Kirstjen Nielsen's cybersecurity efforts blocked

WASHINGTON - In the months before Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to resign, she tried to focus the White House on one of her highest priorities as homeland security secretary: preparing for new and different Russian forms of interference in the 2020 election.

President Donald Trump’s chief of staff told her not to bring it up in front of the president.

Nielsen left the Department of Homeland Security this month after a tumultuous 16-month tenure and tensions with the White House. Officials said she had become increasingly concerned about Russia’s continued activity in the United States during and after the 2018 midterm elections - ranging from its search for new techniques to divide Americans using social media, to experiments by hackers, to rerouting internet traffic and infiltrating power grids.

But in a meeting this year, Mick Mulvaney, the White House chief of staff, made it clear that Trump still equated any public discussion of malign Russian election activity with questions about the legitimacy of his victory. According to one senior administration official, Mulvaney said it “wasn’t a great subject and should be kept below his level.”

Even though the Department of Homeland Security has primary responsibility for civilian cyberdefense, Nielsen eventually gave up on her effort to organize a White House meeting of Cabinet secretaries to coordinate a strategy to protect next year’s elections.

As a result, the issue did not gain the urgency or widespread attention that a president can command. And it meant that many Americans remain unaware of the latest versions of Russian interference.

This account of Nielsen’s frustrations was described to the New York Times by three senior Trump administration officials and one former senior administration official, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity. The White House did not provide comment after multiple requests Tuesday.

After this article was published online Wednesday, Mulvaney said through a spokesman, “I don’t recall anything along those lines happening in any meeting.”

While U.S. intelligence agencies have warned of the dangers of new influence campaigns penetrating the 2020 elections, Trump and those closest to him have maintained that the effect of Russia’s interference in 2016 was overblown.

Before she resigned under pressure April 7, Nielsen and other officials looked for other ways to raise the alarm.

The opening page of the Worldwide Threat Assessment, a public document compiled by government intelligence agencies that was delivered to Congress in late January, warned that “the threat landscape could look very different in 2020 and future elections.”

“Russia’s social media efforts will continue to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions, undermining trust in authorities and criticizing perceived anti-Russia politicians,” the report noted. It also predicted that “Moscow may employ additional influence tool kits - such as spreading disinformation, conducting hack-and-leak operations or manipulating data - in a more targeted fashion to influence U.S. policy, actions and elections.”

By comparison, cyberthreats have taken a back seat among security priorities at the White House.

Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, eliminated the position of cybersecurity coordinator at the White House last year, leaving less experienced aides to deal with the issue. The National Security Council insisted that the White House had been more active on cybersecurity issues in the past year than it had before the change. In January, Nielsen fumed when 45% of her cyberdefense work force was furloughed during the government shutdown.

Nielsen grew so frustrated with White House reluctance to convene top-level officials to come up with a governmentwide strategy that she twice pulled together her own meetings of Cabinet secretaries and agency heads. They included top Justice Department, FBI and intelligence officials, many of whom later periodically issued public warnings about indicators that Russia was both looking for new ways to interfere and experimenting with techniques in Ukraine and Europe.

One senior official described Homeland Security officials as adamant that the U.S. government needed to significantly step up its efforts to urge the American public and companies to block foreign influence campaigns. But the department was stymied by the White House’s refusal to discuss it, the official said.

As a result, the official said, the government was failing to adequately inform Americans about continuing influence efforts.