Agents of Chaos

The candidates are fighting for every vote in this very tight race.

Republican candidate Donald Trump has the lead across the country.

Clinton or Trump?

Hillary Clinton, 228. On this map, the states won by Clinton are blue

and those won by Trump are red.

And so, America has a new president.

And the planet has a new American President. Donald Trump.

My husband woke me up and said,

"You're not gonna believe it, but apparently Trump is winning."

And I thought, "God, now they're gonna blame us."

And I even posted that I think that Russians should go out on the streets

and carry the American flag.

Somebody against whom the whole establishment,

and all of the media, and all of the deep state, almost all of them, were,

won because the people liked him.

As a young person who still believes in the values that I was taught

by Americans, in an American school

to me, it was very optimistic to see that,

that it can actually really happen.

That is how democracy is supposed to work.

I think we know what we're up against. We do, don't we?

She's guilty of a very serious crime. She should not be allowed to run.

Hillary Clinton has some explaining to do.

I'm sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!

Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton.

Bernie Sanders. I told him "The election's rigged."

"Here's another ballot!" Throw it away.

"Here's one I like. We'll keep that one."

You could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call

the basket of deplorables.

Isn't this exciting? Don't you love it?

I love it! What's more fun than a Trump rally, right?

I made speeches to lots of groups.

But did you have to be paid 675 000 dollars?

That's what they offered.

This is the ultimate reality show.

It's the Presidency of the United States.

Hacked the hell out of us.

The DNC hack exposed by WikiLeaks...

Our country has no idea.

- I doubt it. - He'd rather believe Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin. He called you a brilliant leader.

Do you really want to be complimented by that former KGB officer?

When he calls me brilliant, I'll take the compliment, okay?

Every time Russia is brought up, they say, "Oh, Trump!"

What do I have to do with it?

I'm not going to make you relive the 2016 election. It was too chaotic.

Too crazy. Too much.

But I am interested in figuring out this Trump-Russia thing.

What was that all about? Vladimir Putin's plan to rule the world?

A Democrat witch hunt to take down Trump?

A Cold War spy game?

I've been trying for years to answer those questions,

and everytime someone asked me what this movie was about,

I'd say, "Well, how much time do you have?"

Fear. Money. Corruption.

I can't tell you the one thing that explains what Russia did to us

or that we did to ourselves.

All I can tell you is what happened.

That's hard enough when you're talking about the most chaotic election.

Maybe for now that's one thing I will say.

For some politicians, in Russia and America,

chaos isn't something to fear.

It's a way to get by. Sometimes, with a little help from your friends.

AGENTS OF CHAOS Part I

The country spent years telling itself stories to make sense of 2016.

It started in the final days of the Obama administration

with a report from the US intelligence community.

An American intelligence report finds that Russia used disinformation warfare

to try to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

One of the weapons in the Kremlin's arsenal

was its state-run news network, RT.

I read that report. Well, I laughed my guts out.

They mentioned my name there 27 times.

It would be laughable if it weren't that scary.

If the intelligence community of the most powerful country in the world

is that ignorant, the world Is In much trouble.

The FBI has an open Investigation...

What's next on the Russian investigation?

There were too many investigations to count.

The FBI, the Justice Department,

both houses of Congress.

Everyone wanted to know what Russia had done.

But if anyone was going to get the goods,

it would be the team put together by the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.

After the announcement that Rod Rosenstein had appointed

Bob Mueller, a friend of mine sent me an email that said: "Bye, bye!"

He knew that I'd worked with Director Mueller twice before

and he assumed I'd just go off and work with him.

People like to think of the special counsel's office as a witch hunt,

but this is just not a partisan issue.

Our report has one key finding,

clear, unequivocal, efforts by the Russian government

to interfere with our election.

The issue that goes to the core of our democracy is:

are we doing everything we can to make sure that Americans will decide

who is running this country?

So the DNC knew of the hack on April 19th.

But it wasn't reported until...

I started working on the Russia story at the suggestion

of the legendary reporter and producer Lowell Bergman.

We formed a team of reporters and collaborators from the US and Russia

to take on different parts of the story.

Were you hired by a firm that had a more political interest?

But what exactly was the story?

We learned a lot of details about election interference.

The trolling, the hacking, and the alleged collusion.

What I couldn't figure out was,

how did these pieces fit together? Or even if they did.

The first piece of the puzzle led us down the cyber trail on the Internet,

where a motley band of Russian trolls had been busy making mischief

on social media.

TROLLS

The campaign was riddled with disinformation,

which travels like quicksilver on the internet.

So we sought out Camille Francois,

who was engaged by the US Senate to study the activities

of the infamous Russian troll factory

known as the Internet Research Agency, or IRA.

In 2016, people didn't know what a Russian troll was.

I was quite fascinated by this new means of controlling narratives.

My background is in human rights, and I was very concerned

with the way digital technology was actually creating new problems

in human rights.

What's really interesting with Russia, it exemplifies a new trend

in governments using the Internet to control and repress.

Members of the committee, thank you for having me here today.

We're here to discuss the growing issue of online imposters

and disinformation.

Targeting specific communities at the right time and with the right tactics

can have a catastrophic impact on society, or on an election.

And I have seen the types of impacts

that those disinformation campaigns can have.

The IRA uses what we call persona.

A persona is simply an account that's not who they say they are.

They're really doing three types of personas.

Fake people, like "Hi, my name is Jenna Abrams."

"I am an American conservative."

She doesn't exist. She's a fake person.

That's a fake persona.

Fake organizations. "Hi, we are BlackMattersUS."

"We are an organization dedicated to fighting racism in America."

This organization doesn't exist. It's a fake shop.

And finally, they're doing fake local media.

Like, a newspaper that's based in Baltimore that has a title

that sounds like it could be real. But it's not.

It's not a real newspaper. It doesn't have real journalists

and it has zero office in Baltimore.

They have this army of personas and together they're gonna do campaigns.

What does all this social media activity tell us

about what the IRA was doing in the United States?

What is the story? Initially, the IRA was not focused on

the 2016 election.

The first thing that you see is the IRA's seeking to control

the Russian domestic conversation.

The first target of the IRA really is the Russian people themselves.

The IRA starts in 2013, in St. Petersburg.

To tell the story of the troll factory,

we compiled hacked and leaked materials

and spoke to former employees and journalists who had gotten inside.

Can you hear me OK?

The whole organization was built from scratch.

But the factory itself started in 2013. It took off from there.

The troll farm itself is like a Disneyland

for investigative journalists.

There is always something going on there.

It's a very evil organization, but it was very fun to investigate.

When was the first time you heard of this thing

we've come to call the troll factory?

In the year 2013, I was the first journalist to report

about the troll farm.

I've seen a post on social media.

A woman told about a very strange job.

And I decided that I need to check.

So I went undercover. I bought a new SIM card.

I created a new social media profile.

And I came up with another name.

They rented this big building on Savushkina Street, 55.

I went to the interview and I was asked just two simple questions.

What's your attitude towards Kremlin?

And what's your attitude towards Russian opposition?

That's how it worked.

Videos shot inside the troll factory

I met another investigative journalist there.

We know each other since childhood

and it was very difficult to hide our laughs.

She said, "Hi, Andrei. Good to see you here."

"You also looking for a job?"

Yeah! I will write stuff on the internet about Kremlin

and praise Putin and stuff like this.

And she said, "Wow, I will do the same thing."

It shows how unprofessional they were on their first days

because they had two investigative journalists in the building

at the same time.

They had several levels.

Some doors has just a hashtag.

A special department creating hashtags, maybe.

They had two types of people, simple trolls and analytics.

The job of analytics is to create the agenda for the troll.

You have to use these words and these phrases