Intelligence Makes Decisions Better

I got a kick out of all the buzz in Washington over Donald Trump's reaction to statements about what was said behind closed doors related to Russia hacking the Democrats to help Trump get elected.  I doubt that that ever happened the way it has been portrayed, but the President-elect may be pointing fingers at the wrong people.  Intelligence reports are abused a lot inside the Beltway around Washington D.C.

Intelligence reports usually express the facts as they are known and include how they knew these facts to be true, e.g. A reliable source who provided accurate information in the past, and is highly placed in government said this:  We saw this:  We assess that:  There are always a lot of "ifs" in any statement or report, but it is the best information they have at the time, and is subject to change.
Slamming the Intelligence Community for making a report is a little like shooting the messenger because you don't like the message.

But first, I doubt that anyone in the Intelligence community said Russia did this to help elect Trump President.  It doesn't sound like something an Intelligence report would say.  They might say that it was the Russians and they have reliable information to indicate who in Russia and why, but the inference that it was the Russian government and not just somebody in Russia is a little harder to come by.  It sounds like speculation that the reason for the hacking was to help elect Trump, and speculation is not in those reports.  That can be said by Congressmen without pointing to any report or facts presented to the committtes of Congress and nobody in the Intelligence Community can reply to the statements being made.

Several news outlets pointed to the lack of detail about how the hacked material was given to Wikileaks and published.  That would indicate that a lot about the operation is not known.  Some of those things are important to an assessment of why it was done and whether the Russian government was really behind it and not some bunch of hackers who got caught by the Obama Administration and will spend time in jail.  They had good reason to seek revenge.

As I noted in my third book, the Russians have meddled in our elections before and have tried to favor one person over another.  In each case, they were trying to keep strong Republicans from getting elected.  In each case, they failed.