Russia held a large-scale cybercanine designed to sabotage the U.S. presidential election and, ultimately, to help Donald Trump to win, and to start the operation ordered by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin — that was the assessment of the incident was given to the American intelligence Agency, who presented their findings in a report submitted on Friday, January 6.
The report States that the scale of the Russian intervention was unprecedented and Moscow’s actions represent “a significant increase in the level of straightness, activity level, and degree of effort” in comparison with the previous spy activity associated with the elections.
First, the campaign of Russia was intended to undermine public confidence in democratic processes in the United States, to “demonize” democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and harm its potential image of the President. Over time, however, Russia “began to give obvious preference to the President-elect Trump” and to make systematic attempts to artificially boost its chances of winning.
That report was published, an abridged version of a classified joint report of several agencies, to prepare which earlier ordered by President Obama. This report presents a unique analysis of the Russian offensive on one of the foundations of American democracy.
This 14-page document which became available to the public, also serves as a clear rebuttal of numerous allegations of trump on what U.S. spy agencies are not able to find the perpetrators of the hacking operation, in which thousands of emails of members of the national Committee of the Democratic party was first stolen and then published on the website WikiLeaks.
In its report, the CIA, the FBI and the office of the Director of National intelligence “with high confidence” concluded that Russia’s intelligence services have intruded many computer systems associated with the American political parties, and then gave the stolen emails to the WikiLeaks website.
After a briefing with the participation of senior officials of the intelligence services of the USA, devoted to the contents of the report, trump, at least, acknowledged the possibility that Russia is behind hacking attacks committed during the election period. However, he has not demonstrated the willingness to accept the conclusions of the agencies that Moscow wanted to help him win the election.
Instead, trump said that although Russia, China and other countries may have tried to hack into computer systems of the Democratic and Republican parties, “it does not have any impact on the outcome of the election.”
The report says nothing about this. Trump this report represented high-ranking officials of intelligence agencies, including the Director of National intelligence James Clapper (James R. Clapper), CIA Director John Brennan (John Brennan) and the Director of the FBI James Comey (James B. Comey).
Trump also noted that “any tampering with the voting machines was not.” This statement corresponds to the findings of the report, although it was stated that Russia “received and retained” access to multiple systems the electoral system, which “was not involved in the counting of votes”.
As a note the document States that the conclusions in the declassified version, “the identical findings in a top-secret report, but this version was not included all supporting data relating to the key elements of this campaign influence.”
Obama ordered the report shortly after the election, on 8 November, and he recently ordered to enter a series of retaliatory measures, including new economic sanctions against Russia, the expulsion of the U.S. dozens of Russians suspected of espionage activities and the closure of two Russian diplomatic missions.
The reaction of senior representatives of Congress to the report was mixed. Senator Richard Burr (Richard Burr), Chairman of the Senate Committee on intelligence, has called Russia’s actions described in the report, “a troubling Chapter in an unfolding story, and I hope that the leaders of our country will have adequate resistance to such activities.”
His colleague from the house of representatives Devin Nunez (Devin Nunes) have used the report to criticize Obama, noting that the Committee of the house of representatives for investigation “for many years warned the Obama administration about the need to take tougher measures against Russia… but our warnings were not heeded”.
In the published version of the report was not included the classified material on the basis of which analysts could make their own conclusions. According to American officials, spy agencies have identified several “actors” involved in the cyber attacks, they believe that Russia is much more focused on the penetration system of the Democrats and use stolen data from there, and they were able to intercept, from which it is clear that Russian officials are very happy victory trump.
One of the key findings of the report was that “Putin and the Russian government has sought all sorts of ways to increase the chances of the elected President of the trump to win by discrediting Clinton and publicly comparing her to him in favor of the latter”.
Moscow has done this in part because of its “apparent preferences of the elected President of the trump”, which, while still a candidate, has repeatedly spoken favorably about Putin and spoke in support of the policy in Syria and Europe, which is beneficial to the Kremlin.
However, the report also States that one of the reasons the Russian cyber-campaign was the hostile attitude of Putin to Hillary Clinton, a former Senator and Secretary of state, which Putin has accused of inciting mass protests against his government in 2011 and 2012.
Overall, this report describes the multifaceted campaign, which included not only hacker attacks, and outright propaganda from the controlled Russian information platforms, as well as the widespread use of social networking and “trolls”. The purpose of all this was to bring confusion into the ranks of voters and to strengthen the opposition to Clinton.
Despite all efforts, Russia, apparently, believed that the Clinton victory was inevitable until the announcement of the voting results. That is why Moscow has focused on finding ways to undermine the legitimacy of Clinton, in the event of her victory.
In one of the most remarkable passages of the report described as “Pro-Kremlin bloggers were preparing a campaign on Twitter, #DemocracyRIP, which was to begin immediately after the vote,” and which had to be abandoned because the victory was won by the trump.
The report also refers to the attempts of penetration in the electoral system, which began in 2014 and lasted for the entire campaign and may be taken now.
Russian intelligence services have gained access to the systems of the national Committee of the Democratic party in July 2015, as stated in the report. The main intelligence Directorate of Russia, “probably”, broadened the scope of its campaign in March 2016, getting access to e-mail officials of the Democratic party and other political figures.
By may GRU managed to steal “a large amount of data of the national Committee of the Democratic party.” Later part of these data have been published on various websites, including WikiLeaks, resulting in mass-media there were many posts that did not allow the voters to distract from the scandals surrounding Clinton.
Putin has many times denied the involvement of Russia to the theft of the emails of the Democrats. In an interview with New York Times Friday, January 6, trump called this focused on the question of a “political witch hunt”.
In that report, intelligence agencies also referred to the direct relationship between Putin’s desire to help Trump the election and the policies and goals of Russia in Syria and Ukraine. As stated in the report, in both cases, Putin “has demonstrated a preference in favor of the policy of the elected President of the trump involving cooperation with Russia and Pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly of his sympathetic perception of the Russian position” on these two countries.
Putin also wants to achieve the lifting of economic sanctions imposed against Russia in connection with its support of the separatist forces in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea.
This week trump to question the conclusions of the CIA and the FBI, apparently, was inclined to the position of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Julian Assange) — who denies that his site received any e-mail from Russia.
The published report contains new details about the views of American intelligence agencies about WikiLeaks and its relationship with Russia. “We certainty believe that GRU gave the materials stolen from NCDP and senior officials of the Democratic party, WikiLeaks, the report said. — Most likely, Moscow chose WikiLeaks because of its self-proclaimed reputation of a source that publishes only authentic materials”.
The report States that none of the file sent to WikiLeaks, was not found “falsified data”.
The report says that Guccifer 2.0 — a hacker who allegedly took part in this campaign “for the election campaign made a lot of contradictory statements and making false statements about his identity”. In its report, the American intelligence Agency expressed confidence in his ties with Russia.
In a sense, Russia’s intervention in the elections in 2016 fits into a long trend, rooted in a time when the Soviet Union was carrying out espionage activities in relation to influential American politicians and officials. American intelligence agencies also spend considerable sums on collecting materials about Putin and his subordinates.
The report also said that in addition to animosity towards Clinton, Putin could lead the belief that in the past Moscow has many times been the victim of incriminating leaks, which he attributes to US – including the publication of the Panama documents that showed how the Kremlin is associated with rich people hiding their fortunes, as well as materials that triggered the doping scandal around the Russian Olympic team.
Putin’s success in the use of cyber capacities and advocacy for intervention in the presidential election in the US will likely encourage him to start such operations against the U.S. and its allies in the future. “We believe that the Russian intelligence service will continue to develop the potential that Putin can use against the U.S.” — the report says.
