(2017-03-30) intelligencereport Putin Ordered A Multifaceted Hacking Campaign To Help Donald Trump

Nicholas Loffredo: Intelligence Report: Vladmir Putin ordered a multifaceted hacking campaign to help Donald Trump. Russian government officials mounted an unprecedented public information campaign involving state-funded media, third parties and paid social media users to help discredit Hillary Clinton and promote Donald Trump, according to a declassified intelligence report released Friday. The report, which represents the assessments of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency (NSA), follows Congressional testimony this week from senior intelligence officials on Russian efforts to influence the election.

"We assess with high confidence that (Putin) ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election, the consistent goals of which were to undermine public faith in the U.S. 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. When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election, the Russian influence campaign then focused on undermining her expected presidency."

Russia's motives in promoting Trump included its "longstanding desire to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order, the promotion of which Putin and other senior Russian leaders view as a threat to Russia and Putin's regime." Furthermore, the document states Putin viewed the Panama Papers and Olympic doping scandals as "U.S.-directed efforts to defame Russia."

the NSA only has "moderate confidence" in that assessment while the CIA and FBI maintain "high confidence." The declassified report explains that a "high confidence" judgment indicates a conclusion based on "high-quality information from multiple sources," while a "moderate confidence" judgment "generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."

The report contends that Russian intelligence, not third-party proxies, breached the email accounts of Democratic Party officials, generating a steady stream of leaks throughout the election season. Russian intelligence was behind the Guccifer 2.0 persona, which purported to be an independent Romanian hacker, and directly "relayed material it acquired from the DNC and senior Democratic officials to Wikileaks."

Russia also leaned heavily on its state-run media, internationally focused outlets such as RT and Sputnik and a "network of quasi-government trolls".