NSA Director Adm. Mike Rogers cast a dash of doubt Tuesday on the intelligence community's conclusion that Russia-tied hackers sought to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election, explaining for the first time in public testimony why his agency had only "moderate confidence" in that judgment. 

Testifying before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Rogers affirmed he and the NSA were highly confident the Russians sought to hurt Hillary Clinton in the election. But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., asked Rogers – who also heads U.S. Cyber Command — why the NSA differed on the related conclusion about Trump in the Jan. 6 intelligence report on alleged Russian interference in the election.

That conclusion stated that 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.”

The FBI and CIA backed that with high confidence, but the NSA only held that judgment with “moderate confidence.”

Cotton noted that fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during the hearing called Trump “Russia’s preferred candidate” and asked Rogers to “explain the discrepancy.”

“I wouldn’t call it a discrepancy, I’d call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations and in the end I made that call,” Rogers said.

He added that when he looked at the data, for each of the other judgments there were multiple sources and he could exclude every other alternative rationale. But for this particular conclusion, “it didn’t have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources,” he said.

He noted that he still agreed with the judgment, but he wasn’t at the same confidence level as CIA Director John Brennan and FBI Director James Comey. 

Probed further by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. — who was Clinton’s running mate – Rogers clarified that while he was highly confident the Russians wanted to prevent Clinton from winning, and to undercut her effectiveness if she did win, he was only moderately confident the Russians actively wanted Trump to win. 

The FBI, CIA and NSA were all in complete agreement about the Clinton-related conclusion in the report, which stated: “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.” 

 



As for the issue of whether Russians hacked the DNC server, I point you both to this Wired.com article. I have to ask though, kurster: if Russia didn't hack the DNC servers, who did? Please don't tell me you think it was Seth Rich. That fantasy is so twisted and cruel. 


Feds’ Damning Report on Russian Election Hack Won’t Convince Skeptics


ON FRIDAY, THE Office of the Director of National Intelligence finally released a declassified report on Russia’s role in influencing the US election. And though it offers the most detailed official analysis yet of Russia’s operations, critics in the cybersecurity community say it lacks the still-secret evidence needed to persuade skeptics that analysis is true.

The ODNI’s 25-page report (embedded below) from US intelligence agencies lays out a vast Russian intelligence operation that extends from hacking both Democratic and Republican targets to propaganda campaigns to troll-fueled social media disinformation. It re-asserts the intelligence community’s findings that the Kremlin is behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and even state election board websites. And the express intention of those operations, the report states, was to not only disrupt the American electoral process, but to elect Donald Trump.

“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the report reads. “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”

Even so, the report leaves out the much hoped-for technical evidence that informed these conclusions. In its “Scope and Sourcing” section, the report explains that this evidence exists, but can’t be declassified. And that means the report won’t satisfy the majority of the cybersecurity community that believes Russia hacked Democratic targets but has demanded more evidence, let alone the diehard deniers of the Kremlin’s fingerprints. “Seeing more of the context in which this happened does make me a little more trusting that this really was Russia,” says Robert Graham, an analyst for the cybersecurity firm Erratasec who has closely followed the Russian hacking investigation. “But knowing what data they probably have, they could have given us more details. And that really pisses me off.”