The nation’s top intelligence official is set to be quizzed on a declassified report that fingered the Kremlin in hacking during the presidential campaign, just one day after the U.S. sanctioned five Russians.
Tuesday’s appearance is second time in a week for National Intelligence Director James Clapper on Capitol Hill — this time before the Senate intelligence committee where lawmakers’ questions will expose the underlying debate over the future of U.S.-Russian relations.
The report explicitly tied Russia President Vladimir Putin to hacking of email accounts of the Democratic National Committee and individual Democrats like Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta. Russia also used state-funded propaganda and paid “trolls” to make nasty comments on social media services, the report said, although there was no suggestion such operations affected the actual vote count.
The report lacked details about how the U.S. learned what it says it knows, such as any intercepted conversations or electronic messages from Russian leaders, including Putin. It also said nothing about specific hacker techniques or digital tools the U.S. may have traced back to Russia in its investigations.
The economic sanctions levied Monday against five Russians are not related to the U.S. intelligence agencies findings, officials said, Instead, they are connected to a 2012 U.S. law punishing Russian human rights violators. Americans are now banned from doing business with the men and any assets they may have in the United States are now frozen.
The most prominent individual targeted by the U.S. is Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s main investigative agency. Bastrykin and Putin attended the same university together.
The Investigative Committee under Bastrykin investigated Russian whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky’s death in prison in 2009. It determined that Magnitsky died in detention and closed the case after determining that there was no evidence of a crime.
Two of the Russians placed on the Treasury Department’s list have been accused of trying to help cover up Magnitsky’s death. Britain blames the two others for the London murder of a former Russian spy.
Forty-four Russians have now been subjected to U.S. sanctions under the so-called Magnitsky law, the State Department said.
Before the new penalties were announced, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that the Kremlin still believes the U.S. accusations of election hacking have no substance.
“They are amateurish and are hardly worthy of the high professional standards of top intelligence agencies,” Peskov said. “We categorically rule out the possibility that Russian officials or official bodies could have been involved. We are tired of such accusations. This is beginning to remind us of a full-fledged witch hunt.”
According to U.S. intelligence agencies, Russia provided the emails to WikiLeaks. The website’s founder, Julian Assange, denies that is the case, but Democratic and Republican members of Congress have largely backed the accusation and many have demanded a sterner response.
On Monday, Assange called the report on hacking a politically motivated “press release” and said it provided no evidence that Russian actors gave WikiLeaks hacked material.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
This is the same guy who lied to congress about the NSA.
I’m sorry , but I just can’t trust anything he or Brennan ( converted to Islam) say.
The “scathing” 25 page report offered no fact whatsoever. Only “we assess”…….from these same compromised intelligence agents.
Way too many blind leaps to unsubstantiated conclusions to believe any of them. Feels like a total con. Consider that Podesta’s last leaked e mail is dated well after Crowd source claims to have booted “spys” out. Spys they allege have Russian links but can’t prove even that. Besides Spys who read data looking for a social security number to write down are different animal than those who send themselves exact copy of complete files. So biggest ? how is it that there is no record of a transmission of the alleged hacked data? If a hacker electronically sends captured data to his, there will be an outgoing transmission link from the hacked source to the hackers address that captures & stores the info. Absent a transmission out, the only other way the file left Podesta is by coping it on a thumb drive which leaves no electronic transmission trail & means someone physically stuck a thumb drive in Podesta’s computer. That’s not a hack. Its an insider leak.
Why would any of us believe any lack of intelligence official/s? World powers are in the business of hacking each other. If the DNC was hacked their security measures were inadequate and/or faulty.
All I can say is it’s a fact that most major companies and banks have been hacked multiple times by multiple entities throughout the years. Most of these companies spare no expense to try to secure their IT infrastructures. If they can’t secure their IT systems how much less is the U.S government able to secure their IT systems. At best the majority of government computer systems are of mediocre design and mediocre security. In the government it usually takes many months or even years to upgrade and/or improve computer systems. Another thing people in general don’t realize is that the internet was never designed to be secure. In fact it was designed in the opposite, to be a totally open system. In order to truly improve cyber security everything related to internet networking will have to be redesigned from scratch including human beings which are the weakest link in all security breaches.
American security agencies (spys) are hypocrites everything they are accusing the Russians of doing the CIA has done and worse. Google cia atrocities.
I guess it’s ok for the cia to meddle in the governance of other countries but not the other way around.
how much did Obama invest in the Israeli election?