The hacking campaign that exposed the inner workings of the Democratic Party in the months leading up to the presidential election failed to significantly affect the outcome of the 2016 White House race, the head of the National Security Agency said Sunday.
Navy Adm. Mike Rogers, the head of both the NSA and U.S. Cyber Command, downplayed the fallout of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) email breach during an appearance Sunday at the Halifax International Security Forum in Washington, D.C., The Hill reported.
“I don’t think in the end it had the effect that [the hackers] had hoped it might,” Adm. Rogers said of the DNC breach, according to The Hill.
The NSA director’s opinion mirrors that of Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain, Arizona Republican, who on Saturday dismissed the notion that the results of the latest White House race were influenced by computer hacks and email leaks.
“I do not think that the outcome of the election was impacted by Russian hacking,” Mr. McCain said.
“I would agree with that assessment,” Adm. Rogers stated Sunday.
Discussing the DNC breach days earlier, the NSA chief called it a “a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”
Thousands of internal DNC emails were stolen by hackers and provided to the website WikiLeaks for publication on the eve of the Democrats’ nomination convention in July, unveiling efforts to boost presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton over then-party rival Bernard Sanders and directly leading to the resignation of the former DNC chair, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Security researchers have since linked the attackers believed to be responsible for the DNC breach with other campaigns blamed on a state-sponsored hacking group accused of working for the Russian government.
The Obama administration said last month that U.S. intelligence officials were confident that the Kremlin had ordered computer intrusions against various facets of the U.S. political system, including the DNC, with the intent of interfering in the presidential race ultimately won by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied involvement in the hacks, and Mr. Trump repeatedly questioned Moscow’s purported role prior to defeating Mrs. Clinton on Nov. 8.
“I mean, it could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, OK?” Mr. Trump said during a presidential debate in September.
Mr. McCain’s longtime GOP ally, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, last week called on Congress to investigate Russia’s alleged election meddling, as did Rep. Elijah Cummings, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s ranking Democrat.
Asked Saturday if he’d back Mr. Graham’s effort, Mr. McCain said he believed Russian hackers could never trump “the good judgment of the American people,” The Hill reported.
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