Intelligence chief Clapper now says that Russia did throw the election to Trump.

James Clapper, retired after serving for forty years in various U.S. intelligence services, concluding his career with being Director of National Intelligence from 2010-2017.  He gave an extended interview to Rachel Maddow Tuesday night about his new book, Facts and Fears:   Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence.

Although he was one of the group of intelligence chiefs who told congressional committees that. while they were sure that Russia tried to influence our democratic process and 2016 election, their analysis did not attempt to determine whether it actually changed the outcome.    They simply did not set up their data collection to answer that question.

Now, however, Clapper readily does answer the question:
     "As I left government service, I had my own decision to make. . . . [A]fter experiencing the election, the unprecedented Russian interference in our political process, and the behavior and impact of the Trump administration, I changed my mind.  I think the catalyst was the stark, visceral realization of seeing the fundamental pillars of our country being undermined both by the Russians and by the president.   This shook me . . . "

Rachel interjects here that what Clapper has concluded is all the more remarkable because of what he is in a position to know, what he has seen, what he has been through.    Here's Clapper, from his book:

     "By May 2017, when Jim Comey was fired . . . we'd learned that the Russian operation had been even more expansive than the IC [Intelligence Community] had assessed in January.   We knew now that the Russians had thousands of Twitter accounts and tens of thousands of bots that posted more than a million tweets.  They posted more than a thousand videos on YouTube with days of streaming content.  Facebook has said Russian content reached 126 million of its American users -- an astonishing number, considering that only 139 million Americans voted.
     "As the leader of the Intelligence Community, I testified that the IC did not attempt to assess whether the Russian influence campaign impacted the results of the election.   As a private citizen, I had no doubt they influenced at least some voters.
     "Looking at the savvy ways the Russians targeted specific voter groups -- for instance, buying advertisements on Facebook promoting Clinton's support of the Black Lives Matter movement and ensuring those ads ran only on the pages of white conservative voters in swing states . . . looking at how they created lies that helped Trump and hurt Clinton and promoted these falsehoods through social media and state-sponsored channels to the point that the traditional US media were unwittingly spreading Russian propaganda . . . and looking at how they ran a multifaceted campaign and sustained it at a high level from early 2015 until Election Day in 2016 . . . of course the Russian effort affected the outcome.  Surprising even themselves, they swung the election to a Trump win."

Any other conclusion stretches logic, common sense, and credulity to the breaking point, according to Clapper.   With less than eighty thousand, targeted votes in three key states, they swung the election.   As to whether this was all just dumb luck or whether the Trump campaign had a hand in it, Clapper says that, when he left office on January 20, 2017 (Trump's inauguration day), he had seen "no smoking-gun evidence that the Russian government and the Trump campaign were in substantive coordination of their efforts."

Only later did he learn of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting.   But, in retrospect, what he had seen as DNI was that "the Russians and the campaign seemed to employ strikingly parallel messaging in social media posts and public statements, effectively complementing each other to great effect, with no attempt to hide it."

For example, "whenever the campaign published an allegation that hurt Clinton, the Russians would repeat, amplify, and embellish that claim;  and when the Russians put out a conspiracy theory about Clinton, "Trump would repeat it as campaign rallies and on Twitter.   Whether . . . there was actual collusion or not, this parallelism constituted a putative team effort by the Russian government and the Trump campaign."

Clapper also has some stinging words for Trump himself.   Recalling his experience having served in intelligence under every president from Kennedy through Obama, Clapper says he has "an instilled ethos of profound respect for the president as commander in chief."   So it's difficult for him to speak critically of our current president -- but he also feels it his duty to warn, to give us his perspective that:

"We have elected someone as President of the United States whose first instincts are to twist and distort truth to his advantage, to generate financial benefit to himself and his family, and, in so doing, to demean the values this country has traditionally stood for. . . .   He has set a new low bar for ethics and morality.  He has caused damage to our societal and political fabric that will be difficult and will require time to repair."

And James Clapper adds:    "And close to my heart, he has besmirched the Intelligence Community and the FBI -- pillars of our country -- and deliberately incited many Americans to lose faith and confidence in them."

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It was a powerful message from a man who has few peers in terms of devotion and service to our country and to the institutions that uphold our values and the rule of law.

Ralph