WASHINGTON – Despite President-elect Donald Trump's published reaction to the contrary, The Hill is reporting that an intelligence report declassified and released Friday shows that Russian President Putin ordered a media campaign to help elect Trump.
From the Intelligence Community Assessment:
We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.
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We also assess 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.
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Moscow’s approach evolved over the course of the campaign based on Russia’s understanding of the electoral prospects of the two main candidates. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency.
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Further information has come to light since Election Day that, when combined with Russian behavior since early November 2016, increases our confidence in our assessments of Russian motivations and goals.
However, the report contains numerous admitted assessments and projections. For example, they write:
The General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) probably began cyber operations aimed at the US election by March 2016. We assess that the GRU operations resulted in the compromise of the personal e-mail accounts of Democratic Party officials and political figures. By May, the GRU had exfiltrated large volumes of data from the DNC.
"Probably" used in the assessment suggests they are not sure exactly when the GRU operation commenced which led to Wikileaks' publication of DNC Chief John Podesta's emails. Julian Assange told Fox News' Sean Hannity in an exclusive interview that Assange was absolutely sure the Russian government had nothing to do with obtaining the emails, however he did not identify the source.
The intelligence sources say the WikiLeaks source was "Guccifer 2.0" – a false persona set into place by the Russian government.
From Page 11 and 12 of the report:
We assess with high confidence that the GRU used the Guccifer 2.0 persona, DCLeaks.com, and WikiLeaks to release US victim data obtained in cyber operations publicly and in exclusives to media outlets.
- Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be an independent Romanian hacker, made multiple contradictory statements and false claims about his likely Russian identity throughout the election. Press reporting suggests more than one person claiming to be Guccifer 2.0 interacted with journalists.
- Content that we assess was taken from e-mail accounts targeted by the GRU in March 2016 appeared on DCLeaks.com starting in June.
The report points to Russian-based media sources that criticized Hillary Clinton and American policy as more evidence the Russians were focused on affecting the 2016 presidential election.
Review the report HERE: Download ICA-2017-01
