Media ‘hyperventilating’ on Russian link to DNC emails leak, says NSA director

James Clapper, Director of US National Intelligence, and the man who Edward Snowden says is the one who is in the best position to know who was responsible for the hack of the DNC emails, has cast cold water over the whole “Russian connection” aspect of the story.

Clapper did not say Russia was behind the leak.  Though he did not clear Russia, he says US intelligence has not yet established the identity of the hacker.   He says that there was nothing especially difficult or complex about the hack, meaning that any of many parties could have done it.  He has pointed out that both the US and Russia routinely hack each other, and that they have been engaged in this sort of thing ever since the start of the Cold War, and that only “the tools have changed”.  He says he is “taken aback” by all the “hyperventilation” that has surrounded the story.

These words of sanity and good sense are very welcome and should hopefully dampen down the hysteria, though unfortunately because they do not serve some people’s interests I doubt they will be reported widely.  They tend to reinforce my own doubts that Putin or the Russian authorities were behind the leak.