The Obama Administration is using Perry Mason’s courtroom adversary to prosecute its case against WikiLeaks.
Just as it happens in the old Perry Mason TV show, the prosecutor is basing his case on circumstantial evidence, not on hard evidence.
That is the gist of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections.
Three statements in the assessment are particularly interesting.
Page i of the Scope and Sourcing section says, “We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on the outcome of the 2016 election. The US Intelligence Community is charged with monitoring and assessing the intentions, capabilities, and actions of foreign actors; it does not analyze US political processes or US public opinion.” In other words, the U.S. intelligence community can’t say that Russia definitely influenced American voters.
Page iii of the Key Judgments section says, “DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.” In other words, Russia didn’t tamper with actual voting.
Page 3 of the assessment says, “Disclosures through WikiLeaks did not contain any evident forgeries.” In other words, the information released by Wikileaks is true.
The Hill quotes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying, “Did [WikiLeaks] change the outcome of the election? Who knows, it’s impossible to tell. But if it did, the accusation is that the true statements of Hillary Clinton and her campaign manager, John Podesta, and the DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz, their true statements is what changed the election.” In other words, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was allegedly sunk by true statements made by Democrats.
Now, did Vladimir Putin make those Democrats say what they said?
Still, the U.S. intelligence community is certain that Russia gave information to WikiLeaks, just as in 2003 the U.S. intelligence community was certain that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
