Per­haps because I’m in Italy, I’ve not been infect­ed by the con­ta­gion that has spread more rapid­ly than the Zika virus: the febrile notion that Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin is sub­vert­ing our elec­toral process in an effort to elect Don­ald J. Trump as president.

Nev­er has such con­spir­a­to­r­i­al spec­u­la­tion mutat­ed so quick­ly into received wisdom.

Writ­ing in yesterday’s Wash­ing­ton Post from that moth­er of all ivory tow­ers, the Kennedy School of Gov­ern­ment, Bruce Schneier lapsed into near apoplexy.  “If Putin’s gov­ern­ment has already used a cyber­at­tack to attempt to help Trump win,” he writes, using the word “if” rhetor­i­cal­ly, “there’s no rea­son to believe he won’t do it again.”

Putin will “do it again,” Schneier warns, by hack­ing into our vot­ing machines and deliv­er­ing the race to Trump.  Be very afraid.

Our intel­lec­tu­al bet­ters, hav­ing agi­tat­ed them­selves into delir­i­um over the prospect of a Trump pres­i­den­cy, have sum­mar­i­ly dis­missed the most straight­for­ward expla­na­tion for the email leak: a DNC employ­ee or con­trac­tor — either a Sanders backer or some­one under­stand­ably offend­ed at his col­leagues’ mis­be­hav­ior — stole the trove of emails and pro­vid­ed it to Wik­iLeaks.

The “Siber­ian Candidacy”

A Clin­ton cam­paign aide orig­i­nat­ed the Putin The­o­ry, ped­dling it on the Sun­day morn­ing shows as I was leav­ing for the air­port.  I dis­missed it as a trans­par­ent and some­what des­per­ate effort to put down a rebel­lion among Sanders sup­port­ers.  The emails con­firmed that the DNC was lying all along when it denied that it was secret­ly under­min­ing Bernie’s campaign.

Sack­ing Deb­bie Wasser­man-Schultz hadn’t appeased Bernie’s back­ers, so why not throw a Hail Mary by blam­ing the whole thing on Putin?

Had Trump alleged that the Mex­i­can or Chi­nese gov­ern­ment was try­ing to get Hillary elect­ed, he would have been met with well-deserved derision.

But by the time my flight had crossed the Atlantic, the Clin­ton diver­sion had tak­en root. Instead of delv­ing more deeply into the con­tent of the emails, oth­er­wise ratio­nal peo­ple have been falling all over them­selves to “prove” that no less than Putin him­self (or one of his oper­a­tives) was the leak­er and, worse, that his motive was to advance Trump’s “Siber­ian can­di­da­cy.”

McCarthy­ism Reborn

Writ­ing in The Nation­al Inter­est, the Cato Institute’s Ted Galen Car­pen­ter char­ac­ter­izes the “mount­ing alle­ga­tions that [Trump] is a Russ­ian syco­phant, if not a Russ­ian agent,” as a “smear [that] con­sti­tutes a new McCarthyism.”

Car­pen­ter has hit the mark.  As in the days of the noto­ri­ous­ly anti-Russ­ian Wis­con­sin Sen­a­tor, respect­ed cor­po­rate news out­lets are devot­ing enor­mous ener­gy to prov­ing that those sin­is­ter Rooskies are try­ing to take con­trol of the U.S. government.

The alle­ga­tions have become ubiq­ui­tous, prompt­ing the FBI to inves­ti­gate. The FBI state­ment on the inves­ti­ga­tion is intrigu­ing. The agency says it “is aware of media report­ing on cyber­in­tru­sions involv­ing mul­ti­ple polit­i­cal enti­ties, and is work­ing to deter­mine the accu­ra­cy, nature and scope of these matters.”

No men­tion of Rus­sia. Or Putin. Or evi­dence. Just “media report­ing,” the wild­fire ignit­ed by a Clin­ton polit­i­cal oper­a­tive.  The media have tak­en the mere fact that there is an inves­ti­ga­tion (launched in response to “media report­ing”) as con­fir­ma­tion that their spec­u­la­tions are true.

What If It’s True?

It is of course pos­si­ble that the inves­ti­ga­tion will estab­lish the Rus­sians as the leak­ers. But even if that bears out, it would hard­ly prove that Putin was try­ing to install Trump as President.

After all, the Pres­i­dent told us not all that long ago that the prospect of a Trump pres­i­den­cy had “rat­tled” for­eign lead­ers.  Now we are to believe that a for­eign leader is so enthu­si­as­tic about Trump’s can­di­da­cy that he is try­ing to rig the elec­tion in his favor.

Nor is it entire­ly clear why Putin would pre­fer Trump to Hillary.  She was the one, after all, who pre­sent­ed the Russ­ian for­eign min­is­ter with a reset but­ton short­ly after she became Sec­re­tary of State, pledg­ing to repair rela­tions between Wash­ing­ton and Moscow.

When Xeno­pho­bia Was Social­ly Acceptable

Dur­ing her tenure as Sec­re­tary of State, her fam­i­ly did well by Putin and his oli­garchy.  Her hus­band helped facil­i­tate a series of rather lucra­tive deals for Frank Gius­tra, a Cana­di­an min­ing financier and one of the Clin­ton Foundation’s largest bene­fac­tors. Those deals helped enrich both Gius­tra and, through him, the Clintons.

That series of sales and acqui­si­tions cul­mi­nat­ed with a Putin crony buy­ing a con­trol­ling inter­est in Gius­tra’s Ura­ni­um One, whose hold­ings includ­ed 20 per­cent of America’s ura­ni­um deposits.

Because of uranium’s strate­gic impor­tance, the trans­ac­tion required the approval of the Com­mit­tee on For­eign Invest­ments in the Unit­ed States (CFIUS).  Then-Sec­re­tary Clin­ton was one of nine mem­bers of the panel.

There was good rea­son to believe Sec­re­tary Clin­ton would move to block the sale of our ura­ni­um mines to the Rus­sians.  As a Sen­a­tor, she suc­cess­ful­ly led the charge to reverse the Bush Administration’s agree­ment to allow the sale of six port man­age­ment busi­ness­es to a com­pa­ny based in the Unit­ed Arab Emirates.

The cam­paign against the sale smacked of xeno­pho­bia, accord­ing then-Deputy Sec­re­tary of Defense Gor­don Eng­land [CK].  “The ter­ror­ists want our nation to become dis­trust­ful,” Eng­land said. “They want us to become para­noid and iso­la­tion­ist, and my view is we can­not allow this to happen.”

In those days, Democ­rats thought it social­ly accept­able to exploit pop­ulist anti-Arab Mus­lim sen­ti­ments, just as they now are seek­ing to use Rus­so­pho­bia to their polit­i­cal advan­tage. Mrs. Clin­ton’s suc­cess­ful cam­paign to nix the deal cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit­ed from those sentiments.

A Mutu­al­ly Ben­e­fi­cial Deal With The Russians

As a mem­ber of CFIUS, she proved rather ecu­meni­cal in her sus­pi­cions of for­eign acqui­si­tions of U.S. assets.  As Sec­re­tary of State, she led efforts, for exam­ple, that result­ed in CFIUS reject­ing appli­ca­tions from Chi­nese com­pa­nies to acquire every­thing from min­ing inter­ests to fiber optic com­pa­nies to an Ore­gon wind farm.

So it was nat­ur­al to expect that she would object to Russ­ian acqui­si­tion of the raw mate­r­i­al for nuclear weapons.  If any mem­ber of the CFIUS had reg­is­tered an objec­tion to the Ura­ni­um One deal, the mat­ter would have land­ed on the President’s desk.

Sec­re­tary Clin­ton did not object.  The deal went through with­out requir­ing the President’s direct intervention.

Some­one of a more con­spir­a­to­r­i­al bent might allege that she approved the deal because of the finan­cial ben­e­fits her fam­i­ly received from its asso­ci­a­tion with Gius­tra, who prof­it­ed most from the sale of Ura­ni­um One to the Rus­sians.  Although the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence for such a quid pro quo is much stronger than for the idea that Putin is secret­ly plot­ting to pro­mote Don­ald Trump’s pres­i­den­tial aspi­ra­tions, such an alle­ga­tion requires more spe­cif­ic evidence.

Clin­ton’s role in approv­ing Rus­si­a’s acqui­si­tion of Ura­ni­um One does, how­ev­er, cast doubt on the idea that Putin would be uncom­fort­able with hav­ing a Clin­ton (or two) in the White House.  Pre­vi­ous inter­ac­tions between the Russ­ian klep­to­crat and the Clin­tons, after all, have proven to be mutu­al­ly beneficial.

More Ser­i­al Capit­u­la­tions Ahead?

Putin also no doubt takes heart from the expec­ta­tion that Clin­ton would con­tin­ue the Oba­ma administration’s for­eign pol­i­cy.  That pol­i­cy has helped Putin enlarge his influ­ence both in his “near abroad” and beyond.  Its leit­mo­tif has been to launch bel­li­cose rhetoric against Russ­ian action before slow­ly bend­ing to Putin’s will.

When Syr­i­an Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad crossed Pres­i­dent Obama’s “red line” in Syr­ia by using chem­i­cal weapons against his own peo­ple, Putin dis­suad­ed Oba­ma from pur­su­ing the threat­ened mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion against his client.  Putin instead prod­ded Assad to destroy his stock­pile of chem­i­cal weapons. Oba­ma pro­nounced him­self sat­is­fied. Assad has con­tin­ued to use chem­i­cal weapons despite the agreement.

Russia’s annex­a­tion of Crimea and inva­sion of east­ern Ukraine prompt­ed more Amer­i­can saber-rat­tling, but the admin­is­tra­tion has refused the elect­ed gov­ern­ment in Kiev the weapons and sup­port it has request­ed to resist the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion. Instead, the admin­is­tra­tion imposed eco­nom­ic sanc­tions against cer­tain Russ­ian cit­i­zens and cor­po­ra­tions, a strat­e­gy that has proven inef­fec­tu­al. As a result, Putin con­tin­ues to exert direct or indi­rect con­trol over vast por­tions of Ukrain­ian territory.

When Rus­sia last year sent troops and air pow­er to Syr­ia to res­cue the embat­tled Assad regime, the admin­is­tra­tion expressed strong oppo­si­tion.  Hav­ing long called for Assad’s ouster, senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials warned that Russ­ian mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion was “doomed to fail­ure.”

A year lat­er, with the oper­a­tion joint­ly con­duct­ed by Rus­sia, Assad and the Iran­ian-backed ter­ror­ist group Hezbol­lah on the verge of vic­to­ry, Sec­re­tary Ker­ry is implor­ing the Rus­sians to allow us to coop­er­ate with them in mil­i­tary efforts in Syria.

It is dif­fi­cult to con­ceive why Putin would not thrill to the prospect of four more years of ser­i­al White House capitulations.

Did Trump Urge Putin To Hack Hillary?

We are nev­er­the­less told that Putin is pro­mot­ing Trump’s can­di­da­cy.  The press went fur­ther this week, report­ing that Trump had invit­ed the Rus­sians to hack into Clinton’s miss­ing State Depart­ment emails, a charge the Trump cam­paign denies.

I am loathe to defend Trump, but he did noth­ing of the sort.  He said that if the Rus­sians have the State Depart­ment emails that Hillary destroyed, they should release them.

Hack­ing would be of no use at this point.  Fed­er­al agents already have tried and failed to recov­er the emails.  They “are now gone,” FBI Direc­tor James Comey said in a state­ment, “because they [Clin­ton and her asso­ciates] delet­ed all e‑mails they did not return to State, and the lawyers [for Clin­ton] cleaned their devices in such a way as to pre­clude com­plete foren­sic recovery.”

Putin is no more able to obtain those emails than is the FBI. Unless, of course, he hacked the Clin­ton email serv­er dur­ing her tenure as Sec­re­tary of State.  In that case, he swiped them before Hillary destroyed them.

New Wave Of Russophobia

And that, I sus­pect, is a big rea­son Clinton’s team is agi­tat­ing this new wave of Rus­so­pho­bia.  She and her lawyers no doubt had good rea­son to take care in shield­ing those emails from the pry­ing eyes of fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tors. But there remains a pos­si­bil­i­ty — how­ev­er remote — that some­one else obtained them before their destruction.

Should the emails sur­face and prove polit­i­cal­ly dam­ag­ing, Clin­ton would have few options. Alleg­ing that their release was part of a plot by a hos­tile for­eign leader to put his pup­pet in the Oval Office might be her only recourse.

Hav­ing already staked its dimin­ished rep­u­ta­tion on ped­dling this nar­ra­tive, the New York Times will buy in. Its acolytes among cor­po­rate news out­lets will swal­low it whole.

The major­i­ty of vot­ers may not.

What­ev­er the out­come, the Amer­i­can peo­ple will choose the next pres­i­dent, unaf­fect­ed by the pre­sumed inter­ven­tions of any for­eign leader.

If we choose Mrs. Clin­ton, there may well be much rejoic­ing in the Kremlin.