Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. He is the author of "United States of Jihad: Investigating America's Homegrown Terrorists." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles at CNN.

(CNN) My fellow Americans.

It is, of course, a great relief that the special counsel has cleared my campaign of conspiring with the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. I feel considerable vindication about that, since this is what I have been telling you from the beginning.

But I take no joy in the extent to which Russia -- a foreign power whose interests are antithetical to those of the United States -- has manipulated our sacred election process as laid out so comprehensively in the special counsel's report.

That interference came in multiple forms.

First, there were the efforts by the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency to manipulate social media to promote my campaign and denigrate that of my opponent, Hillary Clinton. Millions of Americans were potentially manipulated by this campaign, which even extended to the organization of actual political rallies here in the United States.

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