‘You don’t wait until the epidemic is killing everyone’ — ex-NSA hacker blasts Obama’s response to Russian election hacking

A former hacker for the National Security Agency says the Obama administration failed to do its job when confronted with intelligence that showed Russia’s attempt to influence the 2016 presidential election.

“They were so busy thinking about retaliation and secrecy that they were not doing the thing that would make a difference,” the source told Business Insider on condition of anonymity, given the sensitive nature of their work with Tailored Access Operations, the NSA’s elite hacking unit.

A bombshell report published Friday by The Washington Post, which focused on the timeline of Russian hacking and how the Obama administration responded, revealed that the White House struggled with keeping the matter closely held, and did not respond in any substantive way until the election had ended, despite knowledge of Kremlin ties to the hackers being revealed months prior.

“It is the hardest thing about my entire time in government to defend,” a senior Obama administration official told The Washington Post. “I feel like we sort of choked.”

Read the whole story from Business Insider.

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