The WikiLeaks release of internal emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign constituted a “conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect,” the head of the National Security Agency said Tuesday.
“There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” NSA Director Michael S. Rogers said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “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.” Rogers acknowledged in October that Russians were behind the hacks.
News that the DNC had been compromised broke earlier this June, when hacker Guccifer 2.0 released a trove of documents containing campaign emails and memos—most notably emails implying that the committee favored Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders during the Democratic primary. The release of the emails led to the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.
WikiLeaks also published thousands of emails from John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chair. Though Russia was long suspected of being behind the hacks, US officials did not formally accuse the Russian government of orchestrating the cyber attacks until October. In November, just four days before the election, DNC officials told Mother Jones they had found evidence that the DNC headquarters may have been bugged and had submitted a report to the FBI.
Watch the video of Rogers’ full remarks above.
