In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee—a regularly scheduled unclassified briefing on "foreign cyber threats"—Director of National Intelligence James Clapper did very little to preview a report on Russian "cyber" activities around the US elections scheduled to be delivered to President Barack Obama this week. Clapper did say that an unclassified version of the report would be released to the public early next week. However, that version is unlikely to contain any new specific evidence to support the intelligence community's assertions that the Russian government directed hacking and propaganda operations against Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party in an attempt to deliberately affect the outcome of the US election.

"We plan to brief the Congress and release an unclassified version of this report early next week, with due deference to the protection of highly fragile sources and methods," Clapper said in his opening statement. "We have invested billions, and we put people's lives at risk to get such information. If we were to expose how we got this, we could just kiss that off. We're going to be as forthcoming as possible."

Clapper and National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael Rogers both asserted, however, that the intelligence community was even more certain of Putin's involvement in the meddling in the US election than they were when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a joint statement in October. "We stand more resolutely now on that statement than we did on the seventh of October," Clapper said.

While Clapper said it was almost certain that no votes had been changed by hacking, he noted there was no way to determine the full impact of Russia's information campaign on voters' opinions—"We in the Intelligence Community can't tally that."

Much of what Clapper and Rogers said in their testimony echoes data already available from commercial security firms and other sources, as well as the somewhat limited data shared in the DHS-FBI "joint analysis report" (JAR) issued last week. The report to be delivered to the president will, however, take in the whole of the alleged Russian campaign to influence the election, including the use of Russian state-funded media, social media, and "fake news" to spread disinformation. The report will likely also include specific data on how the intelligence community linked Putin to the sharing of breached data from the Democratic National Committee and others (including Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta) to Wikileaks.

In response to a question from the committee on the role of "fake news" disinformation in Russia's election meddling, Clapper said, "Without getting too far in front of the headlights of [the upcoming report], this was a multifaceted campaign—the hacking was only one part of it. It also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, and fake news." Clapper acknowledged that the same sort of campaign was ongoing in Europe now, around the upcoming French and German elections.

That mirrors forensic evidence that Ars has examined recently in our attempts to connect the dots between operations from the organization behind the "Fancy Bear" group of malware, tools and infrastructure used in the DNC, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Clinton campaign breaches, and the theft of data from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). Servers used in connection with some of the spear phishing attacks connected to these breaches have been also used to target French Gmail users recently. (More details of that activity and how it is connected to the information campaign against the Democrats in the US elections are being pulled together for an upcoming Ars report.)

Many of the senators from both parties on the Armed Services Committee, including Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) threw barbs at President-elect Donald Trump for his treatment of the intelligence community and his posts apparently professing greater trust in Julian Assange than US intelligence. Citing Assange as "the one responsible for publishing the names of people who worked for us" in Iraq and Afghanistan plus the subject of a criminal investigation, McCain asked Clapper and Rogers, "Do you think there's any credibility that we should attach to his statements?" Clapper replied frankly: "Not in my view."

For his part, Donald Trump tried to back away from the appearance of endorsing Assange via Twitter:

"The dishonest media likes saying that I am in Agreement with Julian Assange - wrong. I simply state what he states, it is for the people.... to make up their own minds as to the truth. The media lies to make it look like I am against "Intelligence" when in fact I am a big fan!"

Graham was particularly angry at Trump for being overly critical and disrespectful of the intelligence community. "You don't want to undermine those people serving in this arena," he said. He also suggested Obama's sanctions against Russia amounted to "throwing pebbles" when it was time to "throw rocks," because the active campaign to interfere in the US election went far beyond passive espionage.

Graham noted that Republicans should be concerned that someone else might do the same thing to them if Trump were to take on China or Iran, and the response to the Russian information operations was an opportunity to deter future interference in the democratic process. “It’s not like we’re so much better at cyber security than Democrats,” he said.

Another area Graham focused on was the US Information Agency, the government operator of Radio Free Europe, and other US foreign information operations. He suggested this agency was too archaic in its focus on broadcasting. Clapper agreed, saying in his closing remarks that what was needed to counter information warfare was a "USIA on steroids"—a new information organization that could take on misinformation from adversaries more aggressively in social media and other places online as well as in the broadcast realm.

Russia has used the state-funded RT broadcast service and other outlets to more aggressively spread its version of the global narrative over the past few years. The country has reportedly even used "troll factories" to create confusion and support nationalist populism in several European countries.