Breaking News
begin quote from:
Russia-WikiLeaks go-betweens identified, officials say
Intel report says US identifies go-betweens who gave emails to WikiLeaks
Story highlights
- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails
- The emails roiled the 2016 campaign to the detriment of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton
Washington (CNN)US
intelligence has identified the go-betweens the Russians used to
provide stolen emails to WikiLeaks, according to US officials familiar
with the classified intelligence report that was presented to President
Barack Obama on Thursday.
In a Fox News interview earlier this week, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
denied that Russia was the source of leaked Democratic emails that
roiled the 2016 election to the detriment of President-elect Donald
Trump's rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Meanwhile,
US intelligence has received new information following the election
that gave agencies increased confidence that Russia carried out the hack
and did so, in part, to help Trump win.
Included
in that new information were intercepted conversations of Russian
officials expressing happiness at Trump's win. Another official
described some of the messages as congratulatory.
Officials: Hackers aggressively targeting US 02:26
Officials
said this was just one of multiple indicators to give them high
confidence of both Russian involvement and Russian intentions. Officials
reiterated that there is no single intercepted communication that
qualifies as a "smoking gun" on Russia's intention to benefit Trump's
candidacy or to claim credit for doing so.
Vice
President Joe Biden said in an interview with PBS NewsHour that an
unclassified version of an intel report provided to him will be released
"very shortly" and will "lay out in bold print what" the US knows about
the hacking.
"I think it will
probably confirm what a lot of the American people think," he said,
adding that it would "state clearly" the Russians involvement in the
hacking.
In response to the
interview, Trump tweeted on Wednesday, "Julian Assange said "a 14 year
old could have hacked Podesta" - why was DNC so careless? Also said
Russians did not give him the info!"
Trump has been publicly skeptical of Russia's involvement in the hacking, as well as has been publicly deriding the US intelligence community for
its unanimous conclusion that Russia hacked Democratic Party groups and
individuals to interfere in the US presidential election.
Officials told CNN there's
been a disconnect between Trump's remarks about the intelligence
community and his behind-the-scenes behavior when he's present at
private intel briefings.
No comments:
Post a Comment