Hey, I'm Ben Rhodes and you're listening to Crooked Conversations.

I recently published a book called The World As It Is About The Obama White House.

And here in this series of Crooked Conversations, we're taking a deeper dive on the backstory

to some of the issues that come up in my book.

And I'm lucky to be joined by some of the people who are there with me in the Obama White

House.

So over the course of these four episodes, we're hearing about what it was like to write

speeches for President Obama.

The US approach to the secret negotiations with Cuba, which I helped to lead.

And looking at how the Benghazi non-scandal led in part to Trump, given the combination

of Republican cynicism, politics, and the right-wing media ecosystem in our country.

But today, we're covering the Russian intervention in our election in 2016.

And I thought, given all the headlines, it'd be good to go back to the origins of how

this all took place.

Why Russia decided to intervene in our elections, how we responded in the Obama White House.

And what it's like to be the subject of a Russian information campaign, which certainly happened

to my guest.

And so I'm very, very pleased to be joined by Jen Saki, one of my closest friends, to

go over exactly what happened to us and how, in our respective jobs, we dealt with the

issue of Russia from roughly 2014 through the 2016 election.

Okay, I'm here with Jen Saki, who wore many hats in the Obama administration.

At the end, she was the White House communications director, previously campaign spokesperson

...