. What we did not know was what they were going to do with that data, and we didn’t see that until they weaponized the information they had stolen from the DNC, clearly to undermine the prospects of one of the candidates in the campaign, that being Hillary Clinton. That was something that surprised us and I think the rest of world incredible. We had never seen such an active shot right at our democracy and actual attempt to influence the results of the election with material that had been stolen from a cyberattack. That was brand new to us.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: And, Alex, you know, I thought it was really remarkable how you sort of laid out that the Russians were not attacking Hillary Clinton’s policies. Because they could see that they were broadly popular with a broad majority of mainstream America. They went after this e-mail thing that the press was focused on. How did that work? I mean, how did they just decide, oh, my goodness, we can’t go against her at that, but we can sure as hell keep this thing in the spotlight?

ALEX GIBNEY, DIRECTOR, “AGENTS OF CHAOS”: Well, I think it goes back to what Andrew and what we were both talking about before. I mean, it was effectively to sow chaos. You’re not looking to advance a particular policy, you’re looking to smear somebody, and Hillary’s greatest weakness in 2016 was the word e-mail. She was just associated with it. People have done studies about it, that Hillary and e- mail were connected as concepts. And so, what better thing than to release e-mails that discredit Hillary Clinton, which not only show her in a bad light. I mean, you know, the DNC e-mails did reflect, you know, real problems in our democratic process in the sense that the DNC was putting its finger on the scale against Hillary and — I mean, against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary. But also, you know, leaking the John Podesta e-mails. This reverberates because Hillary Clinton is involved herself in an e-mail investigation and then Donald Trump goes one step further.