Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign that targeted the United States presidential election last year and when it looked like Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton would win Russia honed its focus on hurting her efforts, the U.S. intelligence community charges in a widely anticipated report on Russia’s cyber hacking and associated attempts to meddle in the American election.
And the unclassified version of the report warns there is more to come from America’s Cold War enemy, saying the “election operation signals ‘new normal’ in Russian influence efforts.”
The report, which was drafted and coordinated by the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency, says that “We assess Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at the US presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide, including against US allies and their election processes.”
Russia’s future efforts will likely be “cyber-enabled” the report says “because of their belief that these can accomplish Russian goals relatively easily without significant damage to Russian interests.”
President Barack Obama in early December ordered the report following the presidential election and to help get to the bottom of Russia’s attempts to influence the outcome. A month before the election the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement stating that the intelligence community is confident that the Russian government was behind a wave of leaked emails that had been hacked from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign Chief John Podesta and subsequently reported widely.
On Thursday Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a Senate panel that the intelligence community was even more confident than earlier of its assessment about Russia’s role and intentions in the influence campaign, which also included fake news and other means of propaganda.
“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,” says the 25-page report, Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.
The report highlights Russia’s use of disclosures during the election was “unprecedented, but its influence campaign otherwise followed a longstanding Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations—such as cyber activity—with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, statefunded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or “trolls.”
It also includes an annex, first published in 2012 by the Open Source Center, explaining how RT America seeks to influence politics and discontent within the U.S.
The report says Russia’s goal was to help now President-elect Donald Trump and “to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” It adds, “We also assess Putin and 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 report explains that Putin likely wanted 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.”
Trump in a statement on Friday after he was briefed by U.S. officials on the report, said Russia’s cyber hacks didn’t affect the outcome of the election. He also said that the Republican National Committee thwarted efforts to hack its computers through “strong hacking defenses.”
Russian leadership for years has opposed the “liberal democratic order” led by America, the report says, “the promotion of which Putin and other senior Russian leaders view as a threat to Russia and Putin’s regime.”
The report assesses that another reason Putin developed a preference for Trump over Clinton is that he has had numerous positive experiences working with Western political leaders with business interests that made them more disposed to deal with Russia. That includes former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
As an example of one of Russia’s negative attempts to influence the U.S. election, the report points to pre-election denouncements by Russian diplomats of America’s electoral process, adding they “were prepared to publicly call into question the validity of the results” and the Kremlin was ready with a Twitter campaign on election night if Clinton won asserting that democracy was dead.
As for Russia’s cyber espionage associated with the presidential campaigns, the intelligence community says information was collected from the various primary campaigns, think tanks, and lobbying groups seen “as likely to shape future US policies.”
Russia’s cyber hacks and influence campaign against the U.S. didn’t end on Election Day, the report says.
Right after the election “we assess Russian intelligence began a spearphishing campaign targeting US Government employees and individuals associated with US think tanks and NGOs in national security, defense and foreign policy fields” for potential material for future intelligence efforts and “foreign intelligence collection on the incoming administration’s goals and plans.”
Trump said he will order a plan due in 90 days of taking office on how to keep the U.S. safe from cyber attacks.
Congress, either through an independent commission or through its various committees, will continue to hold hearings and investigate the Russian hacking.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has introduced a bill calling for an independent commission, said in a statement that “This issue must not be politicized—all Americans should be outraged at Russia’s actions, and we must hold them accountable.”