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British Intelligence Among First to Detect Russian Hacking, Report Says
Putin Ordered ‘Influence Campaign’ Aimed at U.S. Election, Report Says
(35 minutes later)
WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials who prepared the classified report on Russian hacking activity have concluded that British intelligence was among the first to raise an alarm that Moscow hacked into the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers, and alerted their American counterparts, according to two people familiar with the conclusions.
WASHINGTON — American intelligence officials have concluded that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election,” and turned from seeking to “denigrate” Hillary Clinton to developing “a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
President-elect Donald J. Trump was briefed on Friday by senior intelligence officials for nearly two hours, describing it in a statement as “a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the Intelligence Community.”
The conclusions were part of a declassified intelligence report, ordered by President Obama, that was released Friday afternoon. Its main conclusions were described to Donald J. Trump by intelligence officials earlier in the day, and he responded by acknowledging that Russia sought to hack into the Democratic National Committee, but said nothing about the conclusion that Mr. Putin had sought to aid his candidacy, other than that it had no effect on the outcome.
Participating in the briefing were James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; John Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; Adm. Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; and James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.
The report, a damning and surprisingly detailed account of Russia’s efforts to undermine the American electoral system and Mrs. Clinton in particular, went on to assess that Mr. Putin “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”
It is unclear whether they highlighted the British role, which has been closely held, in the briefing. But it is a critical part of the timeline, because it suggests that some of the first tipoffs, in fall 2015, came from voice intercepts, computer traffic or human sources outside the United States, as emails and other data from the D.N.C. flowed out of the country.
The report described a broad campaign that included covert operations, including cyberactivities, with “trolling” and “fake news.”
“The British picked it up, and we may have had it at about the same time,” said one cyber expert who has been briefed on the findings. British intelligence — especially the signals intelligence unit, GCHQ — takes a major role in tracking Russian activity.
In the unclassified version of the report, the intelligence agencies also concluded “with high confidence” that Russia’s main military intelligence unit, the G.R.U., created the “persona” called Guccifer 2.0 and a website, DCLeaks.com, to release the emails of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John D. Podesta.
. Three reports have been prepared: A classified version that is also being made available to Congress, a “compartmentalized” version with only a few recipients that contains information about the sources of the data, and a public version that Mr. Clapper said would be made available early next week. That schedule may now be accelerated, Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, told reporters on Friday.
Participating in the briefing were James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency; and James B. Comey, the director of the F.B.I.
“It was really quite a stunning disclosure,” she said of the report that was delivered by the same top officials who then headed to New York to see Mr. Trump. She said that she thought other members of Congress, beyond the “gang of eight” leadership, “has the right to know more than they want to disclose to Congress.”
What to include in the public report has touched off a familiar struggle in Washington, pitting officials who fear revealing sources and methods against others who say it is important to push back against Mr. Trump’s deep skepticism that the Russians had been involved. Mr. Clapper, usually enormously cautious, said on Thursday he would lean toward more disclosure.
The report, according to those familiar with it, also describes the election hacking as part of a far broader campaign by Moscow. It details Russia’s role in three previous hacks of the United States government that American officials have declined to publicly attribute to the two main Russian intelligence agencies, the F.S.B. and the G.R.U.
The F.S.B. is the successor to the K.G.B., in which President Vladimir V. Putin once served, and the G.R.U. is the military intelligence unit that the United States says made public the emails harvested from the D.N.C. and the private account of John D. Podesta, the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.
In those prior intrusions, the Russian intelligence agencies gained access to unclassified emails from the State Department, the White House and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But at least so far, none of those emails have been made public, and initially, American officials believed it was part of the kind of surveillance the two countries routinely conduct against each other.
Mr. Clapper refused to call that kind of espionage a “cyberattack” in a Senate hearing on Thursday, saying that “people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.”
But some of the officials involved in assembling the report ordered by President Obama have debated an alternative theory: That some of the emails collected by the Russians from government databases may also be viewed in Moscow as insurance against a cybercounterstrike by the United States.
“It always leaves open the possibility that they could publish some of this material in the future,” said one official involved in the investigation. The official added, though, that the data they stole “has a diminishing shelf life of importance.”
The report concludes that the Russians had multiple motives for hacking into the American electoral system. At first, it concludes, it was simple espionage, similar to what the Chinese conducted in 2008 when they hacked into Mr. Obama’s campaign and that of Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee. The initial hacking was done by the F.S.B., whose precise role, according to one official, has been understood more fully in recent weeks.
Over time, though, that morphed into a second motive: To disrupt the election, and harm Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy. Most of that work was done by the G.R.U., which is known for similar activities in Ukraine and in Europe. The G.R.U. was less careful than the F.S.B., they said, and used some hacking techniques and tools that were recognizable from previous hacks. “It’s almost as if they didn’t really care if they were caught,” said one senior official.
The report also said there are multiple confirming sources about the hack, from signals intelligence to spies and informants. Presumably the most specific information is in the “compartmented” version of the report, which will not be shared beyond a small circle of top officials. They would be the only ones briefed in detail on the conversations and computer traffic that has been gleaned from wiretaps or “implants” in computer networks, which would lurk in Russian systems gathering or replicating traffic.
The British are considered particularly adept at placing and nurturing those implants, to keep them from being detected.
