Why Indict Russians in Intelligence?

See also my post.  I know a lot of people will wonder why the US Justice Department would want to indict 12 Russian GRU officers when there is no chance of them ever getting arrested.  Certainly in the Obama Administration such things were done with the rationale that they were a form of deterrence.  I doubt that.

James Clapper, when he was the Director of National Intelligence said it is not a good idea to do this kind of indictment because (to paraphrase) it invites similar indictments by other countries if other intelligence officials are caught doing something like this.  He even said that this was the "living in glass houses" kind of defense.  We all do this kind of thing, so indictments do no good and encourage retaliation.  In that context, he was talking about the theft of the OPM database of cleared personnel, done by the Chinese.

It appears that in this case Justice thought it was important to announce the indictment with the idea that there were several US citizens who did not know they were dealing with Russians.  Those listening to Guccifer 2.0 certainly thought he was an independent hacker, when he was really a GRU asset.  What we are really waiting for is those US citizens who cooperated knowing these hackers were really from Russia.  There may not be any, if the Russians are any good at what they were doing. Don’t hold your breath on that one.