On Tuesday, Wikileaks released 8,761 documents on the CIA’s “global covert hacking program” in what it claims is the largest publication of confidential CIA documents ever.

The documents were published as part of ‘Year Zero’ which is only the first in a series of leaks named ‘Vault 7’ by Wikileaks. The organization claims these leaks come from a network within the CIA’s Center for Cyber Intelligence in Langley, Virginia.

RELEASE: Vault 7 Part 1 “Year Zero”: Inside the CIA’s global hacking force https://t.co/h5wzfrReyy pic.twitter.com/N2lxyHH9jp — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

One startling revelation that came from the release of these documents is that the CIA kept a large collection of cyber-attack techniques under a project called “Umbrage,” which were “stolen” from malware produced in other countries including Russia.

This would allow the CIA to potentially launch “false flag” cyber attacks and make them appear as if they originated from other countries, such as Russia.

From Wikileaks:

The CIA’s Remote Devices Branch’s UMBRAGE group collects and maintains a substantial library of attack techniques ‘stolen’ from malware produced in other states including the Russian Federation.

With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the “fingerprints” of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from.

Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton once suggested the DNC hacks could have been a false flag operation in order to blame Russia.

The Hill reported in December:

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who has been floated for a possible role in President-elect Donald Trump’s State Department, questioned reports of Russian interference in the U.S. presidential election.

“It is not at all clear to me, just viewing this from the outside, that this hacking into the [Democratic National Committee] and the [Republican National Committee] was not a false flag operation,” he told Fox News’s Eric Shawn on Sunday.

When pressed about his use of the phrase “false flag” and whether he was accusing an entity in the U.S. of involvement, Bolton said, “We just don’t know.”

“But I believe that intelligence has been politicized in the Obama administration to a very significant degree.”

We have yet to see one shred of evidence connecting Vladimir Putin to Wikileaks or proving Moscow was behind the hacks of the Democratic Party.

Did Russia really hack the DNC? Or did deep state elements of the CIA simply make it appear as if it was the Kremlin in order to undermine Trump?