Whether someone else also hacked the DNC would be interesting to know, but it doesn't really impinge on the question of whether there is or is not a vast-but-also-ham-handed-and-kind-of-contradictory conspiracy pushing theory a.
Except that point 7 isn't at all controversial. EVERYONE hacks EVERYONE ELSE in cyber-espionage; even Canada was probably hacking the lame-ass security DNC email server, if only to fill a dossier. Remember that Clinton was set to be the next president of the United States; it is very much in Russia's (and anyone else's) best interest to know as much about her and her team as they can learn. It's the job of American spooks to prevent this, and they completely fucked it up.
Frankly, I find the suggestion that telling voters more about their candidate constitutes 'interference' to be repugnant; but assuming that we are going to engineer a scandal about this, we need to ask whether the Russians released that information to Wikileaks? All of the evidence (ie what Wikileaks says) says otherwise.
>Frankly, I find the suggestion that telling voters more about their candidate constitutes 'interference' to be repugnant
Really? By this argument, I take it you believe political candidates' email (or cough tax returns) should automatically be made public?
Much as I agree with transparency, I think we need to recognize that everyone--including political candidates--has some right to private communications.
> but assuming that we are going to engineer a scandal about this, we need to ask whether the Russians released that information to Wikileaks?
The publicly released circumstantial evidence about Russian backing of "Guccifer 2.0" is fairly convincing, I would say. But (contrary to your claim above) the media have not "jumped to the conclusion" that the Russians were the ones who released the leaked emails; the FBI claimed* Russia was not merely behind the attacks but behind the leaks.
You all can debate the merits of trusting intelligence agencies or not, but the situation you described--in which the IC only suggested Russia was behind some intrusions but not the leaks--is not in fact the world we live in.
* http://www.wsj.com/articles/top-russian-officials-shift-away...
No, they don't, unless you see the need for them to act against our interests without our knowleddge because markets or something, or see some sort of right for them to rule others.
What about non-email communication? Face-to-face conversations should all be public? Does this extend to classified briefings? Should, for example, discussions of "Olympic Games" have been public before it was executed?
It's like in Germany where they're up in arms against this and seem to have forgotten the revelation that the USA was tapping Merkel's phone...
How about the FBI/CIA/DHS/NSA don't like people who don't play by the accepted rules sticking their nose into their business, so they tell a little white lie to try to avoid that?
The three letter agencies have had plenty of people killed before, so "they'd never do that" isn't going to get you very far.
That's more believable than "Russia hacked the DNC and the FBI was honest about it"?
It's certainly not crazy to not trust these people. Deceit is their job.
It's been very difficult for me to wade through the muck on this one.
The reason this is unusual is because the intelligence agencies are being so matter-of-fact about this. They're not trying to convince anyone, like they did with Iraq's WMDs. They're not giving out pointed leaks and then officially denying them. They - meaning multiple agencies - are jut saying, "Yeah, it was Russia", as if it's a settled issue.
The conclusion I draw from this is that there must be very strong evidence. Could that evidence be forged? Sure! (Another reason why the "show me the evidence or I won't believe it!" people sound nutso - why would they think it wasn't forged?) But to believe it's forged we need at least a plausible theory as to who would forge it and why. Right now, I'm drawing a blank.
It's not their job to do the convincing, they leave that to CNN, MSNBC or FOX. They just give some superficial material to get the ball rolling. There was next to no in depth articulation as to how this was definitely Russia. They're still twiddling their thumbs and saying 'we're confident' it was them.
1. The DNC and their members are generally ignorant of good security policy and had an easily hacked system.
2. Some Russian intelligence agency hacked the DNC's email servers.
3. A bunch of other people/hackers/groups hacked the DNC's email servers, as it was "left out in the open", so to speak, and was a trivial target..
4. One group at least used trivial methods to do so and left behind evidence.
5. The FBI/NSA//DHS/etc found that evidence.
6. One of these hackers passed information to WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks has denied that it was Russians who did this.
7. The FBI/CIA claim that the Russians hacked the DNC servers.
8. The press and political opportunists jump to the conclusion that it was the Russians who released this information to Wikileaks.
9. The FBI/CIA classified what they found and aren't going to put it in a press release.