Politico reported today that President Barack Obama has ordered a “full-review” of the pre-election hacking and cyber attack that have been allegedly tied to Russia.
Lisa Monaco, Obama’s counter-terrorism and Homeland Security adviser, said:
“We may have crossed into a new threshold and it is incumbent upon us to take stock of that, to review, to conduct some after-action, to understand what has happened and to impart some lessons learned.”
U.S. Intelligence Community Outraged
Previously, both the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have accused Russia of being responsible for the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), among other political organizations. They have said that this was done in an effort to “interfere with the U.S. election process.”
In a statement to NBC, officials said:
“The US Intelligence Community is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of emails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations … We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.”
Experts believe that the digital attacks on the DNC and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee contributed heavily to Hillary Clinton’s eventual defeat in the 2016 election. The timing of this cyber attack, just months before the election, ultimately proved too much for the Clinton campaign to effectively manage.
The Eventual Outcome
Many Democratic leaders have asked Obama to declassify more information regarding the reported hacks by Russian intelligence:
“We believe that there is additional information concerning the Russian Government and the US election that should be declassified and released to the public.”
Monaco has said that the report will be shared with “a range of stakeholders,” including members of Congress, but she did not say that the findings of the review will be made public.
Watch the video below about the hacking of the DNC:
Featured image credit: Пресс-служба Президента России via Wikimedia Commons/CC-By-2.0
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