In the declassified version of a new report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and NSA, three U.S agencies on the alleged hacking of the country’s election website ahead of last year’s November 8, Presidential poll says Russian President, Vladimir Putin was possibly on a revenge mission against former Secretary of State and Democratic party candidate, Mrs. Hilary Clinton who he accused of embarrassing and plotting to undermine his government five years earlier.
In the report dated Friday, January 6, 2017, “CIA/FBI/NSA Assessment: Russia’s Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election,” the three agencies said “Putin most likely wanted to discredit Mrs. Clinton who he publicly blamed for “inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.”
Added to this, the agencies agree, was the desire to influence the U.S. election, following which “the Kremlin sought to advance its longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order, the promotion of which Putin and other senior Russian leaders view as a threat to Russia and Putin’s regime.”
There is also the mistrust that followed the Panama Papers and the Olympic doping scandal, which was seen as “US-directed efforts to defame Russia, suggesting he sought to use the disclosures to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical.”
Ahead of the November election and beginning from June, a clear five months earlier, “Putin’s public comments about the U.S. presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States.
“Nonetheless, Putin publicly indicated a preference for President-elect Trump’s stated policy to work with Russia, and pro-Kremlin figures spoke highly about what they saw as his Russia-friendly positions on Syria and Ukraine. Putin publicly contrasted the President-elect’s approach to Russia with Secretary Clinton’s “aggressive rhetoric.”
“Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL),” the report added.
It would be recalled that Hilary, former U.S first lady and wife of former President Bill Clinton, was under intense pressure and appeared before the FBI weeks before the election on allegations that she abused her office by using her private e-mail for otherwise official assignment as Secretary of State in the first term of out-going President Barak Obama between 2008 and 2012.