Not sure what part of "claim" you don't understand. It doesn't matter who makes the claim. Claims by the Secretary of State or the CIA are no more credible than claims by you or I if they don't come with evidence we can independently scrutinize. Older people should have learned this lesson in 2003 with the WMD debacle. Those of us who are even older should have learned it at the Gulf of Tonkin.
>trying to claim that "we" are as bad as the Russians is the same shit Putin does to dispel any criticism against his fucked up regime's actions.
Demanding evidence I can scrutinize is not "dispelling criticism". If you trust the evidence- free claims of the government (or anyone else) - on any matter - you are incredibly naive. Unfortunately you aren't alone.
This shit is easy to lookup ... and the fact of the matter is, trying to claim that "we" are as bad as the Russians is the same shit Putin does to dispel any criticism against his fucked up regime's actions. No matter how bad the US has been in Wars and sticking their fingers in democratic elections, the Russians are 10 times as worse and they know it.