WASHINGTON, January 7. /TASS/. The office of the Director of the US National Intelligence on Friday published a declassified version of the report on cyberattacks that had allegedly occurred during the US presidential election campaign in 2016. Washington argues that Russia was behind them.
According to the document it represents the opinion not of the US intelligence community in general, but of its three key agencies - the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency.
Election results are not questioned
The preamble of the report says the US intelligence community "did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election." It also states that according to the US Department of Homeland Security the systems that are suspected to have come under attack were not employed in summarizing the election returns.
Denials and doubts
As a matter of fact, the same conclusions were voiced by the White House with reference to the US intelligence community on several occasions in the past. Russia has more than once dismissed at the highest levels all speculations about its alleged intervention in the election processes in the United States. US President-elect Donald Trump is very skeptical about such charges, too.
The Washington Post said on the eve of the report’s publication that even the classified version contained no explosive revelations.
Russia’s stance
Moscow has emphatically dismissed Washington’s accusations it had been behind the hacking attacks. Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked that the loser always looks for scapegoats elsewhere. He also drew attention to the gist of the information that the hackers exposed.
In his opinion "the best proof the hackers unearthed authentic information is that the head of the Democratic National Committee tendered her resignation, thus confessing that the hackers unearthed the truth.".