of national intelligence, general clapper, a couple of weeks ago saying he hasn t seen any evidence to suggest there was collaboration between the trump campaign and russia as far as the hacking operations on the democratic party. have you seen any evidence at all? hard evidence, congressman, and you are a member of the intelligence committee, to make that assertion? i have not. which goes more deeply into why i m concerned about president trump s acertion. i think it s unfortunate. i think it wreaks of paranoia and someone who is undisciplined. he could have gotten on the phone and called the acting director of our intelligence services. he could have called director comey to get confirmation, but he did not. he was impulsive. he tweeted that out. that kind of manner and way does not speak of someone who claims to be our commander in chief. and, unfortunately, it makes us the laughing stock to the entire world. a quick question.
barbara, do we know if the documents, first of all are genuine? reporter: what u.s. officials are telling cnn is yes, they do believe the documents to a very large extent are authentic. they can t be sure every word, every page that something hasn t been altered inserted or deleted, but they are working on the assumption of their belief that it s all very authentic and verified. this investigation will involve the fbi looking into the potential of criminal activity and will involve the cia because it s cia documents. they need to figure out how this happened. who did it, who was behind it. how did they get access to these documents. and could there even be more out there, detailing cia hacking operations. it is very important to understand the cia under federal law can collect intelligence overseas on overseas targets. that is what this is all about.
either way it contained these very detailed allegations about a russian government campaign designed to influence our election ordered and directed from the highest levels from putin s office and carried out through cyber attacks, through strategic leaks of stolen information, through complex, sophisticated propaganda efforts designed to hurt hillary clinton s chances in the election and bolster donald trump s. before that was it was the statement in october when the department of homeland security and director of national intelligence warned ahead of the election there was a concerted russian government effort to influence our election, including hacking operations to steal and publicize information from the democratic party and the clinton campaign in order to hurt them both. before that, in september there was the warning published by the fbi saying that boards of elections in individual u.s. states had been hacked. the ip addresses they named and
including hacking operations to steal and publicize information from the democratic party and the clinton campaign in order to hurt them both. before that, in september there was the warning published by the fbi saying that boards of elections in individual u.s. states had been hacked. the ip addresses they named and publicized in conjunction with those attacks were later traced back to a server farm in russia. so all of these reports, right, intelligence reports, news reports, these will all be part of the history of this presidential campaign and presidential election but now in the early days of this presidency those reports form the basis of live, current, forward-looking concern about whether not just the election but this presidency might potentially be compromised by foreign influence. and it s not an abstract concern. it inflicts a lot of the way we are processing the day to day
tied to russia s military and intelligence services. they ve emboldened putin. he s acting like he won the american presidential election. he feels like the most powerful man in the world. reporter: still putin and his inner circle tonight are said to be bracing for america s response issuing new plans to guard against cyber attacks. u.s. officials have told cnn they re looking at that as a possible option. how could america retaliate? the u.s. cyber command at ft. meade has a team looking into what the russians are doing, not to collect sbegs on it, but to disrupt it if the president ever gave the order. reporter: a former top u.s. official who analyzed russia s hacking operations said america s cyber warriors could hit back hard. reveal details of the perpetrators on the other side ranging from their tools and techniques to the computers and the ip addresses that they re using to their malware signatures even to their physical identities in certain cases.