President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship with America’s intelligence agencies continues to be fraught after a meeting with their leaders who asserted that Russian President Vladimir Putin personally oversaw a cyber attack with the explicit purpose of helping his victory.
Mr. Trump accepted their conclusion that Russia was behind the breach of computer networks of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the campaign of his opponent in the November presidential election Hillary Clinton, but strongly rejected the possibility that he benefitted from it.
‘No impact on outcome’
“While Russia, China, other countries…are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our.. organizations including the DNC, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. There were attempts to hack the Republican National Committee, but the RNC had strong hacking defences and the hackers were unsuccessful,” Mr. Trump said in a statement after the meeting, while expressing his trust in the intelligence agencies.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director John Brennan and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey led the classified briefing for the President-elect on Friday.
‘Preference for Trump’
Mr. Clapper’s office also released a declassified version of the findings. The report says “Mr. Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.” “We also assess Mr. Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence,” it said.
While the public version of the report does not cite the evidence that led to these conclusions, the classified briefings received by President Barack Obama, Mr. Trump and eight senior members of the U.S. Congress included “full supporting information, including specific intelligence and sources and methods,” the document said.
The 14-page public report says “we assess” or “we judge,” about its claims. These words convey “an analytic assessment or judgment,” according to the report. “Some analytic judgments are based directly on collected information; others rest on previous judgments, which serve as building blocks in rigorous analysis.”
“Some of our judgments about Kremlin preferences and intent are drawn from the behavior of Kremlin-loyal political figures, state media, and pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the Kremlin,” said the report.
“Russia used social media, trolls”
The report said the Russian military intelligence agency General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) was behind the two hackers that accessed and leaked to public domain information from the Democratic side. But covert cyber attacks were only one part of the Russian operation, according to the report that accuses Moscow of using social media and “trolls” to influence the U.S election. The report terms the alleged Russian efforts an “influence campaign” and based its assessments also on close ties between the Russian state media and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. WikiLeaks published most of the hacked emails of the Democratic Party. The report said Russia used “disclosures” to influence the U.S election, but added that there was no “forgery” involved.
According to the intelligence agencies, “Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).”
The U.S intelligence agencies “assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes.”
