Climategate Was an Early Prototype for Russia’s Campaign Hacking in 2016

The Heads of State

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I see that our story about Climategate is now online. You should read it! Here’s why Climategate is worth revisiting:

“If you were a Russian operative [and] pitching influence ops for the DNC, and somebody’s like, ‘Eh, I don’t know about that,’ literally you just turn around and go, ‘Look at how well it worked [with Climategate],’” former National Security Agency analyst Jake Williams tells Mother Jones in our new feature story about the parallels between the two hacks. “I wouldn’t necessarily say one influenced the other, but certainly it’s good proof that that’s a technique that works.”

It is, in fact, remarkable how strong the parallels are between the email hacking at the heart of Climategate in 2009 and the email hacking at the heart of Russiagate in 2016. It’s well worth refreshing your memory on Climategate, since it appears to be an early prototype for a kind of ratfucking that promises to get even more popular in the age of social media.

The story is here. Read it!

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GREAT JOURNALISM, SLOW FUNDRAISING

Our team has been on fire lately—publishing sweeping, one-of-a-kind investigations, ambitious, groundbreaking projects, and even releasing “the holy shit documentary of the year.” And that’s on top of protecting free and fair elections and standing up to bullies and BS when others in the media don’t.

Yet, we just came up pretty short on our first big fundraising campaign since Mother Jones and the Center for Investigative Reporting joined forces.

So, two things:

1) If you value the journalism we do but haven’t pitched in over the last few months, please consider doing so now—we urgently need a lot of help to make up for lost ground.

2) If you’re not ready to donate but you’re interested enough in our work to be reading this, please consider signing up for our free Mother Jones Daily newsletter to get to know us and our reporting better. Maybe once you do, you’ll see it’s something worth supporting.

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