MARGARET WARNER:

It was a unified response from America's top intelligence officers in their first public appearance since releasing an unclassified report describing a coordinated Russian effort to disrupt the 2016 presidential election.

The report released Friday determined with — quote — "high confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the hack of American political organizations, focused on Democrats, that it was designed to aid president-elect Donald Trump and discredit his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, and that stolen information was then delivered to WikiLeaks, and other groups, which published it online.

The report stopped short of providing the evidence underlying those judgments. That remained the case today, with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper saying, to disclose more would jeopardize sources.

JAMES CLAPPER, Director of National Intelligence: We are very dependent on — given the nature of intelligence work to start with you, very dependent on you, as our overseers, to look at that yourselves on behalf of the electorate.