Intelligence Scoop: Is Russia Preparing to Attack Europe?

23:30today at equinox.com.

23:35I'm Gwen Washington from Snap Judgment, the storytelling podcast from KQED. Imagine, an iconic piece of paradise overrun by one of the most horrific fires in recent memory. Everyone flees, everyone, except one person who decides to fight the flames alone. The moment when nature, institutions, and technology fail at the exact same time. That's All Systems Down and new Snap Judgment miniseries from KQED. Tap to listen now.

24:10Gordon Corera:Well, welcome back. So we've looked at the Russian drone threat. We've looked at this particularly, I think, fascinating and worrisome piece of sabotage conducted at Leipzig using this kamikaze drone. And all of this, I think, together suggests that something is indeed going on when we look at how Russia is working across Europe. Yeah, that's right. I think there's lots of different incidents, which if you put them together, become worrying. So just a few others to run through quickly. September the 15th, Italian combat jet, which is on this air policing mission run out of Lithuania, shoots down a drone that penetrates about 60 miles into Lithuanian airspace.

24:55That's carrying an explosive, seems to have come from Belarus. Poland has talked about seeing cruise missiles penetrate its airspace. Poland also now saying that Russia is focusing on attacking border crossings. So at the border between Ukraine and its neighbors, including Poland, with the aim there of disrupting deliveries into Ukraine. So, I mean, that fits with that train strike that we were talking about. Yeah. But other incidents as well, including on the Ukrainian border with Moldova. So getting very close to the border with traditional military action, if you like. and also seeing some of these drones, jets, missiles stray into NATO territory.

25:38And this is partly that on the ground, the Ukrainians have been doing okay militarily. But in the air, the Russians have developed some of these new jet-powered drones, which can fly faster and higher and are much harder to hit and stop, I think. And this is a problem for Ukraine, which is spilling over a bit in terms of danger as well.

25:57Gordon Corera:Well, it's a problem that isn't going to go away because when you look at like Russian manpower in Ukraine, the math is quite grim for the Russians. But when you look at the math on Russian drone production, the math is quite good. I mean, the Russians can produce something like 400 long range drones per day. They cost anywhere from$30 ,000 to$50 ,000 a piece. When you compare that to what we can produce from a Western standpoint on interceptors and the cost of those, it's a structural problem that's spilling out of this conflict that just won't go away. You can't stop it. No, I mean, it's absolutely true.

26:39And I think the problem is that the Russians have got more ballistic missiles. They've got these jet-powered drones, which are also harder to intercept. I mean, I remember when I've been in Ukraine in the past, people got quite relaxed about air alerts in the capital, Kiev, because they were quite confident that the interceptors could take them down. But frankly, now there are too many drones of these jet powered drones and too many ballistic missiles. And there's a shortage of interceptors, partly because they've been shifted towards the Gulf and the conflict with Iran. So suddenly, actually, people wouldn't always go to shelters immediately when they heard an air raid warning, whereas now it's different.

27:15So I think the drone threat has definitely upped. We've also seen an uptick, though, recently in Russian sabotage. A lot of these drone attacks are on the border points where supplies are getting into Ukraine. And if you look at the sabotage attacks, again, it looks like Russia targeting supplies heading to Ukraine. So Romanian intelligence officials said they disrupted a sabotage operation targeting NATO facilities, Ukrainian Antonov cargo aircraft again, a bit like Leipzig. The Estonians have talked about an arson attack on a defence contractor which supplies drones to Ukraine. Italy is looking at an explosion at a munitions factory.

27:55Not certain it's linked to Russia, but it might be. Big fire in Bulgaria at a defence plant linked to a businessman. Emelian Gebrev, whose factories have been targeted in the past and who was actually poisoned, I remember covering this back over 10 years ago, by the GRU, nearly killed him but didn't. And recently we've had the head of a German company that supplies drones to Ukraine saying he's living under police protection because of a poisoning plot. So once you put all that together, you go, the Russians are upping the pressure on those who are supplying weapons to Ukraine and those kind of supply lines which go into Ukraine.

28:34Gordon Corera:There's all these kind of mysterious incidents, for example, in the Netherlands, where you have pipes and iron beams and other kind of debris that are deliberately placed on railway tracks. I mean, I think 30 or so locations across the Netherlands had this happen. Some of these things are tied to the rails. In several of the locations, debris is removed and then they reappear after workers clear the tracks. And in one case, a train hits an object, but no one's injured. There's no evidence tying that to Russia so far, but you can see a kind of pattern of just an attempt, frankly, by the Russians to disrupt the supply lines, the munitions that are feeding the war to Ukraine.

29:18Gordon Corera:And we'll probably talk about this more, but I think to sap political will inside these countries for their stance on the war in Ukraine. Yeah, and a couple of other incidents which have just come to light, which are interesting as well. So activity in the sea. Now, there was one particular incident a couple of months back, which has only just emerged, which I think is really interesting. I mean, it looks more like reconnaissance in the event of war rather than actual sabotage. but deep in Arctic waters near the Svalbard archipelago, which is Norwegian territory up in the Arctic, although there's a kind of Russian community there, NATO allies catch Russian subs training to unleash some kind of secret weapon designed to disable the critical undersea cables without being noticed.

30:05What do you mean secret weapon? Secret weapon? I mean, we love a secret weapon. It sounds sound a bit James Bond because it's coming from their super secret military research department, which I love. It's called Googie, which is the undersea warfare director. It's a comic name. It's not quite Spectre. But they've got deep sea submarines to do sabotage. And in this case, we don't quite know what they're going to do. But it looks like British, Norwegian and American ships confronted them and they left the area before they got to do anything. But it's still another sign of activity, isn't it?

30:37Gordon Corera:I think they've been breeding sharks that have a taste for undersea cables, Gordon. I think that's what it might be. That's my guess. Yeah. And if you want to find out more about how Russia is using the sea to prepare for war, then do subscribe to our newsletter at therestisclassified.com slash newsletter, because we're going to have a piece looking into this kind of really interesting story in the next week or so. But also, and we talked about this, you know, trailed it earlier, didn't we, David, that there's actually been unusually, I think, an accusation by the US government against Russia for activity within the US and involving US citizens.

31:12I mean, that's also a sign of something slightly new and a different risk appetite, isn't it, from the Russians?

31:17Gordon Corera:Well, so I might push back on that one a little bit, just because I do think it is provocative. There's a reason why the DOJ, the Department of Justice, has prepared this indictment, because you don't obviously want Russians murdering people in the US. But it has probably happened before. It happened in D.C. There was a very sketchy incident involving a former Russian official who died in mysterious circumstances. And the Russians have also attempted to find, probably with the intent to kill, defectors who have left Russian intelligence and resettled to the U.S. So it's not without precedent. But I think coming in the context of what we've been discussing.

32:00Gordon Corera:It was a Stalin quote that quantity has a quality all its own. So if you take all of these incidents that may be in isolation, have a historical parallel, but are all happening at once, I think it does create a sense that we're at a different stage of the escalatory ladder with the Russians. So we should maybe just explain briefly what this US indictment was, because it is quite interesting. Five people accused of a plot to murder a dissident on US soil, three senior Russian spies, a former colonel, his son, who's an FSB officer. And then the really bizarre bit, a Cuban dance teacher who lives in Russia after marrying a Russian and teaches salsa.

32:43I mean, again, it's the slight bizarre world of spies that occasionally comes up. But the accusation is this dance teacher uses a network of Spanish speaking contacts internationally and kind of reaching out to them on Facebook message boards to basically find people to do jobs for Russia. So it's back to the kind of disposable agents, spies for hire. And in this case, they contacted someone in the US asking them to carry out surveillance and potentially kill a dissident. So they did carry out some of the surveillance and were given some money for that, but then offered$40 ,000 to eliminate the target.

33:20And the person who's asked to do this says they don't want to do it.

33:24Gordon Corera:$60 ,000 to tango them to death. If you've seen me tango, then that would be definitely to death. If you've seen Gordon tango, then he owes you$60 ,000 for having to sit through that. That's not a pretty sight. Beyond the bizarro, you know, kind of salsa dance and nature of it. It's back to the spies for hire, isn't it? And people doing that and trying to employ people to carry out attacks, including also trying to get a US citizen to murder someone in Lithuania. That's also in the indictment as well. In that case, there actually was surveillance on this group. And this time, there was an offer of$25 ,000 to kill that victim in Lithuania.

34:04The US citizen, I think, quite wisely declined.

34:08Gordon Corera:But one of those former FSB officers says he could, you know, okay, you don't want to murder someone, I'll give you a simpler job, like setting fire to a warehouse or throwing a bottle of petrol at an electrician. substation. So it is interesting that we have a kind of gig economy for Russian sabotage and assassination where you can have people who are, they're contacted on Facebook, they're contacted on Telegram, they might have some kind of criminal past, and they're given a job and they could be paid a certain amount for killing someone or a certain amount for spraying graffiti somewhere They're committing arson.

34:49Gordon Corera:And it's a fascinating piece of this is just how cheap it is. I mean, it's just not expensive. And the Russians are not putting their own networks at stake here. They're finding existing social and criminal networks and tapping into those to get jobs done. It's deniable because you've got one step removed. No Russian's going to get arrested. And as you said, it's kind of low risk and relatively low cost. When you start to put all of these stories together, so Leipzig, the train, this US indictment, there's a lot recently. And we'll get to some of the other warnings that have been coming up, which I think has led to the question of, is this a deliberate step change from Russia?

35:32Or are we just in a kind of moment where we're seeing more because we're looking for things more? But I think the evidence is that there is something going on with the Russians at the moment. There is a deliberate escalation on the Russian part. And that's definitely the sense I get from talking to people, you know, Western intelligence agencies at the moment. They are seeing an uptick in activity. Something is going on.

35:56Gordon Corera:I think it's interesting to flip this a little bit because I think the big question here is what are the Russians up to? What are they trying to accomplish? What do you think it looks like from Moscow, Gordon? If you flip this and you don't look at it from Western intelligence, but you look at this from the standpoint of the Russian leadership, the Kremlin, Putin, what do you think this looks like? Why are they doing it? What are they hoping to gain? I think it's a really good question, and I definitely think it's the right one to ask. I think they see the West, and particularly Europe, escalating its support for Ukraine.

36:34So Russia struggling on the battlefield to win in Ukraine. seeing Europe take up more of the slack, particularly as the Trump administration has pulled back from supporting Ukraine. So Europe becomes the main problem for Russia. Russia, remember, is seeing deep strike drone attacks within Russia on its energy infrastructure, its kind of gas refining facilities, its oil facilities. It's seeing attacks within Moscow. We've seen that in the last few days. It is seeing deep drone strikes and what it sees as sabotage operations inside its country, which it obviously knows is being carried out by Ukraine, but thinks it's being done with European either intelligence or European munitions or European support.

37:20Gordon Corera:They're not wrong. The French provide targeting intelligence that helps the Ukrainians conduct these deep strikes into Russia. I think, is the UK still providing the storm shadow missile system, which the Ukrainians use to conduct deep strikes. So again, I'm not trying to justify a Russian sabotage campaign. Those who have listened to the pod for long enough would know that neither of us are big fans of Russian sabotage. But I think it's an interesting way to sort of flip the perspective a little bit and say, how does the world look when you see it through the lens of Vladimir Putin? I think you're spot on that the Russians think that they're just doing things that that the West, Ukraine and its partners are already doing to them.

38:04Gordon Corera:I think you're right. They see it partly as payback. And I think they want to try and deter ongoing European support for Ukraine. So I think their calculation, which I think we'll come to is wrong, but is that if they can inflict pain on European countries, whether it's sabotage, disruption, also fear through some of these attacks, they will make European countries think twice about continuing to back Ukraine, that they might withdraw support from Ukraine, and then Ukraine is in real trouble. So I think that is the Russian calculation that we're seeing. But I mean, the result so far is that it's not working, if anything, it's the opposite.

38:47Gordon Corera:When you look at how badly things are going for the Russians on the ground in Ukraine, I mean, the net losses that they're sustaining from a manpower standpoint are like 6 ,000 people a month net that they cannot replace. Like one and a half million battlefield casualties going back to the start of the war. And if it keeps going like this for like another year and a half, there's going to be another 750 or so thousand. I mean, we're approaching a world where 10 % of the sort of military age male population in Russia is going to be either killed or injured as part of this conflict, which is like ticking up toward, but not quite at World War I levels in Western Europe.

39:30Gordon Corera:So it's very serious. And it means that structurally, none of this stuff is going anywhere because they're going to try to relieve pressure on themselves by destroying or sabotaging the networks and infrastructure in the West that's feeding the conflict as they see it. One intelligence source I was talking to did say to me, he said, that's what makes Putin dangerous at the moment, is because there is an air of desperation, which could lead him to take gambles, to try and do things, to try and change the dynamic precisely because it's not going well on the battlefield, to try and up the stakes elsewhere.

40:06And I think the other worry is that Russia might have an even more ambitious goal, which would be to try and provoke, create an incident which could test and maybe break the NATO alights. And this is, I think, where we're getting all these warnings about perhaps something more imminent and even more serious than sabotage at the moment. The Poles in particular, I mean, I've heard Polish ministers speak out about this. Polish intelligence services have been talking about the potential for a staged incident, perhaps using captured Ukrainian drones and then sending them over a border to blow something up.

40:46Polish prime minister has warned of some kind of drone or rocket attacks on European countries. perhaps again the idea is to do something which isn't quite a full-scale invasion there's no sign of that they haven't got the manpower they don't want to invade europe and create a full-on land war but do something which would cause confusion within the nato alliance about how to respond so if you had that kind of incident where maybe they use ukrainian drones to blow something up in Poland or in Lithuania. And then you're left with this question, well, is that an attack by Russia or is it not? Do you trigger the NATO collective self-defense mechanism and say, well, this is an attack.

41:32An attack on one is an attack on all. We're all going to war with Russia. A lot of people will be like, whoa, hang on a sec. We're not sure about that. Some might be up for more aggressive behavior. And so suddenly what you do is create division and splits within the alliance, which of course, is what Russia wants. And I think that's one of the worries at the moment.

41:51Gordon Corera:If we put our Vladimir Putin hats on and think about how he and the people around him see the world, I think one of the scary parts of this is that I think the Russian perspective is that the Western alliance NATO, however you want to describe it, actually wants to dismantle Russia and sees the sort of breakup of the Russian state as an end goal of this conflict. And so therefore, the Russian mindset would be that splintering NATO is not a provocation, it's a defense strategy. Yeah, and a win. To prevent that from happening and a massive win. So a lot of this comes back to, I think, the way that Putin and the Kremlin are viewing the conflict in Ukraine and the broader conflict with the West.

42:41Gordon Corera:And it's why I think it's a really scary situation because all of these actions that we talk about and frame as Russian aggression and provocation, which I think they are, are seen as defensive actions. By Russia. Yeah. And I think a big question for Europe and for Russia is how the US would respond. I mean, I was in the Baltics a few months ago for a security conference. I did a panel with lots of spy chiefs, and also sat with some Americans who said they weren't sure how the Trump administration would come to NATO's aid. And I went right by the border. And it's amazing, when you go right to the border between the Baltic states and Russia, you have this sense that you could imagine the tanks rolling over there.

43:20And they were putting sensors there to be able to detect if that happened. And the big question is, well, what would Washington do if that happened? And I think that, again, at the moment, there is a question mark in a way there wouldn't have been in previous points about Washington's response.

43:36Gordon Corera:Well, let's talk about the American angle a little bit, because I think at the moment, we've had this interesting mix of US warnings to Moscow, also outreach. And I mean, interestingly, in late August, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, actually went to Moscow for a conversation with the Russians. Yeah, that's right. I mean, he went out from Riga in Latvia, flew from the Baltics on his C-17A military transport plane. We talked to Bill Burns, former CIA director, didn't we, about what it's like to fly on these visits and even to go to Moscow, because he went to talk in the run-up to the Ukraine war to basically say to the Russians, don't do it.

44:14On this case, I don't know what your sense is of the Ratcliffe mission, but it was partly to say to Putin, things aren't going well for you. Now is the time to deal and not to escalate. That was the message.

44:25Gordon Corera:Doesn't seem to have been absorbed by the Russian leadership. And Reckliff didn't end up meeting with Putin, did he? No. In that visit, it doesn't seem. I mean, but again, I think it probably does come back to a concern on the part of Western intelligence broadly, or the CIA in particular, that we have this really volatile mix of all of the Russian aggression we've just discussed. Sabotage, drones, assassination plots. I mean, really kind of state-sponsored terrorism across Western Europe. And the Russians also feel backed into a corner in Ukraine. And frankly, I mean, there's also the below the waterline piece here, which is may there have been specific intelligence that was picked up that prompted the visit that was concerning to us.

45:12Yeah, because there were some interesting reports that some of the CIA warnings might have been about the kind of Russian sabotage or possible plans for an incursion or a provocation or something. Also, that there were some worries that Russia had viewed the kind of US entanglement in the Gulf with the Iran war as a distraction, as a weakness. And again, offering a window of opportunity for Russia to escalate. And I think Ratcliffe might have wanted to play that down. I mean, it is interesting as well, because we are seeing some signs from the US administration that they're looking at negotiations as well.

45:45And they're offering the carrot of business deals and better relationships with the US. Now, I mean, you can look at this different ways, whether it's smart to have a kind of carrot and stick approach to the Russians to be saying, you know, don't do these attacks. And by the way, there's better business deals on offer. But you could also view it the other way in which the Russians are going, great, you know, we're being offered some business deals. They don't seem to care that much about our escalation.

46:09Gordon Corera:I know. I think the best approach with the Russians is that the carrot is not using the stick. There's only a stick. There shouldn't be a carrot. There should just be a big stick and a smaller stick or no stick at all if you do the things that we want. I agree with you. I think the idea that somehow a set of business deals would incentivize the Russians or somehow convince Putin that this legacy gamble he has made in Ukraine that's going terribly, he should somehow reimagine his entire legacy. I don't know. It doesn't seem particularly compelling to me, but I don't know. I'm skeptical that on the negotiation side, we would be able to change Putin's mind about some of the fundamentals here because he just doesn't view Ukraine as a country.

47:02Gordon Corera:He views it as a Russian vassal state, and we fundamentally, I think, still disagree with that. So I guess, as we start to bring it to a close, there is definitely an escalation going on. I think you're right to say that some of this activity, like maybe the US indictment, is the kind of thing we've seen before. But there do seem to be escalations in some of the drone strikes, in some of the sabotage campaigns, definitely bigger warnings from some European leaders. I mean, the French President Macron did a briefing for politicians at the Elysee Palace, which he apparently did to warn French politicians that things were getting dangerous.

47:38You're having the Lithuanians actually preparing evacuation routes out of Vilnius, the capital, towards Poland, just in case something happens. So there is a little bit, I think, of anxiety at the moment and this question about whether it's going too far, whether some of the war talk is a little bit too much. because we're not seeing a Russian troop buildup on the borders of the Baltics or Poland. They've not got the capacity to do that while they're stuck in Ukraine. I mean, they do not want a land war with NATO. I think that feels really, really implausible to me, which isn't to say there aren't other risks, though.

48:19Gordon Corera:No, and to that point on the other risks, I mean, I think if we go a little deeper into the sort of Russian espionage and, frankly, the sabotage and assassinations piece of this, I think that there are some structural reasons to be really concerned about these incidents not only continuing, but frankly, just it being a matter of time before something really, really bad happens. and it potentially provokes a more vicious escalatory cycle. And I should also commend to listeners, there's a journalist named Michael Weiss who writes a great substack called The Foreign Office. And I think he's also writing a book on the GRU.

49:07Gordon Corera:And he works with The Insider and Bellingcat, and he's been behind a lot of these investigations into what Russian intelligence is up to. And he makes, I think, a really compelling point that we tend when we talk about sabotage, we talk about the GRU, we talk about these these organizations. We're actually missing the fact that the Russian intelligence space over the last maybe five to 10 years, but in particular, the last five since the war in Ukraine, it's really changed. It's become a much more bottom-up kind of system in which these different organizations, some of which are frankly semi-autonomous from the state, are competing for attention and patronage from the Kremlin.

49:55Gordon Corera:Many of them are financed by billionaires who are not actually, they're obviously all associated with the state, but they're taking private funding and pushing them almost like a donation into these organizations. And it's become a much more sort of corporatized intelligence environment where you're getting credit for conducting audacious, risky operations. And when you do that, you attract more funding, you attract more attention from the Kremlin, and that's good for you. So the idea that this stuff, it's not quite like Putin can just turn the spigot off because you have all of these organizations that are doing this.

50:38Gordon Corera:The Cold War way of thinking about the way these organizations run is just totally gone. Yeah. I mean, what I think is really interesting when you talk about it that way is there's a parallel there with when we looked at the Nord Stream plot, which was obviously by the Ukrainians, in which it was a kind of semi-autonomous plot done by a group, allegedly, linked to Ukrainian intelligence, who decided they were going to do this and how much they told the state wasn't clear. But that was a pretty aggressive form of sabotage. I agree, it's a more fluid and therefore more dangerous environment, isn't it, in which you've got lots of actors trying to do things.

51:15There's a difference as well we're seeing between European governments in how they talk about these. Some of the polls are talking about it very loudly, others are not there's some question about whether actually part of the russian strategy is to kind of it's almost like a psyop to to get europeans to freak out of it to get them to panic to to be on guard for anything happening to see everything you know every small incident cyber attack or you know electricity substation going down or you know air traffic control going down here in britain to think oh is it the russians is it the russians and to be kind of edgy and therefore think, well, maybe we should back away from this.

51:51So I think there's also a kind of psychological aspect to this where the communication of risk, I think, in Europe has not been done very well by governments in terms of how to talk about drones, incursions, and other things without freaking people out.

52:06Gordon Corera:People maybe should be a little freaked out because if you have a Russian intelligence system, some of which is part of the state and some of which is sort of not, that is in competition with one another for the most kind of audacious and flashy operation they can conduct in Europe. And by the way, those operations are cheap for them to run, right? Relatively easy. They're using cutouts. They're using existing networks. They're not actually having to build their own infrastructure inside Europe or take a whole lot of risk inside the continent, it creates this massive problem for Western counterintelligence and law enforcement, which is that you actually can't defend against it.

52:54Gordon Corera:There's this fundamental asymmetry in which Western counterintelligence law enforcement, in order to sustain that level of public trust, has to be right every time. And the Russians only need to do something once, kill the former CIA director on a train, cause a mass casualty event at a European airport, and all of a sudden the whole psychological perspective inside that country, and maybe it's politics change as a result, and all of this stuff. I mean, the amounts that the Russians are paying these agents are like hundreds or maybe low thousands of dollars in crypto to do this stuff. So it's just, it's super cheap.

53:32What we're saying is we are at a dangerous moment. I mean, I spoke to one Ukrainian who said to me, He thought that perhaps if the US was kind of paralysed politically after the midterms, if there was chaos there, some kind of dispute, that's the moment the Russians might try and do something big, like a bigger incursion or provocation. I'm still not sure that that's necessarily where we're heading. I think we may still be heading not necessarily to a deliberate choice to escalate towards war. But as you were saying, the risk is miscalculation. You know, the Russians miscalculate about the impact, for instance, of one of these attempts or one of these sabotage attempts, drone strikes, goes wrong and kills people and leads to a cycle of escalation.

54:17Then you are at risk of conflict, not from the two sides choosing to go to war, but of it escalating almost by mistake into war.

54:26Gordon Corera:Or the risk is just that we're now living in a security environment where these kind of events are just going to keep happening constantly, right? Even if you don't slip into another, a new stage of the sort of escalatory ladder, you have to bake this risk in. If you're a Western sort of domestic security official, counterintelligence official, police person, this kind of stuff is just going to keep happening and you probably can't stop. So I think that's a good place to leave it with a sense that we are at a more dangerous moment, even if it might not necessarily lead to the most alarmist scenarios of war.

55:06A reminder, of course, that if you're waiting for Kim Philby, then he's back next week, next Monday. And then next Thursday, we'll have another one of these Intelligence Scoop episodes looking at different issues or things out of the news. So do stay tuned for that.

55:20Gordon Corera:And a reminder, of course, if you want to hear that entire Kim Philby series and all of the incredible bonus content we have alongside it that you can right now just go and join the Declassified Club at TheRestIsClassified.com. And also sign up for the newsletter at TheRestIsClassified.com slash newsletter for that piece on Russia's war at sea next week. We'll see you next time. See you next time.

55:51Push your limits, train with precision, see the results. At Equinox, that's high performance loving. Everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox. Start today at equinox.com. I'm Gwen Washington from Snap Judgment, the storytelling podcast from KQED. Imagine an iconic piece of paradise overrun by one of the most horrific fires in recent memory. Everyone flees. Everyone except one person who decides to fight the flames alone. The moment when nature, institutions and technology fail at the exact same time. That's all systems down and new snap judgment miniseries from KQED.

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