Russian hackers ‘swung US election’
CIA confident the Kremlin was behind attempts to help Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton to the White House
WASHINGTON // A CIA report has concluded that Russia interfered in last month’s United States presidential election to help Donald Trump win.
The president- elect’s camp immediately rebuked the report, which was published in The Washington Post.
“These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr Trump’s transition team said.
“The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest electoral college victories in history. It’s now time to move on and ‘ Make America Great Again’.”
The Washington Post report came after president Barack Obama ordered a review of all cyber attacks that took place during the election cycle, amid growing calls from congress for more evidence of the extent of Russian interference in the campaign. The newspaper said people with connections to Moscow provided WikiLeaks with emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign chief and others.
Those emails were steadily leaked in the months before the election, damaging Mrs Clinton’s White House run.
According to the Post, the Russians’ aim was to help Mr Trump win.
“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favour one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” said the newspaper, quoting a senior US official.
But questions remain unanswered and the CIA’s findings fell short of a formal US assessment produced by all 17 intelligence agencies, the newspaper said.
For example, intelligence agents have no proof that Russian officials directed the identified people to supply WikiLeaks with the hacked Democratic emails.
Those people were “one step” removed from the Russian government, which is consistent with past practices by Moscow to use “middle men” in intelligence operations to preserve plausible deniability, the report said.
“I’ll be the first one to come out and point at Russia if there’s clear evidence, but there is no clear evidence,” said California Republican congressman Devin Nunes, the chairman of the house intelligence committee and a member of the Trump transition team.
“There’s a lot of innuendo, lots of circumstantial evidence, that’s it.”
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied any links with the Russian government.
At the White House, deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said Mr Obama called for the cyber-attacks review this week to ensure “the integrity of our elections”.
“This report will dig into this pattern of malicious cyberactivity timed to our elections, take stock of our defensive capabilities and capture lessons learnt to make sure we brief members of Congress and stakeholders as appropriate,” said Mr Schultz. Mr Obama wants the report completed before his term ends on January 20.
“We are going to make public as much as we can,” the spokesman said. “This is a major priority for the president.” The move comes after Democrats in congress pressed the White House to reveal evidence of Russian hacking and disinformation in the election. On October 7, one month before the election, the department of homeland security and the director of national intelligence announced that “the Russian government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organisations”.
It also said that “these thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Mr Trump dismissed those findings in an interview published on Wednesday by Time magazine accompanying its person of the year award.
Asked if the intelligence was politicised, he said: “I think so. I don’t believe they interfered. It could be Russia. And it could be China. And it could be some guy in his home in New Jersey.”
Worried that Mr Trump would sweep the matter under the rug after his inauguration, seven Democrats on the senate intelligence committee called on the White House to declassify what it knows about Russian interference.
The seven have been briefed on the classified details. On Tuesday, leading house Democrats called on Mr Obama to give members of the entire congress a classified briefing on Russian interference, from hacking to the spreading of fake news stories to mislead US voters.
Republicans in congress also promised hearings into Russian activities once the new administration comes in.
Mr Obama’s homeland security adviser, Lisa Monaco, said the cyber interference went back to the 2008 presidential race, with the campaigns of Mr Obama and John McCain hit by malicious computer intrusions.
Russian hacking and election interference have also become a big issue in Germany.
On Thursday, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV issued a warning over a rising Moscow-directed campaign of hacking and misinformation directed at “destabilising” the country and influencing political discourse. Last week, WikiLeaks published stolen documents on intelligence activities that embarrassed chancellor Angela Merkel as she began campaigning for elections.