U.S. intelligence officials told leaders in Congress a year ago that Russian hackers were targeting the Democratic National Committee and other party entities, but the lawmakers could not inform those targets because of the sensitive nature of the information, Reuters reported Friday.
The revelation was based on three anonymous sources who were familiar with the matter, Reuters said.
According to the report, intelligence officials briefed a group of lawmakers known as the Gang of Eight last summer. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV); then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH); House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC); the committee’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA); and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) received the briefing.
The disclosure of the attack came with restrictions. Lawmakers were not allowed to share any information with the targets of the hack because it could have revealed that the U.S. was monitoring the hack and what tools the intelligence agencies were using to track it, Reuters reported. The intelligence officials believed that the hack was backed up by two Russian intelligence agencies, a conclusion the FBI did not share with the DNC when it first reached out to the group about its cybersecurity infrastructure in the fall.
It is believed that penetrating the DNC allowed the hackers to then infiltrate the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Hillary Clinton campaign and other Democratic organizations.
The Clinton campaign first detected a potential hack back in March and received a “general briefing” by the FBI, according to one of Reuters’ sources, but even then the campaign was not told that U.S. intelligence agencies had concluded Russia was behind the attack.
The DNC did not respond to Reuters’ inquiries and the DCCC declined the opportunity to comment. House Speaker Paul Ryan office’s also declined to comment, while Pelosi’s office did not respond to Reuters’ inquiry.
