The public will get to see an unclassified version of the intelligence community’s report on Russian hacking by early next week, the director of national intelligence said on Thursday.
President Obama had requested that the report, which is expected to give the public an idea of what influence Russia had on the U.S. election, be released before his term ends on Jan. 20, a deadline the intelligence community seems poised to meet. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the public version of the report from the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency will be released next week and briefed to Congress.
Clapper said he had four briefings planned for Congress next week, including meetings for the full House and Senate as well as closed sessions with the oversight committees to go into more detail about sources and methods. While the unclassified report will not include sensitive sources and methods that could hurt the intelligence community, Clapper stressed that he is releasing as much as possible to the public.
“I intend to push the envelope as much as I can, particularly in the unclassified version, because I think the public should know as much about this as possible,” he said. “We’ll be as forthcoming as we can.”
One of the early findings of the investigation suggested that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the data thefts and disclosures surrounding the election. Clapper said his assessment on that has not changed.
“We stand actually more resolutely on the strength of that statement,” he said.
Clapper also said the report will ascribe a motivation to Russia’s activities, but declined to talk about that ahead of the report’s release.
In addition to the highly-publicized release of emails from the Democratic National Committee, Clapper said the Russian hacking campaign also included classical propaganda: the spreading of disinformation and fake news.
It’s impossible to gauge what impact these tactics had on the outcome of the election, Clapper said.
“Whether or not that constitutes an act of war, I think, is a very heavy policy call that I don’t believe the intelligence community should make,” he said.
The Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was called to discuss cyber threats to the U.S. more broadly, but in reality, largely focused on the recent Russian hacks. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and chairman of the committee, stressed that the Russian attacks are part of a larger cyber problem and said Thursday’s meeting will be the first in a series of hearings in the 115th Congress focusing on cybersecurity.
McCain also slammed the administration of its “indecision and inaction,” which has led other countries to attack the U.S. without consequence.
“Our adversaries have reached a common conclusion: that the reward for attacking America in cyberspace outweighs the risk,” he said.
The intelligence officials also plan to brief President-elect Trump on Friday, following a week in which Trump has appeared to side against the official findings of the intelligence community. On Wednesday morning, he cited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s claim that the Russian “state” was not the source of the information. Twenty-four hours later, Trump pushed back against the notion that he is siding with Assange over the intel community.
“The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange – wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people….,” he tweeted, “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!”
Clapper was questioned by Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., about Trump’s tweets about Assange and resulting conflicts with the intelligence community during the hearing.
“I think there is an important distinction here between healthy skepticism, which policy makers, to include policy maker No. 1, should always have for intelligence, but I think there’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,” he said.
Intelligence community leaders also worried about the impact on morale because of Trump’s dismissal of its findings.
“I don’t want a situation where our workforce decides to walk,” said Adm. Mike Rogers, head of U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.
