WASHINGTON – For two years, cybersecurity researchers, spies and federal prosecutors have laid out a stunningly thorough chain of evidence to support one simple conclusion: The Russian government sought to sway the 2016 presidential election. Federal agents have traced data and currency trails across continents, revealed inside knowledge of Russian spies’ computer network, and quoted the private emails of employees at a Russian internet firm working to influence voters. Cybersecurity researchers analyzed malware and followed clues buried in the details of stolen emails. Those disclosures have left an unusually detailed public view of Russians' wide-ranging campaign to persuade and divide voters in the months before the presidential election. While the government sometimes shares its conclusions about national security threats, rarely does it take the risk of revealing so much of its evidence to the world. “It’s unprecedented, both the activity that’s outlined and the fact that we’re privy to so much information,” said John Carlin, a former chief of the Justice Department’s National Security Division. And it remains widely disbelieved. As recently as July, about a quarter of voters said they thought there was “no Russian interference in the 2016 election,” according to an NPR/Marist poll. President Donald Trump has long equivocated on the question. Last month, standing beside Vladimir Putin, he said the Russian president had been "extremely strong and powerful" in his denial of election interference and cast doubt on the work of U.S. intelligence agencies. Days later, Trump clarified his remarks and said he believed the government's conclusions, but then suggested after that on Twitter that the notion of Russian interference "is all a big hoax." Meanwhile, warning signs are pouring in that Russians might similarly target this year's midterm elections. Facebook said in July it had detected a sophisticated and secretive political influence operation. And Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said Russian hackers had unsuccessfully targeted her campaign's computers. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats warned Thursday that spy agencies "continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States." The most detailed disclosures about Russia's intervention in 2016 were a product of Mueller’s investigation. His office has so far brought criminal charges against 12 Russian intelligence officers and 13 other Russian nationals (plus three private businesses) over what he alleged were illegal attempts to involve themselves in the presidential election. The Justice Department has used similar indictments in the past to respond to cyber attacks from foreign military forces; it also has brought cases against Chinese and Iranian officers. The charges offer a way for the government to say publicly that it knows what happened and who did it, and to alert the world that it is watching. Each indictment comes at a cost — any information the government reveals in court also risks compromising the tools officials used to gather it. But officials said the trade-off is sometimes worth it because it can help lessen new threats. “One of the things we ought to be doing, ought to be trying as a country, is to develop some real antibodies to the virus that the Russians have tried to introduce into the body politic,” said David Kris, a former National Security Division chief and a founder of Culper Partners. “That’s especially well met with public disclosure.” For all that is known, officials say there is more that remains secret. Officials won't say what that evidence is, because it remains classified, but they've given hints about the surveillance tools that informed their conclusions. Adm. Mike Rogers, then the director of the National Security Agency, told lawmakers last year the laws authorizing the government to eavesdrop on foreign targets had been “instrumental” to its ability to gather intelligence on Russian actors targeting the election. “In the intelligence world, it’s as incontrovertible as it can get,” said Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. That central conclusion — that Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election — has become a rare point of agreement among political factions in Washington who seem to agree on little else. The FBI, CIA and National Security Agency concluded in a rare public assessment in early 2017 that Putin “ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election,” and that he did so in part to help elect Trump. Republicans and Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee unanimously backed that conclusion this year. Their Republican House counterparts also backed the conclusion that Russia conducted a “malign influence campaign” before the election, though it disputed Moscow’s motives. Here are the threads that led to that conclusion: THE FIRST DATA TRAILS The Democratic National Committee revealed in June 2016 that hackers had compromised their computers and gained access to internal emails and the opposition research they had amassed on Trump. CrowdStrike, the company the DNC hired to investigate the intrusion, quickly said it had traced the intrusion to Russian government hackers. Hackers similarly breached the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Cybersecurity researchers quickly saw clues pointing to Moscow, particularly when the stolen files began appearing online. For one thing, data embedded in the files showed that they had been edited by someone whose computer had Russian language settings. The malicious software that had been implanted on the DNC’s servers bore striking similarity to programs used in previous attacks that other governments had said were carried out by the Russians. Malware often forces infected computers to communicate with machines elsewhere on the internet, to receive commands and steal information. Researchers found the malware on the DNC network was communicating with the same computers as malware that had been used against the German parliament. Researchers at SecureWorks studied emails stolen from Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta and found another clue. Among the emails eventually published by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks was the original message that was thought to have tricked Podesta into revealing his password, a technique called "spearphishing" that's widely used by criminals to trick people into revealing bank or email passwords.<doc-sep>The White House brought out five top intelligence and national security officials to answer questions on Thursday, demonstrating a united front on fighting Russian election meddling even as the President continues to cast doubt on the issue. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Chris Wray, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone and National Security Adviser John Bolton all expressed commitment to thwarting foreign efforts to sow discord in the U.S. and influence upcoming elections. “We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States,” said Coats, while noting that Russia’s efforts on the 2018 midterms are “not the kind of robust campaign we assessed during the 2016 election.” “Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day,” said Wray. “This is a threat we need to take extremely seriously.” “Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs,” echoed Nielsen. The unannounced show of force in the briefing room came just over two weeks after President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and declined to denounce him publicly at a joint press conference for election meddling, saying he believed Putin’s denial. (Later, Trump said he misspoke and that he would accept the broad assessment that Russia had interfered.) And Thursday’s briefing came on the third day of the trial of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager who used to work for pro-Russian politicians in Ukraine and has been charged with tax and bank fraud on some of those earnings. “Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX,” Trump tweeted Wednesday in the context of other tweets about Manafort. But the top officials facing the press Thursday assured the country that the President is working hard to fight Russian influence, at least behind the scenes. Bolton said that in an expanded meeting with top advisers in Finland after the two leaders met privately, Putin said that election meddling was “the first issue” that Trump raised with him. Bolton also said that Trump has “made it abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it” and that “he supports them fully.” “The President has specifically directed us to make the matter of election meddling and securing our election process a top priority,” Coats said. While Trump has claimed that Russia wants to help Democrats in the midterms, Coats said that “the Russians are looking for every opportunity regardless of party.” The officials outlined ways their agencies are sharing more information among each other and with state and local governments, working together on everything from sharing intelligence to promoting best practices in securing online voter databases to giving classified briefings to social media companies to help them secure their own platforms. Wray also provided a fresh look at how Russia and other countries go after the United States’ integrity, saying the FBI has uncovered foreign influence operations that include “targeting U.S. officials and other U.S. persons through traditional intelligence tradecraft, criminal efforts to suppress voting and provide illegal campaign financing, cyber attacks against voting infrastructure along with computer intrusions targeting elected officials and others,” as well as “both overtly and covertly manipulating news stories, spreading disinformation, leveraging economic resources and escalating divisive issues.” It’s a complex, multifaceted problem, and Thursday’s briefing seemed designed to show a worried public that it is being faced with a strong, multi-agency force. “We’re not going to accept meddling in the elections,” Nakasone said. “It’s very unambiguous.” Get our Politics Newsletter. The headlines out of Washington never seem to slow. Subscribe to The D.C. Brief to make sense of what matters most. Please enter a valid email address. * The request timed out and you did not successfully sign up. Please attempt to sign up again. Sign Up Now An unexpected error has occurred with your sign up. Please try again later. Check the box if you do not wish to receive promotional offers via email from TIME. You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder. Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.berenson@time.com.<doc-sep>“I hope I’m wrong. But I think we’ll see attacks on campaigns in which the Russians in particular have already stolen information,” said Eric Rosenbach, an intelligence veteran and cybersecurity expert at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Nationally, the two major political parties stepped up security after the 2016 breach of computers at the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Voting machines, often described as old, insecure and lacking a paper trail, are more secure than widely understood. Four in five Americans vote on machines that incorporate paper ballots or backups. Many state voter-registration databases also have been hardened against outside attack since 2016. While it is possible to hack voting devices to rig an election, experts say, intruding into enough of them to change the outcome would be extremely difficult. How are ballots being secured? Election officials and the Department of Homeland Security set up a council to coordinate the response to threats, and the department offers security scans, equipment and other services to election officials nationwide. Top state election officials are gaining security clearances to see and assess threats, and in February, all 50 states and more than 1,000 localities opened a center to exchange data. Virtually every state has taken steps to lock down its election processes. A public-private committee has also approved a new standard for voting equipment that will significantly improve security. More voting machines than ever have verifiable paper backups, and nearly all should have them by 2020, said David J. Becker, the director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. States also are adopting more advanced auditing techniques for vote counts. What are intelligence agencies doing? The most important work the intelligence community has done, according to current and former officials, is to penetrate foreign networks and spy on Russian groups conducting the attacks. The agencies have also monitored networks in the United States to try to detect information campaigns as they begin. “They are gathering intelligence,” said Michael Sussmann, a former Justice Department official who is now a partner at Perkins Coie. “They are trying to figure out what our adversaries are planning and what is being done. That includes penetrating foreign networks and other kinds of spying they do. And they are doing surveillance on U.S. networks to detect influence of all kinds.”<doc-sep>(CNN) — On Thursday, the White House made a show of force. National security adviser John Bolton, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen all appeared in the White House briefing room to make one thing very clear: Russia sought to interfere in the 2016 election and they are already working to do so again in 2018. “Russia attempted to interfere in the last election and continues to engage in malign operations to this very day,” Wray said. “Our democracy itself is in the crosshairs,” Nielsen said. “We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States,” Coats said. Russia’s active interference campaign in 2016 – a fact that the intelligence committee unanimously concluded last year – has triggered a heightened awareness and vigilance across the US government for foreign threats to our democracy. Case closed! Except, well, not exactly. Because there’s one person in the White House who has publicly disagreed with the sentiments offered on Thursday by Nielsen, Wray, Coats and others. And his name is President Donald Trump. Since the revelations of Russia’s attempts to interfere in the election surfaced in the summer of 2016, Trump has publicly voiced his skepticism about not only the source of the efforts but whether they are real at all. He has speculated that a “400-pound” kid could be behind it. He has tweeted – relentlessly – about how special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is a “witch hunt” and a “total hoax.” But, the coup de grace came earlier this month in Helsinki, Finland, when, standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin after a summit between the two men, Trump was asked directly whether Russia was to blame for the election meddling. “I hold both countries responsible,” Trump said. “I think that the United States has been foolish. We’ve all been foolish. We’re all to blame.” In the wake of the uproar caused by those comments, Trump tried to clean up his mess once he arrived back in Washington. “I have a full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies,” he said, reading slowly from a page of written remarks. “Could be other people also.” Then, this on Thursday night at a campaigbn rally in Pennsylvania – just hours after his administration’s show of force: “In Helsinki, I had a great meeting with Putin. We discussed everything. … We got along really well. By the way, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing. Now we’re being hindered by the Russian hoax – it’s a hoax, OK?” The truth is that Trump has been telling us that for a very long time. He’s been extremely resistant to acknowledging Russian interference from the start – even after everyone in a position to know has made abundantly clear that there is simple not two sides to this debate. Russia interfered. The end. Trump doesn’t say what Wray, Nielsen and Coats said on Thursday for a simple reason: He doesn’t totally believe it. And that lack of full faith in what smart people in his administration are telling him (and telling him) that badly undermines what his administration was trying to do today. Consider it in your own life. Three vice presidents hold a company-wide meeting where they announce that market research has unanimously concluded that plastic widgets are the future. And so, the company will now only make plastic widgets. Then, a day later, the president of the company does an interview with a trade publication where he says: “Many people say plastic widgets are the future. Maybe they are. But maybe metal widgets are…” Would you be convinced that the company’s full force is behind making plastic widgets? Of course you wouldn’t. (If you did believe that, you would be, um, dense.) Same goes for the Trump administration. No matter how many times Wray and Coats insist that Russia interfered and broadly assert that Trump agree with them, there’s just too many statements from the President out there that directly contradict that assertion. And when the boss isn’t sure about something, it’s impossible to say his administration is totally convinced of it. (By the way, the President tweeted five times – not counting deletions – after his top national security officials took to the White House briefing room, and none of those tweets were on the topic of election interference, CNN’s Jeremy Diamond pointed out. Instead, Trump tweeted about his approval rating, an upcoming rally in Pennsylvania, the farm bill and his support for an Ohio congressional candidate.) Which made Thursday a nice photo op for an administration trying to get beyond a debate over whether Russia interfered in the election and what the government is doing to ensure it doesn’t happen again. Unless and until the President of the United States – via Twitter and in public pronouncements – can say what the likes of Nielsen, Coats and Wray did on Thursday, there will always be some doubt and confusion about exactly how big a threat Russia represents and what the US is doing to combat the threat. And that uncertainty is exactly what Russia wants.<doc-sep>
(CNN) — A handful of top US national security officials said Thursday that Russia is continuing to pursue its efforts to interfere in the US political system and said President Donald Trump has directed them to make countering election interference a top priority. “We continue to see a pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States,” Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Thursday from the White House briefing room. “The President has specifically directed us to make the matter of election meddling and securing our election process a top priority.” The top officials’ presence in the White House briefing room amounted to the administration’s most significant effort to date to convey that a whole of government effort is being undertaken to combat Russian attacks on US democracy, which Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said is “in the crosshairs.” “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of our democracy, and it has become clear that they are the target of our adversaries who seek … to sow discord and undermine our way of life,” Nielsen said. A Cabinet official who wasn’t present at Thursday’s briefing weighed in on efforts to counteract Russian meddling in the upcoming elections. “We, the Department of Defense, are taking active measures to protect election security including monitoring our adversaries,” Defense Secretary James Mattis told a small group of reporters at the Pentagon. Mattis’ comments were not directly related to the scorching criticism Republicans and Democrats have unleashed on the President following his refusal to back the US intelligence community’s conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denials. Trump has since reaffirmed his confidence in the US intelligence assessment, but his absence from the briefing room on Thursday and his ongoing branding of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “witch hunt” have only kept alive questions about whether Trump is serious about confronting ongoing Russian interference. That cognitive dissonance was on display during the briefing Thursday as Coats, national security adviser John Bolton and FBI Director Chris Wray were pressed about contradictions in the administration’s messaging and the President’s. “I think the President has made it abundantly clear to everybody who has responsibility in this area that he cares deeply about it and that he expects them to do their jobs to their fullest ability and that he supports them fully,” Bolton said, adding that Trump opened his private meeting with Putin by raising election interference. Still, Coats said he is “not in a position to either understand fully or talk about what happened in Helsinki,” despite being one of the US’s top intelligence officials. Wray, meanwhile, fielded a question about Trump and his administration’s ongoing attacks on the Mueller investigation and on the FBI. “I can assure the American people that the men and women of the FBI, starting from the director, all the way on down, are going to follow our oaths and do our jobs,” Wray said, standing feet away from White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who on Wednesday claimed “corruption and dishonesty” within the FBI. Coats, Nielsen, Wray and Bolton were also joined by Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, who said the US is prepared “to conduct operations” against cyber actors attempting to undermine US democracy. But the overwhelming message from the officials was to demonstrate that the Trump administration is on guard as the 2018 midterms approach, particularly in the wake of Trump’s ambivalence and reports that US intelligence officials had yet to receive adequate guidance on priorities from the White House. “The intelligence community continues to be concerned about the threats of upcoming US elections, both the midterms and the presidential elections of 2020,” Coats said. “Our focus here today is simply to tell the American people we acknowledge the threat, it is real, it is continuing and we are doing everything we can to have a legitimate election that the American people can have trust in.” Coats said that while Russian efforts to influence and drive a wedge in US democracy are “pervasive” and “ongoing,” he said that US intelligence so far believes the Russian influence campaign is less robust than in 2016. “It is not the kind of robust campaign that we assessed in the 2016 election,” Coats said. “They stepped up their game big time in 2016.