Any information that passed through the Democratic National Committee’s network or Hillary Clinton’s personal servers should be considered an open secret to the world’s intelligence agencies, according to a key Republican lawmaker.
“We all live in an environment now where we see bad actors [like] the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, the Iranians, the Russians, who all have active cyber programs to steal emails,” Rep. Mike Pompeo, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
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“I think it’s the case for the DNC as well as for Secretary Clinton’s homebrew server,” he said. “One has to assume those bad actors are going to obtain access to those servers. So that information is available. That’s why classified information needs to never be put there.”
“I think it’s almost certain that the 33,000 emails Secretary Clinton destroyed … are in the possession of nationstate actors that intend to do destruction to America,” Pompeo added. “I think it’s incredibly likely. I think that’s what [FBI] Director James Comey told us as well.”
Pompeo was speaking to the issue of Friday’s document dump by WikiLeaks, which came in the form of approximately 20,000 emails hacked from the party’s servers. The documents, which revealed the extent to which DNC officials collaborated with Clinton’s presidential campaign to crush her primary opponent, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, have roiled the Democratic National Convention being held this week in Philadelphia.
The FBI announced on Monday that it would begin an investigation into the leak, which experts believe was just the tip of the iceberg. “The new investigation is based upon the widespread nature of the intrusion,” said Tom Kellermann, CEO of the Washington, D.C. based firm Strategic Cyber Ventures. “How far did the Russians colonize our devices?”
Events suggest the answer to that question is significant. The infiltration, which was linked to two Russian hacking outfits known as “Cozy Bear” and “Fancy Bear,” lasted for nearly a year before being discovered by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike in June, giving the hackers ample time to siphon out anything of value and infest an untold number of devices held by American political leaders. And in comments made by WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange days before the leak was announced, Assange suggested that information related to Clinton was going to be coming out.
“We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,” Assange said in an interview at the time with British ITV, adding that he anticipated it would be “a very big year” for his site because of information it holds on the former secretary of state.
Clinton boosters have sought to spin the incident as a positive thing for their candidate, arguing it proves the Kremlin supports Republican Donald Trump. In a Monday statement, the House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat argued, Trump had served to encourage a hack of the DNC by Russia, even if it was not yet certain Russia was at fault for last week’s leak.
“Given Donald Trump’s well known admiration for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his belittling of NATO, the Russians have both the means and the motive to engage in a hack of the DNC and the dump of its emails prior to the Democratic convention,” Schiff said.
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Pompeo said it was premature for Schiff to attribute blame for cyberattacks to a political candidate, particularly due to what the breach revealed about how accessible the servers were to a range of hostile foreign actors. “Mr. Schiff should not have made such a statement absent some evidence,” he said. “The challenge here is that this information from Mr. Schiff’s political party is now available to terrorists.”
“We can now see the fix was in for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to make sure that Bernie Sanders would never be elected. That’s embarrassing to many Democrats, so they’re flailing about trying to find separate storyline to deflect from the true substance of what was in those emails,” Pompeo added.
Whether the emails were released by Russian hackers or some other party that managed to infiltrate the DNC will remain an open question for the foreseeable future. In the event intelligence agencies reach a conclusion, the issue of whether to publicly name the responsible party will be up to Congress and the Obama administration, the latter of which is exceptionally reserved when it comes to attributing responsibility for cyberattacks on American organizations.
Potentially lost in the exchange between parties is the issue of whether actors outside Russia who have obtained potentially damaging information on the candidates will seek to release it now that the world has seen what is possible. “I do think that this type of covert cyber operation will be replicated by other nation states,” Kellermann said.
If China were to get involved, he pointed out, events could take a different direction. “China is focused on a 50 year plan which requires stability in the USA, her largest debtor. Which candidate symbolizes that?”
Pompeo said the DNC hack served as a reminder of the need to defend Americans against the growing threat of cyberattacks. “No foreign state should be meddling in U.S. domestic politics. They shouldn’t be doing this by stealing email and releasing it selectively, regardless of which party or which candidate it helps or hurts.”
