president of the united states, donald trump, where he said the problem with the russians is they lie. this is absolutely when you have a covert action like this, the nice thing about it is it provides you with what s known as plausible deniability. you can look with your deep eyes into the camera and say absolutely not. why would i do this? it s all simply not true. if i could add on to jeffrey s comment earlier about the leaks portion, leaks of classified information are a bad thing. it s all the worse in this case, because guys like mueller who are doing the investigation on this have access to this information, as do both the oversight committees. so it s not as though this information was not available to parts of the government investigating this. the fact that it comes out, and this is just part of the tension of an open society in the press and the american people s desire to know chasified information, it gives a big advantage to the russians to be able to protect them selve
registration systems, even some election officials. we knew about some of this before the election in states you may remember, we reported this in arizona and illinois and florida. but this gives more details about that. the nsa has been looking into this and found more information, and they compiled a report to say here s where we saw attempts at penetration of these voting systems, registration systems, et cetera. it gives them more information, but it does not change their assessment that you remember from january, anderson, that said while they did steal e-mails, et cetera, they did an influence operation, the russians were not able and did not attempt it appears to change vote counts during the election. in terms of the person accused of leaking the document, what else do we know other than her name, which apparently is reality winner. reporter: that s right, and we re seeing the first photographs of her. cnn has spoken to her mother. she s a 20 something contractor, working f
information public eventually. the fact that the washington post and the new york times and cnn have been so aggressive in getting information about russian attempts to influence the election, and some of that information has been classified. that s been a great public service, so that s why i find cases like this morally complicated. yes, it is illegal, but there is a public value in getting access to some classified information. thanks, everybody. did you want to respond to that? no, my last comment was simply that yeah, it s a very difficult situation because there is public value in these leaks but there s a high counterintelligence price to pay and the public is less well protected in the future if it gets out. so it s a hard one. i struggle with it myself. coming up, the countdown to comey testifying on capitol hill.
if i could just add just on the leaking issue, post edward snowden, another contractor who leaked classified information, there s been a lot of discussion inside and outside the intelligence community how they can prevent this in the future. they have taken many steps, protocols. they reviewed processes, reviewed who has access to certain classified information. yet here yet again, a contractor getting a very highly classified in fact, very freshness report only a couple of weeks old and putting it out there and the fact is, even though she s in great legal trouble, the information is already out there, right? we know the content of that report. just offer one word in defense of leaking and investigative journalism. yes, it s true mueller will have access to this material. but i think there is a public value in the public having access to it. mueller may not make any of his
for his dealings with the government of turkey and russia and information he did not disclose in his security clearance. same thing for jared kushner, the president s son-in-law, who we also now know did not disclose his dealings with other countries on his security clearance form. all of which tells us, this investigation is not just about russia and not just about the election anymore, but could touch on things that trump associates did over many years. the president may not be involved at all, but it could still the be very damaging and embarrassing to him, anderson. tom, what about the other inquiries, specifically those in congress? yeah, the congressional part here is also picking up steam here. it s important to bear in mind. remember, over on the house side, the intelligence committee has now issued its first subpoenas. they want to talk to flynn, as well.