U.S Intelligence Chief Publically Defends Russian Hacking Claim

James Clapper, head of U.S Intelligence has publically defended his analysts’ conclusions that Russia hacked the Democratic Party.

His response comes in wake of Trump’s tweets which have cast doubt on the conclusions drawn by the FBI and the Department of Homeland security over who hacked the Democrats.  Trump is convinced it was not Russia who was responsible for the hacking during the election campaign.

Clapper, who is to step down soon, said, “Russia has clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture.  Hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation and fake news.”

Despite his position, Clapper and NSA director Admiral Michael Rogers could offer no further evidence that Russia interfered in the U.S election.  They plan to release an unclassified document next week which will provide additional evidence as to Russia’s involvement.  The document will be put together by the CIA, FBI, and NSA.  Russia has always denied the claims.

He went on to say, “We stand more resolutely on that statement than we did on the seventh of October.” Clapper stated he would assign a motive for Russia to hack the servers of the Democrat Party.  Leaked emails were passed to Wikileaks.

Clapper has been forced to apologise for giving false information to the Senate on the scope of domestic NSA surveillance.  Nonetheless, he said he wanted to “push the envelope as much as I can on the unclassified version of the report because I think the public should know as much of this as possible.

“They did not change any vote tallies or anything of that sort.” He added.

Russia has consistently denied the claims and did not retaliate when their diplomats were expelled by the Obama administration last week.  Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks has also said that Russia was not the source of the information passed to them.