Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a cyber and influence campaign aimed at interfering in the United States election and boosting President-elect Donald Trump’s chances, according to a declassified U.S. intelligence agencies’ report on Russian hacking and efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.
“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the report stated. “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. We have high confidence in these judgments.”
The assessment — drafted and coordinated by the CIA, FBI and NSA — covers Moscow’s motivations and the scope of its intentions related to the U.S. election, as well as its use of “cyber tools and media campaigns” to influence public opinion. The agencies also say that Putin directly ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election.
The Kremlin’s influence effort marked its “boldest yet” in the U.S., representing a “significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort compared to previous operations” targeted at the country’s election. The report detailed Moscow’s multifaceted operation, described as a blend of covert intelligence operations and overt efforts by “government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or ‘trolls.’”
Steven Hall, a former senior CIA officer who retired in 2015 and spent much of his career overseeing intelligence operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union and the former Warsaw Pact, said he was struck by the stark assessment of the report and its emphasis on how “multifaceted” Russian efforts went beyond hacking.
"They said clearly and made no bones about it that the Kremlin and specifically Putin very much favored Trump over Clinton,” Hall said. “They specifically mentioned Putin. They’re saying this was him.”
The report also stated that “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.”
Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the intelligence community’s findings on Russia’s meddling in the election, received a full intelligence briefing on the hacking earlier on Friday. He released a statement after the briefing, saying "there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election."
He did not acknowledge the Intelligence Community’s assessment that Russia attempted to interfere in the election with the aim of trying to tip the election in his favor, but said he had "tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women of the community to our great nation."
"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break though the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat [Democratic] National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said.
John Sipher, who retired in 2014 after a 28-year career in the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, noted that many members of the IC “will still be perplexed by his inability to fully acknowledge Russia’s role.”
“I think from the beginning the vehemence of his denials and his sort of lashing out at the Intelligence Community and the press, a lot of it had to do with his conflating the hacks and the legitimacy of his election,” Sipher told The Cipher Brief. “There are politicians and people who would try to spin things and delegitimize an election, but [for] the people who collected the information, that was not their intention or goal, certainly.”
The three agencies noted in the report that “we did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The U.S. Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze U.S. political processes or US public opinion.”
According to the declassified report, the CIA, FBI and NSA all agree with the assessment that Putin and the Russian government “aspired to help” elect Trump by discrediting Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton and contrasting her unfavorably to him. The report noted the CIA and FBI have “high confidence” in this judgement while NSA has “moderate confidence.”
The IC report assessed that Putin most likely sought to discredit Clinton “because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.”
Moscow’s approach “evolved” during the campaign based on its assessment of the candidates’ electoral prospects — when it seemed Clinton was likely to win, “the Russian influence campaign began to focus more on undermining her future presidency,” according to the report.
On its evaluation of cyber espionage against U.S. political organizations, the report stated that Russian intelligence services “conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election, including targets associated with both major U.S. political parties.”
It also says Russian intelligence services collected information on “the U.S. primary campaigns, think tanks, and lobbying groups they viewed as likely to shape future U.S. policies.” In July 2015, Russian intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks and maintained that access until at least June 2016,” it adds.
According to the IC’s review, Moscow did collect on some Republican-affiliated targets, “but did not conduct a comparable disclosure campaign.”
The report did not declassify full supporting information or key technical data linking Russia to the cyber and influence campaign.
“I suspect that there’s a lot more technical data in terms of how they did some of the forensics that is not included in here for obvious reasons,” Hall said. “I thought they good job of making that report hang together as a piece of finished intelligence without having to leave big, pondering questions about how was all this obtained.”
According to the analysis, the agencies have “high confidence” that GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, “used the Guccifer 2.0 persona and DCLeaks.com” to release data obtained in their cyber operations to the media and “relayed material to WikiLeaks.” That organization, founded by Julian Assange, was likely selected because of its “self-proclaimed reputation for authenticity,” the report stated.
While Russian intelligence “obtained and maintained access to elements of multiple U.S. state or local electoral boards,” the report states that the Department of Homeland Security “assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”
The Kremlin also put its “state-run propaganda machine” to work in the influence campaign by “serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences.”
Trump has yet to acknowledge Russia’s role. Before the intel briefing on Friday, the president-elect told The New York Times that the focus on Moscow was a "political witch hunt.”
Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center and senior fellow for the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said Trump’s continual dismissal of the IC plays broadly into Putin’s hands.
“It’s a huge gift to a former KGB agent like Mr. Putin when you have a U.S. president who doesn’t trust U.S. intelligence findings and would rather rely on gut feeling or whatever else is motivating him to trust either the Russians themselves, or various agents of the Russians like Julian Assange,” she said.
Sipher said he suspected that Moscow would read Trump’s response to his intelligence briefing “as a positive sign.”
“They’re obviously getting more benefit out of all this stuff than they would have ever expected, and if they had a worry it would be after a briefing like this or after he starts looking at the information that he would immediately start to turn on or change his tone,” he said. “If I was in Russia and I was reading this, I would continue to be pleased. He’s continuing to downplay how serious it is. He’s making it like the issue of cybersecurity is the problem, not attacks by Russia.”
As the agencies’ report noted, Russia’s efforts in the 2016 election mark a “new normal.”
“We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against U.S. allies and their election processes,” the report concluded.
The assessment that there is more to come — not only in the United States, but specifically with regards to upcoming elections and political activities in Europe — is key, Hall said.
“The impression they left was there were lessons learned, and that’s usually code in government terms meaning ‘there are lessons learned but there’s things to improve upon,’ and we’re going to do it again,” he said.
Mackenzie Weinger is a national security reporter at The Cipher Brief. Follow her on Twitter @mweinger.
Leone Lakhani contributed to this report.
