The Indian Express (Delhi Edition)
‘Putin ordered hacking to help Trump’
Report contains no information about how agencies collected their data or came to their conclusions
US INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES’ REPORT
US INTELLIGENCE agencies alleged in an assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an effort to help Republican Donald Trump’s electoral chances by discrediting Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential campaign.
The report released Friday, lacking classified details, neither assessed “the impact Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election” nor did it reveal how the intelligence agencies collected the evidence underpinning their conclusions or the evidence itself, a fact likely to keep alive the controversy over what Moscow may have done. The omissions are likely to leave the report open to criticism.
Russia’s alleged objectives were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State Clinton, make it harder for her to win and harm her presidency if she did, the report claimed.
“We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” the report said. “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
Russian authorities, which have previously denied interfering in the US elections, offered no immediate comment on the report Saturday, and the reaction of the country’s media was low-key.
The report’s conclusions, though lacking details of how the Russians may have relayed the material to Wikileaks and others, will give ammunition to Democrats and Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress who want tougher action against Russia, setting the scene for a potential showdown with Trump.
The report was produced by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. It said Russian military intelligence, the GRU, used intermediaries such as Wikileaks, Dcleaks.com and the Guccifer 2.0 “persona” to release emails that it had acquired from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) as part of the effort.
While the report found Russia had conducted cyber attacks on both the Democratic and the Republican parties, it said that the primary aims were to harm Clinton whether or not she won the election.
The CIA and FBI had high confidence in this judgment and NSA moderate confidence, the report said.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has said he did not receive emails stolen from the DNC and top Clinton aide John Podesta from “a state party.” However, Assange did not rule out the possibility that he got the material from a third party. Russian actors were not found to have targeted US systems that are involved in tallying votes, the report said.
Trump promises to be tough on cyber attacks against USA
In a statement after his intelligence briefing, Trump said: “Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organisations” 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 defenses and the hackers were unsuccessful,” Trump said. He would appoint a team to give him a plan within 90 days of taking office on how to prevent cyber attacks but suggested that he would keep their recommendations secret.
In a statement he delivered outside Trump Tower Friday, Vice President-elect Mike Pence commented on the report.
“The president-elect has made it very clear that we are going to take aggressive action in the early days of our administration to combat cyber attacks and protect the American people from this type of intrusion in the future,” Pence said.
Dan Coats to be appointed National Intelligence Director
Trump said in a statement that he will appoint former Indiana Senator Dan Coats as the national intelligence director. Coats was a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee before retiring from Congress last year. The post requires Senate confirmation.