PHOTO: Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump
US intelligence agencies have added to their October finding that the Russian Government hacked American computers during the Presidential campaign, with “senior Administration officials” saying that Moscow targeted the Republican National Committee as well as the Democratic National Committee.
However, in contrast to the release of information from the hack of the Democratic computers — including through WikiLeaks — the Russians withheld all material from the Republican counterparts.
The officials said the conclusion of Russian responsibility, probably through the military intelligence agency GRU, is with “high confidence”, the US intelligence label for near-certainty.
Donald Trump’s transiton reacted immediately by denouncing the intelligence community that the President-elect will oversee from January 20: “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”
I spoke with BBC Radio Wales this morning about the significance both of the Russian hacking and of Trump’s dismissal of the US intelligence services.
Trump is in a real jam. During the election, he spoke very favorably about Russian President Vladimir Putin.
When Trump enters office in January, will he cozy up to Putin, who has been very aggressive in Ukraine and in the Middle East, including Syria? Or will he now step back and say, “Perhaps the Russians don’t necessarily have America’s best interests at heart”?
