{"id":60329,"date":"2016-12-14T15:59:47","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=60329"},"modified":"2016-12-14T16:03:26","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T20:03:26","slug":"c-i-a-judgment-on-russia-built-on-swell-of-evidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=60329","title":{"rendered":"The New York Times Publishes More Outright Lies And Propaganda About Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence
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\"12intel-master768\"<\/a>

President Vladimir V. Putin last month at the Kremlin. The C.I.A. believes he deployed computer hackers with the goal of tipping the election to Donald J. Trump. Credit Pool photo by Alexei Druzhinin<\/p><\/div>\n

By MARK MAZZETTI<\/span> and <\/span>ERIC LICHTBLAU
\nThe New York Times<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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WASHINGTON \u2014 American spy and law enforcement agencies were united in the belief, in the weeks before the presidential election, that the Russian government had deployed computer hackers to sow chaos during the campaign. But they had conflicting views about the specific goals of the subterfuge.<\/p>\n

Last week, Central Intelligence Agency<\/a> officials presented lawmakers with a stunning new judgment<\/a> that upended the debate: Russia<\/a>, they said, had intervened with the primary aim of helping make Donald J. Trump<\/a> president.<\/p>\n

The C.I.A.\u2019s conclusion does not appear to be the product of specific new intelligence obtained since the election, several American officials, including some who had read the agency\u2019s briefing, said on Sunday. Rather, it was an analysis of what many believe is overwhelming circumstantial evidence \u2014 evidence that others feel does not support firm judgments \u2014 that the Russians put a thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump, and got their desired outcome.<\/p>\n

It is unclear why the C.I.A. did not produce this formal assessment before the election, although several officials said that parts of it had been made available to President Obama in the presidential daily briefing in the weeks before the vote. But the conclusion that Moscow ran an operation to help install the next president is one of the most consequential analyses by American spy agencies in years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Mr. Trump\u2019s response has been to dismiss<\/a> the reports by citing another famous intelligence assessment \u2014 the botched 2002 conclusion that the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction \u2014 and portraying American spies as bumbling and biased.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s ridiculous. I think it\u2019s just another excuse. I don\u2019t believe it,\u201d Mr. Trump said on Sunday in an interview on Fox News. Some top Republican congressmen have said the same, although with less bombastic language, arguing that there is no clear proof that the Russians tried to rig the election for Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n

Yet there is a loud chorus of bipartisan voices, including Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, going public to accuse the Russians of election interference.<\/p>\n

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said the public evidence alone made it clear that Moscow had intervened to help the \u201cmost ostentatiously pro-Russian candidate in history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the Russians were going to interfere, why on earth would they do it to the detriment of the candidate that was pro-Russian?\u201d Mr. Schiff asked.<\/p>\n

The dispute cuts to core realities of intelligence analysis. Judgments are often made in a fog of uncertainty, are sometimes based on putting together shards of a mosaic that do not reveal a full picture, and can always be affected by human biases.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is why I hate the term \u2018we speak truth to power,\u2019\u201d said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior C.I.A. analyst. \u201cWe don\u2019t have truth. We have really good ideas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr. Lowenthal said that determining the motives of foreign leaders \u2014 in this case, what drove President Vladimir V. Putin<\/a> of Russia to order the hacking \u2014 was one of the most important missions for C.I.A. analysts. In 2002, one of the critical failures of American spy agencies was their inability to understand Saddam Hussein\u2019s goals and motives.<\/p>\n

At the same time, Mr. Lowenthal said, intelligence agencies have always been loath to be seen as taking sides in disputes about American politics.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the one place you don\u2019t want to be as an intelligence officer: the meat in someone\u2019s partisan sandwich,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Both intelligence and law enforcement officials agree that there is a mountain of circumstantial evidence suggesting that the Russian hacking was primarily aimed at helping Mr. Trump and damaging his opponent, Hillary Clinton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In July, the infiltration of the Democratic National Committee\u2019s computer servers produced embarrassing emails<\/a> and other internal party documents, the publication of which caused a backlash that led to the resignation<\/a> of the committee\u2019s chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and her top staff. Just weeks before the election, hacked emails from the account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton\u2019s top campaign manager, were made public<\/a> and produced numerous stories about the internal dynamics of the campaign. That hack also produced the text of speeches<\/a> Mrs. Clinton had given to Wall Street banks.<\/p>\n

American intelligence officials believe that Russia also penetrated databases housing Republican National Committee data, but chose to release documents only on the Democrats. The committee has denied that it was hacked.<\/p>\n

Beyond the specific targets of the hacks, American officials cite broad evidence that Mr. Putin and the Russian government favored Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton.<\/p>\n

After demonstrators marched through Moscow in 2011 chanting \u201cPutin is a thief\u201d and \u201cRussia without Putin,\u201d Mr. Putin publicly accused<\/a> Mrs. Clinton, then the secretary of state, of instigating the protests. \u201cShe set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

More generally, the Russian government has blamed Mrs. Clinton, along with the C.I.A. and other American officials, for encouraging anti-Russian revolts during the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine. What Americans saw as legitimate democracy promotion, Mr. Putin saw as an unwarranted intrusion into Russia\u2019s geographic sphere of interest, as the United States once saw Soviet meddling in Cuba.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin have had a very public mutual admiration society. In December 2015, the Russian president called Mr. Trump<\/a> \u201cvery colorful\u201d \u2014 using a Russian word that Mr. Trump and some news outlets mistranslated as \u201cbrilliant\u201d \u2014 as well as \u201ctalented\u201d and \u201cabsolutely the leader in the presidential race.\u201d Mr. Trump called Mr. Putin<\/a> \u201ca strong leader\u201d and further pleased him by questioning whether the United States should defend<\/a> NATO members that did not spend enough on their militaries.<\/p>\n

Russian television, which is tightly controlled by the government, has generally portrayed<\/a> Mr. Trump as a strong, friendly potential partner while often airing scathing assessments of Mrs. Clinton.<\/p>\n

And yet, there is skepticism within the American government, particularly at the F.B.I.<\/a>, that this evidence adds up to proof that the Russians had the specific objective of getting Mr. Trump elected.<\/p>\n

A senior American law enforcement official said the F.B.I. believed that the Russians probably had a combination of goals, including damaging Mrs. Clinton and undermining American democratic institutions. Whether one of those goals was to install Mr. Trump remains unclear to the F.B.I., he said.<\/p>\n

The official played down any disagreement between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and suggested that the C.I.A.\u2019s conclusions were probably more nuanced than they were being framed in the news media.<\/p>\n

The agencies\u2019 differences in judgment may also reflect different methods of investigating the Russian interference. The F.B.I., which has both a law enforcement and an intelligence role, is held to higher standards of proof in examining people involved in the hacking because it has an eye toward eventual criminal prosecutions. The C.I.A. has a broader mandate to develop intelligence assessments.<\/p>\n

Law enforcement officials said that if F.B.I. agents had the evidence to charge Russians with specific crimes, they would do so. The F.B.I. and federal prosecutors have already gone aggressively after Russian hackers, including two men detained in Thailand and the Czech Republic whom the United States is trying to extradite.<\/p>\n

Russia has tried to block those efforts and has accused the United States of harassing its citizens.<\/p>\n

The F.B.I. began investigating Russia\u2019s apparent attempts to meddle in the election over the summer. Agents examined numerous possible connections between Russians and members of Mr. Trump\u2019s inner circle, including former Trump aides like Paul Manafort and Carter Page, as well as a mysterious and unexplained trail of computer activity between the Trump Organization and an email account at a large Russian bank, Alfa Bank.<\/p>\n

At the height of its investigation before the election, the F.B.I. saw some indications that the Russians might be explicitly seeking to get Mr. Trump elected, officials said, and investigators collected online evidence and conducted interviews overseas and inside the United States to test that theory.<\/p>\n

The F.B.I. was concerned enough about Russia\u2019s influence and possible connections to the Trump campaign that it briefed congressional leaders \u2014 including Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Senate minority leader \u2014 on some of the evidence this summer and fall. Mr. Reid, in particular, pressed for the F.B.I. to find out more and charged that the agency was sitting on important information that could implicate Russia.<\/p>\n

But the agency\u2019s suspicions about a direct effort by Russia to help Mr. Trump, or about possible connections between the two camps, appear to have waned as the investigation continued into September and October. The reasons are not entirely clear, and F.B.I. officials declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Now that a partisan squall has erupted over exactly what role Russia played in influencing the election, there is growing momentum among both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill to have a congressional investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not trying to relitigate the election,\u201d said Senator Angus King, independent of Maine, who is one of the lawmakers calling for such an investigation. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to prevent this from happening again.\u201d<\/p>\n