Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates says there hasn't been a big enough sense of emergency among U.S. officials, including lawmakers and President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE, over Russia's interference in the election.

"I think that given the unprecedented nature of it and the magnitude of the effort, I think people seem to have been somewhat laid back about it," Gates said during an interview airing Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"And maybe part of the problem was that it took the intelligence community a while to assemble really firm evidence of Russian involvement and Russian government involvement that delayed a response," Gates added.

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The Washington Post reported Friday that the FBI supports a CIA assessment that Moscow attempted to intervene in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the White House.



The Kremlin has repeatedly denied the allegations while calling for the U.S. to provide evidence of Russia's involvement, while Trump has dismissed reports that Russia attempted to intervene to help him.



President Obama addressed recent reports of the intelligence findings and Russia's public dismissal of the allegations during a press conference at the White House on Friday.

"We will provide evidence that we can safely provide that does not compromise sources and methods," Obama said, promising a full investigation will be completed by the time he leaves office next month.

"But I will be honest with you, when you are talking about cyber-security, a lot of it is classified and we are not going to provide it, because the way we catch folks is by knowing certain things about them that they might not want us to know, and, if we are going to monitor this stuff effectively going forward, we don't want them to know that we know," Obama added.

Gates told NBC that he believes the U.S. intelligence community has "reliable information" that proved Russia's interference in the election.



"Attribution is a challenge, but it seems pretty clear to me that they've developed really reliable information that the Russian government was involved," he said.