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As it happens, there are good reasons for skepticism regarding the charge that Putin and his government were behind the hacking and the disclosure of the DNC emails.
To begin, The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has pointed out the essential distinction between a "leak" and a "hack:"
"Leak: When someone physically takes data out of an organization and gives it to some other person or organization, as Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning did.
"Hack: when someone in a remote location electronically penetrates operating systems, firewalls or any other cyber-protection system and then extracts data."
VIPS concludes, "all signs point to leaking, not hacking. If hacking were involved, the national security agency would know it -- and know both sender and recipient."
Expanding on this distinction, former British ambassador Craig Murray says that the emails were leaked, not hacked, and moreover that he personally knows who did the leaking. Presumably, it was an "insider" at the DNC: a Bernie Sanders supporter, disgusted at how the Democratic Party "regulars" sabotaged the Sanders campaign. The leaker wanted the world to know about the rigging. Little did he suspect that his leak would set off a national uproar and intensify the new Cold War. (See also an interview with Craig Murray).
- "Russian hackers" does not necessarily mean "Russian Government," still less Vladimir Putin himself. There are many enterprising and mischievous Russian cyber-geeks who might have acted independently. Recall that a flood of "fake news" has come from sources outside of Russia -- in Montenegro and Georgia. No evidence was presented by the CSI report of a firm connection between the (presumably) Russian hacks and the Russian government.
The new DNI report admits outright that it does not have definitive proof of a Putin-Wikileaks-DNC emails connection: "Judgment are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact." The report is long on accusations and absent of evidence. When the critical reader asks for evidence, he is told in the report that the evidence is a state secret. "So just trust us" (as we were asked to do with the reports of Saddam's WMDs). Or, as the cynics like to rephrase it, "If you knew what we know you would understand; we could tell you, but then we would have to kill you."
Despite its manifest deficiencies -- vagueness, repetition, absence of evidence -- the mainstream corporate news media is pronouncing this report as "definitive" and "irrefutable." To the vast majority of American citizens who will never read much less critically assess the report, that's good enough.
But let's put all that aside and assume that which has not been decisively proven, and which, nonetheless, the DNI proclaims in its report: namely that Vladimir Putin himself ordered and directed the effort to defeat Hillary Clinton and put Donald Trump in the White House.
The DCI reports that the "Russian influence campaigns are multifaceted," and yet deals with only two of these multiple "facets:" the DNC emails and the cable channel and website, RT (formerly "Russia Today"), with passing reference to email "trolling." Nowhere in the report are we told how much of this allegedly massive Russian propaganda assault "got through" to the American public in sufficient amounts to "win hearts and minds" of ordinary Americans and thus to influence the outcome of the election.
If in fact Putin revealed the contents of the DNC/Podesta emails, he chose a pitifully weak instrument to accomplish his nefarious plan. For surely, it is fair to ask: just what did he accomplish by exposing the content of those emails?
Answer: Those emails told us what we already knew: That the Democratic establishment in the DNC rigged the primaries and the debates against Sanders, and stacked the "super-delegates" in Clinton's favor. There is no evidence that this disclosure of what the public already knew had a significant effect on the election outcome.
The effects of RT, "the Kremlin's principal propaganda outlet" (DNI Report), is likewise underwhelming. To prove otherwise, the Report reprints a four year old article. There we find that in 2012 RT had about 450,000 You Tube subscribers. Impressive! Until you take a second look and realize that about one in 700 Americans (0.14%) subscribed to RT. Hardly a media powerhouse!
As for the rest, we read that Russia "conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 US presidential election." Amazing! What "operations"? What "targets?" Tell us more!
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