U.S Intelligence Is Certain That Russia Tried To Influence U.S. Election; U.S. Intel: Putin Had "Clear Preference" For Trump; Trump Downplays Role Of Russian Influence; Winter Storm Nails Southeast U.S.
QUEST: A declassified version of the report on the Russian hacking says there is little doubt that the Kremlin orchestrated to the campaign to hurt Hillary Clinton, excuse me, if not to outright help Donald Trump win election in 2016. The unanimous conclusion from U.S. Intelligence is that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a multi-pronged campaign to influence the election and that included the cyber attacks. Report says Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for Trump and set out to help him win by discrediting Secretary Clinton. But, the CIA and FBI have high confidence in these conclusions. The National Security Agency rated its confidence as moderate. The reports also warning that Russia's efforts to undermine western democracies will not end. And in fact, it says Moscow will apply lessons learned from its Putin-ordered campaign aimed at U.S. presidential election to future influence efforts worldwide that includes U.S allies and their election processes. Donald Trump reaction to the revelations in the intelligence was lukewarm at best and for that part of the story, CNN's Jim Sciutto.</s>JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tonight, a declassified version of the intelligence community's report on Russian hacking concluded that, "Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump". Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency. The Russian's assault on the U.S. election used several different techniques blending "covert intelligence operations such as cyberactivity with overt efforts by Russian government agencies state funded media, third part intermediaries and paid social media users or trolls. It also says "when it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election. The Russian influence campaign began to focus on undermining her future presidency." Following the briefing, the president-elect said in a statement, "I had a constructive meeting and conversation with the leaders of the intelligence community this afternoon. I have tremendous respect for the work and service done by the men and women in this community to this great nation." However, Trump may make clear he believes that hacks don't taint his election victory. "There was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election including the fact there was no tampering whatsoever with the voting machines." The intelligence assessment confirmed that hacking was "not involve in vote tally". However in a statement, Trump never specifically acknowledged that Russia was behind the hacks, despite the clear intelligence assessment and overwhelming bipartisan agreement on Russia's involvement.</s>LEON PANETTA, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: I think that's the one thing in a statement that he should have acknowledged that whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, we are not going to tolerate a country like Russia trying to interfere in our election process.</s>SCIUTTO: Now, Donald Trump and some of his surrogates have made the point that only the Democrats were hacked here and that's why only Democratic material was released. But, in fact, this report contradicts and says that the cyber apps targeted both major U.S. political parties but because material stolen from the Democrats, only that material was released in the days and weeks leading up to the election. It is in large part because of that, that the community concluded that the intention was to weaken Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump. Jim Sciutto CNN, Washington.</s>HOWELL: Jim, thank you. The Vice President-elect Mike Pence attended that intelligence briefing with Donald Trump and he says the Trump administration will take swift and decisive action against cyber attacks. Listen.</s>MIKE PENCE, (R), VICE-PRESIDENT-ELECT, USA: We did this afternoon complete an extensive briefing from the leaders of our intelligence community. It was as the president-elect said. It was a constructive and respectful dialogue and president-elect has made it very clear that we're going to take aggressive action in the early days of our new administration to combat cyber attacks and protect the security of the American people from this type of intrusion in the future. But, I know the president-elect appreciated the presentation made by the leaders of our intelligence community and I know the president- elect and I both appreciate the sacrifices that the men and women who serve in our intelligence services around the country and around the world provide and contributing to the safety and security of the American people.</s>HOWELL: Let's talk more about this with Rod Beckstrom, the former director of the National Cyber Security Center at the U.S Department of Homeland Security, also a former senior adviser to the U.S director of National Intelligence. Rod joining us lives this hour from Santa Cruz, California. It's good to have you with us, Rod. Let's talk first about this declassified report. The president-elect meeting he got a much more detailed version of this particular report. That report essentially stating that Russia was behind and influenced the campaign to influence the election. It was targeting Hillary Clinton to hurt her chances of winning, but still his statement afterwards, Trump never acknowledged that Russia was behind it. Your thoughts on that.</s>ROD BECKSTROM, FORMER DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL CYBER SECURITY: It looks that President-elect Trump is a tough New York street fighter and fights to win. He's not someone who's going, you know, easily change his position on this issue. Clearly, he feels that, you know, it relates to the credibility of his election potentially. So, you now, he's taking a strong position and I think any president that was elected would do exactly the same thing. So, we shouldn't be surprised by that. And I think this report -- you know, it's a good report. Community has done some good work here and started to connect some dots. And so, you know, it certainly is not a final decisive document in terms of hard core proof and that's attested as Richard Quest just said by the fact the NSA rated the even Putin intentionality here on the Russian governments as moderately probably (ph). That's a couched term here. So, I think -- anyway, I don't think we should be surprised by the president-elect's position.</s>HOWELL: OK. But, looking back, you know, in the weeks before this particular report and this meeting that Donald Trump had, Trump did describe this meeting as constructive. He seemed to walk back some of that harsh rhetoric where he was directly criticizing the intelligence community. Is that enough to mend fences?</s>BECKSTROM: Yeah, I think it will be. He's appointed someone extremely respected Senator Dan Coats to be the next director of National Intelligence who has a great reputation for bipartisan collaboration and by the way. So, I think things will be calming down from here and coming back together. I certainly hope so. But I guess some important lessons from this experience and why is that we're living in a hyper connected, high transparent world and everything is becoming more exposed and transparent including election, presidential elections and others. Leaks are occurring whether it's by government insiders like in Edward Snowden or by hacktivists or foreign nation state or other parties. This is part of the new world we're living in to and we need to really improve our elections systems and processes in this country. And, you know, for example only roughly half the states there will be audits after the election. And addition in many state, you can elect electronic voting machines that have no paper audit and the Russians could have hacked some of those devices. They have absolutely the capability. I believe they chose not to strategically. And actually it would have been nice this report. It would been useful to hear why the Russian chose not to actually hacked the device. I mean, I think there are some good reasons why but it would have been interesting to get the intelligence assessment on that.</s>HOWELL: Rod, you suggest that fences will be mended but, you know, the big story here, the Trump administration, the incoming administration is suggesting hey, hey, this is a partisan situation that, you know, the hacking may have happened but at the same time, you know, that it's not undermining his legitimacy as the president. The big story, though, here, is that a foreign power may have acted to influence the U.S election. That's the big story. Do you think that's going to be swept under the rug here?</s>BECKSTROM: Well, at first, this is not entirely a partisan issue. I mean, even the hearing that McCain and the armed forces committee of the senate had earlier this week was clearly a well orchestrated bipartisan affair with general buy in from the participants and from different the intelligence leaders that they all had concern that Russia probably was involved here. But, again, this is not a shocking news story. As the report itself says, the Russians have been doing this for years all around the world and also with previous American elections thought to have an impact. The change is that we move towards hyper transparency that moved towards disclosure of information is a shift. It is something we want to protect from. But, the most important thing is that we prepare for the future and learn from the lessons here because this is the new reality we're going to live in.</s>HOWELL: The Trump over Twitter has suggested that gross negligence by the Democratic National Committee allowed hacking to take place. The Republican National Committee had strong defense, he said. The truth is though that both groups were hacked but only damaging information from the Democrats was leaked and released. So, the question here is, are we at a point even before the inauguration that we cannot longer expect to have an honest conversation about facts with the incoming president?</s>BECKSTROM: Look, there are --the reports said there was hacking of both parties. It did not say that the Trump campaign servers were hacked and the campaign has maintained and their spokes people have maintained that it was not hacked and that they shared their information with the FBI as well as there's -- it's been maintained that the DNC did not share their data and servers with the FBI. I'm not 100 precise but I've not have that data that says that the Trump campaign or the RNC was directly hacked. I'm open to receive, that was not this report. It said there was hacking in both side. I think it would be useful, of course, George to hear which parties were hacked. I think it's relevant. The American can hopefully learn this through time. Regarding, you know, facts and non-facts. You know, the fact is that there is very good evidence that the Russians did hack into the DNC servers. There's also -- it's very clear that Wikileaks did a major leak of e-mails that could have come from Podesta's account and g-mail as wells the information from the DNC. What has not been absolutely proven is the connection between the two. All of this report and the good research done by the intelligence community suggest that it's actually quite likely and that the smell is clearly there in terms of the trace in connecting the dots. So, I think this transparent world will move us toward of more fact based analysis. But again I really hoping George that we learn to improve the system here. And also, I want to mention, you know, when I had the discussion with John Vauss on CNN on October 14th, I mentioned that election tampering could be construed as an act of war. That discussion came up in Senator McCain's hearing this week. And what I've based on this report, in this case, we're not to the level of an act of war but had there been tampering with the tallying systems or the voting machines. We could get there. And I think we want to make sure that we figured out what are those red lines in the future? What does constitute an act of war and we'll also going to do some self reflection on what role does our government play in other elections around the world? And do we want to an international treaty relationship, treaty created on this or does the United Nations policy -- but these are really important questions that I think we are all going to have to confront moving forward.</s>HOWELL: Again, the president-elect not saying directly that Russia was behind this hack. Rod Beckstrom thank you so much for your insight on this. We appreciate you joining us.</s>BECKTROM: Thank you, George.</s>QUEST: As we continue tonight on CNN, President Obama is reacting to the shooting at the Fort Lauderdale airport and the president's weighing in on whether or not it was an act of terror. We'll talk about that.