Spy report: Putin order pro-Trump

WASHINGTON -- U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that Russia's president, Vladimir 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 Donald Trump.

The intelligence report, an unclassified version of a more detailed classified account given earlier to Trump, the White House and congressional leaders, withheld the government's evidence to back up its assertions.

The public version of the report depicts Russian interference as unprecedented in scale, saying that the assault represented "a significant escalation in directness, level of activity, and scope of effort" beyond previous election-related espionage.

The campaign initially sought primarily to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process; "denigrate Secretary Clinton," the Democratic nominee; and harm her electoral prospects. But as the campaign proceeded, Russia "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump" and repeatedly sought to elevate him by "discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.

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"We further assess Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump," the report said.

Trump, in a brief interview, said he "learned a lot" from his discussions with intelligence officials, but declined to say whether he accepted their assertion that Russia had meddled in the election on his behalf.

"It was a really great meeting, I really like those people a lot," said Trump, who has challenged the intelligence community since winning the election. "I learned a lot and I think they did also."

Trump would not detail what evidence he was presented with, saying only that he learned "a lot of confidential things." Because Trump is not yet president, he is legally constrained from revealing classified information.

In an earlier written statement, Trump said it was clear Russian email hacking did not deliver him the presidency.

In the statement, he said "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people" are consistently trying to hack U.S. networks, including the Democratic National Committee's. But his statement did not include any mention of Russia's interference in the election aimed at helping him.

Trump said that as president he would appoint a team to develop a plan to "aggressively combat and stop cyberattacks."

The classified version of the report concluded that British intelligence was among the first to raise an alarm of the hacking and alerted their U.S. counterparts, according to two people familiar with the conclusions.

"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.

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 the public version.

"It was really quite a stunning disclosure," Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, said of the report that was delivered by the same top officials who then headed to New York to see Trump.

Several advisers joined Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence for the intelligence briefing. They included Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., Trump's choice to head the CIA; incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus; incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn; incoming deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland; and Thomas Bossert, Trump's pick for homeland security adviser.

Weighing whether Russia's intervention altered the outcome of the 2016 race was beyond the scope of the review that the nation's spy agencies completed this week. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in a Senate hearing Thursday that U.S. intelligence services "have no way of gauging the impact ... it had on the choices the electorate made. There's no way for us to gauge that."

Trump's statement came after his first face-to-face encounter with the leaders of intelligence agencies whose work he has repeatedly disparaged. Those who took part in the meeting included Clapper, CIA Director John Brennan, FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency chief Adm. Mike Rogers.

All four of the spy chiefs have endorsed a classified report that was briefed to Trump and circulated in Washington this week that concludes that Russia used a combination of aggressive hacking, propaganda and "fake news" to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential race.

Trump appeared to acknowledge that hacking of Democratic and Republican computer networks had occurred, but was apparently not prepared to accept the consensus view of U.S. spy services that Russia sought to help him win.

"I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the intelligence community," Trump said. He acknowledged that "Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber-infrastructure of our government institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee."

Russia's Motives

In the unclassified version of the report, the intelligence agencies also concluded "with high confidence" that Russia's main military intelligence unit, the GRU, 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 Podesta.

The classified report, according to those familiar with it, also details Russia's role in three previous hacks of the U.S. government by the GRU as well as Russia's FSB intelligence agency. The FSB is the successor to the KGB, in which President Vladimir Putin of Russia once served.

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 has been made public, and initially, U.S. officials believed it was part of the kind of surveillance the two countries routinely conduct against each other.

Some of the officials involved in assembling the report ordered by President Barack 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 U.S. electoral system. At first, it concludes, it was simple espionage, similar to what the Chinese conducted in 2008 when they hacked into Obama's campaign and that of Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee. The initial hacking was done by the FSB, 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 Clinton's candidacy. Most of that work was done by the GRU, which is known for similar activities in Ukraine and in Europe. The GRU was less careful than the FSB, 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.

More Doubts by Trump

In an interview with The New York Times before Friday's briefing on the report, Trump said the focus on Russian hacking "is a political witch hunt."

"China, relatively recently, hacked 20 million government names," he said, referring to the breach of computers at the Office of Personnel Management in late 2014 and early 2015. "How come nobody even talks about that?"

The briefing, which was requested by Trump, comes on the heels of a series of revelations about Russia's role and motivations in last year's campaign.

Trump also confronted questions about whether taxpayer funds should be used to begin construction of his promised wall along the southern border. He said doing so would allow construction to begin quickly, but insisted that he would negotiate with Mexico to reimburse the United States for those costs.

On the issue of Russia's cyberactivities, Trump noted that there have been prior successful hackings of the White House and Congress, suggesting it was unfair that those attacks on U.S. institutions have not received the attention that the Russian ones have. But none of the information from those intrusions was made public as it was in the case of the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Podesta.

"With all that being said, I don't want countries to be hacking our country," Trump said. "They've hacked the White House. They've hacked Congress. We're like the hacking capital of the world."

Trump, who has consistently expressed doubts about the evidence of Russian hacking during the election, did so again Friday. Asked why he thought there was so much attention being given to the Russian cyberattacks, the president-elect said the motivation was political.

"They got beaten very badly in the election. I won more counties in the election than Ronald Reagan," Trump said during an eight-minute phone conversation. "They are very embarrassed about it. To some extent, it's a witch hunt. They just focus on this." (In fact, Trump won more counties than any Republican presidential candidate since Reagan, according to a PolitiFact analysis citing data from the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections.)

The president-elect also noted the news this week, first reported by BuzzFeed News, that the DNC had refused to give the FBI access to its computer servers after it was hacked.

"The DNC wouldn't let them see the servers," Trump said. "How can you be sure about hacking when you can't even get to the servers?" The DNC has previously said the law enforcement agency had not asked to examine the computers.

A senior law enforcement official said the FBI had repeatedly emphasized to the DNC the necessity of obtaining direct access to servers and data. The FBI was rebuffed and had to rely upon a third party -- a computer security firm brought in by the DNC -- for information.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Miller of The Washington Post; by David E. Sanger, Michael D. Shear and Adam Goldman of The New York Times; and by Eileen Sullivan, Deb Riechmann and Jonathan Lemire of The Associated Press.

A Section on 01/07/2017