'Clinton quite effective at discrediting herself' Ex-CIA analyst blasts hacking claim

A FORMER CIA analyst has dismissed a report claiming Vladimir Putin led an elaborate cyberattack to install Donald Trump in the White House, saying the analysis is an attempt to “smear” the President-elect.

By ROSS LOGAN
PUBLISHED: 13:55, Sat, Jan 7, 2017 | UPDATED: 22:24, Sat, Jan 7, 2017

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A declassified report says Vladimir Putin ordered a cyberattack to influence the US election

Larry C Johnson branded the newly declassified US intelligence report “as a farce and a charade”, adding Russian attempts to discredit the Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton were unnecessary because “she was quite effective at it herself”.

On Friday, intelligence officials published their findings into alleged Russian hacking during November’s US election.

The report claimed the Russian president personally ordered an online campaign to influence the outcome of the ballot in Trump’s favour.

It said Mr Putin’s goal was to undermine the democratic process and denigrate Mrs Clinton, by using intermediaries such as DCLeaks.com, Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks to publicly expose private emails acquired from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and top level Democrats.

The report said the campaign blended secret spying operations such as computer hacking with overt efforts to sway the result by Russian government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries and paid social media users.

The report, which did not suggest the interference tipped the balance in Trump’s favour, stated: “We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavourably to him.

“We have high confidence in these judgments."

But Mr Johnson, a retired CIA analyst who previously worked in the US State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, said the report was a “joke” and lacked any evidence to back up the claims.

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Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson said the report was a smear on President-elect Donald Trump

Speaking to Kremlin-funded news agency Russia Today - which itself was the subject of seven pages of the intelligence report - Mr Johnson said: “It’s designed to smear Trump.

“I don’t think they’re hiding anything because they don’t have anything. These are ‘or and how’ intelligence estimates as opposed to an intelligence analysis based on fact. There’s no fact underlying this. There are analytical assumptions.

“This thing it’s a joke. If I’m a Russian intelligence analyst, with one of your intelligence services, I would be suspicious and think ‘What are the Americans up to? They really can’t be this stupid.’ And let me just reassure the folks on your side of the ledger – yeah, they actually are.”

Mr Johnson comments to the RT are consistent with those on his personal blog, No Quarter.

In a post titled “The Big Lie on Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections” the retired analyst said the US intelligence community was made of 16 agencies, but the declassified report reflects the views of only three - the CIA, the FBI and the NSA.

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There are fears across the US and Europe that Trump and Putin are getting too cosy

Mr Johnson wrote: “What happened to the other 13 members of the so-called Intelligence Community?

“For example, what about the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research? They are a key part of the analytical portion of the Intelligence Community and have actual Russian experts. And why was the Defense Intelligence Agency excluded?

“One of the supposed bad Russian actors in this hacking fiasco is the GRU, the Russian military version of the CIA. That is a prime target that DIA analysts follow. They are the experts. But they apparently were not given the chance to concur (or maybe they declined to do so out of embarrassment over the amateur quality of the work).”

Mr Trump, meanwhile, has again downplayed Russia’s supposed role in his election victory.

After a briefing with intelligence officials on Friday, the president-elect released a statement accepting organisations in Russia and China were “consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions”.

However, the statement added such efforts had “no effect” on the outcome of the election “including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines”

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