The cyberwar that never happened: How Obama backed down from a counterstrike against Russia.

In the summer of 2016, as evidence mounted of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, a team in the White House began work on a far-reaching counterstrike against Russian media, the Kremlin oligarchy, and Putin personally — plans that were shelved when President Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, ordered the staffers to “stand down.”

The details of the project, and the debate within the administration of how aggressively to confront Moscow, are told in a new book, “Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump,” by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones.

Excerpts from the book are being published this week by Yahoo News and Mother Jones. The book goes on sale Tuesday, March 13.

By Jerry Adler.

Full story at Yahoo News.