WASHINGTON — A united front of top intelligence officials and senators from both parties on Thursday …
Cybersecurity Takes Center Stage on The Hill
In a Thursday hearing, James R.
Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, criticized the
"disparagement" of the U.S. intelligence community and its findings on
Russian hacking during the election.
By THE NEW YORK TIMES.
Photo by Al Drago/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
WASHINGTON
— A united front of top intelligence officials and senators from both
parties on Thursday forcefully reaffirmed the conclusion that the
Russian government used hacking and leaks to try to influence the
presidential election, directly rebuffing President-elect Donald J. Trump’s repeated questioning of Russia’s role.
They suggested that the doubts Mr. Trump has expressed on Twitter about the agencies’ competence and impartiality were undermining their morale.
“There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” James R. Clapper Jr.,
the director of national intelligence, said at a hearing of the Senate
Armed Services Committee on the Russian hacks. He added that “our
assessment now is even more resolute” that the Russians carried out the
attack on the election.
The
Senate hearing was the prelude to an extraordinary meeting scheduled
for Friday, when Mr. Clapper and other intelligence chiefs will repeat
for Mr. Trump the same detailed, highly classified briefing on the
Russian attack that President Obama received on Thursday. In effect,
they will be telling the president-elect that the spy agencies believe
he won with an assist from President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Continue reading the main story
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
Then
Mr. Trump will have to say whether he accepts the agencies’ basic
findings on Russia’s role or holds to his previous contention that
inept, politicized American spies have gotten the perpetrator of the
hacking wrong. That would throw the intelligence agencies into a crisis
of credibility and status with few, if any, precedents.
In a pair
of Twitter posts early Thursday, Mr. Trump appeared to back away from
the scorn he had previously expressed for the intelligence agencies’
work, as well as from his embrace of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which released most of the hacked emails of Democratic officials.
“The dishonest media likes saying that I am in agreement with Julian Assange
— wrong,” he wrote. “I simply state what he states, it is for the
people to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to
make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big
fan!”
Intelligence Officials Testify About U.S. Cyber Security
At a Senate hearing, intelligence officials said Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, should not be given credibility.
Photo by Stephen Crowley/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »
But
on Thursday night, the president-elect returned to Twitter and appeared
to underscore his doubts about the F.B.I.’s investigation of the
hacking.
“The
Democratic National Committee would not allow the FBI to study or see
its computer info after it was supposedly hacked by Russia,” he wrote, a
day after a report by BuzzFeed
on the issue. “So how and why are they so sure about hacking if they
never even requested an examination of the computer servers? What is
going on?”
Early
next week, the public will get its fullest information to date on the
evidence the agencies have to support their contention that Mr. Putin’s
government used the hacked emails to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign and
help Mr. Trump’s. Mr. Clapper said he would “push the envelope” to
include as much detail as possible in the unclassified version of the
intelligence agencies’ report on the Russian operation.
The
hacking, he added, was only one part of that operation, which also
included the dissemination of “classical propaganda, disinformation,
fake news.”
Mr.
Clapper will step down as intelligence director later this month after a
career in intelligence and military service that began when he enlisted
in the Marine Corps in 1961. His replacement is expected to be Dan Coats, a retired senator from Indiana, a Trump transition official said Thursday.
A
low-key conservative who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee,
Mr. Coats would oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies in a job
that was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to improve
the sharing of information, but that is sometimes criticized as adding a
layer of bureaucracy.
The Coats news came on the same day that R. James Woolsey, a former C.I.A. director, stepped down as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, citing his diminishing role in the transition.
The
Senate hearing on Thursday, devoted to foreign cyberthreats, was
unusual as much for its context as its content — a public, bipartisan
display of support for the intelligence community that seemed aimed, at
times, at an audience of one.
The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.
A Times investigation reveals missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of a campaign to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.
Though
Mr. Clapper and most Republican senators were careful to avoid
antagonizing the president-elect directly, the hearing spoke to the rift
Mr. Trump has threatened to create between the incoming administration
and the intelligence officials assigned to inform it.
Senator
John McCain, Republican of Arizona and chairman of the committee, said
the purpose of the gathering was “not to question the outcome of the
presidential election” but to move forward with a full understanding of
what had happened.
Repeatedly,
though, Mr. McCain and his colleagues seemed to undercut Mr. Trump’s
past messages of support for Russia, and for Mr. Assange of WikiLeaks.
“Do you think there’s any credibility we should attach to this individual?” Mr. McCain asked.
“Not
in my view,” Mr. Clapper said. Another witness at the hearing, Adm.
Michael S. Rogers, the head of the National Security Agency and United
States Cyber Command, said he agreed.
The
intelligence director said he welcomed skeptical questioning from Mr.
Trump, allowing that the intelligence community was “not perfect.”
“We
are an organization of human beings, and we’re prone, sometimes, to
make errors,” Mr. Clapper said. But he said the agencies had learned
from their failures, notably their declaration that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction.
Democrats
on the committee repeatedly coaxed intelligence leaders to rebut Mr.
Trump’s multiple assertions that a random individual hacker might have
hacked Democratic targets.
Senator
Joe Donnelly, Democrat of Indiana, told Mr. Clapper that in the
conflict between the intelligence agencies and Mr. Assange over Russian
responsibility for the attack, “We’re on your side every time.” He asked
Mr. Clapper to convey his level of confidence in attributing the
election attack to Russia, rather than “someone in his basement.”
“It’s, uh, very high,” the laconic intelligence director replied.
At
one point, Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, wondered
aloud “who benefits from a president-elect trashing the intelligence
community.”
Ms.
McCaskill said there would be “howls from the Republican side of the
aisle” if a Democrat had spoken about intelligence officials as Mr.
Trump had.
Senator
Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia and Mrs. Clinton’s running mate, used
the occasion for an aside about Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Mr. Trump’s choice for national security adviser, who has a history of sharing discredited news stories and conspiracy theories.
Mr. Kaine said that he was unsure whether Mr. Flynn was acting out of
“gullibility” or “malice,” but that it was a cause for “great concern”
that Mr. Flynn shared stories that “most fourth graders would find
incredible.”
No
Republican lawmakers embraced Mr. Trump’s remarks casting doubt on the
intelligence conclusions, though some were more conspicuous than others
in their efforts to distance themselves.
Perhaps
the closest to a defense of Mr. Trump came from Senator Tom Cotton,
Republican of Arkansas. Denouncing “imprecise language” stating that
Russia “hacked the election,” Mr. Cotton asked Mr. Clapper to confirm
that the actual balloting was not affected.
Mr.
Cotton also suggested that the conventional wisdom that Mr. Putin
favored Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton might be wrong. Mr. Trump promised a
stronger military and more American oil and gas production — policies
Mr. Cotton suggested would not be to Russia’s advantage.
Senator
Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, criticized the Obama
administration for its response to the Russian attack. He said the White
House had lobbed mere “pebbles” in retaliation for the interference.
“When
it comes to interfering with our election, we better be ready to throw
rocks,” he said. Then Mr. Graham issued a warning for fellow Republicans
who might be inclined to brush off any attack on an opposing party.
“Could it be Republicans next election?” he asked. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cybersecurity than Democrats.”
Continue reading the main story
No comments:
Post a Comment