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FRONTLINE film writer and producer discusses findings from "Putin's Revenge: Part 2"

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Wednesday, November 1st at 10 o’clock, only on WGVU Public Television, FRONTLINE presents Putin’s Revenge: Part 2. WGVU spoke with its writer and producer about how Russia weaponized intelligence and interfered in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election.

“Here’s a situation where Vladimir Putin knows he can’t confront the United States directly. He doesn’t have a military that would be capable of say, of military conflict with the United States.”

Mark Wiser is Putin’s Revenge writer and producer. He tells me Putin experimented with cyber warfare in Ukraine and put what he had learned to use during the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. Wiser was surprised to learn the response from the U.S. government during the summer of 2016.

“The intelligence agencies at least, believed that Vladimir Putin himself had ordered an operation to interfere in an American election. So we were talking with senior administration officials about what was the response and what were they going to do? What we saw was that for months inside the Obama administration there was debate about whether to go public about what exactly to say about how strong the statement should be? And there was also a partisan divide between congressional Republicans and between the Democrats in the White House about whether to call out Putin publically, over how big the confrontation should be. And I think it was a real moment where our government, despite the warnings of the intelligence community about what was going on, really found itself unable to act. ”

Putin’s Revenge: Part 2 airing Wednesday, November 1st at 10 PM on WGVU Public Television.

Patrick joined WGVU Public Media in December, 2008 after eight years of investigative reporting at Grand Rapids' WOOD-TV8 and three years at WYTV News Channel 33 in Youngstown, Ohio. As News and Public Affairs Director, Patrick manages our daily radio news operation and public interest television programming. An award-winning reporter, Patrick has won multiple Michigan Associated Press Best Reporter/Anchor awards and is a three-time Academy of Television Arts & Sciences EMMY Award winner with 14 nominations.