U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, a retired Air Force colonel, spent most of her congressional recess in several former Soviet bloc countries learning how they fight a growing Russian threat.
In an unannounced tour of Poland, Estonia and Ukraine by members of the House Homeland Security Committee last week, the Republican who represents Arizona’s Congressional District 2 met with military officers, government officials and computer experts who are fighting a new cold war against the influence of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“They have invaded countries in Eastern Europe,” she said in an interview during the weekend. “They’ve done it in the past in Georgia as well; they are currently right now occupying another country against its will.”
All three countries she toured are targets in what she calls hybrid warfare, using both conventional methods like propaganda to destabilize the region, but also cyberattacks to undermine the government and business community, she said.
“Estonia is on the cutting edge of securing their country and their critical infrastructure against cyberattacks,” she said. “We can learn a lot from them.”
But in Ukraine, there continues to be active pockets of warfare.
McSally says she is pressing for more details on the death of Tucsonan Joseph Stone, 36, a medic. He was killed last month while working for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Initial reports identified him as the victim of an explosion that hit an armored vehicle in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine.
The overseas trip last week coincided with the firing of FBI Director James Comey by President Trump.
Despite statements from White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders that it was “time to move on” from the Russian investigations, McSally insists the FBI investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s election and any ties to the Trump campaign must not end.
“We need to let them continue to move forward with that. This is not something that is going to be easy to kind of pull the thread on it and address all the different parts of it,” she said. “The House and the Senate intelligence committees, which are bipartisan, are also going forward with their investigations in our appropriate role — we don’t do criminal investigations in Congress, and nobody would want us to do that.”
This includes regular updates to Congress.
“They certainly need to be continuing to inform other members of Congress regularly what’s going on. Much of the investigations are happening in the classified sphere, which I understand, especially when we’re dealing with counterintelligence issues, but we need to be kept up to speed so that we’re not in the dark,” she said.
McSally said the investigations into Russia should not be a partisan issue.
“People need to realize that Russia is not our friend,” she said. “I’ve said it before, Putin is a thug. He’s not our friend and we need to show strength and resolve in order to stop him from going any further.”
