Putin Says He Will Prosecute

Yes, I know everyone who heard it thought it was amusing, but he so much as said "show me your case and we will prosecute it". He must have known we would not show him the case because there are aspects of it that show sources and methods of collecting this kind of information.  There are some cases that are not prosecuted because the cost of doing so is too great.  In spite of that, our Justice Department seeming to invite such things, even though it isn't done.  It may have been popular in the Obama Administration to bring indictments against intelligence operatives, but it invites retaliation and we have plenty of people Putin seems willing to bring charges against.  He even mentioned a couple.

Countries do not bring charges against Intelligence Officers.  They run operations against them.  They blunt or corrupt Russian operations with operations of their own.  They don't talk about it;  they do it.  The choice is always between retaliation in kind, or retaliation of some other kind.  The Obama Administration thought any retaliation was fine as long as it could be linked to what we were responding to.  I don't agree with that since retaliation in kind is a reminder that what they are doing can be done to them too.  I don't see a whole lot of anything being done by the current administration but they talk less in public than the Obama White House did.  They could be doing a lot and nobody would ever know.  That would be good, but we can't be sure that it would be effective at convincing the public that the US was responsive to such threats, and that is our weakness.

Voters have to believe that the US is doing something and not just talking a good game.  The Obama White House gave secrets away that compromised programs like Stuxnet to prove they were doing something in response to a threat - the Iran nuclear program.  That kind of thing got votes.  But, you get no votes from keeping quiet about what you are doing in these covert programs and the results are obvious only to the country you do it to, assuming they actually realize it.  No votes, but some deterrent to future types of attacks.  One can hope we are doing something about our upcoming elections and going after the Russians where it hurts.

Law Enforcement should stay out of this kind of business.  It moves too slow and provides no deterrence what-so-ever.  The Mueller investigation is a good example.  Two years in they bring indictments against people known to them when the Intelligence Community wrote its original report during the election in 2016.  Instead of an investigation, they should have struck back at the Russians right away, and followed up with an operation those guys couldn't miss.