“This is something of concern for the DNI”, Charles Allen, a former longtime Central Intelligence Agency officer, told the Post. “It’s the key to our democracy, that people have confidence in the election system”.
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The director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, is overseeing the multi-agency probe.
Rather, they suggested, the Russians would like to sow chaos and confusion sufficient to dent American global leadership, disrupting United States efforts to spread democracy and western influence, specifically in Eastern Europe and the countries of the former Soviet Union. USA officials said they believed those intrusions were the work of foreign hackers, but did not name a specific country they thought was responsible. The FBI, CIA, the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security are all in support.
This talking point has since been at the fore in the campaign ever since, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D – NV) asking the FBI for a formal investigation, claiming that there is “extensive” evidence of a Russian plot to falsify election results.
It also comes just weeks after the hack of Democratic National Committee emails, which officials say was carried out by Russian Federation.
In July, Wikileaks released a trove of emails from the Democratic National Committee, leading to the ouster of chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and several other top DNC aides.
Federal officials are becoming increasingly concerned about the possibility that hackers, particularly those working for Russian Federation or another country, will make mischief. “Free and legitimate elections are non-negotiable. And look, he very early on allied himself with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s policies”.
“It doesn’t really matter who hacked this data from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign headquarters”, Putin said, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Bloomberg News.
Investigators are also looking into who breached voter databases in the states of IL and Arizona. Still, he added that it was a net positive that the DNC documents were released: “The important thing is the content that was given to the public”, he said.
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The comments from the officials center primarily on sheer supposition, that if Russian Federation wanted to intervene in the vote, and if they actually attempted to do so, it might not so much be to change the results as to raise doubts about the vote’s credibility in general. The Russians used a “denial of service” technique, flooding the commission’s Web server with a high volume of requests, which was meant to slow down or disable the network.
