WikiLeaks released on Tuesday what the whistleblower group claimed were thousands of secret CIA files showing how U.S. spies hack smartphones, as well as exposing a major secret listening post in Germany.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment, and in a statement the CIA would not say whether the files are authentic.

“We do not comment on the authenticity or content of purported intelligence documents,” said CIA spokesperson Jonathan Liu.

However, several current and former intelligence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, told ABC News the documents appear to be authentic and likely have origins at the National Security Agency, where most national security hacking of overseas targets occurs.

“Somebody really screwed up to let this get out,” a former official familiar with the activities outlined in the WikiLeaks-released files told ABC News.

WikiLeaks said a former government contractor leaked the tranche of files.

“Recently, the CIA lost control of the majority of its hacking arsenal, including malware, viruses, trojans, weaponized ‘zero day’ exploits, malware remote control systems and associated documentation. This extraordinary collection, which amounts to more than several hundred million lines of code, gives its possessor the entire hacking capacity of the CIA. The archive appears to have been circulated among former U.S. government hackers and contractors in an unauthorized manner, one of whom has provided WikiLeaks with portions of the archive,” WikiLeaks said in a statement accompanying more than 8,000 pages of documents.

The WikiLeaks files also revealed that the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt is a major hacker outpost for the most important and sensitive operations, and a former official confirmed that it is the major nerve center for covert joint CIA and National Security Agency voice collection around the globe. The official said it was the likely origin of the hacking of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal phone — which was revealed in a leak by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

In fact, many of the hacker tools and files referred to in the documents appear to be the NSA’s, in the possession of the CIA rather than the CIA’s capabilities, an official said.

“There are only specific people at [the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence] who are allowed to see tailored access operations products by NSA hackers,” the official told ABC News.

The U.K.’s signals intelligence spy agency GCHQ, for example, is known to conduct proxy cyberactivities in places where the U.S. faces legal restrictions the British government does not have to contend with, a former official involved in hacking said. That intelligence is often shared with or gathered at the behest of American spy services.

The current and former officials could not corroborate WikiLeaks’ claim that a former contractor was behind the massive security breach but said it was very possible, if not highly likely.

“I’m not denying there are people leaking information,” Tyler Wood, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency cyberprograms official, told ABC News today.

The leaked files show a large effort undertaken by CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence to find ways to turn consumer electronic devices — from smart TVs to Google Android and Apple IOS devices, including smartphones and tablets — into remotely activated spy devices. The files detail efforts made to access messages before they are encrypted by security apps and to turn on phones and activate tablet cameras and microphones without owners’ awareness. An entire office at CCI is devoted to exploiting mobile smart devices, the documents suggest.

While Snowden, in hiding in Russia and still wanted by U.S. authorities for his breach, tweeted today that the CIA files reveal a “security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world,” an official familiar with such intelligence activities said usually a human spy is necessary — a “cyber middleman” — who can first gain physical access to a device. That is an often dangerous task and is rarely accomplished, the official told ABC News.

The programs revealed today have a series of cover names, such as BrutalKangaroo, RickyBobby, AfterMidnight and WeepingAngel — the last being the name of a set of characters in the BBC sci-fi drama “Dr. Who.”

Countless intelligence programs with similar cover names — approved by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in a lengthy process — had to be renamed after Snowden blew the lid on those activities.

“And everything will have to be renamed after this,” an official familiar with many of the named programs told ABC News.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said Americans should pay attention to such breaches that reveal vulnerabilities to privacy and national security.

“This is of the utmost seriousness. If they can hack into the CIA, they can hack into anybody,” he said today.

Many cybersecurity experts on social media after the leaks focused attention on the apparent capability of U.S. intelligence to hack smart devices such as Samsung smart TVs, which the leaked files said can be in “fake off mode” when in reality the microphone is turned into a room-listening device without anyone nearby knowing it because the TV appears to be off.

“Pretty much anything can be made into an eavesdropping device,” said a former official.

Samsung, in its user manuals’ privacy statement, warns users that their speech can be transmitted through the internet to third parties.

In the last 10 years, WikiLeaks has published an incredible amount of secret U.S. information — about military operations in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and, more recently, Democratic National Committee emails hacked by Russian intelligence.

Devin Nunes, R-Calif., the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said he is “extremely concerned” by the WikiLeaks publications on Tuesday, telling reporters his panel has reached out to the intelligence community for more information.

“We’ve had initial inquiries into the [intelligence community]. Look, this is early on in the investigation, but these appear to be very, very serious. But at this time, that’s really all the information that I have on it,” he said. “I’ve long said this — that emails and many of our electronic devices are not safe, and they’re primarily not safe from our adversaries like the Russians and the Chinese and others who are actively trying to get into government institutions and private businesses.”

Asked about supposed security vulnerabilities detailed in the documents that are relevant to its devices, Apple said, “While our initial analysis indicates that many of the issues leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS, we will continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities. We always urge customers to download the latest iOS to make sure they have the most recent security updates.”

“As we’ve reviewed the documents, we’re confident that security updates and protections in both Chrome and Android already shield users from many of these alleged vulnerabilities,” Heather Adkins, Director of Information Security and Privacy at Google, said in a statement to ABC News after original publication of this story. “Our analysis is ongoing and we will implement any further necessary protections. We’ve always made security a top priority and we continue to invest in our defenses.”

Samsung, when asked for comment, said, “Protecting consumers’ privacy and the security of our devices is a top priority at Samsung. We are aware of the report in question and are urgently looking into the matter.”

Last October, Trump as a presidential candidate said, “WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks. And I said, write a couple of them down. Let’s see.”

In the regular White House press briefing on Tuesday, press secretary Sean Spicer declined to comment on the matter.

ABC News’ Matthew Mosk, Alexander Hosenball, Paul Blake, Cho Park, Benjamin Siegel and Elizabeth McLaughlin contributed to this report.

This story was originally published on March 7, 2017 and has been updated as new information has become available.

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/International/wikileaks-docs-allege-cia-hack-smartphones-exposes-frankfurt/story?id=45977302

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The Biden administration’s Southern Border coordinator will step down at the end of the month as officials continue to struggle with a large influx of migrants trying to enter the United States.

Roberta Jacobson, the former ambassador to Mexico, was chosen as President Biden’s border czar amid pressure from lawmakers to address what some are calling a “crisis” at the southern border.

“Consistent with her commitment to serve in the administration’s first 100 days, Ambassador Jacobson will retire from her role as Coordinator at the end of this month,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said in a statement.

Roberta Jacobson, the Biden administration’s Southern Border coordinator, will step down at the end of the month. (REUTERS/Tom Brenner)

VP HARRIS VISITS CHICAGO BAKERY EVEN AS BORDER CRISIS ESCALATES

Sullivan praised Jacobson’s work in shaping the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico and renewed efforts to cooperate with Northern Triangle nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, home to many migrant children making the dangerous passage to the U.S.

More than 16,000 unaccompanied migrant children are in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and another 4,000 in the care of Customs and Border Protection, according to official figures. CBP announced on Thursday that there have been 172,000 migrant encounters in March, of which nearly 19,000 involved unaccompanied children.

The administration has blamed Trump’s dismantling of asylum systems for the “challenge” it faces at the border while Republicans have cited Biden’s immigration policies and messaging.

In a statement to The New York Times, Jacobson praised Biden’s effort to repair and recast the nation’s immigration system after four years under former President Trump.

“They continue to drive toward the architecture that the president has laid out: an immigration system that is humane, orderly, and safe,” she said in a brief interview. “I leave optimistically. The policy direction is so clearly right for our country.”

She noted that her appointment was always intended to last 100 days, which will expire at the end of April.

Biden has tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead diplomatic efforts to work with Mexico and Central American countries on improving conditions in the region. Harris has been sharply criticized for failing to visit the border.

Jacobson told the Times she was confident the administration would make progress in slowing the flow of migrants.

“They know it is something that can’t happen overnight,” she said. But she added that officials in the other countries were motivated to find solutions, as well.

“Diplomacy is a conversation,” she said. “It’s not a monologue.”

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-border-roberta-jacobson-step

The post Biden Border Coordinator Roberta Jacobson stepping down first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The officials said the Biden team has not been able to engage with leaders at the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other military-run spy services with classified budgets and global espionage platforms.

The Defense Department rejected or did not approve requests from the Biden team this week, the officials said, despite a General Services Administration decision Nov. 23 clearing the way for federal agencies to meet with representatives of the incoming administration.

The delays came even as Biden advisers spent much of this week meeting with officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA, intelligence agencies that are independent of the Defense Department.

But Pentagon officials said their agency was taking steps required to provide outside officials access.

[Biden to nominate Avril Haines as next director of national intelligence; she would be the first woman to hold the position]

Sue Gough, a Defense Department spokeswoman, said Friday that the Biden team “has not been denied any access.” After being asked by The Washington Post about the apparent standoff, Gough said the requested meetings could take place as early as next week.

By then, Biden advisers will have waited more than a month since the election to have meaningful contact with intelligence agencies that have multibillion-dollar budgets, satellite networks that ring the planet, and vast surveillance authorities.

The delays have added to the unprecedented tensions surrounding the transition, fueled by a president who refuses to concede that he lost the election and spent much of his tenure accusing the nation’s spy agencies of disloyalty to him.

A Biden transition team spokesman declined to comment, as did NSA and DIA officials.

Current and former officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said the delays have impaired the Biden team’s ability to get up to speed on espionage operations against Russia, China, Iran, and other U.S. adversaries.

The inability to meet with the NSA was described as particularly worrisome. The agency is the largest U.S. intelligence service, and its eavesdropping capabilities have been a critical source of intelligence on threats as varied as weapons proliferation and foreign interference in U.S. elections.

Officials said that rejections relayed this week to the Biden team cited seemingly petty procedural barriers.

One person said the Pentagon had asked repeatedly for rosters of those who would take part in a visit, lists of topics, and estimates of time to be allotted — information that in some cases had been provided at the outset.

“If they were in a cooperative mood, none of this would be happening,” said another person with knowledge of the interactions.

The Pentagon has been in significant turmoil since the election. Acting secretary of defense Christopher C. Miller was installed last month after Trump fired Mark T. Esper, his Pentagon chief.

Miller has presided over the removal of senior Pentagon officials, replacing them with perceived Trump loyalists including chief of staff Kash Patel and Ezra Cohen-Watnick, who is serving as interim undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In her statement to The Post, Gough indicated that Cohen-Watnick’s office has played a central role in matters related to the transition.

Pentagon officials, in turn, blamed Biden advisers. One defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject, said that Biden transition officials had improperly contacted agencies directly to arrange visits and briefings, and were told that they instead needed to submit requests to the Pentagon.

The result has been an awkward standoff in which former officials were spurned by agencies they formerly helped run. Among those ex-officials is Vincent Stewart, a retired three-star U.S. Marine Corps general who previously served as DIA director and is a leading member of the Biden intelligence transition team.

Other spy agencies have been far more receptive. At the CIA, for example, the Biden transition team has had extensive access to senior officials, computer equipment connected to the agency’s classified systems, and office space at “Scattergood,” a historic homestead on the CIA compound often used for hosting VIPs.

Biden recently named Avril D. Haines, a former top White House official and deputy director of the CIA, as his nominee to be director of national intelligence. Biden has made no other announcements about his intelligence team, but former deputy CIA director David S. Cohen is seen as a top candidate to be the director of that agency.

While scrutiny intensifies of the transition at Defense Department intelligence agencies, officials have taken steps to advance that effort at the Pentagon itself. The first virtual meeting between the Pentagon’s internal transition task force and the Biden team occurred Nov. 25. Since then, officials have taken administrative actions including granting access badges for the Biden team and completing non-disclosure agreements, Pentagon officials said.

missy.ryan@washpost.com

Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris and Greg Jaffe contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pentagon-blocks-visits-to-military-spy-agencies-by-biden-transition-team/ar-BB1bDYxq?ocid=uxbndlbing

The post Pentagon blocks visits to military spy agencies by Biden transition team first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WAR IS PEACE.

FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Dave Eggers’ new novel, The Circle, also has three short, Orwellian slogans, and while I have no special insight into whether he consciously modeled The Circleon 1984, I do know that his book could wind up being every bit as prophetic.

Eggers’ subject is what the loss of privacy would look like if taken to its logical extreme. His focus is not on government but on the technology companies who invade our privacy on a daily basis. The Circle, you see, is a Silicon Valley company, an evil hybrid of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, whose cultures – the freebies, the workaholism, the faux friendliness – Eggers captures with only slight exaggeration.

The Circle has enormous power because it has become the primary gateway to the Internet. Thanks to its near-monopoly, it is able to collect reams of data about everyone who uses its services – and many who don’t – data that allows The Circle to track anyone down in a matter of minutes. It has begun planting small, hidden cameras in various places – to reduce crime, its leaders insist.

The Circle wants to place chips in children to prevent abductions, it says. It has called on governments to be “transparent,” by which it means that legislators should wear a tiny camera that allows the world to watch their every move. Eventually, legislators who refuse find themselves under suspicion – after all, they must be hiding something. This is where The Circle’s logic leads.

Of course, nobody who works for The Circle thinks what he or she is doing is evil. On the contrary, like many a real Silicon Valley executive, they view themselves as visionaries, whose only goal is benign: to make the world a better place.

“We’re at the dawn of the Second Enlightenment,” says one of The Circle’s founders in a speech to the staff. “I’m talking about an era where we don’t allow the majority of human thought and action and achievement and learning to escape as if from a leaky bucket.”

It believes if it can eliminate secrecy people will be forced to be their best selves all the time. It even toys with the idea of getting the government to require voters to use The Circle – to force them to vote on Election Day. And, of course, it has found multiple ways to monetize the data it collects. As for the potential downside of this loss of privacy, it is waved away by Circle executives as if too trifling to even consider.

Is this vision of the future far-fetched? Of course, it is – though no more than 1984 was. The Circle imagines where we could end up if we don’t begin paying attention. Indeed, what is striking is how far down this road we have already gone. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know that the National Security Agency has the ability to read our emails and listen to our phone calls. Google shows us ads based on words we use in our Gmail accounts.

Last week, Facebook – which has, in shades of Orwell, a chief privacy officer – removed a privacy setting so that any Facebook user can search for any other Facebook user. The next day, Google unveiled a plan that would make it possible for the company to use its customers’ words and likeness in ads for products they like – information that Google knows because, well, Google knows everything.

So, yes, while we’re not in Eggers territory yet, we are getting closer. I don’t have either a Facebook or a Twitter account, yet every few days I get an email from one of the two companies saying that so-and-so is waiting for me to join them in social media land. The people it picks as my potential “friends” are very often people with whom I’ve never been a true colleague, but I’ve briefly met at some point in my life. It is creepy to me that the companies know that I know these particular people.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know,” Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google, once said, “maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” That line could easily have been uttered by one of Dave Eggers’ characters. That is the thought process that could someday cost us our last shred of privacy. The Circle is a warning.

(And in case you’re wondering, here are The Circle’s three slogans:

SHARING IS CARING.

SECRETS ARE LIES.

PRIVACY IS THEFT.)

The post World Without Privacy first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

WASHINGTON — The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election issued an indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers on Friday in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton presidential campaign. The indictment came only three days before President Trump was planning to meet with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland.

The 29-page indictment is the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s interference in the 2016 election, and it includes a litany of brazen Russian subterfuge operations meant to foment chaos in the months before Election Day.

From phishing attacks to gain access to Democratic operatives, to money laundering, to attempts to break into state elections boards, the indictment details a vigorous and complex effort by Russia’s top military intelligence service to sabotage the campaign of Mr. Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

The timing of the indictment, by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, added a jolt of tension to the already freighted atmosphere surrounding Mr. Trump’s meeting with Mr. Putin. It is all but certain to feed into the conspiratorial views held by the president and some of his allies that Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors are determined to undermine Mr. Trump’s designs for a rapprochement with Russia.

The president has long expressed doubt that Russia was behind the 2016 attacks, and the 11-count indictment illustrates even more the distance between his skepticism and the nearly unanimous views of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies he leads.

“Free and fair elections are hard fought and contentious, and there will always be adversaries who work to exacerbate domestic differences and try to confuse, divide and conquer us,” Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said Friday during a news conference announcing the indictment.

“So long as we are united in our commitment to the shared values enshrined in the Constitution, they will not succeed,” he said.

It was a striking statement a day after Republican members of Congress, engaging in a shouting match during a hearing, attacked Peter Strzok, the F.B.I. agent who oversaw the early days of the Russia investigation, and questioned the integrity of the Justice Department for what they charged was bias against the president.

The announcement created a bizarre split screen on cable networks of the news conference at the Justice Department and the solemn pageant at Windsor Castle in England, where Mr. Trump and his wife, Melania, were reviewing royal guards with Queen Elizabeth II.

Russia has denied that its government had any role in hacking the presidential election, and on Friday, Mr. Trump said he would confront Mr. Putin directly. But the president said he did not expect his Russian counterpart to acknowledge it.

“I don’t think you’ll have any, ‘Gee, I did it, you got me,’” Mr. Trump said during a news conference hours before the indictment was announced. He added that there would not be any “Perry Mason” — a reference to the 1950s and 1960s courtroom TV drama in which Perry Mason, a criminal defense lawyer played by Raymond Burr, often got people to confess. “I will absolutely firmly ask the question.”

But Mr. Trump also said he believed that the focus on Russia’s election meddling and whether his campaign was involved were merely partisan issues that made it more difficult for him to establish closer ties with Mr. Putin.

The Kremlin agreed. A statement on Friday from Russia’s Foreign Ministry said that the indictment was meant to “spoil the atmosphere before the Russian-American summit.”

[Read the indictment here.]

After the indictment was announced, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, and others in his party called on Mr. Trump to cancel his one-on-one meeting with Mr. Putin.

The indictment, Mr. Schumer said in a statement, was “further proof of what everyone but the president seems to understand: President Putin is an adversary who interfered in our elections to help President Trump win.” He added that “glad-handing with Vladimir Putin” would “be an insult to our democracy.”

The indictment builds on a declassified report released in January 2017 by several intelligence agencies, which concluded that “Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”

Mr. Trump has long questioned the findings of intelligence agencies, suggesting alternate scenarios for who might have carried out the hacking campaigns. “It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, O.K.?” Mr. Trump said during the first presidential debate in September 2016.

Friday’s indictment did not include any accusations that the Russian efforts succeeded in influencing the election results, nor evidence that any of Mr. Trump’s advisers knowingly coordinated with the Russian campaign — a point immediately seized upon by the president’s allies.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s lawyer, said in a Twitter post that the indictment showed “no Americans are involved,” and he called on Mr. Mueller to end the inquiry. “The Russians are nailed,” Mr. Giuliani wrote.

Still, the indictment added curious new details to the events leading up to the November 2016 elections.

The indictment revealed that on July 27, 2016, Russian hackers tried for the first time to break into the servers of Mrs. Clinton’s personal offices. It was the same day that Mr. Trump publicly encouraged Russia to hack Mrs. Clinton’s emails.

“I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference in Florida. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

The indictment does not mention those remarks.

Separately, the indictment states that the hackers were communicating with “a person who was in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign.” Two government officials identified the person as Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump and the subject of close scrutiny by the F.B.I. and Mr. Mueller’s team. There is no indication that Mr. Stone knew he was communicating with Russians.

Communicating on Aug. 15 as Guccifer 2.0, an online persona, the Russian hackers wrote: “thank u for writing back … do u find anyt[h]ING interesting In the docs i posted?”

Two days later, the hackers wrote the person again, adding, “please tell me If i can help u anyhow … it would be a great pleasure to me.”

In another interaction several weeks later, the hackers, again writing as Guccifer 2.0, pointed to a document stolen from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and posted online, asking, “what do u think of the info on the turnout model for the democrats entire presidential campaign.”

The person replied: “[p]retty standard.”

Friday’s indictment is a “big building block in the narrative being constructed for the American people regarding what happened during the election,” said Raj De, the chairman of the cybersecurity practice at Mayer Brown and the former general counsel of the National Security Agency.

By pulling together threads that Americans have read about for years — including the hacking of political institutions and campaigns, the dissemination of hacked emails and the attempts to compromise state election infrastructure — “this shows that the Russian campaign to impact the election was more coordinated and strategic than some have given it credit,” Mr. De said. “This indictment is our clearest window into that campaign.”

The document is a portrait of a coordinated and well-executed attack that targeted more than 300 people affiliated with the Clinton campaign, as well as other Democratic Party organizations. They implanted malicious computer code into computers, covertly monitored their users and stole their files that led to a series of disastrous leaks

Investigators identified the 12 individuals in the indictment more than a year ago, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about it.

Starting in April 2016, the hackers began to spread their stolen files using several online personas, including DC Leaks and Guccifer 2.0. The tens of thousands of stolen documents were released in stages that wreaked havoc on the Democratic Party throughout much of the election season.

The Russians also worked with people and organizations that were in a position to spread the information, including WikiLeaks, identified in the indictment as “Organization 1.”

According to the indictment, WikiLeaks wrote to Guccifer 2.0 in July 2016 asking for “anything Hillary related” in the coming days.

Most of the Russian intelligence officials charged in Friday’s indictment worked for the Russian military intelligence agency, formerly known as the G.R.U. and now called the Main Directorate.

While many of the broad elements of the Russian scheme were known before, investigators have not previously said how the Russian agents paid for the hacking campaign. The hackers’ use of cryptocurrency was one of the last pieces to fall into place for investigators in a case that they have been working on for more than a year.

The indictment released Friday said that the agents handled the most delicate transactions with the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The Malaysian computer server that hosted DCLeaks.com, for instance, was paid for with the virtual currency.

Because Bitcoin functions without any central authority, the technology “allowed the conspirators to avoid direct relations with traditional financial institutions, allowing them to evade greater scrutiny of their identities and sources of funds,” the indictment said.

The Russian agents had several methods for acquiring Bitcoin, according to the indictment. At one point, the agents were actually mining new Bitcoin, a process that involves using computers to unlock new Bitcoin by solving complex computational problems.

The indictment’s extraordinary details may raise pointed questions about actions taken and not taken by American intelligence agencies and the Obama administration as the Russian campaign unfolded.

In many instances, the indictment describes the actions of individual Russian intelligence officers on particular dates. It is unclear from the indictment whether American intelligence agencies, primarily the National Security Agency, were watching in real time as the Russians prepared for and carried out their attacks against Democratic targets in spring 2016.

It was not until October 2016 that the government put out its first public statement on the Russian intrusion. If Americans knew much earlier about Russian actions, there will be questions about why they did not warn the targets, try countermeasures or call Russia out publicly before they did.

It is possible, however, that American spies did not detect the Russian attacks in real time, but reconstructed them later by studying the hacked Democratic networks and possibly breaking into Russian systems to examine logs.

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