November 18, 2016
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress on Thursday that the joint statement between his office and the Department of Homeland Security attributing the cyber hacks of U.S. political entities has engendered a curtailing of Russian hacking activity.
Speaking before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Clapper said the statement “may have had a desired effect since after that — after the issuance of the statement and the communication that I know took place between our government and the Russian government — it seemed to curtail the cyber activity that the Russians were previously engaged in.”
When asked to clarify this assertion, Clapper said: “I was referring to the cyber reconnaissance that we had observed — many state entities had observed prior to the statement. That sort of activity seemed to have curtailed."
“I don’t anticipate a significant change in Russian behavior,” he said, adding that the Russians have a very active and aggressive capability to conduct information operations, or so-called hybrid warfare, which has been a longstanding practice of the Russians dating back to the Soviet era and something he anticipates will continue.
Clapper offered a similar conclusion in August at the Aspen Security Forum saying philosophically this isn’t much different than what occurred at the height of the Cold War — that is, influencing political discourse on both sides — and that cyber for Russia just represents another tool.
While he declined to offer the House committee speculation into what Russia might do to sow doubt in European countries along the lines of their “active measures” campaign — a Soviet tactic used to spread anti-western, anti-democratic propaganda through American dissent groups during the Cold War — Clapper did concede that the RT network, believed to be a Russian propaganda outlet, is seeking to achieve this goal with more of a focus on Europe than the U.S.
In what might be viewed as a slight disagreement in assessment, or at the very least, semantics, Clapper told the committee Thursday that there was not strong evidence of a connection between WikiLeaks, which provided a frequent drip of leaked emails from top Democratic officials aimed at damaging the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton, and the Russian hacking campaign against Democratic party entities and individuals, for which many believe provided WikiLeaks the stolen contents for their leaks.
“As far as the WikiLeaks connection, evidence there is not as strong, and we don’t have good insight into the sequencing of the releases or when that data may have been provided,” Clapper said.
Earlier this week, NSA chief Adm. Michael Rogers said of the WikiLeaks releases, at the CEO Council hosted by the Wall Street Journal, that “there shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind, this was not something that was done casually. This was not something that was done by chance. This was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily. This was a conscious effort by a nation state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”
Rogers, however, did not offer specifics on the nation state.
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