[Wash Times] As recently as Nov. 17, James Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence officer, told Congress his agencies "don’t have good insight" into a direct link between Wikileaks and the emails supposedly hacked by a Russian operation from Democrats and the Hillary Clinton campaign.During the campaign, Wikileaks released reams of embarrassing internal emails between campaign chairman John Podesta, other campaign officials and the Democratic National Committee. One emailed showed candidate Clinton was provided the questions ahead of a CNN town hall appearance.
Democrats are now on a campaign implying that the hacking won the election for Donald Trump and have pressed the Obama administration for a far reaching investigation.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the CIA has secretly concluded that the Vladimir Putin regime directed hackers to penetrate the Democrats’ emails expressly to help Republican Trump win the election. The Post said the CIA has identified people with connections to the Russia government who supplied the stolen emails to Wikileaks.
That is not what Mr. Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the House Intelligence Committee at an open hearing on Nov. 17.
Asked about Russia and Wikileaks, Mr. Clapper said, "As far as the WikiLeaks connection, the evidence there is not as strong and we don’t have good insight into the sequencing of the releases or when the data may have been provided. We don’t have as good insight into that."